From indignation to occupation: A new wave of global mobilization

Introduction

Little more than two years have passed since the Tunisian uprisings, the spark that ignited a series of ‘mobilizations of the indignant’ that spread like wildfire around the world. On 4 January 2011, Mohamed Bouazizi, a recent Tunisian college graduate who had become a fruit peddler in order to survive, set himself on fire out of complete desperation when he was hassled by the police for a bribe. Given the longstanding and widespread discontent with the deplorable socioeconomic situation in Tunisia, and the indifference of the country’s political elites, this act unleashed massive protests against the government, and President Ben Ali was soon forced out of office. The events in Tunisia acted as a trigger, a model and an inspiration, and mobilizations and protests quickly spread to other countries in the Middle East. The largest and perhaps most important of these demonstrations took place in Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. After weeks of confrontations with both authorities and pro-Mubarak forces that often became violent, Mubarak was also forced to flee. A wave of democratization was afoot in the Arab world, and the phenomenon was soon labeled the ‘Arab Spring.’

The movement that began in Tunisia and inspired other Arab countries became a paradigm of contentious politics that would soon influence the Southern European and American so-called ‘mobilizations of the indignant.’ During the spring of 2011 countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece were facing extreme economic dislocations and hardships in the wake of the implosion of the United States financial system that subsequently led to the ‘euro crisis.’ Within a relatively short time, a number of similar social movements emerged and, accordingly, there were ‘actions,’ demonstrations, and, most visibly, what became the protesters’ favorite tactic: the occupation of public space. The widespread use of this tactic in the Middle East, Europe and, lastly, in the United States has inspired both our term occupy social movements, to which we refer below, and the title of this monograph issue. We chose this term over the more widespread ‘indignant mobilizations’ or ‘networks of outrage and hope’ (see e.g. Castells, 2012) for three reasons. First, outrage was indeed the emotion that ignited these mobilizations; we argue, however, that it was not the sole, and perhaps not even the most decisive emotion at play in this cycle of contention. Second, social movements emerge to modify a situation defined as problematic, and it is usually their goals, visions, strategies, and tactics, and not the emotions that trigger them, that make them what they are, and distinguish them from others. Third, occupying space ‘usually is charged with the symbolic power of invading sites of state power, or financial institutions’ (Castells, 2012: 10–11).

Since 2011, many observers have reported on these unprecedented global protests. They have noted how people felt marginalized if not scapegoated by various combinations of socioeconomic crises that led to the stagnation or steep decline in the standards of living of many. Moreover, they have borne witness to the distress of several others whose lives were becoming more and more precarious and who were being excluded from ‘normal’ ways of living associated with labor, family, and membership to supportive communities (Standing, 2011). Finally, they have observed a good deal of anger at blocked upward mobility and the increasingly growing disparities between the rich and poor. In most of these circumstances, people felt governments and politicians, allied with economic elites, were indifferent at best, duplicitous at worst, and in any event blatantly closed to popular concerns. These perceptions generated a profound sense of injustice, and humiliation was soon turned into indignation and anger.

Many journalists have indeed asked what took so long for people to protest given this fatal combination of unresponsive governments, socioeconomic crises, and increasing populations in precarious circumstances. For the social scientist concerned with social movements and their expression in protests, however, many questions arose as to what kind of actors became participants in these mobilizations, and how and why were they led to, or perhaps drawn to participate. What was the course of these movements and, beyond massive publicity, what exactly have they accomplished since they emerged? For students of mobilization these are often complex questions; there are specific problematics of mediation between structure, culture, and individual or collective agency that need to be addressed. Moreover, as will be evident from the collection of articles that constitute this monograph issue, the dominant paradigms for understanding social movements had failed to consider what we think are major problems and traits of the 2011–2012 mobilizations.

