ASOA15057U Researching social change (Summer 2020)

The course presents theories of social change through activism and democratic engagement drawing on an interdisciplinary field of methods in sociology, anthropology, and psychology.

The focus is on activists’ search for effective models of cooperation, organizing and collective action allowing people from different backgrounds to dialogue and take democratic decisions together in a shifting political, emotional, organizational and ecological environment. This gives rise to important questions that the course will explore: How and to what extend do activists succeed to build coalitions to support the change they strive for? Which barriers do they encounter? To what extend and in which contexts can structural, social, cultural and/or psychological barriers and obstacles be identified, and which solutions need to be undertaken? What role has research in processes, where social change is going on? What is the nature of the knowledge production that can possible be produced in this type of research?

The lecturers and the reading materials give the students the opportunity to explore theories and practices of deliberation, pre-figurative democracy and sustainability. Empirically the course draws on examples from a global as well as a local context. A hands-on approach is established through involvement with different kind of communities and organisations working for sustainability in different settings. Working with methods drawing from action-research and performance theory, combined with the sociologist Alain Touraine’s interview method and the cultural anthropologist Cathrine Hasse’s work, the students are trained to handle ‘real life’ challenges.