Social Movements and Fields of Power: Redistribution, Recognition, and Representation

This session seeks to examine the relationship between social movements and fields of power through the interconnected lenses of redistribution, recognition, and representation.

It explores how struggles over power, resources, and authority unfold within broader social arenas shaped by competing actors and asymmetrical relations of influence. It encourages analyses of the tensions, negotiations, and occasional alliances that emerge between regional, national, and global power structures and collective actors.

Particular attention will be given to the ways in which social movements challenge established hierarchies. The session welcomes contributions examining cases in which collaboration between movement leaders and elites has generated meaningful transformation. At the same time, the session interrogates how social movements may become sites for the emergence of counter-elites, reconfiguring existing structures of power.

It opens space for deeper reflection on democratic participation, legitimacy, mediation.

We invite submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

How social movements mobilise against local, regional, and (trans)national, elites.

Forms of relationship between social movements and local, regional, or global power structures.

Conflicts between authorities and social movements over redistribution, recognition, and representation.

The relationship between political, economic, or cultural elites and the leadership of social movements.

Empirical and theoretical studies examining how social movements challenge, negotiate with, or cooperate with power structures.

Social movements as sites for the emergence of new elites or counter-elites.

Democratic elitism and debates surrounding radical democracy.

The strategic use, co-optation, or instrumentalisation of social movements by elites.

The reproduction and transformation of power within social movements themselves.