Social Movements and Social Change

In this three week programme, students will learn about the tactics and strategies of (urban) social movements, researching and articulating a collectivity's interests and claims. In particular, students will learn how to critically apply social movement theory to explain the successes and/or failures of protest and resistance in particular social contexts. Participants will examine different forms of protest and resistance, with a special focus on Amsterdam.

This programme will turn to important moments in Amsterdam's recent history to examine urban struggles in depth. Participants will learn about the squatter and LGBT movements of the 70s and 80s as an important, contemproary, point of departure. Later in the programme, we will examine the occupy movement (as it occured globally and in the Netherlands), and the various food-related protest movements that are emerging in Amsterdam today. Apart from developing a thorough theoretical understanding of classical explanatory frameworks within the field of urban sociology, students will also gain practical research skills by conducting small-scale qualitative research on a current urban social movement in the Netherlands.

This programme will be divided into three themes from which to examine the topic of protest and resistance, including relevant weekly excursions in Amsterdam and the Netherlands to highlight past and ongoing social movements. We will begin each week from classical approaches, and critically engage with theories at hand. During the middle of the week, guest lecturers and a full-day excursion to a relevant site will help participants understand the complexity of the issues at stake. At the end of each week, participants will collect their findings and record them to build on our "own", better version of the theoretical frameworks that we encounter throughout the programme in a day-long seminar session.