"Understanding European movements" in Europe

Understanding European movements (details here) is getting no fewer than three European launches in June. One is by Prof. James Jasper (CUNY), a leading figure in social movements research, as a semi-plenary session the annual Conference of Europeanists in Amsterdam. The second and third are in Milan, one for a network of urban sociologists (with talks by Andrea Membretti, Anna Casaglia and Laurence Cox) at the University of Milan-Bicocca and one at the PianoTerra social centre (details here). 

ECB blockaded

Remarkable stuff happening at Blockupy Frankfurt, in the belly of the beast. Nice to know we're not alone!

Defend the Centre for Studies in Social Justice

We need your support! The University of Windsor administration has determined that it will close the Centre for Studies in Social Justice this July 1st, 2013. This decision must be reversed as the Centre is a unique, vital and vibrant hub for social justice research, knowledge dissemination, exchange, and advocacy in Canada. You can learn more about the great work that has been done at the Centre by visiting their webpage:
http://www.uwindsor.ca/socialjustice

A petition has been created to stop the closure of the Centre and to send a strong message to the University president and administration that the Centre matters to the University and the community. Please consider adding your signature and sharing it with your friends and allies.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_our_Centre_for_Studies_in_Social_Justice/?pv=0

We also invite you to write an email to administration. You can find a sample here: http://savecssj.org/en/top/letter/   The email can be sent to:
President Wildeman ( wildeman@uwindsor.ca ) and CCed to Provost Leo Groarke
( groarke@uwindsor.ca), VP Research, KW Michael Siu ( kwmsiu@uwindsor.ca ),
Dean Robert Orr ( rrorr@uwindsor.ca ) and Tanya Basok, Director, Centre for
Studies in Social Justice ( basok@uwindsor.ca ).

Please join us an action on June 3, 2013 at 1:30 at Sunset Ave. in front of Chrysler Hall Tower at the University of Windsor.
Please wear black
Flowers optional
Rain or shine event


Please share far and wide and help us demonstrate our continued passion
and commitment to social justice at the University of Windsor.

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Save our Centre for Studies in Social Justice http://savecssj.org/

New book: "Understanding European movements: new social movements, global justice struggles, anti-austerity protest"

See below for details of a new book on social movements in Europe, co-edited by MA CEESA co-director Laurence Cox and Marie Curie fellow Cristina Flesher Fominaya, who will be based at Maynooth for the next two years comparing Irish and Spanish responses to austerity.
 

Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox, eds. (2013) Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest. London: Routledge (Advances in Sociology series).

304 pp. hardback, ISBN 978-0-415-63879-1.
List price $143 / £80; discount $114.40 / £64 (order via www.routledge.com using discount code ERJ67*).
Release date 21 May 2013.

European social movements have been central to European history, politics, society and culture, and have had a global reach and impact. Yet they have rarely been taken on their own terms in the English-language literature, considered rather as counterpoints to the US experience. This has been exacerbated by the failure of Anglophone social movement theorists to pay attention to the substantial literatures in languages such as French, German, Spanish or Italian – and by the increasing global dominance of English in the production of news and other forms of media. As a result, while anti-austerity and Indignados movements have become key actors on the European stage, much public commentary is deeply restricted in its understanding and analysis. This book sets out to take the European social movement experience seriously on its own terms, including:

- the European tradition of social movement theorising – particularly in its attempt to understand movement development from the 1960s onwards

- the extent to which European movements between 1968 and 1999 became precursors for the contemporary anti-globalisation movement

- the construction of the anti-capitalist "movement of movements" within the European setting

- the new anti-austerity protests in Iceland, Greece, Spain (15- M/Indignados), and elsewhere.

The book represents a collaborative project by participants in the Council for European Studies’ social movements research network. Its 15 chapters include authors based in 11 countries whose analyses are all grounded in ethnographic and historical research on these movements – in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain and the UK as well as transnational relationships – and in keeping with the traditions of European movement research many are active, critical participants in the movements they analyse.

This book offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the key European social movements in the past forty years and sets present-day struggles in their longer-term national, historical and political contexts. It will be of interest for students and scholars of politics and international relations, sociology, history, European studies and social theory.

Contents

“Introduction”. Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox

Part I: European theory / European movements

11       “European social movements and social theory: a richer narrative?” Laurence Cox and Cristina Flesher Fominaya

Part II: European precursors to the global justice movement

22       “The Italian anomaly: place and history in the global justice movement”. Michal Osterweil

33       “The emergence and development of the ‘no global’ movement in France: a genealogical approach”. Isabelle Sommier and Olivier Fillieule

44       “The continuity of transnational protest: the anti-nuclear movement as a precursor to the global justice movement”. Emmanuel Rivat

55       “Where global meets local: Italian social centres and the alterglobalization movement”. Andrea Membretti and Pierpaolo Mudu

66       “Constructing a new identity for the alterglobalization movement: the French Confédération Paysanne as anti-capitalist ‘peasant’ movement”. Edouard Morena

77       “Movement culture continuity: the British anti-roads movement as precursor to the global justice movement”. Cristina Flesher Fominaya

Part III. Culture and identity in the construction of the European ‘movement of movements’

88       “Europe as contagious space: cross-border diffusion through EuroMayday and climate justice movements”. Christian Scholl

99       “The shifting meaning of ‘autonomy’ in the East European diffusion of the alterglobalization movement: Hungarian and Romanian experiences”. Agnes Gagyi

110   “Collective identity across borders: bridging local and transnational memories in the Italian and German global justice movements”. Priska Daphi

111   “At home in the movement: constructing an oppositional identity through activist travel across European squats”. Linus Owens, Ask Katseff, Elisabeth Lorenzi and Baptiste Colin

Part IV. Understanding the new ‘European Spring’: anti-austerity, 15-M, Indignados

112   “The roots of the Saucepan Revolution in Iceland”. Árni Daníel Júlíusson and Magnús Sveinn Helgason

113   “Collective learning processes within social movements: some insights into the Spanish 15M / Indignados movement”. Eduardo Romanos

114   “Think globally, act locally? Symbolic memory and global repertoires in the Tunisian uprising and the Greek anti-austerity mobilizations”. Vittorio Sergi and Markos Vogiatzoglou

115   “Fighting for a voice: the Spanish 15-M / Indignados movement”. Kerman Calvo

“Conclusion: anti-austerity protests in European and global context – future agendas for research”. Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox

About the editors

Cristina Flesher Fominaya has a PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley and works at the University of Aberdeen. Laurence Cox co-directs the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. They are founding co-editors of the social movements journal Interface and co-chairs of the Council for European Studies’ social movements research network.

Further details at http://tinyurl.com/euro-movements or  http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415638791/.

Interface 5(1) now out. Struggles, strategies and analysis of anticolonial and postcolonial social movements

Issue 5(1) of Interface: a journal for and about social movements is now available at http://interfacejournal.net on the theme “Struggles, strategies and analysis of anticolonial and postcolonial social movements”.

Like all issues of Interface, this issue is free and open-access. You can download articles individually or a complete PDF of the issue (7.44 MB). Please note that you can also subscribe (free) on the right-hand side of the webpage to get email notification each time a new issue or call for papers is out. This issue of Interface includes 388 pages and 21 pieces, by authors writing from / about Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the UK and the US among other countries.

Interface is based in the Dept. of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth.