Movements have appeared both in Europe and outside of Europe demonstrating against standards issued from globalisation: the Spanish indignados, the Occupy Wall Street movements in the United States, the nuits debout at the Place de la République in Paris. These movements are not specific to education, but the questions they raise (the pressure to achieve results, job insecurity, the market place taking over the public interest, etc.) have strong echoes in this field and the protest has significantly rallied teachers and students. Several recent publications have expressed the need for a new theoretical framework to interpret these dynamics (Caygill 2013). In the long term, notions of power and resistance should be reconceptualised in a new context which imposes that we think together, and that we take on board discourses and practices from both the North and the South (Worth 2013).

This initiative differs significantly from the theories of resistance developed by Anglo-Saxon sociologists in the 1970 and 1980s. Contemporary reflections are based on highly diverse theoretical references: the influence of Foucault’s ideas can be seen in many approaches, whether directly (Foucault 1982) or re-problematized (Popkewitz 2013). A lot of approaches have taken their inspiration from reticular conceptions from the social world which take as much into account the new distribution of power as the dissemination of forms of resistance (Boltanski 2009), but the Marxist tradition has also been profoundly renewed. Another current is based on experiences from the South (Santos 2006). This deconstructs the unified narrative of globalisation and reassesses the practices, knowledge and experiences commonly designated as subaltern. This approach results in an emancipating project which advocates the strengthening of local experiences with the hope of creating counter-models of society.

The aim of the symposium is to start to review the contributions of the different interpretations in order to debate the importance of the phenomenon, its historical and political meaning, the possible prospects it opens up for the future. Obviously, this reflection should also be based on empirical analyses of contemporary protests.

• Are these movements announcing the construction of a new political cause or are they based on the agglomeration of heterogeneous and possibly contradictory claims?

• What links do these protest rallies have with prior movements of political causes, whether it is the construction of the working-class movements from the 19^th century onwards, the movements at the end of the 20^th century (women’s rights, the homosexual cause, claims for the recognition of differences…) or current movements concerning migration. What appears to be radically new in their themes and methods?

• How to interpret the difficulties these movements have in stabilising protests and making them last and/or coordinating themselves? Is it possible to identify a higher principle as likely to federate the different dynamics?

• Do these movements constitute a possibility for the left to regain the initiative that it lost at the end of the 20^th century in the realm of ideas and support a new critical positioning? 

BOLTANSKI L. 2009 De la critique. Précis de sociologie de l’émancipation, Paris, Gallimard CAYGILL H. 2013 On Résistance. A Philosophy of Defiance, London/New York, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc FOUCAULT M. 1982 The Subject and Power, Critical Inquiry-8(4), 777-795 POPKEWITZ T.S. 2013 Éducation et Sociétés-31 La raison éducative comme question sociale SANTOS B. de S. 2006 A Gramática do tempo: Para uma nova cultura política, vol. 4 [Para um novo senso común. A ciencia, o direito e a política na transição paradigmática], Porto, Edições Affrontamento WORTH O. 2013 Resistance in the Age of Austerity. Nationalism, the Failure of the Left and the Return of God, Halifax-Winnipeg/London-New York, Fernwood Publishing/Zed Books