Abstract
When in 1980 and 1981 protesters in Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin and many other cities clashed with the police and disturbed these cities’ urban routines, contemporary commentators were surprised by the intensity of the conflicts, by the number of participants and by the level of violence they often involved. Politicians, journalists and social scientists alike have been quick to label the wave of protest that emerged in several European countries, and most forcefully in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, as a ‘youth movement’,1 ‘youth protest’,2 ‘youth unrest’,3 ‘youth rebellion’4 or ‘youth revolt’.5 Usually these terms were not defined, and often authors used them interchangeably, yet always with the prefix ‘youth’. Others have precisely questioned this prefix, arguing that the issues addressed in the protest were not necessarily youth-specific, and that a significant number of the participants were too old to be labelled as youth.6
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Notes
J. Bacia and K. J. Scherer (eds) (1981) Passt bloss auf! Was will die neue Jugendbewegung? (Berlin: Olle und Wolter).
W. Breyvogel and J. Hirsch (eds) (1983) Autonomie und Widerstand. Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Jugendprotestes (Essen: Rigodon);
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Schweizerische Kommission für Jugendfragen (1980) Thesen zu den Jugendunruhen 1980 (Bern: Bundesamt für Kulturpflege);
H. Nigg (ed.) (2001) Wir wollen alles, und zwar subito! Die achtziger Jugendunruhen in der Schweiz und ihre Folgen (Zurich: Limmat).
M. Haller (ed.) (1981) Aussteigen oder rebellieren. Jugendliche gegen Staat und Gesellschaft (Reinbek: Rowohlt);
H. Kriesi (1984) Die Zürcher Bewegung. Bilder, Interaktionen, Zusammenhänge (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus-Verlag).
H. Willems (1997) Jugendunruhen und Protestbewegungen. Eine Studie zur Dynamik innergesellschaftlicher Konflikte in vier europäischen Ländern (Opladen: Leske & Budrich), p. 431.
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H.-E. Richter (1981) ‘Die neue Sensibilität. 19 Thesen über die Hintergründe der Jugendbewegung’ in Haller, Aussteigen oder rebellieren, p. 238;
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D. McAdam (1986) ‘Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer’ American Journal of Sociology, vol. 92, no. 1, 84.
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I. Miethe (2009) ‘Frames, Framing and Keying: Biographical Perspectives on Social Movement Participation’ in H. Johnston (ed.) (2009) Culture, Social Movements, and Protest (Burlington and Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 135–56.
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‘Eine soziale Bewegung ist ein auf gewisse Dauer gestelltes und durch kollektive Identität abgestütz-tes Handlungssystem mobilisierter Netzwerke von Gruppen und Organisationen, welche sozialen Wandel mittels öffentlicher Proteste herbeiführen, verhindern oder rückgängig machen wollen.’ D. Rucht (1994) ‘Öffentlichkeit als Mobilisierungsfaktor für soziale Bewegungen’ in F. Neidhard (ed.) (1994) Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen, KZfSS, Sonderheft 34/1994 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag), p. 338.
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J. S. Juris (2014) ‘Embodying Protest: Culture and Performance within Social Movements’ in B. Baumgarten, P. Daphi and P. Ullrich (eds) Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 227–47.
Although Johannes Agnoli has claimed that speaking about a revolt would imply its failure with regard to social transformation because, otherwise, it would have been called a revolution. J. Agnoli (1998) 1968 und die Folgen (Freiburg i. Br.: Çaira), p. 10.
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H. Kriesi, R. Koopmans, J. W. Duyvendak and M. G. Giugni (1992) ‘New Social Movements and Political Opportunities in Western Europe’ European Journal of Political Research, vol. 22, no. 2, 219–44; Tarrow, Power in Movement.
H. Kriesi (2004) ‘Political Context and Opportunity’ in D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi (eds) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden: Blackwell), pp. 67–90.
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Haunss, S. (2016). Unrest or Social Movement? Some Conceptual Clarifications. In: Andresen, K., van der Steen, B. (eds) A European Youth Revolt. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56570-9_2
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