PRESENTER 1 & TOPIC
Andrea Felicetti - Social movement organisations. Their ‘functions’ and ‘quality'
ABSTRACT
Democratic scholars in the Habermasian tradition have argued that citizens’
activism usually has at least two different targets: institutions and the public.
Depending on their objectives and activities, different social movements perform
either or both ‘outward functions’ (when they try to affect political institutions)
and ‘inward functions’ (when they focus on self-organising activities and
mobilisations of publics). On the basis of a comparative analysis of four
community groups associated with the Transition movement, this presentation
shows that this distinction applies even within the same social movement. That
is, in implementing ideas from the same movement in different contexts local
groups can act defensively or offensively. Indeed, following Young’s (2000)
distinctions between ‘private’, ‘public’ or ‘political’ associations, the presentation
shows that organisations belonging to the same movement can be understood as
different types of associations. Most notably, movement’s ideals and aspirations
can be adopted in a selective manner depending on the local circumstances in
which social movement organisations take action. In this context, the informal
understanding of democracy that social movement organisations seem tied to
(della Porta 2013) and the prevailing mechanisms related to informal leadership
deserve particular attention. From the case studies it emerges that the
relationship between what Mansbridge (2012) terms ‘everyday’ and ‘organised’
activists is a particularly important determinant of groups’ strategies. These very
dynamics also affect social movement organisations’ capability to develop
deliberative and democratic qualities. Where ‘organised’ activists are more
committed to outward functions, a poor deliberative and democratic
performance may ensue since inward functions may be neglected. This may
result in the emergence of a gap between ‘organised’ and ‘everyday’ activists.
Attention to inward functions emerges as a strongly desirable characteristic to
enhance the deliberative and democratic qualities of social movement
organizations.
BIO
Andrea is a final year PhD student from the Centre for Deliberative Democracy
and Global Governance at School of Politics and International Relations,
Australian National University. He is investigating the deliberative and
democratic qualities in the public sphere. He is currently working at a
comparative analysis of four local organisations associated with the Transition
movement.
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PRESENTER 2 & TOPIC
David West - Social Movement Research: Formal, Substantive and Critical
Perspectives
Chapter 9 Conclusion: A Critical Theory of Social Movements?
Outline
By way of a conclusion, the present chapter identifies some elements of a critical
theory of social movements. Critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition has
the ambitious goal of combining social analysis and normative critique with a
practical orientation towards the transformation of contemporary society.
Although it can benefit from the formal and empirical approaches discussed in
chapter 7, a critical theory has more affinities with the substantive approaches of
chapter 8. Like those theories, it attempts to steer a path between, on the one
hand, dogmatic (‘modernist’ or ‘totalizing’) claims to knowledge of society and,
on the other hand, an ultimately unhelpful postmodern scepticism. Finding a way
between these extremes involves recognizing the concrete and contingent
(rather than abstract and universal) limits of theoretical knowledge. At the same
time, elements of a common set of values for contemporary movements emerge
from consideration of the approach- ing environmental limits to the further
material expansion of human societies. With limits of both kinds in mind, critical
theory can be seen to have an essential but always corrigible role in social
movements and societal transformation.
BIO
David West is a Visitor in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National
University in Canberra. He was until recently Assoc. Professor of Political Theory
at ANU’s School of Politics and International Relations. His most recent book is
Social Movements in Global Politics (Polity, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2013).
His other publications include Continental Philosophy: An Introduction (Polity,
Cambridge and Malden MA, 2010, 2nd Edn.), Reason and Sexuality in Western
Thought (Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2005) and Authenticity and
Empowerment: A Theory of Liberation (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel
Hempstead, 1990). Details of his book Social Movements in Global Politics are
available from Polity via
http://www.politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=0745649599
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PRESENTER 3 & TOPIC
Ricardo Mendonca and Selen Ercan - Deliberation and Protest- still strange
bedfellows? Revealing the deliberative potential of recent protests in Brazil and
Turkey.
ABSTRACT
Deliberation and protest have usually been conceptualized as two mutually
exclusive ways of reviving democracy. It has been argued that protests, by their
adversarial nature, would hinder the quality of deliberation. The recent cycle of
protests ranging from New York to Turkey, and including Middle Eastern
countries and Brazil, however, has shown that protests may enhance rather than
hinder the deliberative quality of democracies. In this article, we seek to show
that deliberative democracy is not antithetical to conflict and agonism generated
by protest movements. In fact, such movements constitute an integral part of
public deliberation, especially when the latter is understood in systemic terms;
in terms of a broad public conversation that occurs in various, partly overlapping
sites. We illustrate this claim by drawing on the 2013 protests in Brazil and
Turkey. The systemic approach to deliberation helps us to reveal the deliberative
capacity of these protests in at least three important areas: (1) in the
architecture of these movements; (2) in the type of collective action such
movements generate: and (3) in their public consequences.
BIO
Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political
Science, Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil), and the co-convenor of the
Research Group on Digital Democracy. He works in the areas of democratic
theory, critical theory, politics of recognition, social movements and political
communication. Some of his recent publications have appeared in Constellations;
Political Studies; Policy & Society; Brazilian Political Science Review; Opinião
Pública; Dados; Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais and Lua Nova.
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