Authors:Takeshi Wada, Yoojin Koo, Yoshiyuki Aoki Pages: 13 - 36 Abstract: Why do people opt for different forms of collective action, like lobbying, marching, or rioting, to voice contentious claims' The patterns of these collective action forms, or “tactics” exhibit variations among groups, regions, and nations, evolving over time. Current explanations for such tactical patterns are unsatisfactory due to limited theoretical and empirical exploration of the concept of repertoires of contention. This paper presents a comprehensive theoretical model drawing on social practice and learning theories, centered around the notion of tactical familiarity. The central idea posits that people in diverse societies have learned distinct ways of doing politics, gaining varying familiarity and proficiency with different tactics, developed through three mechanisms: feedback, diffusion, and memory. These mechanisms contribute to the formation of notably distinct repertoires of contention. Based on this theoretical model, this study develops an empirical measure of tactical familiarity. The novel measure allows comparing the impact of tactical familiarity with other factors, like political regime characteristics. Previous research has not conducted such comparisons, as it often focuses on particular tactics, like protests or violence, without delving into the full array of potential tactical choices, including conventional-institutional ones. Using quantitative event analysis and a dataset of 10 Million International Dyadic Events, the paper examines 17,575 global political events from 2000 to 2004. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression highlights repertoires of contention’s significant influence on tactical choices, potentially outweighing political regime characteristics. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15495 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Mans Lundstedt Pages: 37 - 48 Abstract: The processual approach to political violence suggests a close link between nonviolent and violent tactical repertoires. Yet in doing so it excludes cases where violence appears to appear in the absence of public protest activity. This article traces how political violence emerges in the aftermath of local protest campaigns against migrant accommodation. Developing the concept of the privatization of protest, the article shows how the demobilization of protest contributes to a process where grievances are reframed into private frustrations rather than objects of political contention. Transformed as such, persistent patterns of intermittent political violence can sometimes grow out of private interactions, even in the absence of any consistent public protest. Applying the conceptual apparatus of frames, emotions, opportunities and to a paired process tracing of episodes of protest against Swedish migrant accommodation in 2007-2008 and 2012-2017, the article maps the causal mechanisms that create facilitative conditions for violence, sometimes long after the decline of nonviolent protest. Extending its discussion beyond the case of Sweden, it links the processual approach to adjacent discussions on the link between micro- and meso-level causes of political violence. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15496 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:David H. Slater, Patricia G. Steinhoff Pages: 49 - 61 Abstract: After a disastrous period of New Left political violence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, followed by two decades of abeyance, Japan has experienced a renewed era of social movement activity since the 1990s. These new movements explicitly seek to avoid contamination by the earlier period, even when their participants know little about it except for fear perpetuated by media portrayals of senseless violence. We analyze ethnographic accounts of contemporary groups engaged in collective action, ranging from small informal groups in Japan’s invisible civil society; groups trying to mobilize laborers who fall outside Japan’s traditional enterprise unions; and groups reviving and revitalizing older movement networks to deal with new threats; to new right-wing challengers and their counter-movements; and those making innovative use of cultural resources. They all seek alternatives to earlier social movements that engaged in political violence, by creating very different organizational structures and relations to ideology, relying on social media for communication, and developing new forms of collective action. They foreground cultural and expressive repertoires, and seek to establish the movement as a place of personal and social belonging. As was true of the New Left social movements in the mid-20th century, these new groups are closely attuned to movement developments around the world, even as they craft their responses to specific historical conditions in Japan. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15497 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Alessandra Lo Piccolo Pages: 63 - 74 Abstract: Civic monitoring is a democratic practice that allows citizens to hold accountable powerholders and enhance the accountability of democratic systems. To date, democratic theorists and collective action scholars have stressed the relevance of monitoring by NGOs, social movement organizations, and alternative media to increase civil society’s watchdog potential, filter publicly relevant information, and ensure the inclusion of new voices and the representation of new instances in democratic arenas. However, little is known about how such diverse collective actors leverage monitoring practices, particularly in interaction with monitored actors and their constituencies. Focusing on the Spanish case (2011-2021), often considered a prominent example of monitory democracy, the study employs Situational Analysis and builds on semi-structured interviews and document analysis to discuss differences within the Spanish monitoring field. The results contribute to ongoing discussions on the hybridization of civic efforts and classifications of civic monitoring initiatives. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15498 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Carla Mannino Pages: 75 - 89 Abstract: The literature on nationalist movements in Western democracies has almost exclusively focused on ethno-nationalist parties by attributing to them the key-role of “ethnic entrepreneurs”. Yet, non-institutional actors such as social movement organizations and grassroots groups can significantly impact the history of territorial contention and reshape movements. Their role is thus explored in the Scottish and Catalan struggles for selfdetermination between the 1980s and the 2000s. Firstly, the historical analysis of transformative events shows how the latter were set in motion by non-institutional actors. While Scottish organizations and groups operated to foster cross-party cooperation, the Catalan counterparts operated to mobilize society and popular support. Secondly, a thematic analysis of primary sources shows that the mobilizations fuelled by these events produced organizational and cultural changes in both nationalist movements. These changes left their legacy suggesting that former grassroots mobilizations made an important difference to resources mobilized in the current secessionist movements. