The indignants' demonstrations in Greece: a social-psychological analysis (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rage and Protest: The case of the Greek Indignant movement
In 2011 numerous Occupy and anti-austerity protests took place across Europe and the United States. Passionate indignation at the failure of political elites became a mobilizing force against formal political institutions. In Greece a mass movement known as the Aganaktismeni (the Indignant) became the main agent of social resistance to the memorandum signed by the Greek government, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The Greek movement did not take the form of a social movement sharing a collective identity. Left-wing protestors played a prominent role. Protestors embracing right-wing populist frames also participated actively in collective mobilizations, while segments of the extreme right attempted to manipulate rage to their advantage. During the Greek Indignant movement civil society remained a terrain contested by conflicting political forces. This unique feature of the Greek movement posed a completely different challenge to the principles of diversity and inclusiveness than the one debated within the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy protests. Furthermore, it illustrates that rage and indignation may spark dissimilar forms of political contention. Hence, rage and indignation do not merely motivate ‘passive citizens’ to participate in collective protest. They are linked to cognitive frames and individual preferences, which influence protestors’ claims and mobilizations’ political outcomes. Accordingly, advances in democratization and inclusive citizenship are only one of the possible outcomes of mobilizations prompted by rage and indignation.
The ‘Normalization’ of Young Protestors in Greece
Youth in Central and Eastern Europe
During the last decades, the number of demonstrations as well as of demonstrators has significantly increased in most Western European countries. Some scholars support that protesting has become so widespread leading to the ‘normalization’ of the demonstrators. Overall research examining the ‘normalization thesis’ of street youth protest by analyzing representative datasets is extremely scarce. The chapter by analyzing youth-over-sampled survey data collected as part of the EURYKA project examines key socioeconomic determinants in participating in demonstrations among Greek young adults aged 18-34 years old. Greece is an exceptionally interesting case study to examine the ‘normalization thesis’ of youth protesting as the recent recession and its severe socioeconomic impacts triggered an exceptional wave of protest mobilization where Greek youth was one of the main protest claimants. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic determinants under study, such as gender, educational at...
Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 1, 31-51.
Greece has been one of the countries which most severely suffered the consequences of the global economic crisis during the past two years. It has also been a country with a long tradition of protest. The present paper reports a study in which we examined the ways in which people talk about subjective power and deal with the outcome of collective action in the context of defeat. Subjective power has recently become a prominent field of research and its link to collective action has been studied mainly through the concept of collective efficacy. The current study explored questions based on recent social identity accounts of subjective power in collective action. We examined participants' experiences of subjective power before and after Mayday 2012, in Greece. Two different collective action events took place: a demonstration against austerity and a demonstration to support steel workers who were on strike. In total, 19 people were interviewed, 9 before the demonstrations and 10 after. Thematic analysis was carried out. Protest participants talked about power in terms of five first-order themes: the necessity of building power, unity, emotional effects, effects of (dis)organization, and support as success. The steel workers we spoke to experienced the events more positively than the other interviewees and had different criteria for success. Theories of collective action need to take account of the fact that subjective power has important emotional as well as cognitive dimensions, and that definitions of success depend on definitions of identity.
A Social Psychology of Protest. Individuals in Action (Introduction)
van Stekelenburg, Jacquelien, and Bert Klandermans. A Social Psychology of Protest: Individuals in Action. Cambridge University Press, 2024
In 1997 The Social Psychology of Protest (Klandermans, 1997) appeared. Until then theories and approaches to collective action were scattered throughout psychological, sociological and political science journals and volumes in Europe and the United States. The Social Psychology of Protest was an attempt to bring these bits and pieces together. A very successful attempt-it became a classic in the field. However, the two decades that has passed since its appearance have been vigorous decades in the field and in the world. One can see this volume-Individuals in Action-as an attempt to integrate the recent efforts and update the assessment of where we are today. Since 1997, the world of protest has changed profoundly. Take the Internet, social media, e-mail, and smartphones, which gave the world a virtual 'stratum'. In The Social Psychology of Protest there is no single reference to Internet nor social media. This would be inconceivable nowadays. Simultaneously, a new social fabric emerges, loosely coupled networks are added to the organization and structure of society, accelerated by ever renewing ICTs. Traditional 'greedy' institutions such as trade unions and churches which made significant demands on members' time, loyalty and energy (Coser, 1974) are replaced by 'light' groups and associations that are loose, easy to join and easy to leave. Despite this process of individualization people are still committed to common causes. Underlying this, is what Lichterman (1996) calls 'personalism': people feel a personal sense of political responsibility rather than feeling restricted or obliged to a community or group. These societal processes imply profound changes in protest dynamics that call for an update of empery and theory.
