Processes of political meaning-making and movement formation. The current Romanian protest movement and its activists‘ motives and demands

PhD project of Nina Krienke (since 2018), supervisor: Heiko Pleines
 
Versiunea în limbă română găsiți aici

Since 2012, Romania has been facing a civic awakening. While mobilizing themes and activist groups are quite diverse, the protests of the newly forming active civil society seem to be linked by an underlying frustration of many Romanians with the development of their country during the last years. Historical references, especially to the events of 1989-92, are often observable in today’s protests and discourse. The new civic protest activities already changed the Romanian public, having introduced the voice of civil society into the public sphere latest since 2011, increasing the number of actors in the public discourse significantly. Two governments stepped down because of the public pressure, the Roşia Montană gold mining project was stopped and the usual practice of bypassing votes in parliament by decree was challenged severely.

This project seeks to investigate this course of events, addressing the following question:

How do activists in the current Romanian protest movement make sense of their own political environment?

That includes to find out about how Romanian activists explain their political discontent, where their motivation for political action stems from and what their political demands and future visions are. The research project is intended to give insight into a process of the awakening of civic conscience in an environment formerly known for the political apathy of its inhabitants.

For that, I employ an interpretive methodological approach, acknowledging that the meaning of things does not consist of their mere existence, but that it is produced by agents within context. This implies an iterative style of research, and an abductive approach towards knowledge generation.

On the methodological level itself, I want to make a contribution to political science’s approaches to social movement studies, as political science methodologies often emerge from a somewhat subconscious path dependency of studying powerful, institutionalized actors in countries of the „West“. With regard to the post-socialist region, such approaches often don’t take into account the ongoing processes of (civil) society formation and its dynamics as well as the agencies of the people implicated in it. I want to test a methodological approach that bridges theories of the political difference, and the focus upon politicization processes one could derive from it, with ethnographic methodological thoughts and methods, tackling the question:

How to study social movements in contexts of political liminality, with a sensibility towards situatedness and meaning-making?

Therefore, together with documentary filmer Sergiu Zorger, and later on also in collaboration with activist groups in Romania, I put up an open online historiography of and for Romania’s recent protest movement(s). This will contain, first, an open and interactive collection of material referencing the phenomenon of increasing public protest activities in Romania. Second, together with a small number of activist groups, a representation of their interpretations of and development through the public protest phenomenon will be elaborated. Third, a short video series will accompany the project, featuring themes evolving through the course of building the online platform.

The scientifical interpretation of that project – which is going to comprise my formal dissertation, and, most likely, further scientifical work – will feature its methodological aspects and findings, as well as empirical themes hopefully enriching the literature on social movement formation in the post-socialist space.

Eventually, I seek to make a contribution to ongoing theory-building in the ontologically turned, decolonialist realm of studying political movements and learning, exemplifying the importance of individual and collective meaning-making as well as of historical and structural context for actual political realities.