Recent Protest Movements Research Articles

Linee di conflitto, economia politica e stratificazione sociale nel Kurdistan iracheno

Abstract The article follows the history of Iraqi Kurdistan from the achievement of regional autonomy in 1991 to the most recent protest movements, tracing the origin of a neo-patrimonial system tied to the dynastic power of the two ruling parties and outlining its current crisis. The authors analyze the popular protests that have inflamed the region since 2015 within the processes of institutional formation, social stratification, and economic transformation of the Iraqi-Kurdish region. By questioning the dominant scholarly approach, which tends to present the Kurds exclusively in ethno-national terms, the authors propose an original sociological reading with the aim of shedding light on the complexity of the social and political conflicts running through Kurdish society.

From Occupy Wall Street to the Gilets Jaunes: On the populist turn in the protest movements of the 2010s

Many recent protest movements, from the 2011 square occupation movements to the Gilets Jaunes display typical populist features, starting from an appeal to the people vs the elites. Drawing on my work on social movements in the 2010s in this article, I discuss the different components and implications of this ‘populist turn’ and its differences vis-à-vis other forms of populism, and in particular right-wing populism. I claim that social movements’ populism involves the adoption of a ‘popular identity’ as a unifying notion as a means to compensate for identity fragmentation; an identification with social majorities evident in Occupy Wall Street’s famous ‘we are the 99%’ slogan, which departs from the minoritarian identification of previous movements; and an appeal to common sense and the nation vis-à-vis the militant antagonism and cosmopolitanism prevalent in many previous social movement waves. This cultural transformation within social movements is, on the one hand, an indication of changing political opportunities and the unlocking of new areas of support for protest movements and, on the other hand, the product of social movements’ self-reflection and the attempt to escape the self-ghettoising tendencies of previous protest waves. However, this populist turn has also raised concerns among some activists, especially concerning the association of the ‘popular’ with the ‘national’ and a perception that popular identity involves undermining internal diversity and pluralism.

Village Fascists and Progressive Populists: Two Faces of the Countermovement in Slovakia

The introduction of liberal reforms in Slovakia has generated countermovements that build upon nostalgia for state socialism. This essay shows how countermovement emotions can be successfully employed by both reactionary and liberal leaders, provided that they accurately respond to voters’ concerns by mitigating the economic ideology of the free market and reflecting voters’ preferred ways of life. It argues that recent protest movements, whether reactionary or progressive, derive their impetus from the resilient agrarian features of state-socialist modernity. They must therefore be analysed in terms of a historical cultural economy that predates the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

Rearticulating football fans in Hong Kong: between activism, localism, and consumerism

ABSTRACT For a significant part of the twentieth century, Hong Kong was seen on the forefront of football development in Asia, and it was just in recent decades that the so-called “beautiful game” has been relegated to a less prominent spot in the cultural fabric of citizens’ everyday life. However, amidst the current socio-political conjuncture of the Special Administrative Region, which has been slowly unfolding over the last decade, football has again become a meaningful platform to imagine, articulate, and perform a local(ist) identity. Social scientists, cultural studies scholars and anthropologists have long examined the multi-faceted dimensions of football fan cultures around the world. The subject of study, however, has often been limited to European or American perspectives, with incomplete accounts of Asian experiences in this domain, calling for more interventions in the form of culturally informed research. First, this article aims to offer a qualitative overview of Hong Kong’s football fan culture, using a thick description of a supporters’ group that rearticulated and materialized subcultural practices of the popular local forum LIHKG – an online community that has later emerged as a central catalyst of recent protest movements. Second, the research attempts to provide an alternative understanding of the politicization of football fandom, by emphasizing the multiple fan identities being negotiated between consumerism, activism, and localism. By critically investigating common fan categorizations that have been put forward in the context of football’s hyper-commodification, the research questions the suitability of Eurocentric models on residual or emerging sporting cultures in non-European contexts. The paper further argues that the re-appropriation of football as a site of imagination and performance of identities reaffirms the idea of sport as a resource for cultural citizenship, as well as a decoding device for the ever-changing politicization of everyday life.