The current monograph issue is the offspring of the international conference ‘From Social to Political: New Forms of Mobilization and Democratization,’ held in Bilbao, Spain, on 9–10 February 2012. This conference was a joint activity organized by two of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committees: Social Movements and Social Classes (RC47) and Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48). A number of scholars representing different regions, different academic networks, and different orientations came together in Bilbao to share their ideas, theories, and research concerning this new wave of contentious mobilizations. The primary objective of the conference was to foster theoretical reflections and present empirical evidence on the mobilizations that began in 2011 and soon spread all around the world. The meeting provided, as well, an opportunity to engage in a necessary and enriching debate about the continuities and discontinuities established between these mobilizations and previous social movements in terms of their contexts, organization, repertoires, and identity work.

In this introductory article to the monograph issue we try to address two simple, though in our opinion highly urgent, questions. First, what is at the core of this international wave of protests? Or, in other words, what are the main forces driving these movements, and what distinguishes them from previous types of mobilization? And, second, can these mobilizations be interpreted as parts of a novel cycle of contention? If so, what are its distinctive traits in terms of diffusion, coordination, action repertoires, frames, and types of activism?

Social inequality: The heart of current global mobilizations

In the following section we contend that the mobilizations that began in Tunisia in 2011 are part of one cycle of contention (Tarrow, 1998). Before doing that, we would like to argue that this cycle has had global dimensions, though different regional expressions. The analysis of such a wave of protests carries in its very womb the danger of ‘naturalizing’ the global scale of contestation, that is, assuming that this is a global cycle of contention without really testing this premise - just like social movement studies have often done with the national scale of analysis through a still powerful methodological nationalism. ¹ While we understand that the global diffusion of neoliberal capitalism and its widespread social impacts have swiftly concatenated political upheavals around the world, we believe social contestation has been articulated in regional terms, and that regional and local socioeconomic and political contexts have played an important role in this articulation (see also Baumgarten, this issue).

We thus distinguish two clearly identifiable threads within the current cycle of protest. First, those mobilizations that have mainly demanded political reforms to initiate or deepen ongoing processes of democratization in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, and Syria, among others. Second, the massive displays of discontent regarding the political mismanagement of the socioeconomic crisis and the erosion of the welfare state in Southern Europe and also in the United States. Among the latter are the 15M mobilizations in Spain, the ‘Indignate-vous’ protests in France, the outraged Greeks of Syntagma Square, the hundreds of Occupy Wall Street mobilizations, and other demonstrations of young people and students in Britain, Belgium, and Israel.

However different these streams may be in terms of the grievances they express, and the socioeconomic and political contexts in which they have emerged, we argue that the antecedent conditions for these mobilizations are to be found in the increasing levels of social inequality that have accompanied global capitalism as it became globalized, financialized, and legitimated by neoliberalism. The growing levels of poverty, inequality, and the precarious nature of employment have been either the result of, or deepened by, processes of deindustrialization that moved manufacturing to the Far East, the financialization of global capital (including speculations of currency convertibility, the derivatives market, interest rates, and commodities), and neoliberal structural adjustment policies have privileged debt payment over social benefits and/or social investments. As a result, we have seen that neoliberal globalization has had adverse consequences for many people while at the same time it has created vast wealth concentrated in the hands of a small minority. ²

Although the Arab Spring uprisings have been portrayed as ‘purely political’ mobilizations (i.e. primarily concerned with the democratization of dictatorial political regimes), these various movements have also been rooted in the particular impact that neoliberalism has had in their respective societies (see Moghadam, this issue). As in Europe, although in more alarming levels, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) societies are characterized by a sharp polarization of incomes, the exclusion of a rapidly growing class of educated yet unemployed youth, raising prices for basic commodities, the retrenchment of government services, and, in turn, a growing precariat (Standing, 2011).

