Afterwords: Old and New Repertoires of Contention

Abstract

Della Porta discusses the volume’s debt to the scholarship of social movements, as well as its original contribution to a better understanding of modern protest and its forms. As she argues, the book can be read as a homage to Charles Tilly and his life-long quest to broaden the conceptualization of repertoires of protest. Della Porta praises the volume’s innovative attention to the persistence and adaptation of pre-modern forms of protest in modern collective action, and reflects on the factors that mostly account for this. Old repertoires of protests, she writes, are particularly suitable for empowering subaltern groups. Old repertoires can also be of great assistance in times of intense repression, as they can play with popular traditions. Furthermore, the re-emergence of old tactics provides a way of building a symbolic bridge between different generations. Lastly, old repertoires particularly appeal to more horizontal political cultures, which, she explains, accounts for their widespread revival in the context of the Global Justice Movement or the Spanish Indignados.