A New Global Tide of Rising Social Protest? The Early Twenty-first Century in World Historical Perspective Sahan Savas Karatasli, Johns Hopkins University Sefika Kumral, Johns Hopkins University Beverly Silver, Johns Hopkins University Contact Information: Beverly J. Silver Department of Sociology The Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218
[email protected] 410-516-7635 Paper presented at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting (as part of Mini-conference on Globalization in Uncertain Times) Baltimore, MD, February 22-25, 2018 (Session 216: February 24, noon-1:30 pm) 1 A New Global Tide of Rising Social Protest? The Early Twenty-first Century in World Historical Perspective I. The Problem and Its Significance A (Puzzling) Resurgence of Labor and Social Unrest: During the past three decades, there had been an almost complete consensus in the social science literature that labor movements worldwide were in a severe (many argued 'terminal') crisis (see for example, Sewell 1993; Zolberg 1995; Castells 1997; Gorz 2001). In a similar vein, the dominant position in the social movement literature was that "class" had become largely irrelevant as an organizing principle for collective action and social movement organization (see, e.g., Larana et al 1994; Pakulski and Waters 1996; for a critique see Rosenhek and Shalev 2014). In the past several years, however, there has been a growing chorus among sociologists pointing to the resurgence of labor protest in various parts of the world (see for example, Milkman 2006, Chun 2009, Silver and Zhang 2009, Agarwala 2013, Zhang 2015, Ness 2015). Likewise, beginning around 2010, major newspapers were suddenly filled with reports of labor unrest around the world, after a two decade lull in such reports (Silver 2003, 126; Silver 2014).