On the Generational Threads of Social Critique: Global Gen-Z and Claims of Democracy

Open Session : On the generational threads of social critique: global Gen-Z and claims of democracy

This panel proposal aims to understand how youth political imagination, framing a public global debate on democracy and social critique, may emerge starting from recent youth social mobilizations for democracy in Global South and Global North. These are different generational units that in various countries are taking the lead in glocal movements and mobilizations, rooted in local contexts but conceived on a transnational scale. By connecting these recent events, with their successes and failures, to the sociological debate on a public sociology as outlined by Burawoy and Beck, this panel calls for contributions based on experiences in various national and continental contexts, aimed at reflecting on attempts to develop such generational space of political imagination.

These attempts can be considered particularly relevant given the turbulent times we are living through. Risk and uncertainty society, polycrisis, retrotopian temptations, and forms of regression mark the present and pose a challenge to sociology’s capacity to understand and critically assess the status quo. In this scenario, young generations — starting from the prefigurative value of their practices in the social and political spheres — seem to offer a privileged vantage point for observing ongoing changes. The panel has the specific aim to encourage debate between experiences that are geographically distant but converge on this shared generational need. It is possible to identify several analytical and research trajectories such as mutualism, care, solidarity, artistic practices, alternative imaginaries.