Civil Society and the Law : Civil Disobedience, Protests and the (Re)writing of Environmental Politics

Civil Society and the Law : Civil Disobedience, Protests and the (Re)writing of Environmental Politics

En ligne, sur inscription auprès de Audrey Loetscher@unil.ch ou Clemence.Demay@unil.ch

Keynote speakers

Agnès Michelot, Université de La Rochelle

Agnès Michelot is a Senior Lecture (Maître de Conférence) in public law at the Université de la Rochelle. She specializes in issues of climate justice as developed by the French Social and Economic Council and the European Social and Economic Council (EESC).

Graeme Hayes, Aston University

Graeme Hayes is a reader in political sociology at Aston University. His research focuses primarily on social movements, and on environmental sociology, and in particular the collective responses to climate change and genetically-modified crops. He is an Editor of Social Movement Studies, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Environmental Politics and a member of the Editorial Board for the Amsterdam University Press book series, Protest and Social Movements.

The last decade has witnessed a rise in the individual and collective actions related to environmentalism, including climate change marches, anti-speciesism demonstrations, combatting the use of pesticides such as Glyphosate, destroying GMO cultures, and resorting to jurisdictions to enforce environmental norms. Actions multiply both at the institutional level and at the margins of legality, through the constitution of areas to be defended and other acts of civil disobedience. These various movements appear to be animated by a common claim, namely the urgency of a mobilization borne by citizen to palliate governmental inaction in regard to environmental issues. Political unrest hence comprises a wide range of citizen movements which contribute, through marches, protests and other forms of non-violent action, to introducing new ideas and pointing out innovative directions to tackle environmental issues.

These movements form a valuable object of research, for they constitute the mirror of a plural and robust civil society that seeks to redefine itself as an actor of change. Through the variety of their repertoire and domains of actions, these movements testify to the creativity and inventiveness as the “weapons of the weak,”recalling other great historical labor struggles.

Bearing in mind the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, we would like to propose a conference built around the various research angles studying these movements of popular mobilization, and in particular the representations and discourses on which they draw, and the narratives around which their protest and activism revolve.

Conference organizers :

Audrey Loetscher@unil.ch

Clemence.Demay@unil.ch