From the pretty to the ugly

Social movement studies has become a minor, but familiar, field of academia, routinely included in general textbooks. This paper steps back from this situation to explore a wide history of ideas and an alternative, usage of phrase 'social movement', grounded in a broader awareness of historical possibility and a more dialectical sense of social development than contemporary 'social movement studies' usage. It then explores one way this figure of thought has been developed, in E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class . Here the alternative understanding is deployed to great effect, covering a wide range of historical phenomena, their interconnections and transformations. The paper uses this alternative understanding to think aspects of contemporary working-class self-organisation in Ireland. The author wants to provoke some discussion of whether as researchers or participants it is wise to allow the routine academic processes of field construction to define the limits of our own understanding. Keywords:E.P. Thompson; English working-class; Eppur Si Muove; social development; Social Movement

This article outlines how the critical theory of the Frankfurt School has influenced some key debates within social movement studies. The impact of Jürgen Habermas's sociology is widely acknowledged, especially with regards to our understanding of ‘new social movements’. There have however also been several lesser‐known attempts to bring the concerns of Theodor W. Adorno's negative dialectics and Herbert Marcuse's critique of one‐dimensional society to bear onto social movement research. For this reason it makes sense to outline the relevance of the ‘first generation’ members of the Frankfurt School – something that is often missing from the most authoritative overviews and textbooks on social movement theory. Presenting a body of literature that often appears as fragmented or only on the periphery of social movement theory in this way reveals a number of common themes, such as negation, refusal and co‐optation. To this end, the article provides a comprehensive theoretical overview of the multiple ways of how critical theory has made sense of social movements and argues that its concerns can be brought into a rewarding dialogue with contemporary social movement studies.

While shared narratives of the past have long been considered functional in terms of legitimising, coordinating and directing movement imaginary and action, it is not until recently that studies of memory and social movements have begun to interact systematically. Furthermore, these studies have treated mnemonic practices from a cognitive perspective rather than an affective, relational stance. This article analyses the mass commemoration of mafia victims that took place in Bologna on 21 March 2015 using an affective lens. It shifts the focus from memory as an identity-shaping, community-building force to memory as a mobilising force that intensifies and fuels heterogeneous and multidirectional movements such as the anti-mafia. In particular, it highlights the suggestive force of objects, discourses and bodies that together catalyse the crowd, drawing from ethnographic material. It concludes that what is ritualised, and thus important for the movement’s direction, is the way the past is presented and lived through the event. It suggests that the study of social movements and memory can benefit from the affective turn in memory studies.

The article seeks to critically examine the secure/normative family from the standpoint of one or more members entering the arena of social movements because this, in many ways, is seen as putting nation/society before the family. In this context, the article attempts to understand how two activists of a Marxist group called Magowa1 enter different spheres of social/collective action and negotiate duties/obligations of the familial in the process of critiquing the normative, recasting lived practices in the family or creating alternate support structures to the family. I hope to tease out the processes of restructuring or reorganising the private sphere that seem inevitable when one or more members of the family enter the arena of social movements. While drawing from the insights from family studies in India, and social movement studies, the article attempts to explore the lives of two activists from the group to map mainly the ‘failed’ or ‘successful’ journeys of the processes of restructuring the ‘private’. These complex journeys help us to arrive at an understanding that goes beyond framework that either suggests that social movements ‘established alternatives to the family’ or ‘simply reproduced normative families in personal lives’. They help us to look for more complex grey areas, thus widening the scope of both family studies and social movement studies.

The Islamic Revolution of 1979, the student protests of 1999, and the Iranian Green Movement are among the most important social movements in contemporary Iran. This tumultuous history makes Iran a prime candidate for any analysis of social movements and collective action. However, a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between studies of Iranian social movements and the larger literature on collective behavior and social movements is yet to be conducted. I divide the literature on Iranian social movements between works focusing on the Islamic Revolution and those addressing movements in post‐revolutionary Iran with a focus on the Iranian Green Movement and point out the major foci of each category. Analyses of the Islamic Revolution mostly emphasize the role of grievances, political opportunities, and Shi'a ideology. Works on post‐revolutionary movements are mainly concerned with analyzing the role of political opportunities and internet and communication technologies. Overall, studies of Iranian social movements seem to be moving towards more connection with and application of mainstream theories of social movements. Nevertheless, I identify four areas with room for improvement: (a) a continuous connection to and dialogue with the mainstream literature on collective behavior and social movements; (b) an emphasis on the use of cutting‐edge analytic techniques, especially quantitative ones; (c) increasing the number of studies that address issue‐specific social movements such as the women's and LGBT rights or environmental movements; and (d) conducting more comparative studies on Iran and a variety of different societies. In addition, I suggest that the scholarship on social movements in contemporary Iran can benefit studies of social movements in general by testing and modifying theories in a sociopolitical setting that is different from where they originally focused on.

