ABSTRACT
Contemporary European social movements have a powerful influence on Europe and the world. They are at the heart of the central defining conflicts in European politics and society, and they make these conflicts visible through symbolic, discursive and material disruptive practices. Social movements serve as a means of diagnosing dysfunctions in the democratic process. They challenge public norms, and draw attention to and often contest how these reflect and distribute power in society. This chapter situates contemporary European social movements into their political and scholarly context with a focus on how movements understand democracy, how they contribute to it and regenerate it, and also how they threaten and undermine it. In so doing, we highlight the need to pay attention to ideational frameworks, culture, history, memory, identities and emotions, as well as to important contextual and organizational aspects of collective action in the study of movement dynamics and outcomes.
