Capitalism in Social Movements Studies: A definitional problem

The emergence and increased importance of social movements in a very wide geography after the outbreak of the global financial crisis is remarkable, not only for the academic community that has for a long time tried to theorize this sort of political grouping and strategy, but also for the common citizen who, perhaps more than those belonging to academia, can actually see these movements as a potential platform of engagement in political action. The instances abound: the Occupy movement in the USA; the whole Arab Spring; Podemos in Spain; Syriza in Greece; and even more recently the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party in the UK. Naturally, the social analyst would rightly be suspicious of these widespread dynamics being only coincidental with the crisis of contemporary capitalism that is still unfolding and whose end is necessarily uncertain. It is on this suspicion that Professor Della Porta focused in the book here under review. The exercise is laudable and was for a long time lacking. As a matter of fact, and as the author repeats often, social movements scholars have consistently left out from their research considerations about the role of the system of production. Bringing important fundamentals from social theory and political economy to her main field of studies, Professor Della Porta aims at providing a panoramic look at what have been the recent changes both in social movements and brought by social movements. The scope of the empirical analysis is large, particularly given the wide range of cases that are brought to the analysis—in fact, there was no “case selection”, for virtually all instances of emergence of social movements in the last few years are included in the study.