Economic Outcomes of Social Movements

Abstract

In his theory of the state as expressed in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel relegated the market to the sphere of civil society-or "the system of needs"-as separate from both the family, as a private institution, and the state, as politics and the site of " ethical life." He regarded civil society and the market as forming a sphere of social life where individuals were set against each other in egoistic terms, each searching to fulfill their own needs and desires. An initial theoretical problem in discussing the economic outcomes of social movements is thus: To what extent and in what sense can social movement action in the sphere of politics change or impact the economic sphere? Recent scholarship looks at how social movements bring contentiousness to the market and how they might bring about market change (

Solidarity economy and political mobilisation: Insights from Barcelona

“…The paper also offers an understanding of the genesis of solidarity economy organisations as an economic outcome of political mobilisation (Giugni & Grasso, 2019). In this sense, the social movement approach helps to explain how the economic and political dimensions of solidarity economy organisations are strongly intertwined, and transversal to the three dimensions analysed (productive, collective and care, as shown in Table 2).…”

Imagining the future through revisiting the past: the value of history in thinking about R(R)I’s possible future(s)

“…If, following Brundage and Guston, we assume that R(R)I does fit the criteria of a SIM, a pertinent questionespecially when thinking about the futurewould concern the impact or effects of SIMs over time. There are four kinds of external impacts a social movement can have: procedural (changes to rules, laws, or policies), substantive (changes to the material environment), structural (changes in institutional structures), and sensitising (changes to the political agenda and/or public attitudes) (Giugni 1995;Van Der Heijden 1999).…”

Au-delà de la confrontation : saisir la diversité des interactions entre mondes militants et mondes économiques

“…Pour les premiers travaux analysant les interactions entre mouvements sociaux et mondes économiques, il s'agissait de critiquer le caractère stato-centré de la sociologie des contestations collectives (Tarrow, 1994 ;Tilly and Tarrow, 2015) et de montrer que les mondes économiques pouvaient également constituer des cibles ("targets") des mouvements protestataires (Van Dyke, Soule & Taylor, 2004). Au-delà de ce déplacement analytique, nombre de ces travaux se sont néanmoins contentés de transposer des paradigmes et des cadres théoriques forgés pour analyser les rapports entre mouvements sociaux et Etat, sans profondément les renouveler (Soule 2018; Giugni & Grasso 2019 ;Walker, Martin et McCarthy, 2008).…”

“…Au-delà des modalités d'action, une grande partie du champ "social movements, firms and markets" a cherché à identifier les facteurs de la vulnérabilité des acteurs économiques aux contestations sociales qui les visent -et donc les déterminants de l'impact économique (economic outcomes) de ces dernières (Giugni & Grasso, 2019). Fruit de la transposition du concept de structure d'opportunités politiques issu de la sociologie des mouvements sociaux (McAdam, 1982;Tarrow, 1994), la notion de structures d'opportunités économiques a été mobilisée par plusieurs travaux pour rendre compte de la diversité des réponses des entreprises face à la critique (Schurman, 2004).…”