Repertoires of action and collective memory: the re-emergence of feminist self-managed health centers in Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the relationship between repertoires of action and collective memory by exploring the re-emergence of feminist self-managed health centers in Italy. These were a key form of action of 1970s feminism in the country, which rapidly disappeared after the institution of state-based Family Health Centers. In the last decades, feminist and transfeminist self-managed health centers have resurfaced in several Italian cities. The present article investigates the mnemonic dynamics underpinning the re-adoption of a form of action from the past in subsequent cycles of mobilization. Social movement scholars have stressed the relatively stable and repetitive character of the repertoire of collective action over time, considering it as part of an implicit memory. The article examines a case in which the discontinuous adoption of a form of action makes its retrieval by subsequent activists the result of active memory work. While the study of social movements and collective memory has grown considerably in the last decades, the study of repertoires remains largely under-researched in this field. Filling this gap, this study shows how, by adopting a symbolically and historically meaningful repertoire, activists re-elaborate their collective identity in the present and establish a relationship with previous cycles. It suggests that further research should investigate the relationship between collective memory and repertoires of action.