The XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology will start in a few days. The research committee 47 “Social classes and social movements” proposes a very timely program in a world increasingly shaped my reactionary movements and authoritarian regimes but where progressive movements remain also very lively and creative. With 31 panels and over 150 speakers, it will be the largest program ever run by our RC at an ISA event. Have a look at the program in this newsletter and join us in room 705 in Toronto!

Our experience in Yokohama and Vienna showed us how important it is to get to know each other before starting a very demanding week at the ISA congress. We have set up a convivial “Welcome session” that will take place on Sunday July 15th at 3 pm at the congress venue. It will be an opportunity to get to know each other, to share our recent research and publications as well as to present some recent projects by our research committee. Have a look at the program on page 2.

Among the highlights of the RC47 program in Toronto, the Opening session will gather leading scholars to reflect on the current state of social movements across the world (Monday 16, 15:30). RC47 has also organized two “ISA integrative sessions”. The first one will focus on social movements in the Global South (Wednesday 18, 12:30) and the second one on social movements and labour (Friday 20, 12:30).

The RC47 business meeting will take place on Thursday 19th of July at 19:00. It will be the opportunity to propose new projects and to take an active part in our RC. We will also process to our internal elections to designate our board members for the next 4 years. Join us and contribute to shape the future of our research committee!
As program organizers, we would like to thank all the session chairs and coordinators as well as the panellists who have chosen ISA47 to present their latest research results. Before arriving in Toronto, have a look at the short guidelines to present a paper below.

We are very pleased that one of our active member, Tommaso Gravante, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, has received one of the ISA Awards for junior researchers for his article “Desaparición forzada y trauma cultural en México. Una nueva narrativa social a partir del Movimiento de Ayotzinapa”.
We look very much forward to seeing you on Sunday in Toronto!

Breno Bringel & Geoffrey Pleyers
RC47 Program coordinators at the 2018 World Congress of Sociology

To download the full newsletter, click here

See our program in this pdf document and join us, submitting your abstract! Have a look at the section “How to present a paper” (p. 13) and don’t hesitate to contact the panel coordinators for more information about their panel.

Membership of RC47 is not compulsory but will be taken into account in the abstract selection process. Please join us at http://www.isa-sociology.org/memb_i/index.htm

Our aim is to foster a global dialogue among sociologists of social movements. Therefore, all panels should include about half of the speakers from the Global South.

Program Coordinators:
Geoffrey PLEYERS, Belgium/France
Breno BRINGEL Brazil

The deadline for panel proposals at the next world congress of sociology is nearing. Please register your session proposals directly on the ISA website before March 15th (!!).

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/rc/cfs.cgi  (Then choose RC47).

Proposals should be thematic open call for abstracts (and not closed sessions with invited scholars).

These panel proposals will then go through a selection process, taking into account both thematic and geographical balances. The selected one will then be included in the ISA47 call for abstracts for the 2018 world congress of sociology.

The ISA47 board has suggested a few orientations for its program at the World Congress of Sociology. Please take them into account when preparing your proposal:

1. Each panel should include at least one and if possible half of the speakers coming from the Global South (and if possible not only the richest Latin American countries). We need to get our colleagues from Africa and Asia on board! There won’t be any session on a specific geographical area.
2. Some priority will be given to the topics we defined as our priority at our last board meeting: epistemologies of the South; trade unions and movements; conservative/extreme right movements.
3. Our overall call will include diverse topics and cover a range of movements. Among the other topics that should have some space in our program: online/offline activism; environmentalist movements; outcomes of the movements; epistemology and practices of social movement studies (including the relation between researchers and activists)… And the topics you consider as relevant in 2018.

Two years ago, we received 69 proposals for our 14 slots initially allocated to our RC at the ISA Forum in Vienna. We will have slightly more slots this time, but we won’t be able to select all the proposals. The call is widely open. Some priority may be given to ISA47 members who have been active in some of our initiatives.

Note that session organizers will have to be members in good standing of ISA47 before the general call for abstracts is published (April 7^th, 2017).

For questions or further information, please contact Geoffrey Pleyers, Breno Bringel, or any of the ISA47 board members.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 30 January 2017

Young people shape the futures of their society. They envision, plan, challenge practices and present new perspectives. Youth as actors face however many challenges. This international conference will explore how do youth and other actors enhance youth capabilities to pursue the change they envision within a context of social and political repression, sociopolitical instabilities. Further, it will look into ways in which youth emerge as actors and become more influential in policies, and shaping the current and future alternative of their societies; How do youth and other actors sustain their collective action and sense of agency with increase repression in societies; how would they move from the focus on the individual to a focus on a greater commitment despite all the challenges they face. Youth resiliency the experiences of youth and other actors with regards to enhancing youth engagement.

This Bethlehem University, ISA RC34, and ISA RC47 conference will be an opportunity to enhance a mutual learning between scholars in Palestine, Arab countries, and the international community.

