20466 - What Is the Use of Protest Today?

Description

Zeynep Tufekci recently wrote that "the year 2024 started out looking as if it would be a momentous one for political protests. All winter and spring, college campuses were aflame in anger and conflict and as summer approached, the Democratic National Convention threatened to be engulfed by street demonstrations...The year was momentous, all right, but not for the reasons it seemed. Mass protests had already been showing diminishing returns, sometimes drawing big crowds but rarely getting proportionally big results. Now, 2024 looks like the end of the road, at least for the kind of power that such mass protests once had, a power that has defined political action in America and in democracies around the world for decades." In this session, a panel of social movement scholars will take up this claim and discuss the value of protest under our current political conditions. What has protest been able to accomplish in the past that it is no longer able to do? Are there new ways that protest can be useful to activists?

Sub Unit

• Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements / What Is the Use of Protest Today?

Presider

• David S. Meyer, University of California-Irvine

Panelists

• Dana R. Fisher, American University

• Marco Giugni, University of Geneva

• Daniel Gillion, University of Pennsylvania

Session Organizer

• Edwin Amenta, University of California-Irvine