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Culture, Activism and Politics: Anthropology and the Study of Social Movements
In recent years, we have witnessed a global resurgence of protests and social movements, from feminist mobilizations and the Arab Spring to austerity protests and Occupy movements, to Gen Z student demonstrations, and to digitally mediated activism. This course examines how social movements emerge, take shape, and transform political and cultural life through an anthropological lens. We explore why people mobilize, how collective identities form, and how movements create alternative visions of social change. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from around the world, we examine feminist, student, migrant, digital, and post-socialist mobilizations. The seminar integrates classic and contemporary anthropological approaches, including prefigurative politics, affect theory, feminist anthropology, digital ethnography, and militant ethnography. Students will learn how anthropologists analyze social movements as everyday practices of world-making, resistance, and political imagination. Anthropology contributes to social movement studies by expanding the concept of “collective resistance” beyond formal protest to encompass everyday forms of dissent, cultural practices, and affective experiences. We will examine how people resist neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and global capitalism; how digital technologies reshape activism; and how diaspora communities mobilize transnationally. Poslední úprava: Üçok Ecem Nazlı, MSc. (13.01.2026)
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Aim of the Course The aim of this course is to introduce students to anthropological approaches to social movements and to explore how collective action, resistance, and political imagination emerge in different cultural and political contexts. The course trains students to think ethnographically about protest, activism, everyday forms of dissent, and prefigurative politics, and to understand how emotions, bodies, technologies, and social relations shape contemporary movements. Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, students will be able to:
Poslední úprava: Üçok Ecem Nazlı, MSc. (13.01.2026)
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Course Requirements & Assessment 1. Class Participation & Engagement (20%)
2. Prefigurative Politics Mini-Ethnography (50%) (Group Assignment- Details TBA) Students examine how activists “bring the future into the present” in:
Submit a visual ethnographic snapshot (ethnographic video /photographic documentation with narration and fiedl notes/ visual analysis, interpretation /podcast recording) or written essay.
3. Digital Ethnography Assignment (30%)
Students choose a digital social movement (e.g., #MeToo, #MahsaAmini, Fridays for Future, TikTok activism).
Poslední úprava: Üçok Ecem Nazlı, MSc. (23.05.2026)
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WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Week 1: Introduction to the Course
We will go over the syllabus, goals of the course, and what anthropology brings to the study of social movements. Students will reflect on their own experiences with social movements.
Week 2: Conceptualizing Social Movements in Anthropology
This week introduces how anthropology contributes to the interdisciplinary study of social movements. We compare anthropological perspectives with those of sociology and political science, highlighting anthropology’s focus on lived experience, meaning making, and the cultural embedding of protest. We also discuss ethnography as a methodological approach for studying mobilization, tracing how movements are constituted through everyday practices, narratives, and relational processes.
Salman, T., Assies, W. (2017). Anthropology and the Study of Social Movements. In: Roggeband, C., Klandermans, B. (eds) Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.cuni.cz/10.1007/978-3-319-57648-0_4
Graeber, D. (2009). Direct action, anarchism, direct democracy. In Direct action: An ethnography (pp. 322–362). Oakland, CA: AK Press. (Please also look at CHAPTER 1: New York Diary March 2001)
Week 3: Anthropology of Emotions and Affect in Social Movements
This session examines the role of emotions and affect in mobilization, focusing on how emotions are socially produced, circulated, and politicized within movements. We analyze how emotions such as fear, hope, anger, and solidarity shape participation, identity, and collective action. We explore the methodological challenges of writing affective ethnography and consider emotions as both discursive and embodied modes of political engagement.
Abu-Lughod Lila and Catherine Lutz .1990. Introduction: Emotion, Discourse and the Politics of Everyday Life. In Language and the Politics of Emotion. Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. Pp.1–23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Skoggard, I., & Waterston, A. (2015). Introduction: Toward an anthropology of affect and evocative ethnography. Ethos, 43(1), 1–16.
Week 4: Prefigurative Praxis, Pluriverse and Collective Action
We will explore prefigurative politics how activists attempt to enact future social worlds in the present through experimental practices, ethical commitments, and alternative infrastructures. Drawing from Colombian scholar-activist anthropologist Arturo Escobar and pluriverse theory, we discuss how movements imagine and materialize “other worlds” beyond capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal logics. We examine the connection between ontological politics, everyday utopias, and collective forms of world-making.