We thus argue that the growing levels of inequality and precarious employment behind the wave of protests requires us to ‘bring political economy back in.’ While this may seem self-evident, we might note that most contemporary perspectives on social mobilizations had generally moved away from the kinds of political economic concerns typical of earlier generations of workers’ movements, often tied to socialist and communist parties. With the growth of the welfare state, many of the workers’ grievances and/or insecurities over health care or retirement benefits were assuaged. Moreover, between the growing nationalism that emerged in the late 19th century and the consumerism of the 21st century, collective identities generally moved from work and politics to patterns of consumption, cultural tastes, and leisure activities. This move, however, left younger workers bereft of union and/or work organizations in which they might collectively, and more forcefully, contest certain economic policies.

We claim that the centrality of ‘inequality’ as the main force propelling the current cycle of mobilization calls for rethinking previous decades of New Social Movements analyses that focused mainly, or solely, on issues of culture and collective identity. On the other hand, although the Civil Rights and the Feminist movements did also deal with the issue of social inequality, and put inequality at the heart of sociopolitical and sociological debate for one or two decades, we must recognize we are now dealing with very different types of social differences. This legacy has given social movement scholars a generalized sensation of helplessness when trying to analyze and explain the 2011-2012 cycle of contention.

Almost in awe, many have grumbled that our discipline could not have predicted the present wave of mobilization; they have also lamented that once it was already under our sight, we lacked the analytical framework that could enable its comprehension. We would like to argue differently: useful frameworks do exist, but they have been overshadowed by decades of empirical and theoretical Euro and US-centrism within social movement studies. The current mobilizational pattern marks an approach of social movements emerging in the ‘developed’ or rich economies towards social movements already acting in the developing nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These movements have now been struggling against socioeconomic crises associated with deindustrialization and neoliberal adjustment policies for more than two decades. We should thus look in this direction to find relevant theoretical tools to advance our understanding of the current cycle of mobilization.

Occupy social movements: A new cycle of social contention

We would suggest that these various occupy social movements, with their protests, demonstrations, and occupations of public space should be seen as diverse instantiations of an international cycle of contention fighting against social and economic inequality. Their primary goals, if not visions, include a transformation of the economic system to provide greater opportunities, greater equality, and greater personal fulfillment. Moreover, these movements also seek to democratize power in more participatory ways that empower the masses bearing the brunt of economic strains. In some cases, particularly in societies with long-term leftist, if not socialist traditions, this has been combined with demands for radical political change, as protesters do not consider themselves to be represented by any traditional party, either on the Left or Right, nor do they consider to have benefited from the structural adjustment measures approved by elected politicians.

We argue that these mobilizations are part of one cycle of contention (Tarrow, 1998). During the last two years, we have observed a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, expanding repertoires of contention (Tarrow, 1995), one detonating the other, across three different regions of the world. In an extraordinarily rapid diffusion and coordination of collective action, ongoing mobilizations and social movements have created political opportunities for others to act or join in. Activists around the world have also coordinated efforts, particularly during the organization of Global Action Days. On 15 October 2011, 951 cities in 82 countries witnessed simultaneous demonstrations and assemblies aimed at ‘initiating global change’ against capitalism and austerity measures. The second Global Day of Action, 12 May 2012, was organized by occupy social movements around the world to rally against corporate greed, corruption, human rights violations, police brutality, and censorship. From 12–15 May 2012 protesters took the streets to hold assemblies, performances, workshops, and debates addressing the status of public education, migration, the housing crisis, the environment, unemployment, civil disobedience, feminism, youth, pensioners, and more. Finally, on 14 November 2012, European workers held their biggest ever coordinated strike action. Called by the European Trade Union Confederation, the European Action and Solidarity Day coordinated a considerable amount of protests against the austerity programs that have been gripping the region since the mid-2000s. General strikes took place in Spain and Portugal; Greece saw a three-hour stoppage starting at noon and rallies ending in Syntagma Square; and workers held a four-hour stoppage in Italy. Many occupy social movements endorsed and participated in the mobilization.

