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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Publications

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Anti-Islamic PEGIDA Beyond Germany: Explaining Differences in Mobilisation

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Lars Erik Berntzen and Manès Weisskircher

The rise of anti-Islamic PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) is one of the latest sustained episodes of radical right mobilisation in Western Europe outside the electoral arena. This study provides a first comparative analysis of PEGIDA beyond Germany and its core region of Saxony. Combining protest event analysis with online data and… more

Democracy in neoliberalism?

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Colin Crouch, Donatella Della Porta, Wolfgang Streek

The article is based upon a round table, in which Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck, and Donatella della Porta participated, organized in the framework of the Marxism(s) in Social Movements Working Group at Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence, May 2015). The roundtable was the concluding moment of a cycle of conferences aimed at rethinking some of the… more

Distorsiones tecnopolíticas: represión y resistencia algorítmica del activismo ciudadano en la era del big data

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Emiliano Treré

Several strands of literature on social engagement, digital media and big data conceive digital platforms as a shortcut to government accountability and citizen empowerment. According to these visions, social media and the new possibilities offered by the analysis of big data represent the solution to the issues of contemporary democracies. Based on a critical analysis… more

Gramsci’s Political Thought and the Contemporary Crisis of Politics

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Loris Caruso

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead… more

Hardly ever relevant? An appraisal of nativist economics through the Hungarian case

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Andrea L. P. Pirro

Populist radical right parties place selective emphasis on immigration or minority issues, generally garnering support on the basis of their exclusionary agenda. However, populist radical right parties are not single-issue organisations and strenuously endeavour to come across as credible actors in different policy areas. It has been observed that, especially since the outbreak of the… more

Les town meetings, mythe fondateur de la démocratie américaine

Journal Article - 2016

Authors: Paula Cossart; Andrea Felicetti; James Kloppenberg

L’analyse historique a marqué la naissance et le développement des réflexions sur la démocratie participative et délibérative1. Outre le travail fondateur de Jürgen Habermas (1978) d’analyse de la transformation de la sphère publique bourgeoise, plusieurs contributions importantes à l’étude de la démocratie délibérative s’appuient en effet sur la recherche historique. Parmi les plus célèbres, on… more

Media ecologies and protest movements: main perspectives and key lessons

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Emiliano Treré and Alice Mattoni

Studies adopting the media ecology metaphor to investigate social movements form a promising strand of literature that has emerged in the last years to overcome the communicative reductionism permeating the study of the relation between social movements and communication technologies. However, contributions that apply ecological visions to protest are scattered, and only seldom connect their… more

The integrative power of online collective action networks beyond protest. Exploring social media use in the process of institutionalization

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Elena Pavan

In this article, we aim at expanding the event-based and protest-centered perspective that is typically adopted to study the nexus between social media and movements. To this aim, we propose a network-based approach to explore the changing role that these tools play during the dynamic unfolding of movement processes and, more particularly, over the course… more

Which Crisis? European Crisis and National Contexts in Public Discourse

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Lorenzo Zamponi, Lorenzo Bosi

Is there such a thing as “the crisis” in the European public discourse? We investigate the Great Recession as it appears in the public discourse of seven European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland). We do so through a political claim analysis conducted on the most important newspapers of each country between… more

Why the refugee crisis is not a refugee crisis

Journal Article - 2016

Author: Javier Alcalde

In the context of the European research project "Collective action and the refugee crisis", I have spent several months interviewing activists who work on the denunciation , solidarity and support of migrants and refugees. Even though they do not all share the same analysis of the causes and solutions, there is one point on which… more

News

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

alt
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.