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category: peer-reviewed article

title |

The independent psychological effects of participation in demonstrations

author(s) | Olivier Fillieule

journal | Mobilization

publication year | 2012     volume | 17     issue | 3

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abstract | Street demonstrations have received the lion’s share of scholarly attention to collective action. This paper, starts by returning to this research in order to raise some methodological questions about how to collect data on demonstrations and the validity of the results gathered. Next and based on my own research on demonstrations, I suggest some questions that deserve to be analyzed. In particular, I argue that we should work more on the psychological effects of participation in demonstrations. One potential line of investigation would be to explore more systematically the socializing effects of political events. Indeed, vivid political events should be important catalysts because they can have traumatic effects. Events may have an impact at any age but depending on one’s position in the life-cycle, the socializing effects will differ, from strenghening and substantiation for older people to conversion and alternation for youngsters. I hypothesize, in line with the impressionable years model of socialization research (Karl Mannheim), that people should especially recall events as important if they happened in their adolescence or early adulthood.

country project | The Netherlands

more info | Olivier.fillieule@unil.ch

 

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