Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and Spanish Student Movements (Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology) - Hardcover

Zamponi, Lorenzo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3319685503 ISBN 13: 9783319685502

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Synopsis

Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions.

This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media’s representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past.

About this title

About the Author

Lorenzo Zamponi is a Research Fellow in sociology and political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore, in the Istituto di Scienze Umane e Sociali (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences) in Italy, where he is part of the COSMOS (Centre on Social Movement Studies) research team. He holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute. His research interests include memory, contentious politics and media analysis.

From the Back Cover

Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions.

This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media’s representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3319685503
• ISBN 13: 9783319685502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352