The present international cycle of protest has also been characterized by innovation in both the forms of contention, and the generation or modification of discourses and frames. Repertoires of contention (Tilly, 1995), that is, protest-related tools and actions, have included the creation of special-purpose coalitions, and a myriad of public meetings, vigils, demonstrations, sit-ins, petition drives, statements to and in public media, boycotts, strikes, and pamphleteering. Most importantly, they have also entailed the occupation of the public space. In the past, radical actions have often started at places of work or study and involved their occupation. Although strikes and factory or school occupations did take place in some countries such as Egypt or Greece, the most common form of action amid the 2011–2012 mobilizations entailed reclaiming the public space.

The extensive use of this tactic in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States has inspired our term occupy social movements. The choice of this term emerges from the verification that this tactic has served strategic but also symbolic purposes in every mobilization since Tunisia; it has not been driven by the glare of Occupy Wall Street and related mobilizations in the United States. Across the world, squares and plazas have become public spheres where people could not only share alternatives, if not counter-hegemonic discourse, information, viewpoints, and ideas, but also where they could develop a sense of community and incubate novel forms of collective projects and identities.

Our term occupy social movements intends to respond, in part, to the preeminence that has been given to the role played by social media and online activism in the explanation of the current cycle of protest. As we discuss below, the embodied, territorialized political praxis associated with these occupations was indeed combined with the intensive and savvy use of social media. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, n-1, and movement web pages operated not only as potent means of information and organization, but also, probably for the first time on such a large scale, as deterritorialized spaces for doing disembodied politics from-the-ground-up in both a deliberative and horizontal fashion. It was however the physical encounter with others that actually gave birth to the movement. As people encountered one another in the heart of the city, in the public space, they began to piece together common notions: they became collectively conscious of an enemy, and of a desire to do something about that enemy (Merrifield, 2011). This is how camps sprung up, spontaneously.

Moreover, the conscientious choice of streets and squares as locales for mobilization has had a pivotal impact on the movement’s repertoire of contention: it has enabled the organization of massive camps and public meetings, or ‘popular assemblies,’ where participants have experimented with the techniques of participatory democracy. The 2011–2012 cycle of protest gave democracy a new meaning, turning it into a horizontal, deliberative, transparent, and participatory dialogue between ‘common persons’ – not only activists, or militants – concerned with the ‘common good.’ In doing this, it demonstrated that another way of engaging with the public sphere was possible, and it helped initiate or re-engage vast numbers of citizens previously disenchanted with, or disbelievers of politics as a key mechanism for the transformation of social reality.

This wave of protests also gave democracy a new locale; taking it out of dim, hierarchical, and bureaucratized institutional redoubts, and bringing it to the light and openness of the public space. The cycle marked, as well, the ‘outing’ of horizontal deliberation from the social movement micro spheres to which it had been traditionally confined – such as the feminist or the squatter movement – and its diffusion and massification (Romanos, 2011). Much of the Occupy movement’s democratic process occurs in ‘working groups,’ where any protestor can have their say. However, important decisions are often made at general assemblies using the consensus model of direct democracy. These meetings operate with discussion facilitators rather than leaders, and often feature the use of hand signals to increase participation. The political socialization of thousands of men and women, young and old, in this type of horizontal and deliberative political praxis is, perhaps, one of the most important outcomes of this cycle of contention. So is the feeling that in participating in these encounters activists were forging, and simultaneously living, their own collective utopia. The tactic of occupation of the public space has thus had a transcendent impact on these occupy social movements.

