Speeding up Collective Action. Theoretical Affinities between Conflict Studies and Acceleration Theory

Abstract

Acceleration theory has emphasized the alienation that results from the speeding up of social life, but it has paid less attention to other emancipatory goals. Is it possible to consider collective action and conflicts as an acceleration motor? If so, is it a contingent-situated motivation or rather a structural condition? The paper’s hypothesis is that conflicts are deemed a contingent or structural acceleration motor depending on the very basic theoretical starting-point: 1) if conflicts are considered as an “exception” or an “anomaly” to be solved in an assumed “normal” course of society (functionalism), there is no structural acceleration condition for them, but rather a contextual one. Conversely, 2) if conflicts are perceived as a constitutive part of modern capitalist society, they can also be understood as an acceleration motor underpinning social life with emancipatory potential. Keywords:.