Protesting at the crossroads: Framing 'in-between places' in spatial analyses of contention

Bridging anthropological understandings of “non-place” (Augé, 1995) with insights on the “in-between city” (Sieverts, 2003), this paper advances the concept of in-between place as a useful heuristic device through which to examine spaces of contention outside the city. Focusing on a single protest organised by youth activists in Wadi Ara in the summer of 2013, it uses frame analysis to interrogate the power of roads, particularly the nodal power of inter-urban crossroads, in enabling Palestinian protest in Israel. In so doing, this paper seeks not only to address the creative efforts to be seen and heard on the margins of an ethnocratic regime, but to contribute to a wider decentring research agenda that would move beyond the city in concrete and analytical terms.