Definition
The term camped (acampada) is used in Spanish to define the act of lodging and staying in an open-air place for recreational purposes. However, this concept has been generalized in social science literature to refer to a form of political action based on the permanent occupation of a physical space as a method of citizen mobilization. The wave of pro-democracy protests that took place in 2011 triggered an expansion of this strategy to the point of becoming an outstanding action within the political repertoire of civil society. The citizens of different countries have made use of this form of mobilization as a way to express themselves in a politically active manner to claim settlements, reforms, or amendments of the political system. Thus, acampadas have become somewhat generalized as a means of political action by the civil society that has been theorized since the 1980s by authors such as Habermas (1996), Keane (1988), and Arato and Cohen (1988) as a nongovernmental space...
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Feenstra, R.A. (2020). Acampadas. In: List, R., Anheier, H., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99675-2_9503-1
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