We particularly welcome papers on the four axes of the conference:

The main themes to be discussed in the conference are:

• Youth as actors of change, transformation from the individual to the collective commitment
• Repression: How to create and sustain a commitment with a context of repression
  • A sub topic will be with regards to the development of tools and techniques by youth and other actors to face repressions and online repression.
• Youth resiliency and engagement: how to move forward in time of conflict and instability. Engagement as a tool for community rebuilding
• Youth in Palestine: collective action and change intersection of development and liberation

1. Youth as actors of change, transformation from the individual to the collective commitment

Since 2011, young people, participating in movements in the Arab world and USA and across Europe, have proven to be major actors of social and political change, as much the ones that strike mainstream media headlines as those that discreetly transform politics or daily life. They have developed specific forms of commitment and activism that connect individualization with strong social commitments, protests and alternative, online and offline activism. This conference will gather analyses of young people’s contributions to socio-political change in the Arab countries and around the world. We particularly welcome analyses of youth cultures of activism, and youth visions of social change.

Transformation from a focus on the individualized self to the common and public good is one of the aspects in which youth, organizations, political parties, and others have tried to develop. Various forms of social and political commitment were developed and promoted by different actors. This ranged from voluntary work to participating in online and offline activism.  Currently, in many parts of the world there are two competing spheres in which collective identity and commitment to the public good is emerging and evolving:  the formal and informal. In the informal sphere, initiatives are generally youth-led, with young people working on developing their own structures, groups, and cultures for social and political engagement. Within the formal sphere it is organizations, policy makers, and political parties that are constructing interventions concerned with creating opportunities for young people to demonstrate their social and political contribution as active citizens. Both spheres are increasingly affecting the current and future frameworks of young people’s lives as they shape youth identities, and cultures, styles and forms of engagement.

2. Repression

Repression is another factor that impact youth ability to form a collective action. Repression affects the willingness to participate in collective action, the forms of engagement. Repression affects the possible available actions to be taken by various actors, and the tools that these actors own and access. Youth and other actors try to manipulate a system of repression- political or social- to push for changes they envision. Yet the risk needed for engagement under repression is high and accordingly decreases the possibilities of engagement and sustaining it. For example, Restriction applied on online engagement is only one example of how surveillance limits the space of young activists; framing the actions to support the local community as civic while under colonization is another approach to avoid risks of being subjects to surveillance.  How to enhance Youth participation in collective action during such restrictions varies from one context to another, what are the factors that are encouraging youth to get engaged despite of the risk that they will face is one of the questions that will be tackled by this conference. Another will how do youth and other actors navigate the space available to achieve the change they envision. It will look into the techniques and strategies used by various actors to build a sense of agency and create a sustainable change in a society

3. Resiliency

Resiliency is another aspect that is vital for engagement, agency, and change especially in societies that lives in conflicts and wars. Social and political engagement is an indicator of resilient youth and their societies. Engaged youth prove to be more able to face pressures in their lives, and arguably possess or develop the social capital that helps them to navigate the personal and positional change they want. In a context like Palestine, engaged youth showed better signs of agency, and more capability to face the challenges resulting from a life under colonization, and within a society with high level of unemployment among youth, and political division that lasted around ten years. Youth resiliency is interlinked with the collective resiliency of their society. . Resilient young people are seen to be able to step forward to build the change they envision: they have access to resources provided by their social network, and they have a strong sense of agency. How do social networks and structures enhance youth resilience and prospectively shape and sustain youth engagement. How do programmes and policies directed towards youth affect youth inclusion within their communities and society, and push the boundaries and spaces available for youth as social actors.

4. Understanding youth in Palestine. Contributions for and from research in Palestine in a global context

In Palestine, where one third of the population is between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, young people’s ability to affect the change on policy levels, political parties, and organizations is limited. This is despite a nation’s history in which a strong youth movement shaped the resistance movement against the occupation, and formed the current political parties. The youth movement, similar to other collective actions efforts in Palestine, has dissipated as a result of socio-political changes that have shaped the Palestinian society since signing the Oslo Accord twenty years ago. Currently in Palestine young people are now shaping new spaces for their engagement, usually focused on their local community. Still young people participated in a smaller scale in national movements such as BDS,  stop the wall, and the teachers’ movement.. This situation, although in some respects distinct for Palestine, shares many similarities with other countries in the world.

Venue

The conference will take place in Bethlehem University, Bethlehem, Palestine from April 26^th to 28^th 2017. The conference will be followed with encounters with local actors on April 29^th in the cities of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Hebron. Interested participants will notably meet with organizations that support young people and foster their agency in the three cities. Program to visit organizations working with youth and collective action will be arranged during the conference.

For Information about how to get to Bethlehem, accommodation and life in Bethlehem please check the conference page https://bethlehem.edu/conferences/yc-conference-2016/home . Please note that Easter holiday is one week earlier than the conference, Easter celebration in Palestine is a unique cultural as well as religious experience for many.

Submission of proposals

Proposals should be submitted in English or Arabic; abstracts should not exceed 300 words and may be submitted by January 30^th 2017 either through the conference website or through the following email address youthandchange@bethlehem.edu. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact   Abeer Musleh Abeerm@bethlehem.edu,  Geoffrey Pleyers Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be ; and Ani Wierenga wierenga@unimelb.edu.au

Conference Time line:

Deadline for receiving proposals will be January 30^th.

