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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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News

13/11/2024

International Research Workshop – Call for abstracts: Social movements and the law: Legal mobilisation in a comparative perspective

Legal mobilisation has been broadly theorised and empirically studied as a repertoire of contentious action within the inter-disciplinary scholarly field of social movements and the law. Even though it attracted significant interest from scholars across a number of disciplines, it has been studied to very different extents depending on the policy fields and social movements […]

07/11/2024

Feminism as a Method, short introduction to the conference

The International Conference Feminism as a Method: Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, and Methods in the Social Sciences will be held at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore, on November 14th and 15th. Organized by Anastasia Barone, Giada Bonu Rosenkranz, and Donatella della Porta, this event will bring together scholars from various countries […]

21/10/2024

What war on antisemitism in Germany?

In recent months, institutions and the media have targeted artists, activists, intellectuals and students in solidarity with Palestine, including Jews. Protests have often been repressed as anti-Semitic, triggering, especially in Germany, a ‘war on anti-Semitism’ that criminalizes criticism of Israel. While recognizing episodes of anti-Semitism linked to the extreme right, this ‘war’ has been exploited […]

16/10/2024

Communication and participation and the pandemic, a book from Cosmos researchers

An emergency critical juncture such as a pandemic, the need to communicate probelmatic policies in a mont of anxiety and stress in which “communication and participation are particularly important in dealing with these crisis contexts, representing the very basis for collective involvement”. “Comunicare e partecipare durante una pandemia” (pp.224, Il Mulino) is the result of […]

16/10/2024

Professor Della Porta is the winner of the 2024 “John D. McCarthy Award”

Professor Donatella Della Porta from Scuola Normale Superiore and director of the Cosmos Lab is the winner of the 2024 edition of the ‘John D. McCarthy Award’, a lifetime achievement award presented by the Center for the Study of Social Movements at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. The award will be presented during a […]

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

Attraverso una lunga rassegna di casi concreti, Donatella Della Porta, direttrice di Cosmos, descrive il processo per cui la lotta istituzionale all’antisemitismo in Germania, inizialmente promossa dalla società civile progressista, si è trasformata nella costruzione di un apparato statale e di una struttura di potere ufficiale come strumento di razzializzazione e repressione.

14/06/2024

The Far-right and conspiraciy theories from Covid to the European elections

Donatella Della Porta, Cosmos Lab director, has researched on “Regressive movements in time of emergency” using the case of protests against anti contagion measures. In this case as in many others (from the conservative “anti gender”  European farmers) protesters pictured themselves as an abused minority of powerless victims fighting against some hidden and organized power. This frame seems to be a version of those being used by populist (mainly far-right) parties against Europe. We asked Della Porta to explain why and how conspiracy theories and this kind of posturing is keen to fall for the political offer of rightwing parties.

10/06/2024

Social movements, Coronavirus and the right to healthcare

The 2020 pandemic has brought renewed focus on public healthcare and many mobilizations both on healthcare systems and vaccine patents. What are the peculiarities of right to healthcare movements? A talk with Cosmos Lab member Stella Christou


The Far-right and conspiraciy theories, from Covid to the European elections

Donatella Della Porta, Cosmos Lab director, has researched on “Regressive movements in time of emergency” using the case of protests against anti contagion measures. In this case as in many others (from the conservative “anti gender”  European farmers) protesters pictured themselves as an abused minority of powerless victims fighting against some hidden and organized power. […]

03/06/2024

Far right movements and the European elections

Intersections and differences among far right politica Europan parties and movments, transatlantic exchanges, the role of mobilizations at the grassroots level. An interview with political scientist Andrea Pirro

17/05/2024

An open letter on freedom of expression and protest on Palestine by the European social movement studies community

As social movement scholars we express strong concerns about the growing trend to restrict the right of expression, critique, and protest in several countries in Europe. Signed by research centres, journals and standing groups.

