Abstract
The social movements that have emerged in recent years, following the international financial crisis, have been addressed by a scholarly literature trying to understand their specificity and novelty in comparison with previous social movements, and to improve the theoretical understanding of their causes, characteristics and incidence in time and space. Furthermore, new questions have been raised through the examination of the emergence of social movements with some similarities that had taken place across the globe, from Iceland with the ‘saucepan revolution’ in 2008 to the Arab Spring initiated in Tunisia in 2010, to the anti-austerity protests in Europe which escalated after 2011 in particular in Greece, Portugal and Spain, and to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The book Understanding European Movements looks at European social movement experience considering four main issues: the European tradition of social movement theorizing with a focus on understanding social movements since the 1960s; the social movements between 1968 and 1999 as precursors of the contemporary anti-globalization movement, exploring continuities and disjunctures; the construction of the anti-globalization movement in Europe; and the new mobilizations against financial austerity, after the global financial crisis of 2008.
Instead of focusing on the new (or ‘new new’) versus old social movements debate, the choice in this book is to explore continuities with previous cycles of contention, asking which elements are new and which can be seen as developments of previous movements and networks. Furthermore, the line of inquiry of this book, whose contributions are based on historical and ethnographic research, links the local/national and the global level insofar as it assumes that even though these movements answer to specific economic, social and political problems which have global origins, their configuration relates to the historical and social characteristics of the particular context in which they develop.
In Part I, Cox and Flesher Fominaya discuss the conventional theoretical approaches to social movements and new social movements, i.e. the New Social Movements paradigm, arguing for a broader perspective which should integrate the contributions of European social theory, including the reflection upon popular agency in contemporary society, encompassing strategic and cultural elements, political and economic issues, and working class struggles as much as others. They suggest that: ‘… perhaps it is time to break free of the idea that is necessary to use social movement theory, as currently defined, to study movements. Social theory, itself deeply shaped by movement history, can also serve this purpose and offers a far richer understanding of movements: resisting the artificially separate analysis of “politics” and “culture”, seeing different movements not in isolation but as reflecting and shaping a wider social reality, and contextualizing and historicizing movements.’
The six chapters of Part II of the book, under the subtitle European precursors to the Global Justice Movement, provide evidence of continuities and disconnections of movement networks, ideologies, organizing forms and agendas in national and supranational contexts. This part is clearly the most successful in relation to the intent of contextualizing and historicizing social movements, in particular in the case of Italy and France (Chapters 2 and 3), documenting the diversity of national expressions of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) and how this diversity is related to earlier movements. Osterweil shows the influence of previous autonomous movements in relation to the narratives, goals and organizing forms of the GJM movement in Italy, discussing from a historical perspective (including the history of the Italian Left) how the concept of autonomy became central. Sommier and Fillieule provide not only a detailed picture of the influence of prior organized movements in France but also of the reorganization of activist fields with a strong social orientation, linking their action and frames to the critical analysis of French trade unionism. Moreover, they question the GJM as a single supranational movement pointing out that pioneering groups of anti-globalization protests differed profoundly from one country to another and that significant variations of involvement in international demands depended on national opportunities. In Chapter 4, Rivat addresses the continuity of transnational protest looking at the anti-nuclear movement as a precursor of GJM. Another interesting issue is how supranational movements integrated the narratives and the organizing forms of previous national movements. Membretti and Mudu in Chapter 5 explore the historical development of Italian Centri Sociali (social centres) and their critical influence in the anti-globalization movement not only in Italy but also in Europe. Flesher Fominaya in Chapter 7 highlights the continuity of the characteristics of the British anti-roads movement with central features of the GJM such as ideological heterogeneity, linking former issues to anti-capitalist critique, tension between institutional and autonomous approaches to mobilization, and diffusion of innovative and creative tactical repertoires of direct action. Another question addressed here is how existing movements were reshaped and influenced in turn by the GJM, an issue that is addressed in various contributions, but explored in detail by Morena in Chapter 6 looking at the reconfiguration of the French Confédération Paysanne as an anti-capitalist peasant movement.
In Part III, the four chapters under the subtitle Culture and identity in the construction of the European “Movement of movements” look at the importance of cross-border diffusion and space for the processes of construction of the collective identity and culture of GJM. In Chapter 8, Scholl focuses on Europe as a ‘contagious space’ examining the processes of cross-border diffusion of Euro Mayday parades and the master frame of ‘precarity’ and of climate justice movements, based on ethnographic research in several European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, France). In Chapter 9, Gagyi examines the ways in which central and eastern European activists in Hungary and in Romania received and interpreted the concept and practice of autonomy and of civil society diffused by western GJM actors. The author emphasizes the importance of examining the ways in which local and national contexts incorporate and redefine central concepts questioning universalistic theorization. In Chapter 10, Daphi examines also how the local and national dimensions of transnational activism are relevant, exploring the construction of collective identity in transnational social movements with a focus on Italian and German movements. Finally, in Chapter 11, Owens, Katseff, Colin and Lorenzi examine activist mobility tracing the emergence of a European squatters’ movement.
Part IV under the subtitle Understanding the new ‘European Spring’: anti-austerity, 15-M, Indignados includes five chapters which focus on the wave of protests in Europe following the 2008 international crisis. In Chapter 11, Júlíusson and Helgason examine the roots of the Icelandic revolution of 2008 whose mobilizations were the first to respond to the global financial crisis. In Chapter 14, Sergi and Vogiatzoglou examine the Tunisian and Greek protests highlighting how the national symbolic memory related to the repertoires of contention. Chapters 13 and 15 address the mobilizations in Spain. Romanos examines the collective learning process within the Indignados/15-M, emphasizing continuities and new features in comparison with the GJM. Calvo examines empirical data on participants in the 15-M movement.
In the conclusion, Flesher Fominaya and Cox contextualize the new wave of protests in Europe, the anti-austerity mobilizations which responded to austerity measures imposed in Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, including a deep critique of policy-making processes and a strong sense of injustice. For Flesher Fominaya and Cox the relationship between the ‘Arab Spring’, the post-2008 European anti-austerity movements and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is still unclear both empirically and conceptually and their relationship with the wider ‘Global Justice Movement’ since 1999 and the protests in Africa and Latin America against neoliberal financial institutions is an open question. They stress that the contributions of the book point to approaching radical claims for newness with caution, emphasizing that the processes of mobilization do not operate in a kind of ahistorical, culture-free, technological vacuum.
In my opinion the chapters on the recent anti-austerity social movements are those which would benefit from a more in-depth examination of historical trajectories and of continuities and discontinuities with previous movements. However, the previous detailed chapters on the precursors of the GJM and on the specificities of this global movement at national/local level constitute a major contribution that should inspire future research on the connections and disconnections between the GJM and the recent anti-austerity movements in terms of networks, narratives, goals and organizing forms.
Another relevant contribution of the book is the idea of approaching social movements not only through integrating the contributions of social movements theory in a strict sense but also through social theory reflecting upon agency, strategic and cultural elements, political and economic issues, working class struggles and other struggles. The articles differ in this respect but most of them follow this approach.
Finally, and in line with the broader approach defended by the authors, I would have expected that the articles would address in greater depth the relation between social movements and trade union protest and action, in particular regarding austerity policies, as in a number of issues their agendas partially overlapped and on a number of occasions, for instance during general strikes, episodes of convergence in action took place.