The contentious repertoire of these movements has entailed, as well, the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands emitted by local governments. These acts of civil disobedience have come, in large part, hand in hand with the nonviolent resistance to the forcible removal of protest camps and police repression. The movements have portrayed nonviolence as a strength. In words of the manifesto drafted by the Spanish indignados, and then translated and adopted by Occupy in the United States, ‘nonviolence avoids labeling and doesn’t allow the system to delegitimize our message. It allows multiple actions instead of a physical battle that makes us much weaker than the system. It also allows everyone to participate (men, women, young, old, legal, illegals, the coward and the bold)’ (Source: http://howtooccupy.org/). However, what seemed to be an unbreakable initial commitment with nonviolence has been questioned as months passed by, particularly after the clashes with the police that saw about 400 arrests in the city of Oakland in January 2012. Some protesters and witnesses said the police initiated the violence, others said there was violence against the police; however, they blamed Black Bloc anarchists and agents provocateurs.

The 2011–2012 cycle has also been characterized by innovation in the terrain of discourse and frames. The return to ‘inequality’ and ‘injustice’ as master frames galvanizing mobilization brings us back to the times of the Civil Rights and the Feminist movements. As mentioned above, this discursive shift denotes a departure from previous decades of New Social Movements analyses focused on issues of identity. It also marks an approach towards social movements located in the developing nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. On the other hand, the demand for ‘real’ (genuine) democracy, not solely of ‘democratization,’ has also functioned as a master frame inspiring protest, particularly across Europe and the United States. This frame has distilled and condensed pervasive feelings and understandings about ‘everything that seems to be wrong’ about the functioning of democracy: the lack of representation of the popular will, clientelism, and corruption, to name just the most relevant ones. The diffusion of these frames from one occupy movement to the other has been accompanied by the international borrowing of slogans. Transmitted via social media and the most recent information communication technologies, mottoes such as the Spanish ‘we are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers,’ or the American ‘we are the 99%’ have traveled around the world and inspired new waves of mobilization.

In addition, organized and unorganized, professional and ‘amateur’ activists coexist, and collaborate in the 2011–2012 cycle of contention. These mobilizations were initially called for by core constituencies of young, often college-educated, typically under-/unemployed citizens who articulated widespread grievances and rapidly attracted many other groups, classes, and age cohorts. It must be noted, however, that younger generations acted as catalysts, igniting but not really ‘leading’ the protests. These are horizontal, leaderless movements that have amassed overwhelming support across sociodemographic and even politico-ideological cleavages, attracting the participation and engagement of thousands of men and women with no previous political knowledge or participation. Many of the core actors in the present movements had, however, been involved in earlier progressive mobilizations (e.g. student and squatter movements, anti-evictions and feminist groups, mobilizations against cyber censorship), and as a result, these mobilizations drew on submerged, pre-existent social movement networks. These networks provided the occupy movements with know-how, infrastructure, and methods, which were quickly transformed into manuals, tutorials, and manifestos that allowed the viral and almost immediate ‘replication’ of experiences around the globe. These previous militant contestations thus enabled the activation of contacts and ‘ties,’ whether weak or strong, that opened the way to new types of dialogues and eventually yielded collaborations in different initiatives and projects.

Furthermore, while these movements cannot be said to be expressions of identity politics, the issue of identity is quite salient. One of the central themes in occupy movements has been the attempt to attain/restore valorized identities that provide the person or the group with recognition and dignity, as opposed to the marginalization associated with both the socioeconomic implosions and the perceived indifference of political elites. Participants in some countries declared that since the ‘social contract’ between the government and the people had been violated, a new contract had to be established giving top priority to people’s welfare. They even began to call themselves ‘new citizens.’

However, protesters were demanding recognition not ‘just’ as citizens, but also as human beings with the right to lead lives worth living. Some occupy movements have explicitly referred to the values of inclusion, toleration, sharing, and caring, and have even envisioned an alternative kind of society, more concerned with the realization of humanistic and community values than the endless and mindless pursuit of individual profits. Accordingly, the social movement community has been defined and portrayed in the broadest possible way: terms like ‘the 99%,’ ‘the persons,’ ‘the people’ or ‘the middle class’ have at times replaced, or been combined with, the idea of ‘activist’ or ‘militant.’ As a consequence, occupy movements around the globe have banned politico-ideological ‘flags and banners’ that could divide or even repel current or potential supporters and participants from campsites, assemblies, and demonstrations. They have also encouraged the individual development of mottoes and placards, characterized by an amalgam of naivety and sarcasm, ingenuity and creativity. This strategy has garnered the movements’ broad public support.