21/03/2024

CFP: Feminism as a method – Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies and Methods in Social Sciences

International Conference

14-15 November 2024

Anastasia Barone, Giada Bonu Rosenkranz and Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore)


CFP: Feminism as a method – Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies and Methods in Social Sciences

Feminism as a method Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies and Methods in Social Sciences International Conference 14-15 November 2024 Anastasia Barone, Giada Bonu Rosenkranz and Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore) Call for papers  Over the past decade, feminist epistemology and the feminist perspective on methodologies has been the focus of renewed interest, also due to the […]

16/05/2023

CFP: Analyzing protest in the digital age. Challenges and opportunities in combining text and video sources

Organizers
Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore
Swen Hutter, Freie Universität Berlin & WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Place and date
WZB Berlin Social Science Center, December 7-8, 2023


CFP: Analyzing protest in the digital age. Challenges and opportunities in combining text and video sources

A conference on Analyzing protest in the digital age Challenges and opportunities in combining text and video sources Organizers Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore Swen Hutter, Freie Universität Berlin & WZB Berlin Social Science Center Place and date WZB Berlin Social Science Center, December 7-8, 2023 Call for Papers The conference aims to broaden […]

News

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

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Attraverso una lunga rassegna di casi concreti, Donatella Della Porta, direttrice di Cosmos, descrive il processo per cui la lotta istituzionale all'antisemitismo in Germania, inizialmente promossa dalla società civile progressista, si è trasformata nella costruzione di un apparato statale e di una struttura di potere ufficiale come strumento di razzializzazione e repressione.

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Resisting right-wing populism in power: a comparative analysis of the Facebook activities of social movements in Italy and the UK

Niccolò Pennucci
This paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom.

Journal Article - 2023

Emotions in Action: the Role of Emotions in Refugee Solidarity Activism

Chiara Milan
This article investigates the different types of emotions that result from participation in refugee solidarity activism, investigating how they change over time and to what extent they explain why individuals remain involved in action in spite of unfavorable circumstances.

Journal Article - 2023

‘Love is over, this is going to be Turkey!’: cathartic resonance between the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Batuhan Eren
This study addresses the question of why and how a protest can inspire individuals in distant countries. Taking the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil as cases, it investigates the reasons why the Turkish protests were framed as one of the inspirational benchmarks by some Brazilian protesters.

Journal Article - 2023

Mutual aid and solidarity politics in times of emergency: direct social action and temporality in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lorenzo Zamponi
From the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures introduced created a series of social problems and needs that were partially addressed in Italy as well as in other countries by grassroots mutual aid initiatives. While many of these initiatives were strongly rooted in the Italian social movement and civil society landscape and the choice to engage in mutual aid activities was the result of long years of reflection and planning, the article shows how strongly the temporality of emergency affected the nature of these initiatives, their development and their outcomes, in particular with regard to the extraordinary number of people who volunteered and their relationship with politicisation processes.

Monograph - 2023

Populism and (Pop) Music

Manuela Caiani, Enrico Padoan
The book provides a detailed account of the links between production of popular culture to the rise of populism and contributes to studies on populism and popular culture in Italy, using a comparative approach and a cultural sociology perspective

Monograph - 2022

Labour conflicts in the digital age

Donatella della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta, Lorenzo Cini
From Deliveroo to Amazon, digital platforms have drastically transformed the way we work. But how are these transformations being received and challenged by workers? This book provides a radical interpretation of the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age, developing an invaluable approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations. Using case studies taken from Europe and North America, it offers a comparative perspective on the mobilizing trajectories of different platform workers and their distinct organizational forms and action repertoires.

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 - 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.

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.

Journal Article - 2021

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation

Andrea Pirro & Martín Portos
The article focuses on a neglected aspect of populist mobilisation, i.e. non-electoral participation (NEP), and elaborates on the extent to which populist party voters engage politically outside the polling station. While challenging common understandings of populism as inherently distrustful and apathetic, and protest as an exclusive practice of the left, the study critically places NEP at the heart of populism in general, and populist right politics in particular.