Temporalities of collective action

Social movement studies have long referred to the fact that social actors engage with time in different ways, such as in analyses of the ritualistic nature of the repertoire of contention (Tilly 1978), of the role of events and critical junctures (della Porta 2008; 2020), of latency and abeyance (Melucci 1989; Taylor 1989), and of the narrative construction of spontaneity (Polletta 2006). Furthermore, the literature has seen in the last few years increasing contamination with memory studies (Daphi and Zamponi 2019) and a growing interest towards how actors engage with the future (Tavory and Eliasoph 2013; Mische 2014; Cassegård and Thörn 2018), especially within the context of the climate emergency (de Moor and Marquardt 2023). Attempts to propose more comprehensive visions of the topic have been made (McAdam and Sewell 2001; Gillan and Edwards 2020) but more needs to be done, especially in the present context, significantly characterised by the presence of emergencies, as in the case of climate change or of the Covid-19 pandemic (Yates et al. 2024). Moving beyond subjective notions of time, some are now raising questions about the ‘objective’ temporality imposed on social movements by the ‘nature’ of problems those movements address (de Moor, forthcoming). The goal of this workshop is to bridge recent findings on collective action vis-à-vis the climate emergency with research on different fields and trajectories of mobilisation, in an attempt to propose a more comprehensive vision of the relationship between temporalities – understood as both objective and subjective – and political action.

Cassegård, Carl, and Håkan Thörn. 2018. ‘Toward a Postapocalyptic Environmentalism? Responses to Loss and Visions of the Future in Climate Activism’. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1 (4): 561–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618793331. Daphi, Priska, and Lorenzo Zamponi. 2019. ‘Exploring the Movement-Memory Nexus: Insights and Ways Forward’. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 24 (4): 399–417. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-24-4-399. de Moor, Joost, and Jens Marquardt. 2023. ‘Deciding Whether It’s Too Late: How Climate Activists Coordinate Alternative Futures in a Postapocalyptic Present’. Geoforum 138 (January):103666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.103666 della Porta, Donatella. 2008. ‘Eventful Protest, Global Conflicts’. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 9 (2): 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2008.9672963. ———. 2020. ‘Protests as Critical Junctures: Some Reflections towards a Momentous Approach to Social Movements’. Social Movement Studies 19 (5–6): 556–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2018.1555458. Gillan, Kevin, and Gemma Edwards. 2020. ‘Time for Change’. Social Movement Studies 19 (5–6): 501–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2020.1806813. Koopmans, Ruud. 2004. ‘Protest in Time and Space: The Evolution of Waves of Contention’. In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam, 19–46. Oxford: Blackwell. McAdam, Doug, and William H. Sewell. 2001. ‘It’s About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions’. In Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics, edited by Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, 89–125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ref/id/CBO9780511815331. Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. London: Hutchinson Radius. Mische, Ann. 2014. ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’. Theory and Society 43 (3): 437–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-014-9226-3. Polletta, Francesca. 2006. It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. University of Chicago Press. http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226673769. Tarrow, Sidney. 1993. ‘Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of Contention’. Social Science History 17 (2): 281–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/1171283. Tavory, Iddo, and Nina Eliasoph. 2013. ‘Coordinating Futures: Toward a Theory of Anticipation’. American Journal of Sociology 118 (4): 908–42. https://doi.org/10.1086/668646. Taylor, Verta. 1989. ‘Social Movement Continuity: The Women’s Movement in Abeyance’. American Sociological Review 54 (5): 761. https://doi.org/10.2307/2117752. Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Mcgraw-Hill College. Yates, L., Daniel, A., Gerharz, E., & Feldman, S. (2024). Introduction to the Special Issue: Foregrounding social movement futures: collective action, imagination, and methodology. Social Movement Studies, 23(4), 429-445.

1: What temporalities are imagined by activists across different movements and what accounts for these differences?
2: How are objective problem temporalities reflected in the movements addressing those problems?
3: What are the consequences of imagined temporalities on movements’ organization, strategy and outcomes?
4: What is the relative importance of various temporal aspects across movements, and what explains such differences?
5: What are the broader societal consequences of movements’ temporal imaginaries and contestations?

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Critical junctures and collective responses: transfeminist times in Italy, 2008 and 2020	View Paper Details
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The Study the Temporality of Social Movements: An Analytical Approach	View Paper Details
Ensemble Interventions: Public interest scenario work as field-bridging projects	View Paper Details