Kommentar |
Backed by New Information and Communication Technology (NICT), protest and social movements in the 21st century have entered new territories of transnational virtual networking, cross-issues coalition-building, and street protests with new forms of deliberation and participation. Their effects upon our understanding of collective action and democratic life in different regime types and cultural contexts remains insufficiently explored. Think of the Domino-effects triggered by the MeToo- and Times-Up-move-ments as well as the Avaaz campaign, whose platforms have facilitated a speedy spread of alternative discourses and organization of social movements, thereby clamouring for a voice in global decision-making. Furthermore, such digital mobilization provides new outlets for traditional street protests. Some of them pursue the aim to draw public and global attention for the sake of promoting climate and social justice (ie Friday for Future (FFF) movements). Could this be global democracy in the making? Our course provides a critical overview of significant protest events in the post-2008 period and explores a range of the analytical tools that may be used to understand them, before proceeding to identify, disaggregate and draw into question some of the major claims which have emerged in literature on the post-2008 mobilizations and their effects upon democracy. The sessions contained in the seminar tackle novel approaches and perspectives of social movements and provide nuanced insights with respect to a variety of post-2008 movements ranging from the re-emergence of peace movements, cross-crises protest movements (FFF’s digital mobilization during the Covid-19 pandemic Crisis), issue-, country- and region-specific social movements (eg the New Movement for Iranian women „Women, Life, Freedom“ in 2022 and solidarity mobilization for refugees in Italy). Their composition, mobilization forms, frames, democratic practices, and interrelationships with other actors in pursuit of rights promotion and democratic reform will be carefully studied and compared. |
Literatur |
• BERGER, Stefan; NEHRING, Holger (ed.). The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective: A Survey. Springer, 2017. • DELLA PORTA, Donatella; KRIESI, Hanspeter. Social movements in a globalizing world: An introduction. En Social movements in a globalizing world. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1999. p. 3-22. • DELLA PORTA, Donatella; DOERR, Nicole. Deliberation in protests and social movements. The Oxford handbook of deliberative democracy, 2018, p. 391-426. • DELLA PORTA, Donatella. Can democracy be saved?: participation, deliberation and social movements. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. • ESCHLE, Catherine. Global democracy, social movements, and feminism. Routledge, 2018. • DAVIES, Thomas; RYAN, Holly Eva; PEÑA, Alejandro Milcíades. Protest, social movements and global democracy since 2011: new perspectives. Protest, Social Movements and Global Democracy Since 2011: New Perspectives, 2016, p. 1-29. • Douglas Bevington & Chris Dixon (2005) Movement-relevant Theory: Rethinking Social Movement Scholarship and Activism, Social Movement Studies, 4:3, 185-208, DOI: 10.1080/14742830500329838 • FOMINAYA, Cristina Flesher; COX, Laurence (ed.). Understanding European movements: New social movements, global justice struggles, anti-austerity protest. Routledge, 2013. • HANDLER, Joel F. Postmodernism, protest, and the new social movements. En Law and Social Movements. Routledge, 2017. p. 555-589. • LANGMAN, Lauren. From virtual public spheres to global justice: A critical theory of internet-worked social movements. Sociological theory, 2005, vol. 23, no 1, p. 42-74. • Lanka Horstink (2017) Online Participation and the New Global Democracy: Avaaz, a Case Study, Global Society, 31:1, 101-124, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2016.1235552 • SMITH, Jackie. Social movements for global democracy. JHU Press, 2008. |