Conference: Movement, Protest, Activism – Interdisciplinary Approaches to an Elusive Phenomenon, 24.-25.10.2019, Konstanz

Sven Reichardt, Judith Beyer, Thomas Kirsch, Boris Holzer and Christian Meyer, Universität Konstanz

Venue: Konstanz
Time: 24.-25.10.2019
Registration by: 06.10.2019

Fridays for Future, mass protests in Hong Kong, the Pussy Hat Project – social movements, public protest and activism promise alternatives and correctives to the established political parties and institutional politics in many places. They are also a prominent topic of research for historians, ethnologists and sociologists, but the disciplines often stick to their established methods and rarely take the chance to learn from each other: Sociological approaches demand theoretical models, for example on transnationalisation, diffusion and change of movements, or on the meaning of digital media.

Historians emphasize the inherent logic and the historical context of specific social movements and tend to call for the historicization or problematization of the terminology’s normative content. In contrast, ethnological micro-studies usually reflect on activism as an emergent form of sociality, teaching and learning processes in the socialization of actors, as well as the significance of (material and political) infrastructures.

The international workshop aims at an interdisciplinary exchange and a discussion of those phenomena. On a theoretical-methodological level, respective disciplinary approaches will be presented and conceptual reflections will be made. Another panel addresses the significance of ‚movement‘, ‚protest‘ and ‚activists‘ as labels of self- or hetero description. The presentation of research projects at the University of Konstanz illustrates different approaches and enables the discussion by the example of concrete case studies. The comprehensive aim of the workshop is to take up the different models of theory and research and to identify possible synergies. Read more and source … (Web)