Escobar, Arturo. “Foreword.” The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics: The Future Is Now, edited by Lara Monticelli, 1st ed., Bristol University Press, 2022, pp. xxii–xxx.
Escobar, A. (2020). Theory and the un/real: Tools for rethinking “reality” and the possible. In Pluriversal politics: The real and the possible (pp. xx–xx). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Week 5: Activist Anthropology and Methodology / Militant Ethnography
This week focuses on activist and militant ethnography as methodological frameworks. We discuss the ethical and political implications of conducting research with movements rather than on them. Readings by Santamarina and Juris highlight how scholar-activists engage in co-production of knowledge, participatory research, and long-term collaboration with political collectives. We also address feminist methodological concerns, including reflexivity, positionality, and care within movement spaces.
Santamarina, Ana. 2025. Learning with political movements: social reproductive politics as a scholar-activist methodology, Social Movement Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2025.2470248
Juris, J. S. (2007). Practicing militant ethnography with the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona. In S. Shukaitis & D. Graeber (Eds.), Constituent imagination: Militant investigations // collective theorization (pp. 164–175). AK Press.
Week 6: Anthropology of Digital Activism (Guest Lecturer-TBA)
This session investigates how digital technologies reshape the terrain of activism. We analyze online/offline entanglements, the role of platforms, algorithmic visibility, and the emergence of data activism. Readings by Charitsis & Laamanen and Ansar & Maitra show how marginalized groups mobilize via digital infrastructures while navigating surveillance, platform governance, and digital capitalism. Students learn to use ethnographic methods for studying digital publics.
Charitsis, V., & Laamanen, M. (2022). When digital capitalism takes (on) the neighbourhood: data activism meets place-based collective action. Social Movement Studies, 23(3), 320–337.
Ansar, A., & Maitra, J. (2024). Digital Diaspora Activism at the Margins: Unfolding Rohingya Diaspora Interactions on Facebook (2017–2022). Social Media + Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241228603 (Original work published 2024)
Week 7: Digital Ethnography Assignment Week: In this week’s assignment, students will conduct a short digital ethnography by observing and analyzing a chosen online social movement across platforms. They will examine how activists engage with digital infrastructures, trace forms of visibility and marginalization shaped by platform algorithms, and apply ethnographic methods to document interactions, narratives, and practices within digital publics.
Week 8: Diaspora Activism
We explore how transnational communities engage in political mobilization across borders. We will examine how diaspora activists navigate authoritarianism, repression, and exile; how they sustain connections to home-country struggles; and how emotions, identities, and belonging shape their political engagement.
Üçok, Ecem Nazlı. “Transformative Activism and Feminist Solidarity: A Qualitative Study on the Personal Narratives of Polish Activist Women.” Gender and Research, vol. 25, no. 1, 2024.
Moss, D. M. (2021). The Arab Spring Abroad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Week 9: Prefigurative Politics Mini-Ethnography Week
Week 10: Feminist Anthropological Perspectives on Social Movements
This week examines feminist contributions to the anthropology of social movements, highlighting how gender, power, embodiment, and care shape activism. We discuss how feminist theory and ethnography illuminate the relational, affective, and ethical dimensions of resistance. Readings by Lamphere and Piccardi & Escobar illustrate feminist praxis in diverse contexts from U.S. activism to Jineolojî’s matristic political practice in Rojava and demonstrate how feminist movements prefigure alternative social and political futures.
Lamphere, L. (2016). Feminist anthropology engages social movements: Theory, ethnography, and activism. In E. Lewin & L. M. Silverstein (Eds.), Mapping feminist anthropology in the twenty-first century (pp. 41–64). Rutgers University Press.
Piccardi, E. G., & Escobar, A. (2022). Prefiguring Post-Patriarchal Futures: Jineolojî’s Matristic Praxis in the Context of Rojava’s Revolution. In L. Monticelli (Ed.), The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics: The Future Is Now (1st ed., pp. 161–176). Bristol University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2x00vn2.19
Week 11: Feminist Stories- Social Movement Tour The date and time will be decided depending on the tour’s availability.
Week 12: Wrap Up Poslední úprava: Üçok Ecem Nazlı, MSc. (18.02.2026)
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