This talk analyzes dynamics of violence in the context of street demonstrations – based on research on protests against the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017. More specifically, it is about a phenomenon often referred to as “rioting”; that is, more diffuse patterns of clashes with the police, destruction, and looting in certain neighborhoods or areas, after or beyond organized protests. What characterizes these events, in particular, is a process of expansion or mobilization beyond participants in protests and street demonstrations; in other words, the fact that not only militant activists or protestors take part in the confrontations and looting, but a broad range of heterogeneous groups of people gradually come to participate, including bystanders, spectators, local residents, youths, as well as people coming into the area after the unrest has started, attracted by the “riot”.

Approaches focusing on dynamics of situational interaction can contribute to explaining these processes, but have serious limitations. Based on a detailed analysis of events in an area called “Schanzenviertel” in central-Western Hamburg on the night of July 7th, 2017, I identify several patterns of “micro-mobilization”. At a second level, I then examine the „intra-situational“, relational and spatial dynamics that shape the particular setting in which these patterns of interaction take place, and the ways in which what Jack Katz calls the “epiphany of invisibility” emerges (Katz 2015). Finally, I discuss „trans-situational“ dynamics that shape and constantly transform this setting, among other things via shifts and changes in the configuration of participants.