Collective action has long been a central theme within social history, dating back to the rise of innovative historiographical currents such as the British Marxist historians and the Annales School in the 1950s. Within our Ghent research group, too, a lively tradition exists in the study of social movements and forms of societal mobilization.
Our approach is grounded in the broader theoretical framework of contentious politics, which maps the dynamics of conflict between groups, movements, and power structures. We understand collective action not as isolated eruptions, but as an ongoing process of negotiation in which interests, ideologies, and power relations intersect.
Particular attention is paid to the interaction between different scales. We investigate how local protest practices are shaped by global ideological currents, migration networks, or international mechanisms of repression, and, conversely, how micro-practices contribute to shaping global repertoires of action and meaning.
Our definition of collective action is deliberately broad. In addition to classical social movements, we also examine forms of street politics that have often been neglected in historiography: parades, processions, spontaneous tributes, neighbourhood mobilizations, confrontations with police, and other symbolic acts in public space. Our analysis encompasses not only left-wing or progressive movements, but also conservative, nationalist, fascist, ecological, and religious forms of mobilization.
Methodologically, we combine quantitative and qualitative approaches, ranging from discourse analysis and oral history to digital techniques such as network analysis, cartography, and computational text analysis.