Abstract

The protest movements that followed the Second World War have recently become the object of study for various disciplines; however, the exchange of ideas between research fields, and comparative research in general, is lacking. An international and interdisciplinary dialogue is vital to not only describe the similarities and differences between the single national movements but also to evaluate how they contributed to the formation and evolution of a transnational civil society in Europe. This volume undertakes this challenge as well as questions some major assumptions of post-1945 protest and social mobilization both in Western and Eastern Europe. Historians, political scientists, sociologists and media studies scholars come together and offer insights into social movement research beyond conventional repertoires of protest and strictly defined periods, borders and paradigms, offering new perspectives on past and present processes of social change of the contemporary world.

“This is a wide ranging and informative study…The essays are well presented [and], intrinsically interesting.”  ·  Ruth Kinna, Loughborough University

“The mixture of historical and contemporary accounts and perspectives constitutes an original and much needed approach to the study of social movements.”   ·  Peo Hansen, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University, Sweden

Hara Kouki is a historian and a PhD candidate in the Law Department at Birkbeck College, London. She has co-edited The Greek Crisis and European Modernity (Palgrave, 2013). Previous affiliated researcher with ELIAMEP (Athens, Greece), Hara currently holds a Research Assistant position at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence, Italy.

Eduardo Romanos is a Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the Department of Sociology I at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence.