Comparative uprisings: understanding contemporary mass social unrest

Episodes of massive social unrest, also called uprisings, popular revolts, and rebellions, are recurrent and increasingly frequent events in contemporary societies. The phenomenon can be seen in consolidated, advanced democracies of the global north, as well as in younger democracies and developing economies of the global south. Quantitative studies have shown an increase in the frequency of major protests on a global scale, in recent decades (Carothers & Wong, 2020; Carothers & Youngs, 2015). A study of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue concluded that we are living through a period in history similar to the years around 1848, 1917 or 1968 “when large numbers of people rebelled against the way things were, demanding change” (Ortiz et al., 2021, p. 13). Examples of massive social unrest include the gilets jaunes in France (2018), the indignados movement in Spain (2011), and the anti-corruption protests in Romania (2018), and the so-called ‘social outbreaks’ in Chile (2019), Perú and Colombia (2019-2020). In the Arab region, there was the wave of uprisings at the beginning of the previous decade, known as the Arab Spring, as well as the revolt in Lebanon in 2019. This course uses the emerging literature exploring the causes, dynamics, actors and outcomes of these episodes, and tracks the theoretical debates and models that have been used to understand them.

In this course, we explore some controversies crossing the fields of social movements studies, comparative politics, peace studies and revolutions scholarship. Significant attention is paid to debates on the defining properties of various forms of massive unrest, as well as to their differences: refolutions, coupvolutions, uprisings, revolutions, riots, revolts, among others. In this course, we focus on a “grey area” in the literature, where episodes of unrest do not seem to fit neatly into any of the big conceptual categories traditionally used in the disciplinary fields mentioned above. In addition, a focus on episodes of massive social unrest gives a vantage point to examine the connections between radical change and mass social unrest. It is known that a major assumption of contentious politics studies is that mobilizations from below produce change, promote democracy and advance the cause of equality. In this course, we examine this assumption in light of scholarly literature. Similarly, the social movements literature has long debated whether peaceful protests or disruptive and violent movements are more effective in bringing about social change (Chenoweth & Schock, 2015; Gamson, 1975; Fox Piven 2016). In studying mass social unrest across various regions, the course engages in debates about different temporalities (timing, tempo, acceleration), the role of spontaneity, coalition building, authoritarian backslash, democratic erosion, state building, legitimacy, among other issues.

An innovative aspect of this course is its transnational scope, as we study episodes of mass unrest that have occurred in the Latin American region, Europe, and the Middle East and North African region –and their respective literatures.