From Protest Event to Protest Wave: The Temporal Structure of Protest on the World-Historical Perspective

Chungse Jung, Davidson College

For a long time, social movement studies are strongly influenced by the geographical and historical points of reference. Most of the social movement analyses have focused on the case studies of short-term mobilization activities. Even though one of the most fundamental characteristics of social movement is its ‘connectedness’ both temporally and spatially, time has mostly been a silence in social movement studies and protest has principally been considered as a “dependent variable.” This leads us to draw on a theoretical attempt to examine the temporal structure of social movement on the world-historical perspective. Fernand Braudel’s conception of the plural temporality offers us the possibility of constructing a systemic analysis identifying the temporal structure of social movement and allows theoretical comprehension of spatially and temporally complex collective actions. In this way, the paper seeks to make explicit the relationship between Braudel’s concept of plural time: event, conjoncture, and longue durée and continuum of escalating the scope of protest analysis: protest event, protest cycle, and protest wave. Examining the protest events, protest cycles, and protest waves in the global South over the long twentieth century on the Braudelian perspective offers a path to understanding the continuation of struggles and how periods of contention may be just the one wave in a larger sea of long-term resistance. What is particularly crucial to determine is how diverse social movements affect each other and interact within the structure of time that they are decomposing and transforming in the longue durée.

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