People will be informed about being accepted in the conference by February 15^th

Final paper to be received for the conference is 20^th of April

Conference date is 26^th of April

Social Movements in the 2010s

ISA47/48 Preconference. Vienna, July 9th 2016

Location: Konferenzraum, Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstraße 7, Wien

(2 blocks behind University´s main buliding)

Anna Szolucha’s photo exhibition  “Through our eyes”  will be exposed in the conference room.

9:00-9:20am: Welcome words, Priska Daphi & Geoffrey Pleyers (RC47) & Tova Benski (RC48)

9:20-11:00am: Plenary panel: Social movements, refugees and borders

Chair: Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, RC47

Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna)

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore Florence)

Jeff Goodwin (New York University)

11:15-12.45: Plenary panel: Social movements and change.

Chair: Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, RC 47.

Markus Schulz (New School for Social Research, ISA)

Chris Rootes (University of Kent)

Colin Barker (University of Manchester)

James Jasper (City University New York)

12:45-2:30pm: Socializing session and lunch in thematic groups

• Refugees and movements
• Digital technology, media and social movements
• Continuities and outcomes of movements
• Environmentalist movements
• Movements for democracy
• Right wing and conservative movements
• Women and feminist movements
• Unions and movements around (precarious) work
• Social movements and repression

2:45-4:30pm: Plenary panel 3: Cultural Perspectives on Social Movements

Chair: Tova Benski, College of Management Studies, Israel, RC48

Breno Bringel (State University of Rio de Janeiro)

Priska Daphi (University of Frankfurt)

Paolo Gerbaudo (King’s College London)

Eiji Hamanishi (Notre Dame Seishin University)

Geoffrey Pleyers (Université de Louvain & Collège d’Etudes Mondiales)

Benjamin Tejerina (University of the Basque Country)

4:45-5:15 pm: ISA47&RC48: program in Vienna, forthcoming activities and publications

5:15-6pm: Second socializing session (thematic groups as above)

6-8pm: Special session:                  Location: NS II, Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstraße 7

Sociologists under threats. Repression and violence against social movement scholars

Buket Turkmen (University of Galatasaray, Turkey) on the situation in Turkey

Shruti Tambe (University of Pune, India) on the situation in India

Margaret Abraham (Hofstra University, ISA President)

Sari Hanafi (American University of Beirut, ISA Human Rights Committee)

Pre-conference organizers: Priska Daphi, Geoffrey Pleyers, Tova Benski

ISA47 Program at the 3d ISA Forum, Vienna

July 10 – 15 2016

* The photovoice exhibition “Through our eyes” by Anna Szolucha will be exposed in the seminar room during the pre-conference and various ISA47 panels.

“Through our eyes” is a photovoice exhibition that shows what it means to live with the prospect of fracking. It captures residents’ individual perspectives in their own words and images. The exhibition comprises of 34 photographs taken by local residents who are concerned about the impacts of shale gas developments in Lancashire and the UK. The idea of the exhibition came from Anna Szolucha research project (repowerdemocracy.net) that explored the social impacts of shale gas development. One of the early findings of this study is that even before fracking starts, it has profound impacts on local communities.

ISA47 Program organizers: Priska Daphi, Paolo Gerbaudo, Geoffrey Pleyers

ISA47 Preconference. Vienna, July 9^th 2016

(download and share the program!)

Limited space – please register till 15 June 2016 by sending an e-mail at rc47.isa@gmail.com 

Free entrance for members of RC47.

9:00-9:20am: Welcome words, Priska Daphi & Geoffrey Pleyers (RC47) & Tova Benski (RC48)

9:20-11:00am: Plenary panel: Social movements, refugees and borders 

Chair: Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, RC47

Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna)

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore Florence)

Shalini Randeria (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna)

Jeff Goodwin (New York University)

11:15-12.45: Plenary panel: Social movements and change. 

Chair: Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, RC 47.

Markus Schulz (New School for Social Research, ISA)

Chris Rootes (University of Kent)

Colin Barker (University of Manchester)

James Jasper (City University New York)

12:45-2:30pm: Socializing session and lunch in thematic groups 

 Refugees and movements

 Digital technology, media and social movements

 Continuities and outcomes of movements

 Environmentalist movements

 Movements for democracy



Contact/ISA47 Pre-conference organizers

Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, Daphi@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be

3rd ISA Forum of Sociology
July, 10-14 2016, Vienna Austria

ISA-RC 47“Social classes and social movements”

Abstract proposals should be sent to the panel coordinators and submitted before September 30th 2015 on the ISA Forum website (http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016)

Joint Sessions
Opening session of RC 47 & RC 48: Contemporary Social Movements

Session Organizer(s):

Tova BENSKI, President of RC 48, tovabenski@gmail.com

Geoffrey PLEYERS, President of RC 47, Université de Louvain, Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be

