Speaker : Dr. Priska Daphi Goethe (Universität Frankfurt) Discussant : Dr. Donagh Davis (COSMOS – EUI)

Social movement scholars have become increasingly interested in the effects of protest events on the internal communication and organization of movements. This paper seeks to contribute to this emergent literature on transformative events with a focus on organizational effects. Drawing on recent developments in research on meetings and organizational fields it proposes to explore protest events as organizational infrastructures. The approach adds to existing literature by considering protest events as constitutive of movement’s organizational structures and by broadening the definition of organizational effects to include more general expectations about cooperation and competition within a movement.

In order to illustrate the ways in which protest events may constitute organizational infrastructures, a second part of the paper analyses the organizational effects of the counter-summit in Genoa in 2001. Focusing in particular on the role of the events’ spatial setting, the analysis shows how the protest shaped activists’ subsequent interactions by providing interpretational devices for delineating the GJMs internal and external boundaries: activists define commonality and differences of the movement in relation to places and place-bound activities of the event. 

The talk will take place at the EUI Seminar room (ground floor), Villa Pagliaiuola , Via delle Palazzine 17-19  on the 10th of June from 1 PM to 2:30 PM