CfP 4th European Council of Political Research – Graduate Conference: Linking collective identity and agency: Social movements, organizations and strategic choices

Hi! See very interesting call for paper from my colleagues Lorenzo Zamponi and Markos Vogiatzoglou. Cheers! Mayo

Linking collective identity and agency: Social movements, organizations and strategic choices.

The general CfP for section 16 is asking for papers on social movements, advocacy coalitions, contentious politics, the social roots of political parties , etc..

Our panel proposal will investigate the issue of strategic choices made by Social Movements and Social Movement Organizations. We shall focus on two broad categories of determinants,

a) Time, memory and learning in movements

b) Strategy as an intertwinement of Agency and Structure.

More specifically, with regard to category (a), we are looking for papers addressing:

Processes of evolution and learning in a cycle of protest

The spillover effect and the legacies of mobilisations

Mnemonic constructions and their use by social movements and SMOs

Path-dependency in repertoire and organizational choices

With regard to category (b):

Organizational aspects: Social movements as organizational/strategic action fields

Movements’ decision-making when dealing with strong structural constraints (i.e. under repressive/authoritarian regimes).

Repertoires of actions: violence/nonviolence as a strategic choice

Cultural and institutional contexts’ influence on movements’ strategy

And in the crossroads between the two:

The influence of movement tradition: its diffusion in the national and cross-national level

Events and eventful protests as movements’ strategy determinants.

Tthe panel proposal will include 5-6 paper abstracts (approx. 300 words each). We are looking forward to making a selection based on pluralistic criteria, both in theoretical and methodological terms. We are mostly interested in papers based on empirical-oriented projects, yet we would also consider innovative theoretical approaches.

In order to finalize our panel abstract and ensure a fair and rigorous selection, we kindly ask you to send your paper abstracts by December 31st, 2011.

If you ‘re interested in participating, send an email to lorenzo.zamponi@eui.eu and/or markos.vogiatzoglou@eui.eu