Protests as critical junctures: some reflections towards a momentous approach to social movements

ABSTRACT

Recent times have been defined as momentous: great transformation, great recession as well as great regression have been frequently used short-cut terms to characterize the period following the financial breakdown of 2008. As for contentious politics in these times, we frequently hear references to crisis as well as eventful protests, as calls for what was expected to be routine protest triggered portentous waves of contentious politics. Reference to moments of change can be found in different approaches addressing social movements from the macro, meso, and micro levels. While neoinstitutional approaches have looked at extraordinary times from a macro perspective, the Chicago School adopted a micro perspective, looking at the sudden breaking of established paths, the reproduction of ruptures, and their stabilization. An emerging concern in social movement studies with ‘great transformations’ that triggered big mobilizations can also be seen at the meso level Drawing on these perspectives, I argue that some eventful protests trigger critical junctures, producing abrupt changes which develop contingently and become path dependent. While routinized protests proliferate in normal times, under some political opportunities, some protests – or moments of protest – act as exogenous shocks, catalyzing intense and massive waves of contention. Referring to the debate on critical junctures, and bridging it with social movement studies, I thematize a sequence of processes of cracking, as the production of sudden ruptures; vibrating, as contingently reproducing those ruptures; and sedimenting, as the stabilization of the legacy of the rupture. With the aim of mapping some relevant questions, rather than providing answers, I refer for illustration to research I carried out on movements in democratic transitions during economic, political, and social crises, as well as their legacy and memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Protest
• critical juncture
• neoinstitutionalism
• time
• memory
• social movements

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum.

2. Cit. in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_(organisation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donatella della Porta

Donatella della Porta is professor of political science and dean at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). Among her very recent publications are: Legacies and Memories in Movements (Oxford University Press, 2018); Contentious moves (Palgrave 2017), Global Diffusion of Protest (Amsterdam University Press, 2017), Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents (Palgrave, 2017); Movement Parties in Times of Austerity (Polity 2017), Where did the Revolution go? (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Social Movements in Times of Austerity (Polity 2015), Methodological practices in social movement research (Oxford University Press, 2014).