Racial Inequality in Academia: Systemic Origins, Modern Challenges, and Policy Recommendations

In an ideal world, academia serves society; it provides quality education to future leaders and informs public policy—and it does so by including a diverse array of scholars. However, research and recent protest movements show that academia is subject to race-based inequities that hamper the recruitment and retention of scholars of color, reducing scientific impact. This article provides critical systemic context for racism in academia before reviewing research on psychological, interpersonal, and structural challenges to reducing racial inequality. Policy challenges include (a) the cultivation of harmful stereotypes, (b) the education of racially ignorant future leaders, and (c) the dedication of resources to science that informs only a few, rather than many. Finally, recommendations specify critical features of hiring, retention, transparency, and incentives that can diversify academia, create a more welcoming environment to scholars of color, and maximize the potential for innovative and impactful science.

Active citizens under Eighteen: minors in political protests

ABSTRACT There is currently much public debate around the possibilities of political participation for minors. Although the West has historically evolved to perceive children as not developed enough to participate in politics, adolescence remains an ambivalent period between childhood and adulthood. This article investigates the question of how adolescents may participate in politics when the latter is associated primarily with the realm of adulthood. The adolescents’ participation in two recent protest movements in Russia are compared: the ‘For Fair Elections’ movement (2011–2012) and the anti-corruption rallies (2017–2018). In-depth interviews with the high-school-aged protesters collected in these two time periods show that the minors’ political practice has evolved in the period between two movements. In the 2011–2012 protest, adolescents understood themselves to be ‘immature kids’ in the political arena who were not able to act of their own accord. By the 2017–2018 protest, however, their self-perception had changed, with adolescent interviewees viewing themselves as full-fledged political actors. These differences are explained by the changes in political socialization of 2017–2018 adolescent protesters compared to their counterparts in 2011–12. At the end, the theoretical implications of the analysis for the cases outside of the Russian context are shown.

The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic WorldFrom the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity

The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic WorldFrom the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity

Institutional Distrust, Institutional Participation, and Protest Behavior in the European Social Movement Sector

Institutional distrust has become a pervasive element of global society in general and European society in particular. Concurrently, participation in institutions is also declining, raising concerns about the effectiveness of civil society. Distrust of institutions like the political, education, legal-judicial, and law enforcement systems is linked to declining participation in mainstream political behaviors like voting, but it is unclear how individuals’ trust of and participation in certain institutions affects social movement activity and participation in protest. Here, I use recent European protest movements to better understand the link between institutional distrust, institutional participation, and social protest. Using the 7th wave of the European Social Survey, I construct several multilevel mixed-effects logistic regressions predicting participation in four forms of protest: signing petitions, boycotting products, wearing protest badges, and participating in demonstrations. It turns out that, while institutional distrust is moderately and positively linked to certain forms of protest, those who partake in mainstream political institutions are far more likely to participate in all forms of protest.

Back on Tito Street: bodies and citizens

ABSTRACT Inspired by militant research and personal experience, this article explores how bodies become political in an urban environment where space and time interact to form specific, socially and politically charged chronotopes. The political relationship between the chronotope of and the bodies on Tito Street in Sarajevo is narrated here through a series of photos of defining moments in the modern history of the city, from its liberation in 1945, through the socialist period, to its siege and recent protest movements. The author stresses that the corporeal performances and acts of citizens acquire their true social and political meaning only within a concrete chronotope that attaches emotions and values to their actions. These emotions and values constitute a certain political culture formed from the struggles of, in this case, progressive, emancipatory and left-wing forces. In the face of these struggles, the author claims that researchers and observers cannot remain neutral, and further elaborates his own personal and political engagement.

Agonistic Entanglements of Art and Activism: #RhodesMustFall and Sethembile Msezane’s Chapangu Performances

ABSTRACTThis article reflects on some of the limitations and challenges of recent student protest movements in South Africa, with a specific focus on their activism on issues of cultural politics. It articulates the dominant modes of cultural activism of these movements, taking the #RhodesMustFall campaign as a defining instance in this regard. Revisiting one of the first victories of #RhodesMustFall, the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the University of Cape Town’s main campus in 2015, it finds that another, very different and, in many ways, opposing form of cultural activism asserted itself in an artistic performance by Sethembile Msezane. It is argued that during this iconic scene of contemporary student protests, an uneasy tension thus came to exist, provoking fundamental questions regarding activist styles of cultural contestation and modes of subjectivity. Through Jacques Rancière’s notion of the politics of aesthetics, Msezane’s performance is taken to harbour a critique of the dominant activist modes of #RhodesMustFall, affirming the important role of creativity and imagination within radical political movements. Inversely, a critique of artistic interventions from the perspective of a #RhodesMustFall style of cultural activism is formulated, based on Fredric Jameson’s redemptive reading of philistine attitudes. Although #RhodesMustFall and Msezane’s performance are thus conceived in agonistic terms, it is argued that the tension between art and activism should be endorsed as a productive one, allowing for processes of self-critique, self-correction, and self-reinvention within social protest movements.

