The seminar on “New New Social Movements” has just ended and our tentative findings are in: there is indeed a new kind of social movement that has emerged in the past couple of years. Our task has been to identify and understand the promise and perils of this new movement type, to specify its common set of characteristics, its causes and likely consequences. We began our investigations in Wroclaw and will continue in the coming months. This is the first of a series of progress reports summarizing our deliberations of the past couple of weeks. -Jeff

The new movements are broad and diverse. Our informed discussions ranged from the uprisings of the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, including also the protests in major Romanian cities and the mining region, protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Poland, protests in Israel concerning issues of housing, food, healthcare and other social demands, and the protests in Russia over the absence of democracy in the conduct of the affairs of state and elections. Participants with special knowledge of these social movements presented overviews in light of the social science theory and research of our common readings. We then all compared and contrasted the movements. We worked to identify commonalities and differences in social movement experiences.

We started with readings and a framework for discussion as I reported here. I had a hunch, a working hypothesis: the media is the message, to use the motto of Marshall McCluhan. But I thought about this beyond the social media, as in “this is the Facebook revolution.” Rather my intuition, which the seminar participants supported, told me that the social form (in this sense the media) rather than the content is what these movements share.

There is a resemblance with the new social movements of the recent past studied by Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci, but there is something else that distinguishes the new social movements of the moment: a generational focus on the creation of new publics to address major concerns. We found the work of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt helpful in understanding this, as well as the approaches of my colleagues Eiko Ikegami and Elzbieta Matynia, along with my work.

The movements seem fundamentally to support Hannah Arendt’s primary thesis about politics and the public domain. In her sense, the new “new social movements” are definitively political, about people speaking and acting in the presence of each other, dedicated to their common autonomy, as equals in their differences. Politics to her mind is not a means to an end but an end in itself. She may have exaggerated this, but that it is an important dimension of political life is confirmed by the formation of the new “new social movements” as we studied them in Wroclaw.

Indeed our discussions confirmed Arendt’s position, with important variations on the theme and with specifications. Today some preliminary notes on Romania and Poland. More comparisons, contrasts and implications in upcoming posts.

Ana Maria Murg reported on movements in Romania. Demonstrations over changes in government funding of healthcare eventually led to changes in governments and public policy, and important links between the elites of the political opposition and a broad range of citizens. Most interesting was her report on how the protesters around the country (especially in the major cities) re-legitimized the idea of protest as a democratic way of manifesting citizen discontent. The protests against the government achieved their immediate ends, changes in the governing elite, but Murg believes that the most significant fact was the development of a capacity for members of the society to act in addressing their concerns, from the dangers of de-funding the social safety net, to the employment of miners, to a youth movement against proposed changes in laws about intellectual property, the movement, against ACTA. She showed us videos of demonstrating social activists, including one of her own making.

I found particularly intriguing the way Murg identified links between protests about the ruling elite, ACTA and the mines. She revealed members of a society that was coming together, or at least the potential of this, by addressing their specific concerns, not an enforced unity and the reaction against this, as was the case in Romanian during the communist era and in the demonstrations that brought this to an end, as I analyzed in the chapter on 1989 in The Politics of Small Things (see here) Murg’s report indicated to me a remarkable progress, a turning around, a revolution in micro-politics. In Romania and in the other cases we studied I found evidence of the increasing significance of the politics of small things.

Anti-ACTA demonstrations in Poland were probably the most intense in the region, if not globally. Aleksandra Przegalinska provided the seminar with an analysis. Because young Poles have become accustomed to free access to just about everything on the web, the new law created controversy as it appeared to threaten this way of life. It was a perceived attack upon what they understood as their free public domain. Przegalinska reported a provocative irony: ACTA, according to government and independent analysis, is less restrictive than existing Polish law concerning intellectual property.Yet, the secrecy of the law’s development and the lack of certainty concerning its provisions, provoked broad public resistance. Young people shared their concerns through social media. They exchanged ideas and strategies. They worked together to protest the proposed policy through cyber-activism. The constituted an independent public and independent public action. Government sites were attacked, and the state and the society took notice. Small discreet exchanges led to concerted actions, a major social protest.

Off line demonstrators all met in central squares around the country, seeing each other, sometimes simply jumping up and down together, confirming their solidarity. I noted that this reversed previous conventions, when people demonstrated in the streets, disrupting life and usual, and went home to see how it was represented on the television. Now they go to the streets to see themselves. We all agreed that this relationship between the virtual and the embodied, the politically instrumental and ceremonial, were more situationally enacted.