Ulrich Oslender, The Geographies of Social Movements: Afro-Colombian Mobilization and the Aquatic Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 290 pp.The Geographies of Social is an ambitious project that seeks to use ethnography to bridge political and cultural geography with social movements studies. More specifically, Ulrich Oslender deploys critical place (17) and rich ethnographic fieldwork to analyze the social movement(s) of black communities in Colombia's Pacific Coast region. For Oslender, this means focusing first on the situated cultural, physical, and social fabric of everyday life in these communities, before then tracing the diverse ways that these everyday realities get translated into social movement discourse, practice, and ideals. As a geographer, Oslender's emphasis is on understanding the ways that black communities in Colombia's Pacific Coast articulate their understandings of territory, collective rights, and the logic underlying them. What ensues is not a detached account of Colombian geography, but rather an ambitious ethnography grounded in place and space-one that is even poetic at times.Ulrich Oslender argues that social movement scholars need to go beyond analyzing generic processes and mechanisms (5) of movements and instead account for the dynamics of place-making and the assemblages of spatial relations that occur through human and non-human (in this case, aquatic) entanglements, which he captures through his concept of This shift away from purely structural accounts of movements is of course nothing new (i.e., New Social Theory), and his focus on the geographical constitution of social movement agency (13) draws on the work of geographers like Paul Routledge (1993), Steven Pile and Michael Keith (1997) who also demanded that space and place matter in social movements research. Where Oslender truly makes a unique contribution to the literature on social movements is through his concept of aquatic space. This concept allows him to fuse an attention to space with a multi-scalar examination of the situated physical, cultural, and political contexts of everyday life while paying serious attention to the narratives people have about space. Oslender takes this as the foundation for his analysis of social movement agency.The Geographies of Social begins with an introduction to the study and manuscript, as well as a brief primer on the relevant scholarship on place and social movements. The author goes on in Chapter 1 to outline his critical place perspective by reviewing the literature, which he groups as follows: Lefebvre and the Production of Space, which following Lefebvre's (1991) theory of the social production of space is broken up into the conceptual categories of Spatial Practices, Representations of Space, and Representational Space. This section is followed by A Critical Place Perspective on Social Movements where Oslender engages the work of geographers like Doreen Massey (2005) and David Harvey (1985) to argue, convincingly, for the need to account for the relationship between space and place, in order to render the multi-scalar, grounded, and networked experiences of communities and social movements legible. What I found to be missing, however, is an explicit engagement with the literature produced by anthropologists on social movements, space, and place. I found this surprising given the book's attempt to examine social movements ethnographically. For example, I would have liked to see the author relate Arturo Escobar's (2008) use of the notion of meshwork to his own concept of I think there may be a productive engagement there, especially given Escobar's similar interest in examining territories, difference, and social movements through theories of assemblage and his vast experience conducting ethnographic fieldwork with Afro-Colombian communities in the very same region. …

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge. The Handbook starts by presenting some of the main core theoretical perspectives in the field. A section exploring some of the major social transformations that have recently affected social movements is then followed by one devoted to the analysis of micro dynamics of collective action. At the meso-level, movements’ cultures, organizational models, and repertoires of action are covered. Finally, the last sections address the political and non-political opportunities for social movements’ development, as well as at social movements’ effects on their environment.