Embodied forms of politics and identity in South Asian protest movements: Pinjra Tod and Delhi

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that embodied forms of identity, politics and protests have become critical to South Asian social movements because actors have started identifying ways in which society uses their bodies to oppress them. The fact that “embodied” form of resistance is the prevalent theme of countless contemporary movements like Girls at Dhaba in Pakistan, Women’s March against President Donald Trump in the USA, “Pinjra Tod” in India, etc., proves that it is increasingly becoming urgent to study the way the female body can resist domination and oppressive structures. Discussing the definition of “embodied” resistance, and the gendered idea of “safety” and “peril” in urban spaces, I examine the ways in which recent protest movements such as Pinjra Tod (Break the Cages) in Delhi use embodied forms of politics and identity to subvert the norms that chain and restrict the female body.

‘The tide, change, nobody can stop it’: Metaphor for social action

Based on critical approaches to discourse and metaphor, as well as on cognitive models of metaphorical creativity and recontextualization, this article analyses the origin and evolution of the marea (‘tide’) metaphor as a tool for social action within recent Spanish protest movements (2011–2016). From an initial image metaphor representing different protest groups, to the use of the expression to identify a number of grassroots political parties, among other new meanings, the metaphor has proved to be an important tool in the legitimation of recent social action and change in Spanish society since the eruption of the 15M movement in 2011. By tracking its development, the study explains not only how the source domain marea activates highly positive meanings and emotions within the targets social protest, political parties, change and so on, but also how this ideological, socio-culturally conditioned, cognitively situated metaphor is becoming entrenched in the community within a very specific socio-historical and cultural context.

The Recent Protest Movements in Eastern Europe as an Indicator for Multiple Crises?

Since the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis in 2008, Eastern European countries have been affected severely by the crisis through intensified austerity measures, higher unemployment rates, and increasing dissatisfaction with democracy. Against this backdrop, the region has experienced several large-scale protest movements in recent years. The paper critically assesses the state of the art on political participation in Eastern Europe. Special attention is paid to the still underplayed effects of the global economic crisis. Subsequently, the question is raised whether the increased number of protests indicates a deeper societal crisis. Thereby, the authors conclude, Eastern Europe serves to a certain extend as a trendsetter for similar developments in other parts of Europe.

From Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia's Social Contract

This essay revisits the debate about Russia's “social contract,” arguing that the ability of the Russian system to maintain macro-political stability in the face of significant and prolonged micro-level economic hardship hinges on a peculiarly disengaged relationship between Russian citizens and their state. Russian citizens are seen clearly to understand the failings of the political system and leadership, reinforcing habits of “involution” learned over decades of institutional dysfunction. A review of recent protest movements, indeed, demonstrates that general quiescence coexists with a deep-seated antipathy toward the country's ruling elite, which lends particular animus to grassroots contention in a variety of settings. The question for Russia's sociopolitical future, however, remains an old one: can reactive civic mobilization lead to a proactive process of bottom-up agenda setting?

Queer politics and intersectionality in South Africa

In an interview with Nadia Davids, Zethu Matabeni discusses contemporary queer politics in South Africa and Cape Town in particular. Matebeni contextualizes current queer activism in a broader historical trajectory in which she observes the ongoing exclusive boundaries of Pride celebrations and positions two recent protest movements, #FeesMustFall and Rhodes Must Fall.

Trees and umbrellas: a parallel reading of the Istanbul Gezi Park Movement and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

ABSTRACTThis paper makes a parallel reading of two recent urban protest movements: the 2013 Istanbul Gezi Park Movement (GPM) and the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (UM). As regional centers at both ends of Asia, Istanbul and Hong Kong might at fırst sight appear to be incongruent cities for comparison. Istanbul’s recent past has been defined by contrasting opinions about the city’s post-imperial identity, while Hong Kong’s recent past has been shaped by competing visions around the city’s post-colonial status. Directing attention to the striking parallels between the GPM and UM in terms of the nature of the events themselves, the profile of the participants and opponents, the government response that they received, and the cultural sensitivities concerning the questions of belonging and identity that they rekindled, the paper argues that comparative studies of the new urban protest movements would provide significant insights for discerning the dynamics of emerging illiberal democracies across the world.