Finally, in each of the occupy movements analyzed in this monograph issue we have witnessed how crises fostered anger, fear, anxiety, and pain. Although the mainstream media have foregrounded outrage or indignation as the emotions galvanizing protests, other emotions such as humiliation and hope – usually disregarded as mobilizing factors by social movement scholars – have clearly played an important role in generating and sustaining motivation and engagement. Furthermore, participants were evidently experiencing joy, efficacy, and empowerment derived from their ‘encounter’ with others in a similar situation amid these protests. These ‘constellations of emotions’ were among the primary factors driving people to participate in various direct actions and demonstrations. Moreover, most of these mobilizations were marked by a groundbreaking display of humor, irony, and parody that could be announcing the inception of a new type of ludic activism (see Perugorría and Tejerina, this issue), with pleasure, play, and creativity at its core.

Bridging structural and constructivist approaches in the study of social contention

We have noted that the two streams of mobilization that compose the 2011–2012 wave of protests can be distinguished in terms of the specific grievances they express, and the socioeconomic and political contexts in which they have emerged. We have argued, however, that despite these differences, both threads are rooted in the political economy in which globalization, financialization, and neoliberalism had produced vast wealth for the elites, but increasing levels of social and economic inequality, and ever greater immiseration and degradation for growing numbers of the precariat (Standing, 2011). Therefore, we have made a case for ‘bringing political economy back in’ the analysis of social mobilization. Accordingly, we have defined the various occupy social movements, with their protests, demonstrations, and occupations of public space, as diverse manifestations of an international cycle of contention fighting against socioeconomic injustice, whose primary goals and visions include a transformation of the economic system to provide greater opportunities, equality, and personal fulfillment. We have mentioned, as well, that these movements also seek to democratize power in more participatory ways in order to empower the sectors bearing the burden of economic strains. In the previous section we also identified the differential traits of this new cycle of contention, in terms of diffusion, coordination, innovation, action repertoires and frames, and different types of activism.

Before delving into the individual contributions made by each of the articles included in this monograph issue, we would like to reflect on the necessity of building a bridge between structuralist and cultural or constructivist approaches to the study of social movements. The current cycle of mobilization forces us to rethink the structure–agency–culture link. Structural conditions and contradictions that foster legitimation crises (see Langman, this issue), and in turn the loss or lack of jobs, displacements, and exclusions, can lead to a decline in the legitimacy of the elites, withdrawal of loyalty to the system, and, in turn, provide openings that prompt collective action. While the social movements of today have been responses to legitimation crises, these conditions do not lead to social movements per se.

Crises of the system, assaults to one’s identity need to arouse collective emotions such as ‘moral shocks’ (Jasper, 1997: 165); events must be interpreted, alternative identities, understandings, and visions must be negotiated, mobilizing networks must emerge, and strategies must be chosen. Gaining an identity, individually or collectively, is an interpersonal process that involves emotions. Collective identities are also the consequences of group membership activities that provide gratifying attachments, recognition, feelings of agency, and shared meanings that assuage anxiety and uncertainty. Moreover, collective identities mediate between events and emotional responses.

We thus argue that the consideration of emotions, collective identity, and cultural meanings is necessary to understand the current wave of mobilizations (see Benski and Langman, this issue). When governments, whether ‘elected’ or imposed dictatorships, fail to provide the conditions for economic security and growth, expanded opportunities for its populations, and/or they retrench or privatize social programs providing education, health care or retirement pensions, and when at the same time the growing wealth and political power of elites is especially visible, people experience ‘indignation,’ or a moral shock. This is a violation of the feelings, values, emotions, and beliefs they have about themselves, their society, and its leadership. Such breaches violate what are considered ‘normal’ standards of decency (Jasper, 1997), and in turn dispose joining and participating in social movements that promise emotional gratifications in a soon-to-be transformed society.

