Date: Thursday, April 2, 2020
Time: 10 a.m. (New York Time), 11a.m. (Brazilian Time), 4 p.m. (Central European Summer Time & South Africa Standard Time), 7:30 p.m (Indian Standard Time).
Duration: 1:15 h
Zoom Access:
Each discussant will give a 5-minute presentation. The audience can ask questions via chat in the Video Conference Platform Zoom. If you only want to watch, you can also use the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (ISA RC47) Youtube channel, live or afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCr- 0ie11P6GSQEs9KGFGawg
About: The Covid-19 pandemic and the state of emergency it triggers is rapidly changing social life across the world and is bringing big challenges for the activists of progressive social movements. Protest events on public places, street protests, sit ins, or square occupations cannot take place. But also other forms of social movement solidarities, conviviality, cooperation and personal exchange cannot be lived and practiced at the moment. Isolation, social distancing and the rapidly growing economic crisis is also threatening basic resources of activists and the mental spirit and motivation one needs for creative collective actions. And the same time we are already observing many new forms of solidarities and activism as well as a rapid push in online activities. E-petitions, digital activism or evening pots-and-pans demonstrations, but also neighborhood support structures and help for people in need (from the elderly to the homeless and the migrants) are emerging as alternatives to in-person protests in all world regions. Furthermore, the current crisis reveals the centrality of other axes of conflict that in recent years have already mobilized diverse social movements, especially feminists, ecologists, youth and peasant-indigenous ones: care, the commons, eco-social transitions or food sovereignty. This webinar, jointly organized by the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM-Institute) and the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC-47) discusses changing solidarities and collective action in times of pandemic crisis across countries, continents and world regions:
- How is the pandemic crisis and its social, political and economic implications affecting social movements, protest, and collective action today and in the near future?
- What new threats but also political and discursive opportunities arise for social movements?
- What new forms of national and transnational solidarities are emerging?
Please, join the debate with:
Donatella della Porta, Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy) and Director of Centre of Social Movements Studies (Cosmos)
Breno Bringel, Professor of Sociology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (ISA RC-47)
Supurna Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata (India)
Kate Alexander, Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and Director of the Centre for Social Change
John Krinsky, Professor of Political Science, City College New York, (USA) and founding board member of the New York City Community Land Initiative and Director of the Program Community Change Studies
Geoffrey Pleyers, Professor of Sociology and FNRS Research at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and Vice-President for Research, International Sociological Association
Moderator:
Sabrina Zajak: Associate Professor at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), Head of Department Consensus and Conflict at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM-Institute) and ISA RC47 Vice-President.
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It is also possible to share questions to the debate using this e-mail: pandemic_solidarities@dezim- institut.de. Everyone is also welcome to read and contribute to the RC-47 series of articles on Covid-19 and the challenges it poses for social movements and resistances on Open Movements Platform at Open Democracy, edited by Breno Bringel and Geoffrey Pleyers. Please check the first articles:
- Boaventura de Sousa Santos:
- Teivo Teivainen and Pauli Huotari: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ en/openmovements/democratic- horizons-times-corona- governance/
- Donatella della Porta: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ en/can-europe-make-it/social- movements-times-pandemic- another-world-needed/