Bernd Bonfert | Aarhus University (original) (raw)

Papers by Bernd Bonfert

Journal of Rural Studies, 2022

As the Covid-19 pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of our globalised agri-food system, local su... more As the Covid-19 pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of our globalised agri-food system, local sustainable food alternatives, such as community-supported agriculture (CSA), are on the rise. In CSA local farmers and households co-produce food sustainably and independently of the market. CSA's benefits and shortcomings are wellunderstood but we know little about how larger CSA networks can expand and consolidate the practice at scale. This paper investigates the UK CSA network, showing its ability to upscale, outscale and downscale CSA through institutionalisation, replication and politicization, before discussing the network's strategic limitations and dependencies. Funding details This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under Grant ES/S012435/1. and semi-structured expert interviews with network members. The article argues that the CSA network provides crucial support in expanding and consolidating CSA in the UK through up-scaling (institutionalisation), out-scaling (replication, alliance-building) and deepscaling (politicization), which has become further amplified in the wake of the Covid-pandemic. However, the network's material resources and political capacities remain very limited, making it highly dependent on external allies and societal trends. The next section introduces CSA and the concepts of the solidarity economy and network building, followed by a section explaining the methodology. Afterwards, the case study is presented and analysed,

[S.l.] : S.l. : s.n., 2020

In 2011, Europe witnessed the emergence of the anti-austerity movement, as activists across the c... more In 2011, Europe witnessed the emergence of the anti-austerity movement, as activists across the continent mobilized against the EU’s austerity-based crisis management programmes. The movement was rooted in increasingly diverse national struggles, but also developed new transnational coalitions. This dissertation investigates this dual nature of the European anti-austerity movement, asking a) how we can explain the movement’s diverse manifestation between countries, particularly Spain, Greece and Germany, and b) to what extent this diversity informed the development of transnational cooperation across the movement. To answer these questions, the dissertation develops a historical materialist theoretical framework for the study of social movements and employs a mixed-approach that includes qualitative document analyses of legislation and activist publications, semi-structured interviews with activists, participant observation at political events and a social network analysis of transnational activism. Answering the first question, the dissertation demonstrates that the diverse national characteristics and strategies of anti-austerity activism were decisively influenced by the different socio-economic effects, institutional implementation and public perception of austerity measures between countries. The severe crisis impact and authoritarian neoliberal crisis management in Spain and Greece spawned massive cross-class mobilisations and new activist infrastructures, which eventually strengthened far left political parties without however enabling them to institutionalize any actual alternative to neoliberal governance. Conversely, the relative socio-economic stability and popular acceptance of austerity in Germany left activists unable to mobilize a significant anti-austerity movement, hence they adopted a strategy of transnational cooperation instead. Answering the second question, the dissertation demonstrates that activists reproduce many of their spatial divisions and political strategies at the European level, as transnational coalitions specialize around three distinct archetypes: Reform coalitions are driven by professionalized transnational activist organizations who seek to affect EU legislation through institutional advocacy. Disruption coalitions bring together local and national groups, largely from Central Europe, aiming to shift public consciousness through protest actions. Solidarity coalitions are decentralized but often carried by local solidarity groups from Southern Europe and engage in mutual exchange and support to strengthen their members’ local struggles. The dissertation concludes that the anti-austerity movement (at the national and transnational level) reproduces many of the characteristics, strategies and divisions of previous activist generations, yet it also expands the scope of anti-neoliberal hegemony struggle through its greater embeddedness in local grassroots activism and its advancement of democratic prefiguration and mutual solidarity, all of which future activists can draw on.

Globalizations, 2020

ABSTRACT The European anti-austerity movement is generally associated with spawning leftist elect... more ABSTRACT The European anti-austerity movement is generally associated with spawning leftist electoral projects, which exemplify the domestic institutionalization of activism. That the movement also generated a number of transnational coalitions with unusually broad and far-reaching ambitions remained somewhat under the radar. Projects like Alter Summit and DiEM25 seek to expand the anti-austerity movement’s struggle to the European level, by developing transnational organizational structures and challenging the political course of the EU. However, neither project managed to live up to its ambitions thus far and this article explores why. It argues that Alter Summit and DiEM25 represent attempts to create a transnational ‘modern prince’: a party-like organization that unites social movements around a counter-hegemonic strategy. While both managed to develop such strategies they also encountered challenges in facilitating democratic cohesion between transnational leaders and domestic supporters. This is partly the result of idiosyncratic shortcomings, but also reveals general challenges for transnational activism.

