Protest movements, Culture, and Social Change

This course provides a sociological introduction to the study of culture in protest movements, including debates about social class and group culture, race/ethnicity, gender/intersectionality, nationality, language, and religion. How do cultural diversity and inequality influence the potential of social movements to promote social change on the local ground and in global arenas of political and media debate? In a moment where right wing political parties mobilize cultural difference as a threat, social movements around the globe try to build coalitions across social differences to address global collective action problems including climate change and ethnic or religious conflicts. How and to what extend do engaged citizens and the current progressive movements succeed to reach out to ordinary people to build broader coalitions? How do they use digital media networks and everyday politics to support minorities, migrants and refugees?
 

First, we will investigate culture within local or transnationally operating non-state organizations such as NGOs and activist groups. Second, we will look at culture as a set of discourses and practices analyzing news media framing digital media, narrative, and translation practices used by radical movements. Lectures and research presentations in this course will allow students to gain an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective on culture, protest movements, and social change. We focus on case studies including the climate justice movement, indigenous people’s movements, anti-racist movements, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, as well as pro-democracy movements in Asia, the Arab Spring, Occupy and Indignados movements. We compare protests in the context of the global pandemic, including protests against Corona regulations. Last but not least we critically explore far right and populist right wing political mobilization online and offline.