Dignity, resistance and social change (18BBA00839)

General information

Type:	OP	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	2 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
	Ignasi Martí Lanuza	Ciencias Sociales	ENG

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Ed: 2	Ignasi Martí Lanuza	Ciencias Sociales	ENG

None

Session 1
Introduction and "seeing power"

Readings:
- Desmond, M. 2016. "Forced out. For many poor Americans, eviction never ends? New Yorker
(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out#)
- Fallarás, C. 2013. "I'm the evictee telling you how it is?
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4006161-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-13
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4014311-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-23
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4015001-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-33

Assignment #1 (private): What does power mean to you? Why some seem to have more of it than others?
Assignment #2 (public): This is a post about you. After reading Desmond's and Fallarás' short articles, please write on how you see the problems of evictions. In particular, address these two questions: 1) Who is to be held responsible? and 2) Do you think this could happen to you?


Session 2
On the dark side of power: de-humanizing, oppressing.

Readings:
- Van Maanen, J. (1991). The smile factory: Work at Disneyland. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Lewis, C. C. Lundberg & J. Martin (Eds.).
- Marti, I., & Fernandez, P. (2013). The Institutional Work of Oppression and Resistance: Learning from the Holocaust. Organization Studies, 34(8): 1195-1223.

Assignment #3 (public): One of the readings of this session is on the Holocaust. Please elaborate on about 500 words: To what extent is (or is not!) a (unique, extreme) case like that relevant for you, a future manager, entrepreneur, activist (and a citizen)?

Session 3
Infrapolitics and individual forms of resistance

Readings:
- Scott, J. C. (2012). Two cheers for anarchism: Six easy pieces on autonomy, dignity, and meaningful work and play. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1.

Assignment #4 (private): Please explain in few words (around 500 words) and example of individual resistance you engaged in or failed to. Why did you choose to resist (or why you decided not to resist) and how?

Session 4
Collective forms of resistance

Guest speaker: TBA

Readings:
- Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope. Social movements in the internet age. Cambridge: Polity. Chapter 1 (Introduction).

Assignment #5 (public): One of the largest and most significant social movement in Spain in recent times was the PAH (Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca). What are your feelings about it and about their claims? Would you be willing to fight for their cause with them? If yes, say few words ? if not ? explain too please.


Session 5
Resisting the market, building alternatives?

Readings:
- Case: BRAC in 2014 (715414-PDF-ENG)
- Fourcade, M. and Healy, K. (2007). Moral Views of Market Society. Annual Review of Sociology, 33(14): 1-27.
Documentary:
- Inside Job

Guest speaker: TBA

Assignment #6 (public): If the "market? is something to be resisted ? are there ways in which you do so? Please tell a bit about why and how you do it.

Session 6
Final Project Presentations

In all societies, present and historical, people either individually or collectively worked to foster or impede social, political, economic, and cultural change. Many of those attempts are based on different understandings of what a human life is and what living a life with dignity means.

In this course we will be exploring all of these issues. To do so, we will start by revisiting the notion of power and politics and their different manifestations. This is fundamental to understand oppression and empowerment, de-humanization and emancipation. Then we will be focus on different expressions of resistance, both individual (infrapolitics) and collective and their attempts to preserve the status quo or transform social reality (for good ? in principle).

By the end of the course you should have a better sense of not only the range of resistance tactics, tools, discourses that exist, but also the theoretical foundations used to examine social change dynamics. Several "real-life? instances of individual and collective resistance efforts will be covered in this course, many of them brought by yourself (based on your own experience perhaps!).

At the end of the course, students should:

- Understand and properly using and mobilizing concepts such as power, dignity, acquiescence, oppression, de-humanization, empowerment, infrapolitics, social movements, collective action, framing.
- To have a better understanding of the antecedents, processes and (possible potential) outcomes of different forms of resistance, either individual or collective.
- Imagine possible research questions concerning the intersection between business and society, including relations between firms and social activists and new and alternative forms of organizing.
- Be familiar with different theories used in the fields of social movements theory and resistance.

Session 1

- Desmond, M. 2016. "Forced out. For many poor Americans, eviction never ends? New Yorker
(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out#)
- Fallarás, C. 2013. "I'm the evictee telling you how it is?
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4006161-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-13
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4014311-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-23
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/article/4015001-i-m-evictee-telling-you-how-it-33

Session 2
- Van Maanen, J. (1991). The smile factory: Work at Disneyland. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Lewis, C. C. Lundberg & J. Martin (Eds.).
- Marti, I., & Fernandez, P. (2013). The Institutional Work of Oppression and Resistance: Learning from the Holocaust. Organization Studies, 34(8): 1195-1223.

Session 3
- Scott, J. C. (2012). Two cheers for anarchism: Six easy pieces on autonomy, dignity, and meaningful work and play. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1.

Session 4
- Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope. Social movements
in the internet age. Cambridge: Polity. Chapter 1 (Introduction).

Session 5
- Case: BRAC in 2014 (715414-PDF-ENG)
- Fourcade, M. and Healy, K. (2007). Moral Views of Market Society. Annual Review of Sociology, 33(14): 1-27.

Group	Teacher	Department
	Ignasi Martí Lanuza	Ciencias Sociales

Group	Teacher	Department
Ed: 2	Ignasi Martí Lanuza	Ciencias Sociales