Understanding Contemporary Mass Social Unrest

Episodes of massive social unrest, also called uprisings, popular revolts, and rebellions, are recurrent and increasingly frequent events in contemporary societies. The phenomenon can be seen in consolidated, advanced democracies of the Global North, as well as in younger democracies and developing economies of the Global South. Recent research has shown an increase in the frequency of major protests on a global scale in recent decades, suggesting that we are living through a period of history like the years around 1848, 1917 or 1968. However, the unprecedented scale and the global spread of these mass upheavals calls for a closer examination. Examples of such form of contentious politics range from the Arab uprisings in 2011 and its second wave in 2018-19 that engulfed Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq, to Europe and the US with the occupy movement in 2011, the indignados movement in Spain (2011), as well as the gilets jaunes in France (2018), arriving to the student encampments for Palestine in 2024 across university campuses. This wave of uprisings also spread to Latin America with the so-called ‘social outbreaks’ in Chile (2019) and Colombia (2019-2020), indigenous protests in Ecuador (2019) and Bolivia (2019), and the protests against the pension reform in Nicaragua (2018). This session aims at filling the gap in our empirical and theoretical knowledge about this particular form of contentious politics, by fostering a global conversation and comparative approaches. It will welcome contributions dealing with the causes, dynamics and consequences of these episodes.