Benjamín TEJERINA, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, b.tejerina@ehu.eus

Breno BRINGEL, Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil, brenobringel@iesp.uerj.br

We live in a time of deep reconfigurations of democracy, social movements and activism. Five years after the start of a major global movements’ wave in 2011, the panorama for social movements and democracy in the 2010s is a contrasting one. How do new trends in social movements study help us to grasp this fast evolving situation and the changing forms and meanings of both social movements and democracy?
The decade started with a spread of emancipatory movements and democratic openings. After a phase of intense mobilizations, some of these activists have developed democratic and emancipatory practices in their daily life, while others experiment a partial shift to the institutional politics arena. By the mid-2010s, the panorama for social movements and democracy looks however far more contrasting. The democratic project has however come under serious threat. Social movements are repressed, journalists are killed, and citizens are spied by their states. Even in democratic regions, citizens seem to have little impact on major economic and political decisions. At the same time, conservative, racist and far-right movements are gaining impetus in the West and in the East, jihadism attracts thousands of young people from different regions of the world.
What have been the impacts, the challenges and the limits of emancipatory and conservative movements in the 2010s? How do the new trends in social movement studies help us to grasp these transformations and the challenges faced by social movements and democracy?
Democracy in the Squares: Global Resistance Movements and Women
Joint session RC47 / RC48 [host committee]

Session Organizer(s)

Nilufer GOLE, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), nilufer.gole@ehess.fr

Buket TURKMEN, Galatasaray University, Turkey, elizemestan@gmail.com

A new wave of protest movements has emerged everywhere in the world, ranging from the Middle East, to the European cities, as well as Brazil and Ukraine. These movements follow transnational dynamics, while the domain of politics remain at the national scale. Citizens of the world elaborate new democratic imaginaries. A new public culture of contestation appears with art becoming its intrinsic dimension. These movements that we want to examine contribute to the enactment of forms of citizenship in the public square redefining the political subject. Especially female activists’ struggles in the global resistance movements reveal the emergence of new subjectivities through the act of resistance.
While sociologists believe in the existence of a rupture between these newly emerging struggles and the heritage of the past social struggles, there are also remarkable continuities. The rupture women activists in the Tahrir Square created with patriarchy can only be understood with reference to Egyptian feminism. While Kurdish, Turkish, nationalist, leftist and Islamist female activists developed a sense of sisterhood during the Gezi movement in Istanbul, this sisterhood has been developing since the 1990s, along with the evolution of Turkey’s feminisms. Women in resistance movements experience a dual suffering and have to challenge both the authoritarian/neoliberal regimes and the patriarchy that pervaded the movement along with the society. We will try to understand the new subjectivities constructed by female activists of these global resistance movements as a mixed consequence of the experience of resistance and the feminist heritage.

Silos or Synergies? Can Labor Build Effective Alliances with Other Global Social Movements?

Joint session RC47 & RC44 Labor Movements [host committee]

Session Organizer(s)

Peter B. EVANS, University of California-Berkeley, USA, pevans@berkeley.edu

Daniele DI NUNZIO, Associazione Bruno Trentin/IRES/ISF, Italy, d.dinunzio@ires.it

On the defensive in the face of an increasingly aggressive global capital, labor needs allies. Operating in a “silo” – that is within carefully defined organizational and strategic boundaries that insulate worker organizations from other sorts of mobilization – is a formula for defeat. Alliances with communities and movements for democracy have always been crucial to labor’s success at the local and national levels. Alliances with other transnational social movements at the global have been more sporadic, usually limited to specific campaigns.

Where are the most promising opportunities for building cross-issue synergies that enhance labor’s political clout along with that of other social movements? What are the obstacles to building synergistic relationships? Few would question the contributions of movements for human rights to the quest for expanding workers rights. There is already a rich literature looking at labor’s relationships with movements prioritizing gender issues and with environmental movements. But much work needs to be done before we understand why sometimes silo approaches prevail and what conditions create possibilities for synergies. What are the complementarities between labors’ organizational and ideological strengths and those of other movements? What are the strategic contradictions that make synergies elusive?

This session seeks to bring together both work based on the analysis of specific successes and failures at building cross-movement alliances and work that seeks to offer a general analytical understanding of the foundations of synergies and silos.

The Sociology of Social Movements as a General Sociology. Around Alain Touraine
Joint session RC47 & RC48 [host committee]

Session Organizer(s)
Benjamín TEJERINA, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, b.tejerina@ehu.eus

Kevin MCDONALD, Middlesex Univesity, United Kingdom, k.mcdonald@mdx.ac.uk

Tova BENSKI, President of RC 48, tovabenski@gmail.com

Geoffrey PLEYERS, President of RC 47, Université de Louvain, Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be

Alain Touraine has underlined the importance of considering the sociology of social movements not as a specialized subfield but as an essential part of general sociology. This session will gather contributions that have developed this perspective in different ways and studying a range of social movements on different continents.

