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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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2020-02-26

CFP Athens conference “Capitalism, Democracy, Contention: A Decade of Crisis” 13-15 May 2020

Aspiring to shed light on the Greek experience in the era of crisis in a comparative, inter-disciplinary perspective, the Laboratory on Contentious Politics (Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, Athens), the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence) and the Hellenic Political Science Association are organizing an international conference to be held at Panteion University, on 13, 14 and 15 May 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

13, 14 & 15 May 2020

 

Capitalism, Democracy, Contention: A Decade of Crisis

Comparing four major economic crises of the last 100 years ‒the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the Eurozone crisis, and Greece’s ‘long collapse’‒ a recent IMF Article IV Report (IMF Country Report No. 19/340) made the following conspicuous disclosure: whereas the economies in all the other cases had rebounded to pre-crisis levels within three-six years, a full decade after the signing the first Memorandum of Understanding, despite continual internal devaluation and the persistent implementation of austerity policies, Greece continues to languish.

Aspiring to shed light on the Greek experience in the era of crisis in a comparative, inter-disciplinary perspective, the Laboratory on Contentious Politics (Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, Athens), the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence) and the Hellenic Political Science Association are organizing an international conference to be held at Panteion University, on 13, 14 and 15 May 2020.

As Greece has been the harbinger of things to come all over Europe and beyond, its detailed examination provides grounds for assessing extant conceptualizations and theories at the intersection of institutional and contentious politics, also bearing significant theoretical import for contemporary political sociology as a whole. The conference’s cognitive goals are threefold, involving: (a) examination of the precise character of the crisis and its social repercussions; (b) its influence on the functioning of the political system (democratic hollowing/post-democracy); and (c) the social-movement and political responses it spearheaded.

 

A: The ‘Great Recession’: an unknown familiar, a familiar unknown

Considering that ‘crisis’ has been encompassing nearly all aspects of public life at least for a decade, comparative political sociology is faced with the challenge of tracking down and meaningfully synthesizing pertinent debates on its nature and social consequences. Aspiring to illuminate these dimensions, the conference invites papers from a wide spectrum of fields in the social sciences (political economy, social policy, political and social anthropology), exploring the crisis’ causal mechanisms, the narratives, frames and political discourses that were emitted about it by a variety of actors (the Media, supra-national institutions, political parties etc.), as well as its impact in the broad processes of social organization and reproduction (labor market, public health, education, housing). We are particularly keen on papers that will either be comparing Greece with other countries or will be employing it as a case-study to evaluate (revisit or, if necessary, recast) dominant concepts and research proclivities.

 

Β: Democratic Hollowing -Post-Democracy

In a political system already characterized by the ‘hollowing of democracy’, the influence of austerity politics has been truly portentous. The conference seeks to examine the relevant developments with a twofold focus: (a) which were the consequences the various bailout agreements had on the functioning of the political system (e.g., declining role of the legislature vis-à-vis the executive, ruling by decree, mounting intervention by supranational institutions with minimal democratic accountability)? and (b) in what ways has austerity politics intensified the crisis of representation? If the first aspect concerns developments taking place inside the core of the state, the second centers primarily on party functioning: how was the crisis reflected in the party system, what is the significance of the collapse of the embedded two partyism of 1974-2009 and what theoretical conclusions can be drawn regrading the perennial problem of party bureaucratization (and cartelization)? Here too, a major challenge is the comparative-theoretical utilization of the papers’ empirical results.

 

C: Social-Movement and Political Responses

But Greece was also marked by the outbreak of an unprecedented protest wave ‒dozens of militant general strikes, the occupation of public buildings, the two-month long Aganaktismenoi mobilizations, a variety of solidarity initiatives, and several contentious local protests‒ all in the face of towering police brutality, not only in capital Athens but all over the country. The conference seeks papers exploring three main areas: (a) developments in the repertoires of collective action: which were the major changes occurring in protest forms, which were the conditions fueling them, and what kinds of results did they obtain? (b) subjective understandings of collective action: how was the experience of participating in contentious events interpreted by the claimants themselves, and which factors influenced their preparedness to engage in them? (c) what can be said about the tempo or the rhythm of collective action and in what ways has the transformation of protest into a political program ‒the political mediation of social-movement reality‒ by political parties and organizations influenced developments?

 

The conference invites abstracts (up to 350 words) in any one of the areas above (or combinations thereof) until Friday 20 March 2020. Submit abstracts to to the Laboratory on Contentious Policy website submission form https://lcp.panteion.gr/en/submit-proposal/  or alternatively to lcp@panteion.gr.

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.