The recent economic crisis shaped a new wave of protest in Europe mobilising thousands of people. Austerity measures brought not only the ‘usual suspects’ onto the streets, they also awoke less frequent demonstrators. What brought all these people to the streets? Are their motivations the same for participation in all demonstrations? We compare participants in two types of mobilisations against austerity: those called particularistic (which are reactions to particular anti-austerity issues), and those universalistic (which address much broader issues such as questioning the political system). We also compare two typologies of participants taking into account their participation history: regular and occasional protesters. Employing a two-by-two design defined by type of demonstration (Particularistic vs. Universalistic) and the individual’s participation history (Occasionals vs. Regulars), we found that the differences between demonstrations were smaller than those within types of protesters. Nevertheless, even in this period of hardship, motivation to participate in particularistic or universalistic protests differ depending on the perceptions of political system, ideological positioning and organisational embeddedness. Interaction analyses showed that different levels of identity, trust in institutions and satisfaction with democracy are crucial in driving people to participate in different types of demonstrations as occasionals or regulars.
A brief social psychological perspective of types of social movements: from crowds to revolutions
Protests and revolutions are human manifestations since the political systems were first implemented. These kinds of movements are always helpful, if not to make a mentionable change; at least they empower the civil society and make people feel as part of a group since human behavior tends to gather in situations of grief and suffer. But my perception over a protest was always involving the mass, the large group of people, unorganized, rebellious, without any clear direction. Not only after I started participating in the numerous protests in Romania, I could feel the intrinsic reaction, I could feel as a part of it, I could feel as if I haven’t had been there and if all the people are thinking the same than there is no protests. Is like in any elections slogans: Every vote counts! Here comes social psychology that explains what all the forms of social movements from the lens of individuals and their behavior in these contexts
Political Protest in Times of Crisis. Construction of New Frames of Diagnosis and Emotional Climate
Frontiers in Psychology
In times of crisis, political mobilizations increase. Many of them compete to impose a determined diagnosis of the situation. This work analyses this issue, taking into consideration two of the movements that have had a greater incidence during the crisis in Spain: The Catalonian National Assembly and the Marches for dignity. The objective is to know how the categories of aggrieved ingroup and outgroup responsible were identified and how both these movements defined the emotional climate at that moment. This work includes two studies. In the first one, an analysis of the categories identified in the manifestos published by these two movements was carried out. The results show that the Marches for dignity constructed a more inclusive ingroup identity and show a more negative emotional climate than the Catalonian National Assembly. The second study includes a sample of 919 participants and nonparticipants in 2 demonstrations called by those organizations. In this case MANOVAs of 2 (Type of demonstration: Catalonian National Assembly, Marches for dignity) × 2 (Type of participants: participants, non-participants) were performed. Results show that participants in both demonstrations have a higher level of injustice than nondemonstrators. Furthermore, demonstrators in Marches for dignity have a more negative perception of emotional climate than non-demonstrators. However, and contrary to the hypothesis, demonstrators of the Catalonian National Assembly have a more positive perception of emotional climate than non-demonstrators. The work explains these results in the socio-political context in which each of these movements acts and highlights the relevance of comparative investigation designs to further the knowledge of political mobilization dynamics.
2016
The object of this research consists in the various forms and features of social movements that have emerged in Greece during the current period of crisis, all evaluated as part of “the social movement as a whole”. The studied period spans from April 2010 to October 2011, and includes the emergence of different forms of mobilization (general and sectoral strikes, the “movement of the squares”, various forms of civil disobedience). The focus was placed on the forms of political participation and the transformation of the actors’ consciousness in relation to their participation and experience, in connection with (1) the objective conditions; (2) their own social position in society; and (3) their own conceptualization of the “political”. The development of new relations between people and politics as well as of various forms of political representation (existing and/or new ones) have been given special attention. Methodologically, this research focuses on two key points. The first con...