Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research (CSM)

About us

Our world is rapidly being transformed by globally encompassing processes of change. Social movements play a central role in many of these processes – at times as motors of change, other times as forces of opposition to change. It is therefore important to develop and deepen our knowledge about the relationship between social processes of change and social movements as collective agents of change or resistance. To identify a social movement, we consider three elements as important: their network form, a sense of shared identity, and the use of conflict: social movements are informal networks of organizations, groups, and individuals that share a collective identity and that engage in a conflictual relationship with a common opponent.

The list of issues in which social movements are involved today is very long (e.g. climate change, opposition to war, feminism, LGBTI, unemployment and precarious work relations, north-south global relations, human rights, racism, intellectual property and the commons, regulation of financial markets, food sovereignty, health, land and housing, privatization of public services, etc.) and their political direction is not always progressive. In recent years we have also witnessed the growth of nationalistic and religious movements with a neo-conservative agenda. Despite the diversity of movements, however, a common trend in contemporary social movements since the 1990s is their increasing transnationalization as well as their tendency to engage across policy fields to identify common causes for diverse problems, such as the lack of democratic institutions at the global level.

The Centre for Social Movement Research (CSM) was launched in 2011 to enhance the communication and collaboration of social movement scholars in the Nordic Countries. CSM has its base at the Department of Sociology of the University of Gothenburg, with close ties to national and international research networks studying social movements. CSM organises seminars, workshops, and conferences and coordinates research projects.

The researchers tied to CSM have published both internationally and in Sweden about different kinds of social movements, ways of organising protest, and relations between the state and other parts of society. They are also teaching university courses about social movements. For more information, please contact: Håkan Thörn hakan.thorn@sociology.gu.se or Åsa Wettergren asa.wettergren@sociology.gu.se.

Group members

Mattias Bengtsson
Class and its effects on working conditions and political attitudes, trade union movement.

Carl Cassegård
Social movements and activism in Japan.

Christoph Haug
Public opinion, public discourse and the public sphere, social movements and the transnationalization of civil society, the sociology of meetings and poor people's movements.

Bengt Larsson
Associate Professor in sociologi and is doing research on trade union cooperation within Europe in the project "Can the unions within the EU cooperate?"

Abby Peterson
Police research, jouth crime, social movements, political participation, demonstrations and political protests.

Bertil Rolandsson
The organization of labour movement and new internet based movements, the intersection of business and movements.

Linda Soneryd
How social conflicts around new technologies and/or environmental decision-making intersects with government-led public participation initiatives.

Anna Maria Szczepanska
Free- and Open Source Software movement, the culture and politics of new media, gender & IT.

Johan Söderberg www.johansoderberg.net
The free software movement, the open hardware movement, hackers, epistemological approaches to social movements.

Håkan Thörn
Social movements and globalization, North/South, urban counterculture.

Stellan Vinthagen
Resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conflict transformation and social change

Mattias Wahlström
Social movements, political participation, political protests, and protest policing.

Cathrin Wasshede
Gender and sexuality, resistance and social movements.

Magnus Wennerhag
Social movements, political participation, demonstrations and political protests.

Åsa Wettergren (Personal information)
Social movements, migration, processes of identification and change in organisations and society, sociology of emotions.