Category: Social Movements
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PhD Workshop: New Voices in Social Movements and Protest
The three-day English-language international event, “Empirical Research on Social Movements and Protest: New Voices” will take place December 3, 4, 5, 2025 at the Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, and feature PhD student research on their projects in political sociology. Major events around the world over the last two decades —…
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Empirical Research on Protests and Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe: Conference 2025
Empirical Research on Protests and Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe: State of the Art Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN)72 Nowy Swiat, Warsaw, Poland December 4 – 5, 2025 About Major events in Europe over the last two decades — financial crises, rising populism, EU skepticism, pandemic, and…
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Every protest is an imagined future
Protests often emerge from a mix of grievance and hope – i.e., dissatisfaction with the present with an aim to change it for the better. Whereas street protests are commonly understood as physical, dynamic, interactive, and collective expressions of objection and dissent, less common is the idea that this form of collective action is future-oriented;…
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Prefiguration, or “Be the Change”
Prefiguration is the future-oriented construction of political alternatives during protest and movement-building, where activists reflect their political goals and values within the processes of their movements. This post is a summary of the well-cited article on the topic by Luke Yates, “Prefigurative politics and social movement strategy: The roles of prefiguration in the reproduction, mobilisation…
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NCN Grant on Pandemic Protests in Poland: Presentation Abstracts in 2023
We, the research team funded by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland (2021/43/B/HS6/01155) grant entitled “The Construction of Post-Pandemic Society: Covid-19 Street Protest in Poland,” presented three papers in 2023. One of them was “Reconstructions of the Covid-19 Protests in Poland: Using Text, Pictures, and Video Data to Derive Visions of Social Change” at WZB…
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Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism and Political Change
Why does the news seem overwhelming? How can we get past the “shock” and change the world for the better? In this post, we present the ideas of Naomi Klein, a renowned author and activist whose work has made a significant impact on discussions surrounding social change. Klein’s thoughts and theories help us understand the…
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Piketty: Policy, Institutions, and a Brief History of Equality
Does equality rise? What is the role of policy, institutions, and collective mobilization for increasing equality? This post delves into the work of French economist Thomas Piketty, whose influential books examine wealth and income inequality. Piketty highlights the long-term trend towards greater political, economic, and social equality, driven by political mobilizations, social struggles, and institutional…
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Zolberg’s Moments of Madness
I summarize and critique a classic article in the fields of protest and social movements by Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of madness.” Politics & Society 2, no. 2 (1972): 183-207. See also… Zolberg’s Thesis Zolberg’s thesis, designed to help us understand social and political change, is simple. During an intense social and political situation, such…
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Social Movement Theory: Fields, Arenas, and Players
Social movement theory typically uses the concepts of fields, arenas, and players or actors. But these concepts seem to be conceptually similar. In this post, I critique two articles by prominent social movement theorists to understand fields, arenas, and players. At the end, I attempt a synthesis. See also: Social Movement Outcomes Social Movement Fields…
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Social Movement Outcomes
Do social movements cause social change? How would we know? We look to the success of the civil rights movement in the United States and conclude, “Yes, social movements matter.” But, there are many social movements around the world, and there are many social changes. How do we know if social movements cause social change?…
Political Inequality: A blog since 2010 