Social Movements and the Future They Want

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements

Session Organizer(s)

Markus S. Shulz, ISA Vice-president, markus.s.schulz@gmail.com

Geoffrey PLEYERS, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be

Social movement scholars can make a significant contribution to the third Forum of the ISA entitled “The Futures we Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World”. Social movements are major actors of our societies and contribute to shaping possible futures.

This session welcomes both concrete analysis and theoretical contributions on how progressive or conservative social movements imagine, shape and implement alternative futures. We notably welcome contributions on how social actors and social movements imagine and contribute to shape alternative lifestyles, policies and sociability in the global age, increasingly shaped by both global interdependency and the finitude of the planet.

Young Activists, Subjectivity and “the Future They Want”

Joint session RC34 Sociology of Youth and RC47 [host committee]

Session Organizer

Carmen LECCARDI, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, carmen.leccardi@unimib.it

This session welcomes contributions on how young activists imagine, shape and implement alternative futures. As framed in the third ISA Forum presentation, “Tomorrow no longer appears as pre-determined by inevitable trends but as a rather contingent outcome of complex, typically multi-scalar dynamics that vary in their intensity of contentiousness.” Young people aspire, desire, envision, expect, fear, imagine, plan, project, reject, sustain, and wage war over futures. Young activists are major actors of our societies in shaping our possible futures.

We notably welcome contributions on young activists’ perspectives on the future and how these perspectives shape their subjectivity and their personality. Young green activists and their visions of a future on a limited planet prove particularly insightful in that perspective.

However, to understand the specific potential of their vision – at the centre of which stand autonomy, self-determination, experimentation and creativity together with a high level of personal responsibility – the widespread representation of the future expressed by contemporary young people has to be considered. For the majority of them, the future is related above all with indeterminateness and uncertainty. Moreover, the imperative of choice is not flanked by their conviction that personal decisions will be effectively able to condition future biographical outcomes as well as collective environment.
Cultural Signification: Making Sense of Action in Social Movements

Session Organizers:

Dai NOMIYA, Chuo University, Japan, dainom@tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp,

James JASPER, City University of New York, JJasper@gc.cuny.edu,

Antimo Farro, University of Rome, Italy, antimoluigi.farro@uniroma1.it,

Benjamin TEJERINA, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, b.tejerina@ehu.eus

For many years, researchers have found that social movements contain cultural and psychological elements that guide actions in one way or another, leading eventually to movement mobilization.  Cultural attributes, such as interpretation, emotion, collective identity, and frame, as they give meanings and signification to the action, work in participants’ engagement in the action.
While long recognized as indispensable for mobilization, these cultural components have also been regarded as the elements difficult to grasp; they are difficult to detect, observe, conceptualize, and generalize.  We have come a long way to find frame and collective identity to work in a concrete movement setting.  But we have to stop and think what else we have acquired as our common cultural languages.  We know that emotions are important.  But we are not sure if we have developed and conceptualized enough to bring emotion in our thought frame as a sound analytical concept.  We are not sure further if these cultural languages can easily travel across researchers residing different continents, East and West and North and South.  We may also have different methods and methodologies to detect and observe cultural components of action.
This proposed session aims at bringing together our cultural findings in social movement research.  Proposing a new concept, new ways of doing research aiming at digging out cultural materials, rearranging current conceptualization, displaying a region/location-specific research method, etc, should help understand where we are, and which direction(s) we should move on from here.

Environmental Movements in the Age of Climate Change

Session Organizer

Christopher ROOTES, University of Kent, United Kingdom, c.a.rootes@kent.ac.uk

Environmental movements and protest appeared to be natural bed-fellows as activists struggled to mobilise an environmentally uneducated populace and to challenge the priorities of governments and parties more concerned about economic development than environmental protection. That changed as governments began to acknowledge environmental problems and, recognising the expertise of environmental NGOs, began to see NGOs as partners rather than adversaries. That relationship was consolidated as climate change rose on political agendas, as governments saw NGOs as potential mobilisers of citizens toward sustainable alternatives to the carbon-intensive economy. This created opportunities for NGOs, but, demanding more of them than they can deliver, it has created dilemmas about their identity and future action. Their dilemmas differ according to the dispositions of governments, from the EU, where governments have mostly accepted the need for action on climate change, to countries where governments have resisted action (e.g. Australia, USA, Canada). This panel will compare experiences at local, regional, national and transnational levels, to illuminate the variety of scenarios and responses of environmental movements and NGOs, and to consider the future of environmentalism in light of these developments. We shall be particularly interested in the development of new forms of environmental activism at local as well as international levels, and the emergence of activism on climate justice, including networks of NGOs, activists and experts in and around climate summits. Papers on transnational movements or multi-sited research in an international/global perspective will be especially welcome.
Far Right Movements and Social Research

Session Organizer(s)

Emanuele TOSCANO, University Guglielmo Marconi, Italy, emanuele.toscano@uniroma1.it

