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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Direct Social Action, Welfare Retrenchment and Political Identities. Coping with the Crisis and Pursuing Change in Italy

Lorenzo Zamponi

This article aims to address the issue of direct social action as a response to welfare retrenchment in the context of the economic crisis in Italy, focusing in particular on actors with a background in protest and social movement milieus.

Type: Journal Article
Year: 2019

In the context of the economic crisis, research on collective action has increasingly focused direct social actions, that escape the traditional stateaddressing repertoires of action and focus on a selfchanging society: boycotts, solidarity action, political consumerism, alternative finance (e.g. crowdfunding, food banks), collective purchasing groups, occupations, self‐management, free legal advice and medical services, to mention just a few. This article aims to address the issue of direct social action as a response to welfare retrenchment in the context of the economic crisis in Italy, focusing in particular on actors with a background in protest and social movement milieus. How do these actors keep protest and direct social action together? How do they justify the choice to engage in direct social action? How do they make sense of the contradiction between serviceproviding and claimmaking? And what are the consequences of the choice of these forms of action on their identity? The article answers these questions through the analysis of 20 qualitative interviews to representatives of organisations engaging in direct social actions in Italy.
The analysis shows that investigating the transition in the form of action as a political process, rooted in the decline of political participation, and aiming at reconstructing identity and politicisation, is helpful to understand how actors address the risk of substitution and to assess the outcomes of direct social action.

Zamponi, L. (2019) Direct Social Action, Welfare Retrenchment and Political Identities. Coping with the Crisis and Pursuing Change in Italy. Partecipazione e Conflitto 12(2), pp.382-409.

http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/view/21071/17813

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.” 

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