Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.
This book assesses how much influence social movements have on EU policy and the means through which influence is secured. Using wide-ranging case studies of campaigns from GMOs to water rights and Internet freedom, it elucidates the important differences between technical and political campaigns.
How do progressive social movements deal with religious pluralism? In this book, Timothy Peace uses the example of the alter-globalisation movement to explain why social movement leaders in Britain and France reacted so differently to the emergence of Muslim activism.
Are social movement organizations euro-sceptical, euro-pragmatic, or euro-opportunist? Or do they accept the EU as a new level of governance to place pressure on? Do they provide a critical capital, necessary for the political structuring of the EU, or do they disrupt the process of EU integration? This book includes surveys of activists at international protest events targeting the European Union (for a total of about 5000 interviews); a discourse analysis of documents and transcripts of debates on European politics and policies conducted during the four European social forums held between 2002 and 2006 and involving hundreds of social movement organizations and tens of thousands of activists from all European countries; about 320 interviews with representatives of civil society organizations in six EU countries (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy) and one non-member state (Switzerland), and a systematic claims analysis of the daily press in selected years between 1990 and 2003. The empirical research shows the different paths of Europeanization taken by social movements and civil society organizations.
During the last two decades Europe has experienced a rise in transnational contention. Citizens are crossing borders to advance alternative visions of Europe. They spread protest concepts and tactics and explore new ways of organizing dissent. Far from being a recent phenomenon, transnational protest is obviously more salient in a world of international corporations and global political interaction, compounded by electronic communication and cheap travel. The transnational condition permeates all aspects of protest organization and dynamics - from individual biographies to activist networks to cycles of contention. The contributors offer insight into this multifaceted condition by combining rich empirical evidence with reflections on the problems of transnational research.
This book explores the relationship between social movements, sexual citizenship and change in Southern Europe. Providing a comparative analysis about LGBT issues in Italy, Spain and Portugal, it discusses how activism can generate legal, political and cultural impact in post-dictatorial, Catholic and EU-focused countries.
This book provides state of the art research by leading experts on the movement parties of the radical right. It examines the theoretical implications and empirical relevance of these organizations, comparing movement parties in time and space in Europe and beyond. The editors provide a theoretical introduction to radical right movement parties, discussing analytical frameworks for interpreting their causes, forms, and effects. In the subsequent sections of the book, chapter authors examine a range of empirical case studies in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches, and make a significant contribution to the literature on social movements and party politics. This book is essential reading for scholars of European party politics and students in European politics, social movements, comparative politics, and political sociology.
The celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall provoked a debate on the outcomes of the transition process in the post-communist countries, including a debate on the functioning of civil society. This provided a good opportunity for researchers to collect new data and revise the discourse on collective action and the dynamics of civil society in these countries. Jacobsson and Saxonberg's collection of essays looks at social movements, and their forms of mobilization and organization, as well as action repertoires in relation to the social context, and their success or failure. The book meets an important need in the discourse on post-communist social movements by going beyond the usual discourse about the weak and non-participatory civil society in the post-communist context. This book gives a nuanced and updated view of social movements in post-communist Europe, by looking at the cases of relatively successful mobilization, by examining groups that have often been neglected in the discourse on social movements and civil society (including animal-rights groups, racist movements and non-feminist family organizations), and by giving a deeper analysis of the different strategies that civil society organizations and groups can use. Rather than expecting social movements in post-communist Europe to follow the same patterns and operate in the same fashion as in Western Europe, this volume shows that a wider view of contentious action is needed in order to understand the variety of strategies employed by collective actors operating in this context.
Are the dynamics of contention changing? This is the question confronted by the contributors of this volume, among the most influential scholars in the field of social movements. The answers, arriving at a time of extraordinary worldwide turmoil, not only provide a wide-ranging and varied understanding of how social movements arise and persist, but also engender unanswered questions, pointing to new theoretical strands and fields of research. The Future of Social Movement Research asks: How are the dynamics of contention shaped by globalization? By societies that are becoming increasingly more individualized and diverse? By the spread of new communication technologies such as social media, cell phones, and the Internet? Why do some movements survive while others dissipate? Do local and global networks differ in nature? The authors’ essays explore such questions with reference to changes in three domains of contention: the demand of protest (changes in grievances and identities), the supply of protest (changes in organizations and networks), and how these changes affect the dynamics of mobilization. In doing so, they theorize and make empirically insightful how globalization, individualization, and virtualization create new grievances, new venues for action, new action forms, and new structures of contention. The resulting work—brought together through engaging discussions and debates between the contributors—is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in scope, constituting the most comprehensive overview of the dynamics of social movements available today. Contributors: Marije Boekkooi, VU-U, Amsterdam; Pang Ching Bobby Chen, U of California, Merced; Donatella della Porta, European U Institute; Mario Diani, U of Trento, Italy; Jan Willem Duyvendak, U of Amsterdam; Myra Marx Ferree, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Beth Gharrity Gardner; Ashley Gromis; Swen Hutter, U of Munich; Ruud Koopmans, WZB, Berlin; Hanspeter Kriesi, U of Zurich; Nonna Mayer, National Centre for European Studies; Doug McAdam, Stanford U; John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State U; Debra Minkoff, Barnard College, Columbia U; Alice Motes; Pamela E. Oliver, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Francesca Polletta, U of California, Irvine; Jacomijne Prins, VU-U, Amsterdam; Patrick Rafail, Tulane U; Christopher Rootes, U of Kent, Canterbury; Dieter Rucht, Free U of Berlin; David A. Snow, U of California, Irvine; Sarah A. Soule, Stanford U; Suzanne Staggenborg, U of Pittsburgh; Sidney Tarrow, Cornell U; Verta Taylor, U of California, Santa Barbara; Marjoka van Doorn; Martijn van Zomeren, U of Groningen; Stefaan Walgrave, U of Antwerp; Saskia Welschen.
During the early 1980s, large parts of Europe were swept with riots and youth revolts. Radicalised young people occupied buildings and clashed with the police in cities such as Zurich, Berlin and Amsterdam, while in Great Britain and France, 'migrant' youths protested fiercely against their underprivileged position and police brutality. Was there a link between the youth revolts in different European cities, and if so, how were they connected and how did they influence each other? These questions are central in this volume. This book covers case studies from countries in both Eastern and Western Europe and focuses not only on political movements such as squatting, but also on political subcultures such as punk, as well as the interaction between them. In doing so, it is the first historical collection with a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective on youth, youth revolts and social movements in the 1980s.