Chikako MORI, Hitotsubashi University, Japan, c.mori@r.hit-u.ac.jp

The rise and spread of far right, populist and nationalist movements in Europe and elsewhere in the world opened a new framework of interest for social movement studies. The study of far right is mainly addressed by political science, focusing on parties and electoral trends. Very few researches are instead leaded from the point of view of social movement studies. One explanation can be linked with the methodological issues: social movements researchers usually use qualitative techniques, such us participant observation, in-depth interviews and sociological interventions to study social movements, often creating a relation with activists based on mutual respect and common perspectives. But how can this possible with activists whose discourses are often racist oriented, or whose initiatives are violent and disrespectful?
Which methodological obstacles arise for research oriented towards analysing protest participation in far right movements? And how do we overcome them?
The panel welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions that deal with reflection on methodology in the study of movements – such as racist, populist of far right organisations – with whose discourses and practises is difficult to empathise.
Regular Session
From Indymedia to #Occupywallstreet and Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe: Three Generations of Digital Activism Logics

Session Organizer(s)

Tod WOLFSON, Rutgers University, USA, wolfsont@gmail.com

Emiliano TRERÉ, Autonomous University of Queretaro, Mexico, etrere@gmail.com

Peter FUNKE, University of South Florida, USA, pnfunke@usf.edu

Paolo GERBAUDO, King`s College London, United Kingdom, paolo.gerbaudo@kcl.ac.uk

Across the last few decades the logic of activism, and of digital activism in particular, have changed dramatically. We have experienced what could be regarded as three waves of protests from the early 1990s to the present. Each of these waves is connected both by the transformations in global capitalism and the rise of the digital age, while still displaying differences or rather developments in movement-based organizing. Together however, we can conceive these three waves as part of one broader epoch of contention. Those particular waves of contention are: Global Social Justice, Occupy/Arab Spring, Syriza/Podemos.
In this panel, we propose to look at the logics of these waves of protest (or generations of digital activism) in order to explore their similarities and differences. The goal of the panel discussion would be to mine history assuming a diachronic perspective, but more concretely to understand the strengths and weaknesses of this epoch of contention as we watch the current wave of struggle unfold.
Some of the questions that will be tackled in the panel are: how have capitalist transformations informed the emergence of the current epoch of contention and how has the activists relation to communication technologies evolved and shaped the logics of protests and mobilizations? Can we conceive of an underlying meta-logics of movement politics informing the waves of protests and how are they best conceptualized, similar as well as differently enacted? What has been the evolution of the role of alternative media in an oversaturated media environment where corporate social media are increasingly dominating the digital activism scenario? What are the challenges that social movements and their communication face when they crystallize into political parties? What lessons have we learned from the analysis of this epoch of contention and what are the future horizons of digital activism and protest?

ICTs in the Media Ecology of Protest Movements: Infrastructures, Discourses and Practices for Social Change.

Session Organizer(s):

Alice MATTONI, European University Institute, Italy, alice.mattoni@eui.eu

Ionel SAVA, University of Bucharest, Romania, insava@sas.unibuc.ro

Studies on ICTs and social movements flourished in the past few years, also due to the relevant role that social media platforms and mobile communication devices had in the 2011 protest wave. Literature on the topic, however, frequently considers ICTs independently from the context in which they are embedded resulting in a myopic look at the role of digital media in mobilizations. This flaw might be overcome through an analysis that takes into consideration the media ecology of ICTs. Starting from this assumption, the panel seeks papers that investigate ICTs in relation to: the material infrastructures that sustain ICTs used during protests, from corporate media clouds services to activist managed hardware and software; the discourses and imageries related to ICTs, including values and beliefs that activists and other political actors attach to ICTs used during protests; the (media) practices that include the use of ICTs during protests, also in combination with other media technologies and means of communication, like the live-streaming of face-to-face assemblies or the coordinated collective use of Twitter accounts. The panel welcome papers that explore the role of ICTs in recent mobilizations through qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. We are particularly interested in papers that considers protests in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, also in a comparative perspective with protests that occurred in other parts of the world.

Genesis of the New Social Movements in the Global South

Session Organizer(s)

Simin FADAEE, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, simin.fadaee@hu-berlin.de

Breno BRINGEL, Universidade Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, brenobringel@iesp.uerj.br

The panel will be shaped around the so-called new social movements of the global South. The paradigm which emerged as a response to the ‘rights based’ and ‘quality-of-life’ movements (e.g. feminism, LGBT rights, environment, human rights, etc. ) in Europe and North America after the 1960s assumed that there is a clear distinction between these ‘identity’ movements  and the old organized ‘labor’ movements. Although many Southern societies have witnessed the emergence of rights based and quality-of-life movements, scholarship lacks systematic analysis of these movements in non-western context. The panel aims at addressing this gap by focusing on the historical origins, participants and the relation of these movements to earlier struggles.
Moving Refugees? Mobilisation and Outcomes of Refugee Movements, Solidarity Groups, and Anti-Asylum Activities

Session Organizer(s)

Ilker ATAC, ING Bank Turkey, Turkey, ilker.atac@univie.ac.at

Sieglinde ROSENBERGER, University of Vienna, Austria, sieglinde.rosenberger@univie.ac.at

