Archive année 2022-2023 Europe, transnational mobilisations and ci ...

This course addresses issues of collective action, mobilisations, and civil society, at the transnational (and, especially, European) level. Moving away from elections and party politics, it focuses on political actions undertaken by a variety of actors outside the political field. These can be ordinary citizens organising grassroots mobilisations, but also non-political elites (business elites, corporations, intellectuals, ...) seeking to influence decision-making. At the European level, these mobilisations face serious challenges and raise the question of the possibilities of the existence of a European civil society and a European public sphere, generally considered as key elements of a democratic polity. The course provides a general overview of scholarship on these topics and presents numerous case studies of (trans)national mobilisations in Europe and beyond.

The course will be organised in two parts. The first part will review the classic works and more recent research dealing with civil society and collective action. It will provide a solid theoretical framework for understanding collective action, its regimes and repertoires, and the variety of its actors. The range of movements and repertoires that will be covered in the course extends from political violence, protests, strikes, social movements, to the most institutionalised forms of civil society representation and collective bargaining, including trade unions, NGOs, “government-organised non-governmental organisations”, lobbying and advocacy. The sociological perspective adopted in this course will focus on the different profiles of the actors involved (activists, trade unionists, lobbyists, etc.), as well as on the impact of political mobilisations on their identities and trajectories.

The second part of the course will be devoted to the discussion of several case studies, past and present, which will illustrate the challenges of collective action at the transnational level. It will examine the conditions of possibility of transnational mobilisations, questioning the resources (political, social, cultural, economic) that are mobilised by the actors involved. Examples will include the “progressive” social movements that have been most studied so far, such as peace movements, anti-globalisation movements, climate movements, etc. But more “conservative” transnational mobilisations, such as anti-abortion and anti-gender campaigns, will also be presented and discussed.

Students will be invited to read and present texts (scholarly articles) for each meeting. They will have the opportunity to propose case studies of their choice to be discussed during the course. If possible, the reading list will be complemented by documentary films that will illustrate some of the issues discussed during the semester.

Informations sur l'espace de cours

Rattachements à l'offre de formation