LIST OF PANELS

For this panel we expect papers of three different aspects: focused on concept theory, focused on last decade mass protests and focused on different publics as new social actor. In first type of papers we will strongly encourage  those authors who are interested to elaborate on the problem of “the life of the concept” : emerging of the new concept, is full development, its further maturity, its gradual getting out of date and inability to explain social events at list it does not cover all cases across the globe). The examples here might be – Geo-centric system of universe,  “ Marxist concept of “economic basis of political life “, Fukuyama’s concept of “end of history” and among recent ones, though may still having its followers –“ transition theory”. In theoretical papers it would be very important to follow the changing scope of views of the theory proved by examples in academic literature and equally important – in policy papers.  Second type of the papers we welcome to this panel are the ones focused on latest nation-wide protests in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria. But with the specific focus: in which cases those protests did resemble “traditional social movements - with all features described by Tilly and Tarrow, particularly with the all the stages of the movement development from the active nucleus to spreading , dissemination and mass consolidation, and in which cases those protests do not have features of social movement, but resemble other types of social organizations: network of local communities, interest groups, spontaneous publics, support groups of certain political actors. Third type of papers we welcome - should be on phenomena of public as a social actor –despite of its often spontaneous nature, been its able to consolidate and express common social needs, and to formulate alternative policy agendas. The combination of three types of contributions will help us to see if - and to which extent – latest mass social and political protests are allowing us to formulate different concept – the one of “protesting public”.

This panel aims to focus on "Protest Publics"- those diverse or consolidated "publics", who "make social problems visible" by going out into streets and squares in protest against injustice - and to see if those " protest publics " can be adequately described by social movement theories. The main theoretical question is : which features DIFFER immediate and spontaneous "protest publics" from slowly consolidating "social movements"? And what makes "protest publics" effective in articulating social problems and bringing them into agenda?   The need for the new analytical instruments often comes all over sudden, when some unexpected social events are happening and analysts are trying to explain it with the theoretical concepts and research frameworks they had used to apply before and they realize, - if they are honest with themselves - that those old instruments do not fully explain what is going on. This is exactly how it happened right after the beginning of the mass public protests in Russia. Though, similar mass protest events were already happening it many places before - in Arab World -Tunizia, in Egypt, in Libia, and in Europe, like in Bulgaria and first Maidan in Ukraine, as well as in post-Soviet Asia, like in Kyrgizia or Kazakhstan, almost each time it happened in such a place, that as a environment for mass rallies was unthinkable before the events actually took place. All those events then develop so quickly that it does not give much time to analysts to develop new research instruments by the time they may disappear – and the new events, even more hard to conceptualize, would appeared in the same place. Since the very first lasting mass protests in Russia and other countries, there were many attempts made to somehow define, ‘who were all those people’, when protesters were first called 'angry citizens', but it was not too clear, angry with what, as the protest was clearly shifting its focus, as the first polls had reported a significant number of wealthy people involved, growing protest events were called ‘middle – class uprising’ or even 'fur-coat revolution', but this was not adequate either, as there were many people with quite low income among protesters, finally, recognizing high level of education among protesters, all the participants were referred to as "creative class', but this also happened to be only part of the truth, so the question “who are all those people”, participating in mass protests in Russia during winter 2010-2011 and in other countries, still remains open. In approach this question, there are two conventional theoretical models, that seem to be most adequate to be applied : civil society concept and social movement theory, but the claim of this panel is, that none of them can fully grasp the nature of those mass protest. Theoretical concept of ‘civil society’ presupposes an intense and long-lasting organizational work for societies prior to common action, as the ‘civil society ‘itself is commonly understood as ‘space between family, market and the state,’ (Salamon 2004) but filled with plethora of multiple voluntary associations’, which in practical sense of most research projects is reduced to ‘organized society’, or studying of NGO’s (Heinrich 2004; Aleskerov F., Belyaeva N. 2008; Belyaeva, Proskuryakova 2008) - weather formal or informal - but all having some clear organizational structure and regularly working with their members and constituencies. In case of Russia 2010 it was clearly not the case – neither in terms of ‘prior organization’ of protest events, nor even in terms of mass NGO members participating Another concept, that seem to be adequate to be applied, is social movement theory, that look on civil participation in a more dynamic way and define social movement itself on the base of what is understood as campaign , which itself is defined as ‘ organized public effort, making a collective claim on the target audience’ ( Tilly, Tarrow 2006; Kleman 2013) Social Movement often employ many different forms of political actions, from petitions to mass rallies and demonstrations, but they always do so through a lot of prior organizational work , including creation of stable organizational structures, or ‘special purpose coalitions’, that can insure ‘a sustained and organized’ manner of collective actions. Participants of social movements are usually clear about their own common identity, as one of the major claims, that they make to the other political actors and to the broader public is on ‘who we are’, or ‘ ‘a name for ‘us’ –‘Cherokees’, ‘Diamond Cutters’ - that are called ‘standing claims’ distinguishing members from non-members, as well as ‘program claims’ that are been addressed to their target audience. (Tilly, 2004) In our opinion, social movement theory also have a limited application to Russian protest and mass protests in other countries, because it does not explain the very fact of those protest emergence, as there were no prior ‘claimants’ with any clearly set ‘program claims’ and even participants themselves, when questioned about the reasons for their participation, had very different explanations, which makes it hard to speak about their common identity. To be able to catch the very essence of Bolotnaya events and similar lasting and mass protests in other countries there are new theoretical concepts needed, which we suggest to be a newly emerging ‘theory of publics’ and their particular type – ‘active public’ or agent public , that is capable to perform as a social actor – without prior organizational work, performed either by civil society organizations or social movement organizers. (See more Warner 2002, Mahony, Clark 2013). It is an important novelty, that protest publics bring to the scope of participatory practices – almost total absence of prior organization, that was believed to be necessary. This makes them a valuable object to study and requires new conceptual framework, which we will seek to develop.