Social Movement Networks in Times of Crisis

Abstract

The last decade has been associated with a number of contentious actions that developed across Europe and beyond, part of which unleashed with the 2008 financial and economic crisis. A number of alliances among various sectors of the civil society have been observed, giving rise to different modes of coordination, at times to social movements active on cross-cutting issues, other times to subcultural dynamics or to more contingent events. This panel aims to explore alliances and repertoires of actions by challengers active in contentious politics and/or groups operating in service and good provision addressing the economic, environmental, migration, social and political consequences of the various crisis. The following dimensions of networks are expected to be explored: • the nature of alliances: the type of ties, whether characterized by dense and regular interactions among actors, or more contingent ties including those based on ICTs; the types of alliance structures, and clustering effects between groups and services; • the type of actors involved in the networks, focusing both on the role of classical social movement organizations as well as of more informal and less structured groups, and/or on the presence of more political oriented actors versus services provision actors; • the degree of contentiousness, including attempts to face the crisis through the establishment of solidarity networks, as well as through overt and highly contentious protest actions; • the frames and collective identities at stake within networks. Conceptual and theoretically-informed empirical papers, on single cases or comparative analyses on Europe and beyond, utilizing qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods are welcome.

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