Cristina Flesher Fominaya

Bio: Cristina Flesher Fominaya is an academic researcher from University of Aberdeen. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social movement & Global justice movement. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 50 publications receiving 1471 citations. Previous affiliations of Cristina Flesher Fominaya include Maynooth University & Loughborough University.

Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates

Abstract: The concept of collective identity has been used extensively by social movement scholars seeking to explain how social movements generate and sustain commitment and cohesion between actors over time. Despite its wide application, collective identity is a notoriously abstract concept. This article focuses on the use of the concept in the literature on contemporary social movements and offers a comprehensive theoretical overview. The central elements of collective identity in the social movement literature are developed, and some key differences in interpretations are highlighted. Finally, some contemporary debates around the continuing usefulness and limitations of the concept of collective identity are explored, with a special emphasis on the challenges of applying the concept to movements that define themselves in terms of heterogeneity, diversity and inclusiveness.

Debunking Spontaneity: Spain's 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement

Abstract: The Spanish 15-M/Indignados have drawn global attention for the strength and longevity of their anti-austerity mobilizations. Two features have been highlighted as particularly noteworthy: (1) Their refusal to allow institutional left actors to participate in or represent the movement, framed as a movement of ‘ordinary citizens’ and (2) their insistence on the use of deliberative democratic practices in large public assemblies as a central organizing principle. As with many emergent cycles of protest, many scholars, observers and participants attribute the mobilizations with spontaneity and ‘newness’. I argue that the ability of the 15-M/Indignados to sustain mobilization based on deliberative democratic practices is not spontaneous, but the result of the evolution of an autonomous collective identity predicated on deliberative movement culture in Spain since the early 1980s. My discussion contributes to the literature on social movement continuity and highlights the need for historically grounded analyse...

European anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests in the wake of the global financial crisis

Abstract: European anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements form part of a global wave of protests following the global financial crisis. Despite continuity of actors and a double critique of global capitalism and democratic deficits from the previous Global Justice Movement, the centrality of the nation as target and focus of mobilization is a significant difference in this wave. The economic impact of the crisis and austerity policies is insufficient to explain variation in mobilization across countries hardest hit. In order to transform economic/material grievances into collective resistance, grievances need to be channelled against specific targets, and interpretive frameworks of meaning tied to a collective identity need to be mobilized. In Europe, anti-austerity protests were initiated by two sets of actors, Institutional Left and autonomous actors. Autonomous actors linked anti-austerity claims to interpretive system of meanings framed around the crisis of legitimacy of representative democracy; ta...

Understanding European movements : new social movements, global justice struggles, anti-austerity protest

Abstract: Introduction by Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox Part I: European Theory / European Movements 1 European Social Movements and Social Theory: A Richer Narrative? By Laurence Cox and Cristina Flesher Fominaya Part II: European Precursors To The Global Justice Movement 2 The Italian Anomaly: Place and History in the Global Justice Movement by Michal Osterweil 3 The Emergence and Development of the No Global Movement in France: A Genealogical Approach by Isabelle Sommier And Olivier Fillieule 4 The Continuity of Transnational Protest: The Anti-Nuclear Movement as a Precursor of the Global Justice Movement by Emmanuel Rivat 5 Where Global Meets Local: Italian Social Centres and the Alterglobalisation Movement by Andrea Membretti and Pierpaolo Mudu 6 Constructing a New Collective Identity for the Alterglobalisation Movement: The French Confederation Paysanne (CP) as Anti-Capitalist 'Peasant' Movement by Edouard Morena 7 Movement Culture Continuity: The British Anti-Roads Movement as Precursor to the Global Justice Movement by Cristina Flesher Fominaya Part III: Culture and Identity in the Construction of the European "Movement of Movements" 8 Europe as Contagious Space: Cross-Border Diffusion through Euromayday and Climate Justice Movements by Christian Scholl 9 The Shifting Meaning of 'Autonomy' in the East European Diffusion of the Alterglobalisation Movement: Hungarian and Romanian Experiences by Agnes Gagyi 10 Collective Identity across Borders: Bridging Local and Transnational Memories in the Italian and German Global Justice Movements by Priska Daphi 11 At Home in the Movement: Constructing an Oppositional Identity through Activist Travel across European Squats by Linus Owens, Ask Katseff, Baptiste Colin and Elisabeth Lorenzi Part IV: Understanding the New 'European Spring': Anti-Austerity, 15-M, Occupy 12 The Roots of the Saucepan Revolution in Iceland by Arni Daniel Juliusson and Magnus Sveinn Helgason 13 Collective Learning Processes within Social Movements: Some Insights into the Spanish 15M/Indignados Movement by Eduardo Romanos 14 Think Globally, Act Locally? Symbolic Memory and Global Repertoires in the Tunisian Uprising and the Greek Anti-Austerity Mobilisations by Vittorio Sergi and Markos Vogiatzoglou 15 Fighting for a Voice: The Spanish 15-M / Indignados Movement by Kerman Calvo Conclusion - Anti-Austerity Protests In European and Global Context: Future Agendas for Research by Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox

Creating Cohesion from Diversity: The Challenge of Collective Identity Formation in the Global Justice Movement*

Abstract: Collective identity formation is important because it plays a crucial role in sustaining movements over time. Studying collective identity formation in autonomous groups in the Global Justice Movement poses a challenge because they encompass a multiplicity of identities, ideologies, issues, frames, collective action repertoires, and organizational forms. This article analyzes the process of collective identity formation in three anti-capitalist globalization groups in Madrid, Spain, based on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork. The author argues that for new groups practicing participatory democracy the regular face-to-face assemblies are the crucial arena in which collective identity can form and must be both effective and participatory in order to foster a sense of commitment and belonging. The article raises the possibility that scholars should consider what seems to be an oxymoron: the possible benefits of "failure" for social movements.

Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age@@@The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Theory of Collective Action: 1. The construction of collective action 2. Conflict and change 3. Action and meaning 4. The process of collective identity Part II. Contemporary Collective Action: 5. conflicts of culture 6. Invention of the present 7. The time of difference 8. Roots for today and for tomorrow 9. A search for ethics 10. Information, power, domination Part III. The Field of Collective Action: 11. A society without a centre 12. The political system 13. The state and the distribution of social resources 14. Modernization, crisis, and conflict: the case of Italy Part IV. Acting Collectively: 15. Mobilization and political participation 16. The organization of movements 17. Leadership in social movements 18. Collective action and discourse 19. Forms of action 20. Research on collective action.

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Abstract: A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movem A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has, until now, not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics