92 includes routine procedures like petitions and non-violent protests. Of course, tools developed in a past time can also be recycled or updated as the historical context changes – while their properties remain relatively stable, their capacities vary according to the relations in which they are set. Barricades are a useful example of this: first constructed by local community members to battle thieves in cities,225 they quickly found use as a material instrument for battling with repressive governments.226 The development of new cannons by the military, however, quickly made the barricades ineffective, as did city planners’ widening of roads to facilitate cannon mobility.227 They have, however, made a comeback in recent times, as a number of native groups in Canada have employed them with varying degrees of success. Besides the role of history and changing assemblages, this example also brings up another aspect of the material nature of social movements: the opponents’
own
communicative
and
technological
infrastructure.
The
tools,
communication networks and physical bodies employed by the police and the army in various regimes to repress and react to contentious movements are all central components of a contentious politics assemblage. Finally, we must note the role of material changes in the social world, such as economic decline, resource depletion, migration, or even natural disasters which all form a sometimes significant material element in the assemblages of contentious politics. It may seem odd to group these phenomena into part of a contentious assemblage, but what they contribute to contentious politics is the change in material circumstances that can sometimes radically alter what social movement theorists call
225
Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement, 40. As Tarrow notes, it is often the case that repertoires of contention in conflictual politics are developed in the everyday practices of normal people. Mass petitions, for example, were developed from a common business practice. This is another central example of how elements of assemblages are uprooted from a particular setting in order to be employed for different capacities in alternative assemblages. 226 Ibid., 41. 227 Ibid., 65.