Cultures of Protest: Social Movements and Political Activism in the UK [beendet]

Social movements and political activism have a long history in the UK. The seminar will encompass early modern appearances in the form of the labour movement and the women’s suffrage movement over the classic ‘new’ social movements such as the environmental movement and the anti-war movement up to more recent phenomena of civic political protest such as Occupy, contemporary populist movements and the current surge in climate activism. During the past decades, civic engagement and forms of activism underwent remarkable changes. Perhaps most obviously, the forms of organization are different now than they were a hundred years ago as activism itself is a versatile and dynamic phenomenon. Modes of protest and who participates in protests change over time, currently, multiple forms of political activism adapt to the challenges of the digital age and the opportunities of social media. While until recently, western democracies have been facing a steady decline in civic and political engagement, recent years have seen the numbers in political participation rise. Whether of modern or post-modern origin: social movements and forms of political activism can be productively analysed by employing theoretical frameworks from political science, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.