During the mid to late 2000s, a period of contentious politics emerged in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) concerning social movement responses to so-called ‘mega-events’ due to be hosted there – e.g. the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Central to contentions were newly implemented policing and housing policies associated with preparations for these mega-events: firstly installation of policing in favelas and secondly an extensive programme of evictions and displacements referred to in short as ‘pacification’ and ‘removals’ respectively. In my thesis, I chart the development of local social movements’ responses to these mega-events, focussing especially on one area of favelas named Mare in the North Zone periphery of Rio. I describe these developing contestations over a period of ten years from around 2006-2016 which I frame in terms of an extended episode or cycle of contention and protesting about a specific set of themes – most prominent to which is a series of deaths of favela residents killed during military police operations in favelas. Based on one year of fieldwork in Rio over 2013-2014 and archival research thereafter, the empirical focus of the study is on protest events (e.g. demonstrations and protest marches), the themes that were contested through these, how such events connected over time, and the social uses of literacy and related communication technologies in their mobilization, performance, and dissemination. Firstly, from a synchronic perspective, the findings show five sets of literacy practices which were central to protest events and social movement activities: campaigning literacies, memorial literacies, media-activist literacies, arts-activist literacies, and demonstration literacies. Seen as interconnecting and taken together, these were the principle literacies of social protest, or protest literacies. Secondly, from a diachronic perspective, I highlight multiple examples of meaning making trajectories that interlinked ongoing protest events from 2006-2016. The two main examples were realised through flows of recontextualized and resemiotized texts and practices, referred to as symbolization trajectories and memorialization trajectories. Lastly, I show how traditional protesting texts and practices locally were becoming reshaped by the uptake of new communications technologies (websites, blogs, SNS, etc.), which had started to become used by social movements during the period in discussion (from around 2006 onward). In this changing social-political setting and changing communications-technological environment, new roles and usages for texts emerged. These allowed for the amplification of local voices on national and global scales – especially so, over 2013-2014, the year of my fieldwork and also the period of the largest and most sustained protesting in Rio and Brazil for thirty years. Theoretically, my thesis draws on and contributes toward ethnographic and historical traditions in the New Literacy Studies, whilst combining this research lens with work from Discourse Studies, Social Movement Studies, and Cultural Anthropology, amongst others. Data and findings contribute to both local and global academic and activist work on the issues addressed, from the impacts of global mega-events upon local communities, to the increasing militarization of public spaces and social life, as well as social movements’ contestations of these and other issues, through traditional and changing means of protest.

Although social movement studies have traditionally stressed conflict as a dynamic element in our societies, since the 1980s, research in democratic society has presented an image of an institutionalization of social movements. Since 1999, with the protest in Seattle against the WTO Millennium Round, this image has been however challenged by a new cycle of protest focusing on ‘alternative globalization’ and global justice. Beyond describing some forms of action that (through counter-summits and social forums) emerged in this cycle of protest, the article addresses the more general issue of conflict nowadays by considering the emergent character of protest itself. In social movement studies, protest has in fact been mainly considered as a ‘dependent variable’, and explained on the basis of political opportunities and organizational resources. The author suggests here a different approach, by looking at protests as eventful, in the sense of having relevant cognitive, affective and relational transformative impacts on the very movements that carry them out. Some forms of action or specific campaigns have a particularly high degree of ‘eventfulness’. Through protest events, new tactics are experimented with, signals aBolit the possibility of collective action are sent, feelings of solidarity are created, organizational networks are consolidated, and sometimes public outrage at repression is developed. Data from interviews, surveys, focus groups and discourse analysis are used in order to reflect upon the mechanisms that make protest eventful. More in general, the article suggests that the contemporary sociological reflection on conflicts as producers of social capital, collective identity and knowledge, could be useful to balance the negative vision of conflicts as being disruptive of social relations, an analysis that can emerge from an exclusive focus on the most extreme forms of political violence.

The study of popular uprisings, mobilizations, and social movements is central to the scholarship on contemporary Iran, given the impact of events like the 1979 revolution and successive cycles of mobilizations. Scholars have approached contentious politics in Iran through diverse disciplinary vantage points and by adopting different frameworks of analysis, creating a rich body of knowledge. The scholarship has morphed under the influence of the transformation of Iranian politics and society, such as the cultural and generational change after the end of the Iran–Iraq war and the limited political liberalization and authoritarian retrenchment between the early 2000s and the 2010s. The scholarship reflected these changes in the frameworks utilized to examine contentious politics and the themes discussed. Mobilizations have been examined through the analytical frameworks of dispersed acts of everyday resistance and social movements studies, and by adopting structural approaches that have emphasized distinct aspects of the uprisings, social movements, and non-movements in Iran. Themes have also changed, and scholars have taken interest in specific actors such as the clergy right after the revolution and, since the 1990s, in the youth, the women’s movement, and students’ organizations. The 1979 revolution features prominently in the scholarship as a theme, along with thematic (and teleological) interpretations of Iranian history as an unfinished struggle for democracy led by liberal and anti-authoritarian social movements. This body of knowledge about mobilizations, uprisings, and social movements in Iran would benefit from foregrounding intersectional analysis and how it structures alliance-building and the internal division of labor and roles, and from paying attention to the connection between imperial aspirations, war, and opportunities for mobilizations.

