Research Network Social Movements
Call for papers and panel proposals

6th ESA Conference – Murcia, Spain, 25-28 September 2003

The 2001 Helsinki sessions of the Social Movements Research Network were 
very successful, with eleven panels and over forty paper presentations. At 
the Murcia sessions, we plan to continue some of the conversations, which 
started in Helsinki, in particular, those bridging social movement research 
with cognate areas of inquiry, while adding new themes to our agenda. In 
addition, our Network will be coordinated with the Research Stream: ‘Global 
Movements/”Militarized” States’. We hope that the discussions and 
interchange between our Network and the Stream will enrich our 
understandings of contemporary protest today. Accordingly, we invite 
proposals for both individual presentations and thematic panels. As of now, 
the following panels for the Research Network are planned:

1. Collective action, labor, and the workplace

In recent years, and despite remarkable exceptions, social movement 
analysis has mostly focused on ‘new’ types of movements, defined by 
educational level and/or belief orientations, to the detriment of instances 
on collective action based on professional groups, labor relations, and the 
workplace. However, class-based mobilizations have been far from rare all 
over Europe in the last decade, from the Liverpool dockers to the recurrent 
protest by public employees in France, to the wave of union action in Italy 
against governmental plans to alter labor legislation. Of particular 
interest are signs of mobilization by workers in unusual settings such as 
the unqualified service sector and the highly qualified professionals in 
the new economy. We invite both theoretical papers, documenting recent 
developments, and theoretical papers, re-assessing social movement 
analysts’ toolbox to accommodate both recent and not-so-recent types of 
class action, as well as non-class-based action.


2. Social movement analysis and third sector research

This session continues a dialogue which started in Helsinki. What type of 
cross-fertilization can occur between these two streams of research? Can we 
cumulate findings in areas such as recruitment and participation patterns, 
the role of voluntary associations and movement organizations in broader 
political and policy networks, the tension between organizational growth 
and increasing dependency on public funds? Papers are invited integrating 
theory and research findings on these and related issues.

3. Citizens’ grass-roots action in the cities

This panel will discuss traits and developments in citizens’ mobilizations, 
which do not link directly with national organizations, or indeed with 
formal organization at all, but rather take the form of local grass-roots 
committees. Ranging from environmental to law-and-order issues, citizens’ 
committees pose challenging questions to analyst of collective action. What 
are the dominant strategies and organizational features of these groups? 
What is their relation to established models of left-right politics? Can 
they be regarded as a distinctive component of broader neo-populist trends, 
both in their democratic and un-democratic forms?

4. Social movement contexts: local spaces, national spaces and global spaces

This session will highlight the separate and intertwined spaces of 
contentious politics. The slogan ‘think global, act local’ is assuming new 
meanings in contemporary collective action. The session will highlight the 
ways that social movement networks are increasingly grounded in 
inter-locking spatial contexts. Questions such as whether global, sic 
transnational movements, are indeed emerging, together with the eventual 
forms they are taking will be addressed. Has the national context for 
social movement mobilization lost its saliency?

5. Contemporary social movement protest: new forms of organization and new 
forms of collective action

In recent years we have witnessed a proliferation of strategies and tactics 
for political protest — innovative, imaginative, contentious, and at times 
even violent. The proliferation of strategies and tactics has led both to 
the media enhancement of contentious politics and to tensions within 
specific action spaces. At the same time we have witnessed the emergence of 
new, highly tentative and fragile forms for the organization of collective 
action. Mobilisations, across the globe, have become increasingly 
coalitional. Social movement groups, organizations and networks are more 
and more bridging their differences in order to realize a concerted voice — 
both in the case of one-off action events and in the case of particular 
protest campaigns. What new dimensions does the coalitional principle of 
organization lend to contemporary collective action? What has the 
proliferation of action strategies meant for collective action?

6. Global movements/militarized societies?

The political climate of the world has changed radically since the events 
in Seattle and not least since the events of September 11th 2001. This 
panel will address the battery of questions attached to these changes. How 
are states confronting contentious politics today? We will highlight 
questions dealing with policing protest in specific societies; the 
increasing cooperation between police forces across national divides in 
response to the increasing level of transnational cooperation among protest 
networks; and the hardened climate and use of military forces in some 
societies in order to come to terms with the new wave of protest 
mobilizations. Lastly, we will even address the question of terrorist 
networks and the so-called ‘war on terrorism’. In what ways are public 
spaces for democratic deliberation threatened by the new faces of 
contemporary contentious politics, as well as the state’s responses to 
these mobilizations and actions? Are ‘open societies’ giving way to 
‘militarized societies’?

Additional submissions: members of the Network and indeed all researchers 
in these and cognate areas are invited to submit their own panel proposals 
along with individual paper proposals.

Coordinator: Mario Diani ([log in to unmask])
Co-coordinator: Abby Peterson ([log in to unmask])



Best regards,

Rene Bekkers
Listowner european-sociologist
Webmaster ESA

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European Sociological Association: http://www.europeansociology.org

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