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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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The Charlie Hebdo Critical Juncture: European Public Spheres Before and After the Paris Attacks

This conference aims at analysing the effects of the Charlie Hebdo attacks on the content and quality of public debates across Western European societies, paying special attention to dynamics of deliberation and polarization across public spheres, and to the interplay between mass media and social movements in the construction of public discourse.

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The Charlie Hebdo shootings of January 2015 represent a critical juncture that changed the European public debate, at both the EU and national level. The controversies that followed the attacks had deep effects on mainstream institutional actors, social movements and subaltern publics across Europe. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks contentious issues related to the role of religion in secular societies, civil rights and freedom of speech, accommodation of cultural diversity and securitization of migration are once again in the middle of public sphere debates in Europe.

The conference aims at analysing the effects of these attacks on the content and quality of public debates across Western European societies, paying special attention to dynamics of deliberation and polarization across public spheres, and to the interplay between mass media and social movements in the construction of public discourse.

This event will bring together scholars reflecting on the consequences of critical junctures from multiple perspectives. It will also offer a space to present the preliminary findings of the ongoing project led by Donatella della Porta at SNS, as part of the ERC Advanced Scholars’ Grant Mobilizing for Democracy, which will provide qualitative and quantitative insights from individual case studies in France, Germany, Italy, UK and Denmark.

 

Keynote speakers

ANDRÉ BÄCHTIGER (University of Stuttgart)

DONATELLA DELLA PORTA (Scuola Normale Superiore)

JAN WILLEM DUYVENDAK (University of Amsterdam)

TIMOTHY PEACE (University of Stirling)

GAVAN TITLEY (Maynooth University)

 

Presenters

ROMAIN BADOUARD (University of Cergy-Pontoise)

GWENAËLLE BAUVOIS (University of Helsinki)

MAËLLE BAZIN (University of Paris 2)

FARIDA BELKACEM (European University Institute)

LAURIE BOUSSAGUET (Sciences Po)

JOEL BUSHER (Coventry University)

PIETRO CASTELLI GATTINARA (Scuola Normale Superiore)

KONSTANTINOS ELEFTHERIADIS (EHESS)

ANDREA FELICETTI (Scuola Normale Superiore)

FLORENCE FAUCHER (Sciences Po)

PHILIPPE GONZALEZ (University of Lausanne)

LAURENCE KAUFMANN (University of Lousanne)

NIKO PYRHÖNEN (University of Helsinki)

LINDA LUND (London School of Economics)

AUDE SEURRAT (University of Paris 13)

THIJS VAN DOOREMALEN (University of Amsterdam)

 

Organizers

Donatella della Porta (SNS)

Pietro Castelli Gattinara (SNS)

Andrea Felicetti (SNS)

Allegati

conference-programme

News

22/02/2023

15 fully funded PhD positions
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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 15 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2023. The deadline for applications is April 13, 2023.

16/02/2023

Applications now open! Fourth Edition of the ECPR-COSMOS Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation
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Applicants must send their application materials no later than March the 17th 2023.

10/01/2022

SNS announces 14 fully-funded PhD positions
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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 14 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2022.

16/07/2021

Prof. della Porta to lead VolkswagenStiftung-funded ECSEuro project
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Reflecting the European challenge of transnational cooperation and multiple crises, this project asks how local political initiatives across Europe enact citizenship and solidarity and contribute to the vision of a more democratic Europe from below.

09/07/2021

SNS announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions
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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions. Deadline for applications: 21 August 2021.

28/09/2020

Four post-doctoral research positions on the pandemic
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The Scuola Normale Superiore announces four post-doctoral positions to be activated as part of the research project “After the coronavirus pandemic: The effects of the health emergency on society and knowledge.” 

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Reflective Inclusion: Learning from Activists What Taking a Deliberative Stance Means.
Andrea Felicetti, Markus Holdo
We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our understanding of what deliberation may look like.

Monograph - 2022

Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy
Donatella della Porta, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Chiara Milan, Martín Portos & Lorenzo Zamponi
Drawing interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political "regression" and a growing right-wing backlash.

Journal Article - 2022

Populists in power and conspiracy theories
Andrea Pirro & Paul Taggart
Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why).

Journal Article - 2022

The mobilization for spatial justice in divided societies. Urban commons, trust reconstruction and socialist memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Chiara Milan
The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy.

Journal Article - 2022

(Water) Bottles and (Street) Barricades: The Politicisation of Lifestyle-Centred Action in Youth Climate Strike Participation
Lorenzo Zamponi, Anja Corinne Baukloh, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos
This article explores the forms of action adopted by participants in two Fridays For Future (FFF) strikes, focusing on the repertoires of action of (young) climate justice protesters. Drawing on protest survey data, it shows demonstrated that young protesters do not participate less in claim-based action than older cohorts. Furthermore, a process of politicisation can be seen to be unfolding that leads to increased commitment in both lifestyle and political forms of participation – at least among active milieus.

Journal Article - 2022

Performing (during) the Coronavirus crisis: The Italian populist radical right between national opposition and subnational government
Andrea Pirro
The first year of COVID-19 confirmed the standing of the populist radical right in Italy. While sitting in opposition at the national level, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini's League shared common criticism of the Conte II government but experienced diverging trajectories in terms of popularity. These changes can be partly attributed to the different agency of their leaderships. Overall and collectively considered, the Italian populist radical right broke even during the first year of COVID-19, but the crisis exposed the first cracks in Salvini's leadership.

Journal Article - 2021

Far-right protest mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, opportunities and resources
Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Caterina Froio & Andrea Pirro
In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation.

Monograph - 2021

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations
Elias Steinhilper
This book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavorable contexts of marginalization.

Edited Volume - 2021

Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Shrinking Spaces and Civil Society Contestation
Donatella della Porta & Elias Steinhilper
Building upon social movement and migration studies, this book maps the two sides of ‘contentious solidarity’: a shrinking civic space and its contestation by civil society.

Journal Article - 2021

Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design
Andrea Felicetti
Drawing from literature on democratic practices in social movements and democratic innovations, the article illustrates three ways to advance institutional design in the wake of the systemic turn.
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Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Scuola Normale Superiore Palazzo Strozzi Piazza degli Strozzi 50123 Firenze Italy
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