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15499 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Stella Christou Pages: 91 - 106 Abstract: This paper traces the emergence, politicisation and spread of healthcare provision tactics by (contentious) collective actors in Greece between 1990 and 2015. Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews with relevant field actors (N=40), and documentary analysis, the paper develops a diachronic typology that analyses and compares; (1) the appearance of those tactics in the Greek context in the 1990s, (2) their appropriation by contentious actors after the December 2008 riots, and (3) their diffusion, and eventual modularisation over the course of the 2010 crisis and the cycle of anti-austerity contention. In so doing, the paper helps disentangle the dynamics of repertoire innovation through an understudied set of tactics. This is achieved through the reconstruction of the genealogy of healthcare Direct Social Actions (DSAs) – pace Bosi and Zamponi (2015) – in Greece, their transmutation from “consenting” to contentious tactics after 2008, and their wide diffusion among contentious milieus after 2010. In addition, the paper discusses the interplay between the contextual and strategic dimensions of those tactical preferences across actors and across time. To be sure, early utilisation of those tactics on the side of marginal players can be understood as attempts to tactically differentiate themselves vis-à-vis those traditional and hegemonic players in the arena who relied on indirect, protest tactics. The crisis, however, disturbed the seeming equilibrium of the healthcare arena thus prompting tactical convergence around healthcare DSAs among contentious actors, on the one hand, while reinforcing strategic convergence among some actors and strategic divergence among others. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15500 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Federica Stagni Pages: 107 - 122 Abstract: This article explores the evolution of protests in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, focusing on the shift in dynamics and the movement’s composition. The research employs a longitudinal perspective, utilizing Protest Event Analysis (PEA) and Qualitative Social Network Analysis (SNA) to trace changes in protest networks from 2000 to 2021. The study introduces the concept of a backstaging mechanism, highlighting the movement’s ability to strategically step aside to achieve its goals. This mechanism is examined through a triangulation of data, combining PEA and SNA results with insights from 20 interviews with activists from diverse ethnonational groups. The paper contributes to the literature on social movements by offering nuanced insights into the dynamics of protests involving varied groups and international organizations. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15501 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Maria Nicola Stragapede Pages: 123 - 133 Abstract: What happened to the women who participated in the 2010-2011 Tunisian revolutions and subsequently left the country' While scholarly work has extensively delved into the engagement of the young generations who participated in these transformative times, there has been a limited attention to the experiences of women who subsequently underwent journeys of exile. This article seeks to empirically fill this gap by looking at the political trajectories of six women activists, spanning from their participations in the 2010-2011 Tunisian uprisings to their experiences in exile. Drawing on ethnographic research and life history interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023, this article shows the transformations in these activists’ political trajectories before they left the country. Furthermore, it outlines how, even in exile, queer and feminist activism has provided these women a space of engagement through a “multiple identifications” of their political attitudes and interests. Adopting a social movement approach focused on the continuities of engagement, this article contributes to two fields of the literature that have been traditionally studied in isolation: the literature on gendered borders and the literature on gendered transformations throughout revolutionary times. Finally, the article emphasises the importance of studying the transformations of meanings of engagement while analysing political continuities. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15502 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Lia Duran Mogollon Pages: 135 - 146 Abstract: This paper seeks to further the discussions about what continuity in activism can look like, about the differentiated trajectories that activists can follow and how growth and continuity (as trait shared by all activists) might be differently patterned by factors at the micro- meso- and macro- levels. For this, the present analysis zooms into the trajectories of 9 activists and proposes two ideal typical kinds of trajectories (the abeyant-experimental and the lineal sustained) based on the patterns of growth, expansion, and change as narrated by the participants. The interview analysis suggests that activism has been experienced as an in-flux process during which growth and change have been constant. Participants report about gaining specific skills, expanding their networks, adopting new routines and repertoires of action, adopting different frames of cognition and even a experiencing changes in their self-perception due to their political engagement. The study proposes an analytical concept to further the analysis of activist trajectories and stress the differentiated expressions of growth and expansion revealed by activists. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15503 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Antonio Costabile Pages: 147 - 161 Abstract: The article examines the evolving field of political sociology and highlights the need for a modern reassessment in the context of rapid global changes. The aim is to distinguish the framework of political sociology from that of other social sciences such as history, law and economics. The article emphasises the importance of understanding political power and its transformations in the context of crises such as economic downturns, pandemics and geopolitical conflicts. Reflecting on the seminal theories of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, the discussion highlights how political power, legitimacy and the interplay with other forms of power (economic, technological, etc.) shape contemporary governance. Finally, the article suggests a focus on the dynamics of political power and its legitimacy in the globalised era, noting the growing influence of technological power and the complex challenges posed by modernity. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15504 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Maria Cristina Antonucci, Michele Sorice, Andrea Volterrani Pages: 163 - 177 Abstract: This article explores the development directions of liminal spaces and cities as a whole within the broader framework of neoliberalism in the Italian metropolitan context. First, neoliberalism was defined and considered in the context of liminal spaces and urban development, according to the international literature perspective. Then, with specific reference to the Italian case, through semi-structured interviews, it was found that liminal spaces, despite facing marginalisation, translocalisation and defamiliarisation, acted as antagonists and nuclei of resistance to the encroaching framework of neoliberalism. The article also explores the role of digital ecosystems as tools for empowerment; it also emphasizes the role of liminal spaces in fostering communitarianism while resisting the change experienced and brought about by the surrounding urban spaces. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15505 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Luca Pavani Pages: 179 - 188 Abstract: This paper aims to explore the connection between social sustainability and participatory processes in the realm of social work, through a theoretical reflection. The guiding research questions for the work are: a) How can user participation enhance the social sustainability of social work' b)What should be the dynamic of participation between institutions and users to ensure the social sustainability of social work' In an effort to address these inquiries, we will initially conduct a comprehensive analysis of the current state of social sustainability literature to underscore the significance of user participation in social work. Subsequently, our focus will shift towards examining various forms and dynamics associated with user participation at the meso level of social work practice within the domain of welfare services in Italy. Our aim is to advocate for the adoption of co-creation processes, characterised by a bottom-linked dynamic, as an innovative approach with the potential to enhance the social sustainability of social work. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15506 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Giovanni Barbieri, Lucia Montesanti, Francesca Veltri Pages: 189 - 198 Abstract: This study aims to reconstruct the history of the Five Star Movement by taking the connection between communication and power as our main reference point. This choice is not accidental, given that this connection has acquired a greater relevance in our epoch, characterized by the emergence of mass self-communication and the so-called web society. Furthermore, so-called digital parties, whose activities are mainly based on digital technology, are currently spreading in many areas of the world. The main goals of this study consist of understanding how the communication-power link in the Five Star Movement has changed over time, identifying who actually holds power within it, and evaluating whether it is possible to still define it as a digital party. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15507 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Fabio de Nardis, Angelo Galiano Pages: 199 - 212 Abstract: With this article, we attempted to analyze the radicalization process of the Italian environmental movement with a particular focus on the birth and the practices of the group called Ultima Generazione (Last Generation). Using a qualitative-quantitative approach that integrated PEA (Protest Event Analysis) and participant observation, we tried to understand how a new insurgent consciousness emerged from the experience of the mobilizations promoted by Extinction Rebellion. In this sense, Last Generation is analyzed as a specific case of spin-off movement. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15508 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Silvia Cervia Pages: 213 - 225 Abstract: The analysis of the so-called gender paradox represents the starting point of a theoretical-interpretative framework which, through a structuralist analysis of gender identity, intends to introduce understanding criteria capable of shedding new light on a paradox that only appears to be such. After examining the achievements of the most recent sociological literature on gender, with particular reference to the multidimensional perspectives that look at gender as a structure in the Giddensian sense, the article proposes an original interpretative framework that explores the potentialities of structuration theory, delving into the dual nature inherent in structures, through the recurrence of “cultural patterns” and “symbolic resources”. The second part of the article proposes a theoretical shift that assumes gender identity as a structure, to thematize the processes of social structuring that, starting from modernity, have led to the emergence of individuation processes, then declined, in late-modern societies, into individualization and singularization. The proposed interpretative framework allows, in the concluding part of the article, both to highlight how the gender paradox is not paradoxical at all, and to read the strong polarisation of the public debate around the redefinition of possible gender identifications as an expression of the new cleavage between hyper-culture and cultural essentialism. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15509 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Sara Fariello, Irene Strazzeri Pages: 227 - 236 Abstract: “Taking care” involves a politics of relationships. Care has both a subjective and a relational dimension: starting from subjectivity, everyone opens up to vulnerability, dependence, fragility. Care is above all a practical path of spillage from the self and return to the self, enriched by the experience of the other. This paper proposes a reflection that starts from the founding myth of the essentiality of care and crosses the feminist critique of essentialism and the dialectical tension between mysticism and de-valuation. Focusing on the analysis provided by the so-called second school of ethics of care, it wants to reflect on the current possibility of making care a political paradigm for change and democratization of relationships and society. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15510 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
Authors:Umberto Melotti Pages: 237 - 248 Abstract: The 150th anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni’s death was celebrated beyond all expectations. The President of the Republic himself wished to commemorate it with a statement emphasising the beauty and relevance of The Betrothed, a novel that should be read in adulthood, when one can most appreciate its great richness. There is, however, one difficulty: his writing suffers the effects of time. More than 200 years have passed since it was first written, a little less since its first published version and more than 180 since its definitive version, and language, like any living thing, evolves, all the more so in a period marked by so many important transformations. This is why I have participated in the Manzoni celebrations by publishing the full transcription in modern Italian. But, as a sociologist, in this work, which lasted more than five years, I first of all grasped the validity of that novel also in its sociological aspects. PubDate: 2024-07-23 DOI: 10.36253/smp-15511 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 29 (2024)
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