Übung Power and to the people New social movements and democracy in Western late capitalism

The inter-subjective design of a problematic state of social affairs and the expression of collective demands to modify it turned out historically to be a common path for the emergence of social movements. At the same time, the topics these movements choose as the centre of gravity to impinge on tend to collide with the meanings and scopes of modern Western democracy. We can observe this situation in the short history of collectives such as Blockupy, Occupy Wall Street and Movimiento 15-M – some of the examples that we are going to analyse in our sessions. The attitudes, responses and general validation that the new political movements receive from established parties and political actors have conditioned the specific path of actions and organizational forms they have been unfolding. For that reason our focus will also be on the interaction between the new political and social contenders with the society that nourished them, in order to comprehend and differentiate their strategies for reaching their original and/or suddenly discovered goals. A comparative and contextual interpretation of these groups will allow us to transcend the novelty aura given to them in public discourse – and yet to grasp the current changes in the way we understand and perform modern democracy. Department Institut für Soziologie aktive und regelmäßige Teilnahme sowie kontinuierliche Vorbereitung der Literatur Referat, Hausarbeit ECTS-Punkte: 3 LMU München SoSe 2015 Dr. Schencman Pablo