Suchergebnisse

After the 2007-8 financial crisis, movements - and later parties - which brought 'the people' to the forefront began to dominate the European political scene. These mobilisations brought electoral success for left parties, translating the energies of the movements to the electoral level.
Although many people saw Corbynism as a similar political phenomenon, in the UK it was the Brexit campaign that was most successful in constructing a mass popular subjectivity. This article discusses the failure of the anti-austerity mobilisations in Britain to create a transversal popular
subjectivity, as happened in Spain and Greece; and it looks at Corbynism within the context of the popular left moment after 2007-8. In particular, it argues that, although the party under Corbyn's leadership did try to absorb the anti-austerity energy, and ultimately to present it in a manifesto
that could bring electoral victory, it did not succeed in this attempt. This was partly because the British anti-austerity movements had not had the same social extent as the movements of the squares in Greece and Spain; partly because the Labour Party has very rarely seen itself, or behaved
as, a populist party; and partly because Corbynism did not manage to deal with the challenge of Brexit. But there are also factors outside of the control of the leadership of the party, including the interplay between Corbynism and the Conservatives; the relationship between Corbynism and
Momentum; and the nature of the discourses in circulation during this period.

For most of us the election result was a shock, but in some ways it didnt substantially change the nature of the tasks we face. We still need to find new ways of battling against an environmentally destructive and aggressively unequal capitalism - and the common sense that sustains it. The result made this more difficult in the short term, but its primary effect was on tactics. If Labour had been able to form a government with SNP support, there would have been more obvious and accessible faultlines and pressure points to work with. And a Labour-led coalition or minority government could have provided a basis from which to build a conglomeration of parties and social forces to begin to push back at the ever encroaching logics of marketisation and individualisation. We could have started to explore the possibilities of different left practices and imaginations - embracing new forms of collectivity and networks of solidarity, and ways to repurpose the economy towards sociality, care, and participation, as well as finding sustainable ways to increase productivity that could lead to material benefits for all, not sharply increased returns for a few. Adapted from the source document.

This article explores the role of media and communication processes in the organization of collective action in Greece in the context of the Aganaktismeni (Indignant) protests and subsequent solidarity networks. Theoretically, the article employs the concept of communication ecology to highlight the complex network of media platforms in which collective action is embedded. The concept allows us to explore collective action both within the specific cultural and political environment in Greece as well as beyond specific moments of political mobilization and across time. Based on interviews with activists from various solidarity networks in Athens, we discuss the use of media and unmediated communication practices employed for the organization and mobilization of collective action. We argue that these practices need to be explored beyond the moment of protest in order to better understand how collective action moves across social and political sites.

This article explores the role of media and communication processes in the organization of collective action in Greece in the context of the Aganaktismeni (Indignant) protests and subsequent solidarity networks. Theoretically, the article employs the concept of communication ecology to highlight the complex network of media platforms in which collective action is embedded. The concept allows us to explore collective action both within the specific cultural and political environment in Greece as well as beyond specific moments of political mobilization and across time. Based on interviews with activists from various solidarity networks in Athens, we discuss the use of media and unmediated communication practices employed for the organization and mobilization of collective action. We argue that these practices need to be explored beyond the moment of protest in order to better understand how collective action moves across social and political sites.

What, if anything, do the 'square' protests and 'occupy' movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in the protesters' discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organise themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Ranciere refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics. Adapted from the source document.

A discussion of the record of left- and right-wing populist parties in Europe in response to the austerity policies that followed on from the financial crisis of 2007-8, focusing both on the populist right and on the trajectories of Syriza and Podemos. Questions discussed include: the
issue of definition - whether populism is more than a mobilising strategy/understanding it as a hybrid political practice; what happens to left populist parties when they come into government; what the difference is between left social democracy and populism; the different geographies of populism
- how it operates at the local, national and transnational levels; right-wing populism in Spain, including the Partido Popular as well as Vox, particularly in Madrid; authoritarian populism; populism and nationalism, especially in relation to hostility to migration; right-wing populism in
Greece.