Contemporary Social Movements: Scales, Networks and Territories

05-06-2026

Call for Papers.

The Journal of Global Studies: Historical Analysis and Social Change invites submissions for a special issue to be published in volume 7 (13), Nov-Dec 2027. This monographic issue, edited by Enrique Fernández Vilas, Andrea Delbono y Alexandra Lizbona, will address the topic: “Contemporary Social Movements: Scales, Networks and Territories”.

 Deadline for submission of complete manuscripts: July 31, 2027.

In recent decades, the analysis of social movements has often been shaped by the dichotomy between the local and the global, as well as by the rise of approaches that highlight the growing transnational interconnectedness of collective action (Olson, 1965; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Tarrow, 2005; Rossi, 2015). Contemporary processes, however, appear to exceed this analytical framework, calling into question both the centrality of traditional scales and the implicit directionality contained in the idea of a linear transition from “the local” to “the global”.

In this context, several contributions have problematised these categories and proposed approaches that emphasise the multiplicity of scales, spatial relationality and the emergence of translocal dynamics (Swyngedouw, 1997; Brenner, 2004). These perspectives are complemented by Sassen’s (2014) contribution, which analyses how “expulsions” and the reconfiguration of authority create spaces of action that challenge the binary distinction between the national and the global. Likewise, Escobar’s (2018) notion of the “pluriverse” makes it possible to understand translocal dynamics as assemblages of struggles for autonomy and the defence of territory.

From this perspective, social movements operate simultaneously at multiple levels and actively contribute to producing and reconfiguring those scales (Della Porta & Diani, 2006). Rather than linear movements between the local and the global, contemporary collective action involves complex processes of assemblage, circulation and reterritorialisation of repertoires, identities and organisational forms.

The contemporary political context also introduces new tensions that require these analytical frameworks to be reconsidered. The so-called reactionary turn, or cultural backlash against globalisation, analysed by authors such as Inglehart and Welzel (2005) and Norris and Inglehart (2019), has drawn attention to the emergence of mobilisations that do not follow cosmopolitan logics, but instead articulate nationalist, identitarian and/or exclusionary discourses. These movements can be understood as part of globally circulating discursive and political networks, configuring what some authors have described as “reactionary internationals” (Mudde, 2019). Even mobilisations that appeal to national withdrawal therefore participate in transnational political dynamics.

The tradition of post-materialist movements, initially developed by Ronald Inglehart (1977), has also been revisited in light of new forms of activism linked to environmental issues, gender and LGBTQ+ rights. Frequently articulated through digital networks, these mobilisations display more horizontal and flexible organisational forms (Castells, 2012), while challenging classical distinctions between the local and the global by operating simultaneously across multiple scales and spaces.

Digital infrastructures and platforms have also profoundly transformed the forms of collective action. Although they facilitate the rapid diffusion of protest repertoires and the construction of transnational solidarities, they also generate new forms of inequality, fragmentation and control (Tufekci, 2017). In this sense, digitalisation expands coordination capacities while reconfiguring the scales of political action and producing new articulations between territories, actors and agendas.

This special issue therefore seeks to move beyond the local/global opposition in order to analyse how contemporary social movements configure new political spatialities, articulate complex networks and redefine their repertoires in a context marked by the simultaneity of apparently contradictory processes, including globalisation and withdrawal, cosmopolitanism and nationalism, openness and exclusion. The aim of this special issue is to contribute to the debate and analysis of contemporary collective action by addressing transformations in political scales, digital infrastructures and the new territorial configurations of social movements.

We invite contributions, in Spanish or English, addressing the following thematic lines:

  • Reconfiguration of scales and spatialities in collective action
  • Relations between social movements, the state and public policy
  • Territorial conflicts and disputes over common goods
  • Multilevel governance and citizen participation
  • Social movements and democratisation
  • Citizenship, democracy and new forms of representation
  • Reactionary movements, populisms and nationalisms in global perspective
  • Critical reassessments of the post-materialist paradigm
  • Digital activism, platforms and transnational networks
  • Global circulation of protest repertoires
  • Translocal dynamics and territorial assemblages
  • Tensions between global agendas and local contexts
  • New organisational forms: horizontality, networks and distributed leadership
  • Sociological issues in collective action

This special issue seeks to contribute to a renewed theoretical and empirical debate on social movements. To this end, we invite authors to pay particular attention to contemporary transformations in the scales, networks and spatial configurations of collective action.

Guidelines for Authors

Manuscripts must strictly comply with the guidelines of Revista de Estudios Globales, available at:

https://revistas.um.es/reg/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Submission Process

  1. Complete manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s website: https://revistas.um.es/reg. Registration and login are required.
  2. Submissions must not have been previously published or be under consideration by another journal.

Format and Structure

  1. File format: Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.
  2. Maximum length: 9,000 words, including footnotes and references. Pages must be numbered.
  3. The manuscript must include:
  4. Title, abstract and five keywords in both Spanish and English.
  5. Contact information, including ORCID, email address and institutional affiliation.
  • Citation style: APA, 7th edition. Examples: (Author, 2020, p. 15) or Author (2020). The reference list must appear in alphabetical order at the end of the manuscript.
  • Figures and tables: these must be inserted in the text and also submitted as separate original files, numbered and accompanied by descriptive titles.

Editorial Process

  1. All articles will be evaluated through double-blind peer review.
  2. The journal is open access and charges no article processing charges (APCs) to authors or readers.

Special Issue Timeline

  • Deadline for submission of complete manuscripts: July, 31, 2027.
  • Notification of decisions to authors, after the first round of review: October 15, 2027.
  • Deadline for submission of final revised versions: October 30, 2027.
  • Publication of the special issue: December 15, 2027.

 

For any questions related to this special issue, please contact the guest editors:

Enrique Fernández-Vilas, University of Valladolid, Spain: enrique.fvilas@uva.es

Andrea Delbono, Universidad de la República, Uruguay: andrea.delbono@cienciassociales.edu.uy

Alexandra Lizbona, Universidad de la República, Uruguay: alexandra.lizbona@cienciassociales.edu.uy

References

Brenner, N. (2004). New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford University Press.

Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Polity.

Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (2006). Social movements: An introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell.

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.

Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among Western publics. Princeton University Press.

Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge University Press.

Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Cornell University Press.

Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. Polity Press.

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press.

Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press.

Rossi, F. (2015). Movimientos populares y olas de incorporación sociopolítica. Desarrollo Económico, 59(228), 201–206.

Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Harvard University Press.

Swyngedouw, E. (1997). Neither global nor local: “Glocalization” and the politics of scale. In K. R. Cox (Ed.), Spaces of globalization: Reasserting the power of the local (pp. 137–166). Guilford Press.

Tarrow, S. (2005). The new transnational activism. Cambridge University Press.

Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.