Social Movements WG Meetings

Description

The social movement working group of the European University Institute, with the support of COSMOS, launches a new seminar series for the academic year 2014/15 that will deal with Marxism(s) in social movements. Is Marx Back in Social Theory?. The working group will meet approximately on monthly bases. In each session a professor or researcher will present his work that is fitting into the session thematic with one complementary reading in order to deepen the debate. Researchers act as discussants. After each session we will head together to have a pizza or aperitivo to follow our discussion in a more informal manner.

Writing a PhD thesis is not a solipsistic intellectual effort produced by an individual mind, but rather needs to be constantly fuelled by the presence of a stimulating academic community. We think that the relaunch of the Social Movement Working Group represents a small yet indispensable step for the construction of that community.

Working Group Organizers

Lorenzo Cini (EUI), Daniela Chironi (EUI), Eliska Drapalova (EUI) and Federico Tomasello (PhD – University of Bologna). This working group is sponsored by Prof. Donatella della Porta (Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies and Scuola Normale Superiore, Director of Cosmos).

How to join the working group?

Working group is open to all researchers and professors within EUI. If you wish to participate in this working group or receive information about forthcoming sessions just write an email to the organizers of the working group: Lorenzo Cini , Daniela Chironi , Eliska Drapalova , and Federico Tomasello .

Series 2014/2015

Marxism(s) in social movements: Is Marx Back in Social Theory?

There is a widespread agreement among a certain number of movement scholars on the fact that the recent wave of protests has put into crisis the dominant theories of social movements. Some of their analytical and conceptual tools seem no longer to be effective in explaining the factors triggering mobilization. How to better understand the outburst of current mobilizations? How to explain their framing processes, repertoires of action, goals, and outcomes? We think that bringing back political economy in the study of social movements is a first and necessary step to be undertaken to answer these questions. This view is also shared by some of the most recent strands of social movement research, aiming at (re)taking seriously economist perspectives, and especially Marxist, in the study of contemporary mobilizations. By calling for a (re)turn to Marxist and other political economist perspectives in social movement research we would like to underline the importance of bringing “capitalism” back in—as Hetland and Goodwin (2013) have stressed in a recently published article—even in the analyses of the “new” and “apparently” post-materialist movements of the last three decades. Contemporary society and its structural and cultural changes need to be (re)investigated through new conceptual and analytical lens embodying more critical perspectives. The themes and approaches that we will present and debate over the ten planned sessions go precisely in this direction.