Global, transnational and national social movements : the case study of occupy wall street

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite their lack of merits and demands, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) did become a defining feature in the short aftermath of the Financial Crisis and a part of the global occupy-movements during the protest year of 2011. As the founders and organisers behind the first encampments in Zuccotti Park called out for a Tahrir moment in the United States of America (US), few scholars or pundits had seen the leaderless movement coming. OWS spread across the US in the matter of months, hitting the media headlines gradually and more rapidly than any previous protest movement. Scholarly responses to OWS have been plentiful, and their categorisations of the OWS' structure, demands and impact have been going in many different directions.This study attempts to debate and analyse the main research question; is OWS a new kind of a social movement? Even though there are several ways in which one may approach this question, the following will focus on the organisational structures, the political opportunity structures and the global linkages of OWS. The organisational structures has been debated by most, as the movement has a leaderless structure, it is ruled by consensus and supported by protesters from all social spheres, who came, protested and left as they pleased. The political and economic deficits, which gives way to the political opportunity structures of the movement, has not been this dramatic since the Great Depression. The Financial Crisis of 2008 has not only been defined as an economic crisis, but also a crisis of representative democracy. Furthermore, the global protest movements of 2011 have been similar in several ways. Even as all of them, be it Tahrir, 15M, in Greece or OWS, has been unique in matters of context, time and space, they share similarities in tactics, methods and fundamental demands - democracy and prosperity.The concluding statement to the research question is not clear-cut. Rather, it revokes former debates, which distinguished between old and new social movements, and implements a globalising civil society. A new kind of a social movement has come and gone, with elements of the earlier movements. It has added new modes of tactics, structures and demands, all formed by the present context. OWS is not an exception.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University