This book emerged out of one year of research and interviews with riot police, non-lethal weapon designers as well as activists and sociologists over the period of one year.
“How can we come to new conceptual understandings of the behaviour of all the protagonists involved in political demonstrations?”
How do people group together? And what are the methods of containment used in order to regulate the ‘vulgar mob’? These are just two of the questions elicited by Christian Nold in Mobile Vulgus . Looking at the tactics used by state forces, in particular, non-lethal weapons and associated training regimes, he traces the move toward total policing.
Positioning itself within the counter-tendencies the book then develops its own methodologies of action. Once aligned under a common desire this project reveals the potential force a crowd of people hold when they act as a cohesive whole. At once a textual treatise, a visual manual and an audio tool, Mobile Vulgus has developed out of in-depth research, alongside test situations in Bristol and London.
ISBN 1 870699 56 4 – Price £7.50