The past ten years have witnessed an upsurge of mobilizations and protest activities by asylum seekers, irregular migrants and migrant rights solidarity activists and groups. With forms of collective public action they demand advocacy for human rights, a fair asylum process and access to labor markets. Furthermore, they demonstrate resistance to pending deportations. In contrast to these pro-migrant movements, we have noticed also a rise of counter-movements that take action against asylum seekers and their accommodations, mostly on a local level.
First, the panel focuses on organizational aspects, framing strategies and identities of these protest movements. Which practices, discursive alliances and mobilization strategies do they use? What are the similarities and differences among these movements? In which ways do pro-refugee and anti-refugee movements relate to each other?
Second, the panel will deal with internal effects and social and political outcomes of these movements. These movements produce cultural effects, through their framing strategies they aim to change perceptions in the society; they produce individual/biographical effects, protests against the deportation of failed asylum seekers results in some cases to legalization. However, asylum seekers may also run the risk of being deported. Reactions of governments and other state institutions may also result in repression, co-optation, and prevention.
This panel addresses refugee, solidarity and anti-asylum movements and focuses on both their different forms of mobilizations and their social, political and movement-related outcomes. Comparative papers with regard to movements, countries and political levels as well as single case studies are also welcome.

Popular Dissent in Sub-Saharan Africa

Session Organizer:

Marcelle DAWSON, University of Otago, New Zealand, marcelle.dawson@otago.ac.nz

The nature of popular resistance in sub-Saharan Africa has much in common with the waves of protest that have swept across the globe in recent years. Consequently, scholarship on protest in Africa – while it certainly must take into account the diversity on the continent – has much to offer the field of social movement studies. This session aims to attract a range of important voices that will examine the history, character and trajectory of grassroots struggles in sub-Saharan Africa but, at the same time, highlight the ways in which popular dissent in this region is connected to global patterns of protest. In particular, this session welcomes contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following issues:
–       Working class struggle in sub-Saharan Africa
–       Leadership and the role of key political thinkers in past and present sub-Saharan contexts.
–       ‘Dynamics of contention’  in sub-Saharan Africa both within and outside of the context of organized social movements.
–       The intersection between community and labour movements in sub-Saharan Africa.
–       Theoretical implications for social movement studies that draw on African cases.
Preference will be given to contributions that contextualize African struggles within the global picture of popular resistance.
Social Movements As Sites of Social Development

Session Organizer(s)

John KRINSKY, City College New York, USA, jkrinsky.ccny@gmail.com

Social movements are a crucible in which activists collectively generate which new forms of social organization as they attempt to make new subjects, worlds and histories in the context of—and in response to—the old; they may equally be moments of stymied progress where few advances are made on critical questions facing movements and the social groups they represent.  Whereas recent scholarship on social movements has emphasized their microfoundations, conceived as strategic interactions and choice-points, it has tended to play down the more macro-level, longer-lasting features of capitalist societies (including their historical encoding of class, race, gender, and nationality) and the often-contradictory nature of these features. In favor of analytic formalism, social movement studies have largely abandoned systematic social criticism.  This formalist turn also tends to play down the extent to which movements are a site of collective learning.  Reticence about social critique leads analysts to abjure judgments about whether and how collective action leads toward or away from social development.  Emerging Marxist scholarship on social movements has attempted to join the focus on on-the-ground interaction typical of formalist theories with the analyses of the larger, structured dynamics of capitalism and class; and as a body of work grounded in a theory of the “self-emancipation of the working class” (variously defined), its central concern is movement development towards more encompassing modes of social action an social identities.  This panel welcomes papers that focus on efforts to weave together theories of strategy and learning and larger-scale historical and social contradictions.

Social Movements in Latin America: Contributing to a North-South Dialogue

Session Organizer(s)

Renata MOTTA, Free University Berlin, Germany, renata.motta@fu-berlin.de

Pablo LAPEGNA, University of Georgia, USA, pablo.lapegna@gmail.com

Ilan BIZBERG, El Colegio de México, Mexico, ilan@colmex.mx
Session in Spanish and English

Social movements from the global South are usually investigated by applying theories developed by and for the global North. But what happens when theories travel across diverse social contexts? Can theories and concepts developed in the global North fully capture the complexities of social movements and societies that have followed different historical trajectories? For instance, nationalism, “populism,” and socialism, or key institutions like the state or labor unions cannot be assumed to have universal importance and meaning. To what degree theories and practices from the global South inform social movements and studies developed in the global North? How do situated cultures and meaning-making practices require a re-elaboration of social movement theories and concepts?
We would welcome papers that establish a dialogue between theories and movements from the global South and the global North, with a special focus on Latin America. Papers may contribute to this collective enterprise in various ways, for instance, looking at (1) the social and organizational basis of activism and collective identities; (2) how different cultural and historical contexts require new ways of thinking about contentious repertoires, “frames” and the mobilization of resources; (3) the links between social movements, governments, and institutional politics (e.g. the relevance of “patronage politics” in Latin America); and (4) the convergences, influences, and tensions between the global North and global South (e.g. the influence of the Bolivian process of social change in the actions and ideas of Podemos in Spain).