Despite a growing body of Anthropocene research, less attention has been given to how these changing dynamics are impacting social movements. This work addresses this gap in the literature by developing a critical reading of social movements and the Anthropocene that draws on social movement studies and environmental political theory. I argue a new social movement formation is appearing, which I call the Earthbound people. I show how a new Earth-centered cosmopolitics is emerging in response to the Anthropocene by drawing on diverse examples of global social and environmental justice and Indigenous rights struggles over land and water.

In the wake of the assembly movements that emerged from 2011 onwards, a lively academic and activist debate developed around the question of organization. Various political theorists have proposed an ‘ecological’ approach to social movements, which allows us to perceive them as contingent combinations between various activist repertoires and organizational forms. Rather than prioritizing either a ‘horizontalist’ or ‘verticalist’ logic of organization, both are often at play within a social movement, where they compete with or complement each other. This article contributes to this ‘ecological turn’ in social movement studies by adding a historical perspective. We argue that a key revolutionary event – the Paris Commune of 1871 – could be read as a ‘distributed ecology’. This historical application allows us to better recognize the merits of an ecological approach for contemporary radical-democratic theory and practices and helps us to appreciate the significance and radical potential of recent social movements.

This paper will seek to address a new and vibrant development within the field of Israeli–Palestinian socio-politics and social movement studies. By interrogating the received wisdom surrounding social movements as agents bearing collective claims as expressed by Charles Tilly (2004), this paper will suggest that the joint activism around the building of the Wall sees Israeli and Palestinian activists move beyond the traditional liberal/Marxist paradigm of counter-hegemonic action (Gramsci, 1971). Instead, understanding the activism of these activists belongs more within the field of post-structuralism where power is contested from all angles and its networks, extensions and connections identified (Foucault, 1980, p. 145). The activists' actions and motives revitalise the theories of protest-anarchism (Braidotti, 2002) with their insistence on creating change through direct action. They do not act to be granted emancipation by their oppressors (Day, 2005, p. 89), but their actions seek to bring about their own liberation. The Palestinians act on their own terms to ensure the survival of their communities while the Israelis, since they share nationality with the more powerful and repressive actor, the Israeli state, through their actions break down the theoretical barriers that see grass-roots activism as the preserve of the ‘have-nots’. By combining post-structuralist notions of networks of power with anarchist ideas privileging pre-figurative forms of struggle over the politics of demand; the Israeli and Palestinian activists of the ‘intifada of the fence’ offer a break with traditional methods of theorising social movements and asks the question how relevant is much social movement theory today?

The introduction to the volume “Social Movements and Social Theory. Mutual Inspirations” discusses how new theoretical ideas and insights are produced. (a) The classical way is empirical research. However, its theoretical guidance, implicit or explicit, limits the chances for innovation. Three further paths of innovation are possible. (b) Innovation of empirical research methods enables new insights but also initiates the theorizing of phenomena that become accessible with the new methods. (c) Theoretical debate not only examines internal consistency but also discusses combinations of compatible approaches. The combination of theories from different fields or theory from a specific field, such as social movement studies, and general social theory provides a source for substantial new insights and important theoretical contributions. (d) The final source for innovation is broader shifts in perspective or attention, such as the cultural turn. The turns provide an opportunity to reconsider theories from a different angle. The presented volume takes the third path of combining social movement theory with general social theories. The introduction briefly presents each contribution.

ABSTRACTThis article engages Bhaskar's category of absence and Foucault's notion of problematization in the context of explaining an example of the historical emergence of political activism. Specifically, it considers the emergence of the ‘psychiatric survivors’ social movement in the UK, with a focus on the ‘politics of self-harm’. The politics of self-harm refers to acts of self-injurious behaviour, such as drug over-dosage or self-laceration, which do not result in death and which bring individuals to the attention of psychiatric services. For many years survivors have protested about the harmful treatment (‘iatrogenesis’) they receive from such services and have campaigned for their reform and for new, non-psychiatric understandings of the meaning of self-harm. The article explains how such activism emerged in the late 1980s. Its contribution is at the interface of critical realism and social movement studies.