Global Political Economy

While there has been a turn towards incorporating examples of dissent, resistance and alternative... more While there has been a turn towards incorporating examples of dissent, resistance and alternatives in the Global Political Economy literature, this article claims that there is still a considerable absence of analysis of dissent in and against the global political economy. The authors identify four frustrations (which can be easily turned into suggestions). First, that resistance, dissent and alternatives, continue to be marginal to most attempts at understanding the global political economy. Second, when resistance and dissent are considered, often they are presented as discrete episodes of ‘protest’. The third ‘frustration’ points towards the types of questions the literature tends to ask of instances of resistance: why resist, and with what effect? This directly connects with the fourth frustration: effect is often seen narrowly, simply as ‘impact’. The discussion of these frustrations concludes that dissent and resistance are ultimately central to the configurations of actors, i...

European Sociologist, 2019

Capital & Class, 2021

Sustainability

Multiple systemic crises have highlighted the vulnerabilities of our globalised food system, rais... more Multiple systemic crises have highlighted the vulnerabilities of our globalised food system, raising the demand for more resilient and ecologically sustainable alternatives, and fuelling engagement in practices such as community-supported agriculture (CSA). In CSA, local farmers and households share the costs and products of farming, allowing them to organise food provision non-commercially around short supply chains. While this may prefigure alternatives to the dominant food system, CSA is considered limited in regard to its scalability and accessibility. While these shortcomings apply to individual CSAs, we know little about whether multi-CSA networks can tackle them by expanding and institutionalising their practices at scale. This paper alleviates this blind spot by investigating local CSA networks in Wales and Germany through a lens of ‘food movement networks’, identifying their scaling practices and encountered challenges. It draws on semi-structured interviews with CSA actors...

Capital and Class, 2021

The ongoing commodification of housing and urban space in Europe has led to the formation of a bu... more The ongoing commodification of housing and urban space in Europe has led to the formation of a burgeoning housing movement, consisting of large anti-eviction networks in Southern Europe, as well as tenants’ unions and right-to-the-city networks in Central and Northern Europe. These different forms of housing activism have become increasingly connected at the transnational level, primarily due to the work of the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’. Consisting of activist groups from over 20 different countries, this coalition facilitates mutual exchange, organises collective campaigns and has begun engaging in institutional advocacy at the European Union level. It steadily expands in size and tactical repertoire, aiming to develop a more unified transnational strategy for attaining affordable and self-determined living space across Europe. Drawing on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, this article makes the case that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ increasingly performs the function of a ‘collective intellectual’ that organises a transnational struggle against neoliberal hegemony. Based on qualitative analyses of documents, interviews and field notes, it demonstrates that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ exhibits a counter-hegemonic perspective that opposes neoliberal capitalism as a whole and manages to facilitate mutual solidarity across different activist communities explicitly on the basis of class struggle. At the same time, instead of organising a democratic centralist political project the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ pursues a more decentralised approach to collective intellectual leadership that prioritises domestic struggles, yet also lacks a cohesive long-term strategy.

In this paper I illustrate a theoretical approach to social movement research that seeks to deliv... more In this paper I illustrate a theoretical approach to social movement research that seeks to deliver a combined analysis of the discursive elements and material context conditions of movements. This is demonstrated via an abbreviated meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative research on the " indignant " movements in Spain and Greece. I argue that an in-depth understanding of a social movement's characteristics and development requires us to correlate its political goals and protest practices with its sociopolitical context. In order to achieve this the framing-approach to social movement theory needs to be embedded in a materialist theoretical base, consisting of Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Poulantzas's state theory. I apply this perspective by focusing on four substantial and developmental dimensions of the indignant movements and highlighting their interrelations: The political regime of austerity politics, the social composition of activists, the framing of protest activities and the long-term positioning among other political actors. This approach ultimately demonstrates that there is a strong causal connection between the first three of these dimensions specifically, while the fourth dimension emphasizes the relevance of a social movement's relationship towards other social actors in determining its sociopolitical impact. I conclude that his approach, while extensive, showcases the fundamental necessity of overcoming monocausal theoretical perspectives when analyzing complex societal actors.

Books by Bernd Bonfert

Book Reviews by Bernd Bonfert