Reporting on the unreported with Paul Mason: Scenes from Sydney, 2011

This article engages with Paul Mason's 2012 book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: the New Global Revolutions from the perspective of a place where things have not quite 'kicked off' - Sydney, Australia. Through this engagement, I argue that Mason's book provides a useful framework for interrogating the political dynamics of events in a range of places beyond those which feature in its pages. Mason emphasises the importance of relationships between alienated young people, the (sub)urban poor, and organized labour in the events he considers. I apply this frame to examine the potentials and limits of three events that took place in Sydney in 2011; a major union campaign against public sector cuts, the public launch of the community organising efforts of the Sydney Alliance, and the formation of Occupy Sydney. The article concludes with some discussion of the need to extend Mason's work by paying more attention to the translation , as well as the transmission, of political repertoires from place to place.