Contributions

This monograph issue compiles the work of contributors from eight different countries: Argentina, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Israel, Italy, Spain, and the United States. In addition, its editors represent four continents characterized by diverse and vibrant sociological traditions. The scope of the monograph issue is considerably broad, as the studies touch on cases at various junctures: Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, and the United States.

The monograph issue brings a holistic perspective to the study of the 2011–2012 global wave of mobilizations that rejects both cultural and economic, and even political reductionism. On the contrary, the articles focus on substantive topics such as identities, emotions, cognition, repertoires, cultural resources, the media, and the interaction between social movements, international institutions, and the state. These approaches cut across the boundaries of New Social Movement, resource mobilization, political opportunity structures, social construction, and interpretive theories, and put them in critical dialogue. The scope, contribution, and limits of the different theoretical approaches covered in the proposal, as well as the tensions that exist between them, will be addressed in the conclusion to this monograph issue.

The contributors attempt theoretical clarification of particular aspects of the 2011–2012 mobilizations while staying empirically grounded. The articles included in the monograph draw on different research designs (e.g. case studies, historical-comparative methods) and data gathering methods (e.g. in-depth interviews, classic and virtual ethnography, analysis of newspaper articles, movement documents, Twitter streams). However, all these articles deal with social movements that are currently evolving and may move forward in new directions as a consequence of different political, socioeconomic, and cultural developments. The conclusion of our monograph issue will elaborate upon the methodological challenges and the theoretical implications involved in ‘freezing’ ongoing social movements that are affected by, and producers of, social change for their empirical analysis; we will also consider the impact of this strategy on the validity and generalizability of our findings.

Valentine Moghadam’s article focuses on three early cases of the Arab Spring – Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco – to discuss causes and likely outcomes, gender dynamics, prospects for genuine democratization, and the connection between feminist movements and democratization. Her comparative and international perspective highlights similarities and differences across the Arab cases and between the Arab Spring and other ‘democracy waves’.

Thierry Desrues discusses the ‘20th February Movement,’ (M20F), a series of demonstrations that began in early 2011 in Morocco, in the context of the ‘Arab Spring.’ His paper describes the historical trajectory of recent protests in the country, the emergence and structuring of the movement, and the neutralization strategy developed by the Moroccan political regime. The author argues that both the nature of the M20F - marked by a profound heterogeneity and dualism, and the hybrid configuration of the Moroccan political regime - offering a variety of repertoires of legitimation for the management of the protests, favoured the failure of the M20F movement.

Ignacia Perugorría and Benjamín Tejerina offer an analysis of the 15M mobilizations in Spain by focusing on three analytical axes: the cognitive, emotional, and relational processes feeding the construction of a social movement identity. First, the article refers to the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing tasks performed by 15M participants. Second, it concentrates on the emotions that were ‘mobilized’ by social movement organizations linked to the 15M, and those that emerged spontaneously during the ‘encounters’ that took place in the public space. Finally, the article addresses the relational aspects entailed in the process of identity construction: the activation and de-activation of both ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ ties between 15M members and political and social collectives within the ‘progressive field.’ In doing this, the article describes the process of identity-synchronization that has allowed people with no previous political participation and with different and oftentimes opposing politico-ideological trajectories to meet in the public space and feel part of the same movement. The authors contend that the ‘politics of the encounter’ performed by 15M members has allowed them to depart from ‘old-time politics’ by temporarily experiencing the utopia of ‘doing real democracy now.’

