Grzegorz Piotrowski

The transformative power of cooperation between social movements: Squatting and tenants' movements in Poland

Squatting, or the use of property without the owners’ permission, and tenants’ activism are under-researched areas, in particular, in the post-socialist context. Poland is pointed out as extraordinary on the map of squatting in post-socialist Europe and a considerable number of tenants’ organizations are active in the country. What is most interesting is that squatters and tenants’ activists are forming alliances, despite obvious differences in their organizational models, social composition, along with the specific motives and goals of their activism. The objective of this paper is to examine the relations between the tenants’ and squatting movements in Poland by studying two cities where both movements are established and cooperating closely. In particular, we are interested in the transformative power of such cooperation, assuming that cooperation between social movements results in negotiations and transformations of the involved social movement actors. The empirical foundations for this paper are 50 interviews, of which 30 were conducted in Warsaw with squatters and tenants’ movement activists and the remaining 20 with activists in Poznań. Warsaw and Poznań are, moreover, two Polish cities where the squatting movement is most vibrant and where squatters and tenants have achieved some considerable successes in their activities. The paper argues against previous studies emphasizing access to abundant resources and identity alignment as crucial for the mobilization of collective and collaborative action. Instead, it argues that the lack of resources might equally be driving social movements towards cooperation, as a kind of compensation. Further, our cases demonstrate that ideology and identity alignment in social movements create stagnation in regard to openness towards new allies. We therefore argue that a high degree of identity alignment and ideological consistency might discourage the formation of new alliances.

25 YEARS AFTER THE COMMUNISM IN EUROPE: PHENOMENA, PROBLEMS AND TEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS: Radical Urban Movements in Poland – the case of squatting

Radical social movements are more and more often the subject of academic inquiry, where their agenda, identity-building processes and repertoires of action are examined vis a vis the dominant discu ...

Radical left movements in Europe

When the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, it was seen by some as proof of the final demise of the ideas and aspirations of the radical left. Not many years passed, however, before the critique of capit ...

Green Activism in Post-Socialist Europe and the former Soviet Union

The first section of the volume provides the theoretical foundation for the proceeding sections. The theoretical essays are must-reads for any scholar or student interested in the analytic underpinnings of strategic decision-making and movements. From ‘Thinking about Strategy’ by David Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg to Francesca Polletta’s essay ‘Three Mechanisms by Which Culture Shapes Movement Strategy: Repertoires, Institutional Norms, and Metonymy’ within which the three aforementioned mechanisms illuminate how culture shapes movement strategy to James Jasper’s ‘Choice Points, Emotional Batteries, and Other Ways to Find Strategic Agency at the Microlevel’, the three essays provide highly useful tools in developing a theoretical backdrop that supports the frame of the more empirically grounded essays found there as well as for future scholarship. The choice of the volume’s editors to highlight ‘Activist Engagement and Movement-Relevant Research’ as the second section of the collection demonstrates the commitment to generating social movement analysis grounded in activist–scholar collaboration. The third and fourth sections of the volume focus on the beginnings or formations of strategy to the consequences of strategic decision-making for movements. The organization of each section provides an elegant presentation of strategic decision-making at different moments of movement existence drawn from a myriad of individual case studies: from the Climate Action Network (Aunio) to Midwestern-based human rights engagement (Smith) to identity as strategic for victims of childhood sexual abuse (Whittier) to civil rights mobilization in Northern Ireland (Maney) to social movements as corporate organizations (Robnett and Alabi) to Indian and Brazilian land struggles (Schock), Christian right mobilization in Canada and the USA (Fetner and Sanders), and Swedish and British Plowshares movements (Nepstad and Vinthagen). In its entirety the volume brings together rigorous scholarship and movement voices to provide scholars and activists of movements a currently unmatched resource for theoretical discussion and case studies on movement strategy.