Social Movements in the Arab World

Session Organizer(s):

Maha ABDELRAHMAN, University of Cambridge, Egypt, mma49@cam.ac.uk

The approaching fifth anniversary of the Arab Uprisings which started in Tunisia and spread like wild fire across many countries of the region is a sober reminder of the challenges faced by social movements. The demand for ‘Bread, Freedom and Social Justice’ was able to mobilise millions of people who came out to the streets to protest against a political and economic order based on policies of dispossession and exclusion. This order has long sustained its hegemony through means of political repression and inflated security apparatuses at the national level. A wide range of movements created new types of activism and mobilisation strategies from workers to students to small farmers, slum residents, professionals, the unemployed and the retired. They crossed regional, gender, class and often ideological divides. The panel aims to explore the trajectories of these movements and how they have unfolded in the aftermath of their peak in 2011. It also hopes to locate them within a comparative perspective with social movements with similar features and histories across the world. We especially welcome papers that explore how these movements have evolved, disappeared, were coopted/ integrated into the political process or completely repressed after 2011. We also encourage papers which examine mainstream theoretical tools in studying social movements in light of the experience of these movements. Comparative research which examines social movements in the Arab region with similar movements in other parts of the world including countries of both the global North and South are also highly welcomed.

Social Movements, Sociology and Climate Change

Session Organizer(s):

Jackie SMITH, Pittsburg University, USA, jgsmith@pitt.edu

Esin ILERI, École Hautes Études Sciences Sociales, France, esinileri@gmail.com

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to near zero by 2050 to avoid more devastating climate change scenarios than are already underway. As government negotiations continue to fail to generate meaningful action in this regard, social movements have been developing concrete projects to enact practices that move in the direction of a low-carbon society.
This panel welcomes contributions on two main axes. • Analyses and case studies about grassroots social movements who promote worldviews, behaviors and policies more compatible with the reality and constraints of the limited nature of the planet and about how these studies provide us with empirical data for grasping some features of the global age and its consequences on life, democracy and society. How do they imagine, implement and contribute to shape alternative futures, starting in daily life and personal experience or contesting actual policies.
• Can our work as sociologists and with social movements help us find ways to achieve a seemingly impossible goal of radical social transformation? What lessons can be learned from these movements? What movements are or should be happening among academic professionals to both reduce our own carbon footprint while also helping advance the movements responding to the climate crisis?

What’s Left of 2011? Continuities and Outcomes of the 2011 Protests

Session Organizer(s)

Lorenzo ZAMPONI, European University Institute, Italy, lorenzo.zamponi@eui.eu

Priska DAPHI, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, p.daphi@gmx.de

Though large protests often surprise observers, they hardly start from scratch. Mostly, they are rooted in previous mobilisations. And often they produce outcomes that in turn will influence future mobilisation. The panel explores continuities and outcomes of social movements in the context of the wave of protests for social justice starting in 2011 – including the Arab Spring, the European anti-austerity mobilisations and the Occupy movement. This perspective allows looking at protests not as isolated events, but as part of a historical trajectory, considering both antecedents and legacies. How did previous mobilisations affect this wave of protest? How did the 2011 wave of protests influence more recent mobilisations? What are the consequences of the 2011 protests for politics more generally?
This panel hence will focus on movement continuities and outcomes, before and after the 2011 protests. On the one hand, we are interested in the contents of continuities and the role organisations, submerged networks, abeyance structures, free spaces and other actors and mechanisms play in ensuring this continuity. On the other hand, we aim to shed light on outcomes both with respect to policy-making and political representation as well as the effects on activists’ life-courses and movements’ internal organization.

The University of Bucharest organized on May 11-12, 2015 the International Sociological Association regional conference “Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe” with the support of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Romania. The Research Committee 47 (ISA 47) intended to evaluate the current status of research on collective action in the former communist countries to asses the capacities of research centers to generate valid knowledge in an highly competitive European and global environment and to encourage young scholars to make research on the new forms of social participation in Central and Eastern Europe.

As stated by the ISA 47 President, professor Geoffrey Pleyers, the social movements are important triggers for consolidating democracy and market economy in the region. As such, new forms of social participation shall be developed in the next period of time.

There were registered 96 scholars that represented some 25 countries. Additionally, some other 40 Romanian researchers and students took part in or assisted to specific panels or plenaries. 21 panels, 4 semi-plenaries, 2 plenaries and a concluding plenary were organized during the two days of workings. A group of well known scholars supervised these sessions. (Among them professors Jim M Jasper from the City University of New York, Kerstin Jacobsson from Gothenburg University, Sweden, A. Ishkanian from London School of Economics, Tova Benski, the ISA 48 President from Tel Aviv, Israel, Carine Clement from Russia. The keynote speakers were the well-known French sociologists Alain Touraine and Michel Wieviorka.)

An e-Book is published by the University of Bucharest Publishing House. Many thanks to volunteers Georgiana Popescu, Ana Popa, Cristian Chira, Sergiu Velesniuc and Adelina Nedelcu.