Nikos Sotirakopoulos and George Sotiropoulos analyze the extended period of sociopolitical turmoil in Greece since 2008: the financial and socioeconomic crisis, and Greek people’s resistance to the country’s custody under the ‘Troika’ of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the European Central Bank. The authors examine a wide repertoire of collective actions, giving particular emphasis to Syntagma Square’s ‘Outraged’ and their daily protests during the summer of 2011. They attempt to fit the case of Greece in the global capitalist crisis and the struggles that have arisen as a response, and they argue for the importance of spotting the movement’s cultural resources as well as its inner class and ideological divisions. The authors contend that despite the unprecedented number of participants and the intensity of its clash with the state, the movement has remained underreported in relation to other similar phenomena.

Britta Baumgarten analyses the Portuguese ‘Geraçao à Rasca’ mobilizations starting in March 2011. She contends that international events and the import of ideas from movements abroad have had an important impact on the claims of this ‘desperate generation;’ activists see their grievances related to the various struggles in other countries, they import action forms and frames and maintain contacts with activists outside Portugal. However, the organizational structure, as well as most of the claims and frames of the movement are adapted and remain country-specific. The article thus argues that the nation-state is still an important factor in social movement.

Stefania Vicari investigates the use of social media for public reasoning around issues involving social contention. By focusing on Twitter streams with reference to the Italian chapter of the October 15 2011 polycentric protest for Global Change, her study addresses the use of Twitter in the aftermath of protest events of high impact for the general public. The author focuses on Twitter for two reasons: its booming usage and its emerging role in contemporary mobilizations around the world. The quantitative analysis of longitudinal progression, networking mechanisms, and processes of meaning construction in over 8000 tweets shows that Twitter has eased centralized processes of information sharing between social movement entrepreneurs and social movement publics, and that it has bolstered the crowdsourced management of public discussion around social contention. According to the author, Twitter has done so as a news medium rather than a conversational platform, primarily providing a space to share information alternative to that available in mainstream media coverage.

Lev Luis Grinberg’s article aims to analyze the spontaneous popular movement J14 that erupted into the Israeli public sphere during the Summer of 2011, following the Egyptian and Spanish upheavals. The J14 movement was ignited by opposition to housing prices, and later expanded into protests against neo-liberal economic policies and socio-economic inequality. The author utilizes the concept of resistance mo(ve)ment to comprehend the peculiar intersection between the movement and moment of mass mobilization. The article explores the political and economic global and local background and context in which the movement emerged, and analyzes the role of a new generational-class (the B Generation) who suffered the effects of neo-liberal political economy. The argument is that socio-economic protests in Israel take place when the ‘conflict’ with external ‘enemies’ is quiet and thus cannot be used to repress socio-economic agendas.

Lauren Langman’s contribution examines the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Langman argues that, while clearly precipitated by specific issues such as the lack of meaningful jobs, blocked mobility, and the privatization of services and resources, Occupy can be best understood through New Social Movement theory. Langman asserts that these ‘movements of the excluded’ are contestations over cultural meanings and the recognition of new lifestyles and identities; they seek cultural transformations through identity-informed participatory, democratic dialogues and have visions of alternative decommodified subjectivities and meanings for society.

Finally, Lauren Langman and Tova Benski focus on the emotional aspect of the 2011 mobilizations. They offer a theoretical frame for the analysis of counter-hegemonic mobilizations such as the Arab Spring, Israeli Summer, the London riots, Greek protests, the Spanish indignados and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Basing their argument on Habermas’s thesis of legitimation crises, they suggest that a process of ‘emotional liberation’ was intertwined with McAdam’s ‘cognitive liberation’ in the process of ‘subjectivation’ as put forward by Touraine. They state that a constellation of noncongruent emotions such as distrust of and disrespect for authorities/elites or their perceived agents, indignation and righteous anger, humiliation, and in turn hope for an alternative future gave rise to the 2011 mobilizations. In stressing both macro and micro level emotional constellations, they propose an argument that is a combination of macro and micro processes of cognition and emotions.