From Revolutions to New Causes. Redefining Activism, Reframing Change.
Monday, 7 July 2025: 09:00-10:45
Location: SJES027 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)
Language: English
The revolutionary processes of 2011 in Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) were driven by a variety of actors, causes, and modes of action, but resulted in a convergence that toppled or disrupted the authoritarian regimes in the region. In the post-revolutionary years, however, activism for sociopolitical change has developed into different directions, not least as a result of changing political opportunity structures and the increasingly palpable impact of ecological crises, but also due to biographical conversions and professionalization, and shifting funding opportunities. Issues of land, access to water and resources on the one hand force to adapt a more global perspective, while on the other hand some movements articulate more local ways of ‘knowing’ justice, i.e., more individual or community-based than the great revolutionary visions of changing societies on a nation-state level.
In this panel, we aim to reflect on what the shift from revolutionary struggle to new forms of activism is doing to individual trajectories and activist networks in SWANA post-2011. How do former revolutionaries update or convert their commitment into resources of a different type? How are these processes situated at the intersections of gender, race, class, and spatial location? What is the role of knowledge production, education, as well as art, in these processes? Departing from these questions, we aim to discuss and productively contrast new causes and modes of activism that are currently emerging, from artistic interventions to feminist mobilizations, via ecologist and anti-racist movements, to name but a few. Five papers will be accepted.
Session Organizers:
Laura RUIZ DE ELVIRA CARRASCAL, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France and
Christoph SCHWARZ, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Co-chairs:
Christoph SCHWARZ, University of Innsbruck, Austria and
Laura RUIZ DE ELVIRA CARRASCAL, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France
Oral Presentations