The Poles acted to defend their capacity to speak and act freely. They defended a free public. This resonated with their understanding of the struggles of the recent past. They were worried about the secrecy and restrictions of the present.

Romanians and Poles are in movement: forming and defending free publics as an end of political engagement.

More to come soon.

I am quite ambivalent about the Tea Party.  While I am appalled by some of the slogans and signs that have appeared in Tea Party rallies, I am convinced that this is a genuine social movement, a politically significant instance of the politics of small things, a political movement concerned with fundamental principles, engaged in a great debate about both the pressing issues of the day and the enduring problems of American political life.  As a registered Democrat and as a strong supporter of President Obama and his program, I am pleased that the actions of the movement may have made the Republican landslide in the upcoming elections less momentous, as the talking heads are now speculating, although I am still concerned that the movement may have given wind to the rightward shift of public opinion.  The emotional, irrational and often purposely ignorant political expression in Tea Party demonstrations is of deep concern, but I think the strong expression of fundamental political principles can and should be seriously considered and confronted.  I am unsure about what the Tea Party Movement’s impact on American public life in the very near term, i.e. the midterm elections, and in the long term, i.e. in the reinvention of American political culture will be.  As I have been trying to sort this all out, I am reminded of the insights of an old friend, Alberto Melucci, an Italian sociologist who presciently understood the meaning of social movements in the age of internet and mobile communications, before these new media were common.

The Theoretical Perspective of a Friend

Alberto Melucci

In series of important books, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, and Playing the Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Alberto explored what it means to become involved in a social movement in our times.  He understood that the means of social movements may be even more important than their ends, and that they make possible a new sense of self and self purpose for their participants to emerge.  Further and most significant politically, they can change the basic social codes.  Alberto was mostly thinking about progressive new social movements, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the like.  But I think his approach illuminates the new conservatism of the Tea Party quite well.  He died prematurely on September 12, 2001, not observing the strange turn in global politics since that very day.  But he would have understood the Tea Party, as a social movement concerned with primary values, unconcerned with electoral priorities, forging new, in this case, reactionary, identities and values, a movement that is very much a product and a challenge of our times.

Challenging Codes

The Tea Party Movement makes its participants feel good about themselves and gives them a sense of purpose, as the participants frequently report on movement blogs and to reporters.  The Movement seeks to “take our country back,” supporting and attacking politicians of both parties.  They have specific ends against bail outs and the government handouts to the undeserving, from the poor to the mighty banks and corporations of Wall Street and Detroit.  They are for limited government and the constitution, as they understand it.  They imagine together a new future based on an idealized past and in their movement they enact their future.

The movement activists and candidates sometime seem to hurt Republicans more than Democrats, an outcome that seems to be irrational given their own voting records, but this is not as significant to them as one would expect.  They are concerned about a vision of America between its past and its future and their place in this America, and worry that this vision to which they are deeply committed is being lost, taken away politically by politicians they revile, and overlooked by too many of their fellow citizens.  When the fundamental concern with the American code is kept in mind, the Tea Party Activists are not as irrational as most outside commentators, of the left and the right, think.

September versus November

Karl Rove got caught up in this Primary Night last Tuesday.   In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, they agreed on fundamental conservative issues.  Nothing in their discussion suggested a questioning of the principles and practices of the Tea Party.  But Rove dared to frankly criticize the candidate who won her primary in Delaware due to Tea Party activism and support, Christine O’Donnell.  She was the candidate of true conviction against a moderate, but her odd behavior despite her stated purity would lead to electoral defeat.  “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not [evince] the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.”  Rove maintained, frankly concluding that “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” (link)   For this assessment he was severely attacked by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the full staff of Fox News, forcing him to retreat from his initial assessment. (link)

Rove was caught between the calculation of a political analyst and of a political partisan.  Since he cares most about the politics of the day, he could not be content with pronounced conservative purity.   He, on the right, along with most objective and Democratic partisan observers, noted that the Tea Party victory in the Delaware primary greatly increased the Democrats chances of maintaining their Senate majority.

But those who seek to take their country back, those more interested in the long march of changing the political culture, changing the code of politics as Alberto Melucci would put it, would prefer resolute cultural battle (most prominently Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, link).    Their movement is their message. For them the victory in September is more important than the increased chances of a defeat in November.