Seminars on Civil Society, Social Movements and Resistance Research

CSM-RESIST SEMINARS 

Forum for civil society and social movement research (CSM) and The Resistance Studies research group (RESIST).

When and where

All seminars will be held in room F417, Skanstorget 18, unless otherwise noted.

Most seminars are also hybrid, unless otherwise stated. If you intend to join us via zoom, please notify us via e-mail

Seminars will be held in English unless otherwise noted.

Wednesday 18 January (with Allmänna seminariet) 13.15-15
Book seminar: Resourceful Civil Society: Navigating the Changing Landscapes of Civil Society Organizations
Zhanna Kravchencko, Södertörn University, and Katarzyba Jezierska, Gothenburg University presents their co-edited (with Lisa Kings) book.

Recommended reading: first chapter of the book, available here:https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-99007-7

Friday 3 February (with EMOGU) 13.15-15
Managing fear through digital interactions: emerging meanings of the COVID-19 pandemic in a vaccine-hesitant cyber community
Maja Sawicka, University of Warsaw

Maja Sawicka is a sociologist of emotions and social interactions. In her research she investigates emotional mechanisms underpinning social interactions, and the roles played by emotions expressed by the people participating in these interactions. She specializes in qualitative social research methods. In her research she primarily uses the tools of digital ethnography. She is the author of books:Emotions in Digital Interactions. Ethnopsychologies of ‘Angel’s Mothers’ in Online Bereavement Communities (with Irene Rafanell, published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Emotions in Interactions of Contemporary Polish Society (in Polish, published by Warsaw University Press, 2018).

Thursday 23 February 14.15-16
Articulating a global politics of decolonization. Decoloniality and subalternity in the global Climate Movement and Global Civil Society
Ludvig Sunnemark, Oslo University

Ludvig Sunnemark is a doctoral research fellow in Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. In his dissertation project, he aims to establish a theoretical understanding of globalized social movements and global civil society from the outlooks of Gramscian Marxism and post-colonialism, building from case studies on the climate justice and Black Lives Matter-movements.

Thursday 23 March 14.15-16
Sweden: A Nordic Model of Obstruction
Kjell Vowles, Chalmers University of Technology

Kjell Vowles is a PhD-candidate at the division of STS at Chalmers University of Technology. His research is focused on climate obstruction and climate change denialism, especially in connection with far-right nationalism. In his dissertation he primarily analysed climate change discourses on far-right alternative media.

Wednesday 19 April (with Allmänna seminariet) 13.15-15
Book seminar: Postapocalyptic Environmentalism: The Green Movement in Times of Catastrophe
Carl Cassegård and Håkan Thörn, Gothenburg University present their book.
Discussant: Alf Hornborg, Lund University

Alf Hornborg is PhD in Cultural Anthropology (Uppsala University, 1986) and Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at Lund University. His transdisciplinary research on human-environmental relations is at the intersections of anthropology, environmental history, ecological economics, and political ecology. He is author of The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), Global Magic (2016), Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene (2019), and The Magic of Technology (2023).

Carl Cassegård is Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His current research interests include the environmental move­ment, critical theory and eco-Marxism, and his books include Toward a Critical Theory of Nature: Capital, Ecology, and Dialectics (2021), Climate Action in a Globalizing World (co-edited 2017), and Youth Movements, Trauma and Alternative Space in Contemporary Japan (2014).

Håkan Thörn is Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research concerns social movements, power, and globaliza­tion and his books include Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Second Edition 2009), Climate Action in a Globalizing World (co-edited 2017), Contemporary Co-Housing in Europe (co-edited 2020) and Urban Uprisings (co-edited 2016).

Thursday 11 May, 14.15-16
Kampen om Kommersen ‒ platsutveckling som performativ aktivism
Anders Westerström, Gothenburg University

Anders Westerström is a PhD candidate in cultural studies at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Gothenburg University. In his theses “Alternatives to Hegemony?” he explores the subsumption of progressive values and ideas into neoliberal urban planning processes.

Thursday 1 June, 14.15-16
Towards a new political subjectivity. Social reproduction, recent abortion protests, and re-democratization processes in Poland
Magdalena Grabowska, Polish Academy of Sciences

Magdalena Grabowska is sociologist, and a professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is the author of the book Broken genealogy: Social and political women’s activism after 1945 and contemporary women’s movement in Poland (2018), and a co-author of a Feminist Fund report Where there is an oppression, there is a resistance (2022). Her academic interests span the history of emancipation movements, post coloniality and post-socialism, and transnational feminisms. She also conducts activist research on violence and sexual violence against women, reproductive rights, women’s equality, and feminist and queer social mobilizations.