Periodic Reporting for period 4 - POWDER (Protest and Order. Democratic theory, contentious politics, and the changing shape of western democracies)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-02-01 al 2023-03-31
One of the core achievements of the research project hence was to further conceptualize the interrelationship of protest and the democratic order. By bringing different strands of research together, we were able to formulate a research perspective that combines strong theoretical interpretive categories with empirically sound research approaches. Thereupon, we gained insights on the influence and relevance of the democratic order to the specific formation of new forms of protest and on how contemporary protest movements question and negotiate premises of democratic orders – i. e. via rhetorical strategies, the enactment of bodily protest practices or the provision of alternative digital infrastructures for democratic politics. We not only gained a deep understanding of current protest dynamics, but also of contemporary social and political transformations within modern democratic societies. The project thus takes up the notion of political protest as especially sensitive to social change to provide society with relevant, scientific expertise on challenges as well as innovations to the democratic order.
Against the backdrop of an interpretative research perspective, the empirical subprojects have worked out the different ways of how and to what extent democracy is imagined, negotiated, and problematized within protest, and how these protests interact with the democratic institutions in place. It could be shown that digital protests put forward new understandings and workings of the public sphere. Climate protest sheds new light on the relationship of democracy and time and foregrounds reflections on the conditions of democratic ordering. In their protest, irregularized migrants imagine and prefigure new forms of co-existence that transcend established political boundaries. While also claiming to act in the name democracy, right wing movements demand the fallacious return to a homogenous people. Accordingly, studying these protests reveals the complex fabric of democratic orders, democratic norms and their preconditions.
We have discussed and disseminated our research results within the scientific community and a broader public:
- In July 2021, the research group has hosted an international workshop, bringing together leading scholars from the fields of democratic theory and social movement research to present their work on the conceptualization of political protest. This important exchange resulted in a Special Issue in the journal Democratic Theory that systematizes and deepens the debate on the meaning of protest along our research perspective (see: Gobbi et al 2022).
- First excerpts of the analytical framework and the criteria for a substantive normative assessment of political protest have been presented by PI Christian Volk within the scientific community in numerous talks and keynotes and will be published in 2024 with Suhrkamp.
- The members of the research group have discussed their research at international conferences and workshops. Moreover, they succeeded in influencing the research fields adjacent to the subprojects through the organisation of conferences and working groups with subsequent publications (for the field of migration studies, see Glathe/Gorriahn 2022; for the field of digital transformations, see Staemmler et al 2022).
- Beyond the scientific community, expertise from the project was repeatedly requested; PI Christian Volk was asked in numerous interviews about his assessment of the legitimacy and success of the climate protests and other movements (see for example Spiegel, Stuttgarter Zeitung (print), WDR (radio)).