Power in Student Movements: A Study of Contentious Politics in the Educational Field

• In Event: Contemporary Student Movements in the Southern Cone: Organization, Identity, Strategy and Impact

Abstract

Student movements have historically played a crucial role in triggering major social and political transformations. Paradoxically, little research has been done to assess when, how and why students push for social change. The aim of this project is to provide a comparative analysis of high school and university student power during the last decades in Argentina (1997-2007) and Chile (2001-2011) to assess the extent to which there is something specific about students vis-à-vis other social movements. In order to do so, it analyzes a manifold of contentious events in the two countries in order to assess a) their main demands and repertoires of contention; b) their relations within a complex network of social and political organizations; c) generational continuities and ruptures between student movements. Building on previous theoretical contributions, particularly on the theory of social power and movements, it proposes a typology of student power that serves as analytical framework for the research. Though a combined method approach, using a quantitative dataset of contentious student events, qualitative in-depth interviews with activists and case studies of important student conflicts, it tries to unravel the various forms in which students activate and practice power and the variables that students themselves consider when strategically selecting between different forms of leverage.

Author

• Gabriela M Gonzalez Vaillant, State University of New York at Stony Brook