“New agendas in social movement studies”
NUI Maynooth, Saturday November 26th, 9.30 - 6.15
About the conference
This conference brings
together 21 researchers from Ireland, Britain, Italy, Belgium
and the US working on movements ranging from alternative food movements to the
World Social Forum, from Shell to Sea to SlutWalks and from Irish Ship to Gaza to children’s
rights advocacy. It showcases some of the best work in the field by new,
established and independent scholars alike. The conference seeks to encourage
real research which does not simply restate common assumptions but tries to
make real contributions to wider debates about social movements, the thinking
of movement practitioners, and public understanding of the nature of society
and democracy.
The keynote
speaker, Dr Cristina Flesher Fominaya (University of Aberdeen), has
beenresearching and participating in European social movements since the early
1990s. She has carried out research on anti-globalisation networks, Spanish
Green parties and the British anti-roads movement, and is also known for her
work on the politics of memory around terrorist attacks such as 3/11 in Madrid and 9/11 in
New York. A founding editor of the social movement journal Interface http://interfacejournal.net, she is
co-chair of the Council for European Studies’ European Social Movements
Research Network.
Practicalities
The conference
is free and open to the public with no advance booking required. Tea and coffee
will be provided but participants should bring their own lunch or buy it in
Maynooth. We cannot organise
accommodation directly but there are various possible hostels, hotels and
B&Bs both in Maynooth and in Dublin. Registration is at
the conference from 9.30 on in the Auxilia Building,
North Campus (see the map at http://www.nuim.ie/location/maps/NUIM-Map-booklet-v3.pdf - Auxilia is building #47 in the lower right
corner). For queries please contact Dr Theresa O’Keefe at theresa.okeefe@nuim.ie
Overall timings
9.30 - 10 Welcome and registration
10 - 11 Plenary
session. Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “New directions in social movement
studies?”
11 - 11.30 Coffee / tea
11.30 - 1 First sessions
1 - 2.15 Lunch
2.15 – 3.45 Second sessions
3.45 - 4.00 Coffee / tea
4.00 – 5.30 Third sessions
5.30 - 6.15 Closing discussion
Draft timetable
Session 1, 11.30 am - 1 pm
(A) Remaking social movements
Silvia Lami (Philosophy,
Pisa and U. Chicago) - Re-thinking social movements. Limits of 60s and
70s movements, new perspectives of struggle
Leslie Parraguez
Sanchez (Loyola University, Chicago) - Between spatial identities and the Right-to-the-City: a
socio-spatial perspective on the reconfiguration of social movements
Theresa O’Keefe
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - Flaunting
our way to freedom? SlutWalks, gendered protest and feminist futures
(B) Exploring new movements
Andre Kenneally
(UCC) - Children’s right advocacy as a new social movement
Yafa Shanneik
(Study of Religions, UCC) - Irish women converting to Islam: a new post-secular
movement?
(C) Research / methodology
Jean Bridgeman
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - Spaces for new knowledge: working class community
education for social change
Anna Szolucha
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - The tyranny of sociology: a case for an
interdisciplinary social movement research
Session 2, 2.15 - 3.45 pm
(D) Agency and power
Geoffrey Pleyers
(FNRS-Université Catholique de Louvain & CADIS-EHESS Paris)- The global justice movement and beyond:
two paths for social agency
Laurence Davis
(Independent scholar) - The Irish Ship to Gaza and the
revolutions of our time
Amanda Slevin
(Sociology, UCD) - Pipelines, politics and power: Shell to Sea and the Irish
state
(E) The politics of new media
Margaret Gillan
(Community Media Network) - Building working-class media (provisional title)
Asia Rutkowska
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - Activists on the web: analysing the content of social
centre webpages
Paul Candon
(Sociology, TCD) - The emerging digital public sphere in Ireland:
how old habits die hard
Session 3, 4 - 5.30 pm
(F) Mapping Irish social movements
Laurence Cox
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - Gramsci in Mayo: a Marxist perspective on social
movements in Ireland
Peter Lacey
(Anthropology, NUI Maynooth) - EU-critical movements and Irish social activism
(G) Advocacy and institutionalisation
Orla O’Donovan
(Applied Social Studies, UCC) - Irish patients’ movements on the move to Europe
Pauline Cullen
(Sociology, NUI Maynooth) - Mobilization on women’s interests at the EU: femocrats
and feminist political practice
(H) Troubles within movements
Andrea Rigon
(Sociology, TCD and Institute of Development Studies, Nairobi) - The tyranny of structurelessness: unequal power relations in the
governance of the World Social Forum process
David Landy
(Sociology, TCD) - Researching splits
Aisling Murtagh
(Food business and development, UCC) - The power dynamics of alternative food
initiatives in Ireland
