[ecrea] CFP - A Global Dissenting Youth?

This is to announce the call for papers for a panel I am organising with 
a Spanish colleague in the ESA 2011 General Conference in Turin. We are 
aiming to put together a wide set of papers investigating* student 
movements* and *youth activism*, in particular in the context of the 
most recent waves of protest. The deadline is* February 1st* and the 
abstracts have to be submitted trough the conference website 
<http://www.esa11thconference.eu>.

*ESA 2011 General Conference - “Crisis, Critique and Change” Turin, 
Italy, August 28th-31th
*
The upcoming 11th congress of the European Sociological Association will 
take place in Turin this year from the 28th to 31th of August, 2013. The 
Social Movements Research Network (RN 25) invites abstracts to 
contribute to the sociology of social movements and empirical research 
on mobilization in various contexts of crisis, critique and change. 
Comparative work that connects theory, empirical analysis and 
interdisciplinary methods is particularly encouraged. Please note that 
one joint session on the role of emotions will be organized together 
with the network on the Sociology of Emotions. A semi-plenary session 
will be organized together with Political Sociology. The deadline for 
Abstract submission is February 1 2013. Paper givers are invited to 
present papers in the following eight sessions:

*Specific Session VI: A Global Dissenting Youth? Student movements and 
youth activism in the anti-austerity and anti-corporate mobilisations: 
relevance, role, strategies and effects*

Chair: Lorenzo Zamponi, European University Institute, 
(lorenzo.zamponi /at/ eui.eu) <mailto:(lorenzo.zamponi /at/ eui.eu)>
Co-Chair: Joseba Fernández González, Universidad del País Vasco, 
(josebafergon /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(josebafergon /at/ gmail.com)>
Discussant: Eduardo Romanos Fraile, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 
(eduardo.romanos /at/ cps.ucm.es) <mailto:(eduardo.romanos /at/ cps.ucm.es)>

When did the current cycle of global contention start? Can we consider 
it a single phenomenon or an articulated set of different and 
interrelated social facts? Which are the shared traits among episodes of 
collective action placed in different political contexts, cultural 
settings, social roots and goals? These and other questions are at the 
core of the contemporary debate on contentious politics, and we aim to 
contribute in addressing them focusing on a particular aspect that is 
common to most mobilisations of this cycle: the significant involvement 
of young people in collective action and in the politics of dissent. Our 
panel will focus on the student movement, as a social actor which has 
been active in different countries in the last years, and on youth 
activism, as a wide set of experiences and practises of contention which 
have played a relevant role in many different conflicts, contaminating 
and disseminating contents and forms of mobilisation. The wave of 
student mobilisation against the corporatisation of education and 
knowledge and the increasing precarity of work, in fact, is the 
immediate antecedent of the current wave of protests in Europe, and it 
might me argued that the contemporary anti-austerity movement discourse 
has been developing in that context. Furthermore, some scholars have 
already underlined the role of university campuses as a space for 
mobilisation and of student loans as a fundamental topic in the Occupy 
movement in the USA. But generational cleavages are visible also out of 
the education system, and youth activism has been considered relevant in 
all the indignados mobilisations, involving the so-called “generation of 
digital natives”. We invite empirical-oriented papers and interpretive 
analyses, aiming at building, through the lens of youth activism, a 
genealogy of the contemporary wave of mobilisation and to contribute to 
a better understanding of it.

*Contacts*

For any additional information on the conference, please make contact 
Nicole Doerr (Mount Holyoke College), Marianne van de Steeg (FU 
Berlin)nand/or Alice Mattoni (European University Institute): 
(esasocialmovements /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(esasocialmovements /at/ gmail.com)>
For specific questions on panels proposed as listed above please 
directly contact panel chairs. Note, however, that all papers ultimately 
have to be submitted to the ESA’s electronic abstract proposal system 
until February 1.

--
Lorenzo Zamponi
PhD Candidate/Researcher
European University Institute
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Via dei Roccettini 9
I-50014 - San Domenico di Fiesole (FI)
Italia
http://www.eui.eu
(lorenzo.zamponi /at/ eui.eu) <mailto:(lorenzo.zamponi /at/ eui.eu)>