Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and Spanish Student Movements

Description

Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions. This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media’s representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Introduction (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 3-11 Memory and Movements: A Long Research Path (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 13-35 The Student Movements in Italy and Spain and How to Study Their Memories (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 37-55 Front Matter ....Pages 57-57 Contentious Memories of the Italian Student Movement: The ‘Long 1968’ in the Field of Public Memory (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 59-118 Contentious Memories of the Spanish Student Movement: Representations of the Spanish 1968 in the Public Memory of the Transition (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 119-175 Front Matter ....Pages 177-177 Syntax: The Forms of Memory (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 179-199 Semantics: The Competing Narratives of Student Movement Memories (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 201-244 Pragmatics: Memory, Identity, and Strategy (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 245-290 Conclusions (Lorenzo Zamponi)....Pages 291-318 Back Matter ....Pages 319-339