Continuities and transformations in forms of collective action

Call for Papers for a Special Issue on “Continuities and transformations in forms of collective action”, to be published in the open access Journal Società Mutamento Politica (https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/smp/index). Abstracts up to 500 words are due 28th February 2023.

Continuities and transformations in forms of collective action across time, either at the micro- or at the meso levels, have been under-explored. This is because fields of research on different phenomena of collective action (i.e. political parties, protest, interest groups, social movements, political violence, etc.) have generally preferred to affirm the boundaries between them, focusing on particular phenomena and reducing individuals and/or collective actors to single forms of collective action at a moment in time, rather than investigating continuities and transformations of forms of collective action across time and within specific contexts. This special issue encourages researchers across different fields of study to push our understanding beyond the present state of knowledge, by investigating the variable and dynamic character of forms of collective action: their potentially constant state of flux, continuing and transforming across time throughout individuals’ and collective actors’ trajectories. In doing this it aims to:

(1) improve and expand the theoretical and conceptual tools for studying the topic – thinking broadly about stages and dynamics of individuals’ and collective actors’ trajectories,

(2) suggest and explore methodological innovations to solve problems of previous research, and

(3) compare the topic in different social, political and cultural settings across.

Welcoming contributions from political sociology/sociology and other disciplines (e.g. political science, psychology, anthropology, geography and history), our aim with this special issue is to connect different fields of research, such as party politics, social movements, trade unions, civil society, lifestyle activism, and political violence. Theoretically informed empirical analyses will be preferred. Purely theoretical or methodological papers will also be accepted to the extent that they propose particularly innovative approaches.