Social movements in deeply divided societies

The course will review the key debates of the literature on deeply divided societies, exploring the implications and challenges of institutional arrangements implemented to govern them, their power dynamics and contested geographies. Furthermore, it will revise the different theoretical approaches employed to study divided societies, such as the settler-colonial paradigm. The students will familiarize with the main dilemmas concerning non-aligned citizens in power-sharing systems, and social movements emerged in divided settings, investigating the different ways in which they navigate societal cleavages. Students will debate recent scholarly works addressing various aspects of collective action in divided societies, from the formation of (alternative) collective identities to the emergence of right to the city movements, environmental groups, and other instances of non-ethnic activism. The course will also address the ethical and methodological challenges that researching deeply divided societies entails.