New Cleavages in the Knowledge Society? Social Movements and the Production, Use, and Valorisation of Knowledge

In my paper I argue that the emergence of protest mobilizations around issues of online privacy, internet regulation, and intellectual property rights (IPRs) are embedded in and intertwined with structural social changes associated with the notion of the knowledge society. Especially the conflicts about intellectual property claims are directly connected with the emergence of new societal cleavages that are expressions of large-scale social change. Instead of trying to map the constituencies of social movements to the existing social strata of industrial societies, I claim that the transformation from industrial societies to knowledge societies may create new social cleavages and thus may alter the structure of stratifications that are relevant and meaningful for social movements. These new cleavages do not replace the existing cleavages of industrial societies, just like the labor-capital cleavage did not replace those of earlier societies. But social transformations create new cleavages and change the relative centrality of the older. (Paper for Session 6: Labour, Social Classes and Inequality)