From Uncles of Victoria Park to the Net Generation Square People: National Identity and Student Movements in Hong Kong

Recent protest movements in post-colonial Hong Kong have exposed a divided society that is grappling with an identity crisis. This study looks at the co-evolutionary trajectories of Chinese identity and Hong Kong student movements and analyses the mechanisms that have conditioned perceptions of Chinese identity since the 1960s. Using a structured process-based approach to identity, we argue that, same symbolic resources can be combined with organic boundary mechanism in one movement while with the voluntarist boundary mechanism in another, contingent on population structure, political system and the nature of social conflicts at a given time. Thus, through decades of student movements, ‘being Chinese’ has been articulated in relation to the oppressed in the British colony, Chinese nation, local society, and mainland Chinese. The outcome of each movement has redefined the connotation of ‘being Chinese’ and this updated connotation has in turn redirected the next wave of activism.

"Translanguaging" as a socially just pedagogy

South African higher education relies primarily on English as the medium of education. This is a result of the colonial history of the country, yet it disadvantages a large section of South African students who undertake their education in a language that is not their first language. It also reproduces the monolingual norm and anglonormativity. This can be read as a social justice issue, since students are impacted negatively by discrimination through language. Indeed, recent protest movements, particularly Rhodes Must Fall, have highlighted language as a critical issue in the “decolonisation” of the university curriculum. This article presents translanguaging pedagogy as a way to address this issue; it analyses the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies in an introductory course at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and 2016. Through an analysis of lecturer reflections, classroom practice and assessments, it highlights how translanguaging pedagogies can empower students who are disempowered by English monolingualism and it demonstrates how students respond positively to these pedagogies. The article makes the argument that multilingual pedagogies are a necessary response to the current crisis in South African higher education.

Marxism, Anarchism and the Situationists’ Theory of Revolution

In recent protest movements, such as those against ‘globalization’, Situationist ideas and practices – which were developed in the late 1950s to the early 1970s − have inspired some of those radicals involved in such dissent. Given this revived interest in the Situationist International, this article takes the opportunity to examine the Situationists’ theory of revolution in relation to both Marxism and anarchism. It argues that while the Situationists’ theory of revolution, in respect of some of its key characteristics, corresponds to Bakunin’s vision of a revolutionary upheaval, the intellectual ancestry of the Situationists’ theory can be traced, chiefly, to the thought of Marx and the ideas of several Marxist thinkers, as well as to the ideas of pre-Situationist avant-garde ‘artists’.

Africa's passive revolution: crisis in Malawi

Recent protest movements in sub‐Saharan Africa have generally failed to effect progressive transformations. Efforts to achieve social change have been frustrated by governing elites that continue to utilise their vacillating and unequal relationships with the external environment to sustain power. Although the leading figures may change, the dominant African class can re‐establish leadership through new alliances with domestic and international networks of capital. To understand such ‘change‐without‐change’, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on Antonio Gramsci's development of ‘passive revolution’. The comparative character of Gramscian analysis enables his philosophy of praxis to be translated into very different historical and geographical settings. With this in mind we draw together recent engagements with passive revolution from Geography, Politics and African Studies. In particular we develop Jean‐François Bayart's notion of extraversion, while considering it in relation to more recent philological engagements with Gramsci. Our empirical focus is the politics of transition in Malawi. In his second term in office, the autocratic and unpopular president, Bingu wa Mutharika, implemented economic policies that ran against neoliberal orthodoxy and suppressed protest during a period of crisis. Mutharika was replaced, following his death in 2012, by Joyce Banda, a previously marginalised vice‐president, who nurtured a re‐engagement with transnational capital. Working through the state, Banda led a transformation from on high and moved to impose new economically liberal policies, including a major currency devaluation, which reduced living standards for many. We draw our empirical material from Chancellor College, a major site of protest against Mutharika in 2011. Evidence from interviews with staff and students demonstrates how two episodes of revolution/restoration in Malawi, a country distant from the western historical experience, can be interpreted through Gramsci's socially differentiated understanding of politics.