- Department: Politics and International Relations
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
- See module specification for other years: 2022-23
This module addresses the interaction between social movements, states, and the private sector, analysing how radical politics is often met by backlash or neutralised through co-optation. Over the last decades, radical or ‘progressive’ discourses, actors, and programmes have made inroads into ‘mainstream’ state policies, commercial advertising, and political rhetoric. In some cases, this has been followed by push-back or backlash and erosion of rights. In other cases, activists have wondered if their perceived success is in fact a failure as their ideas are emptied of their original radical intent.
The module explores highly relevant contemporary political developments as well as providing students with in-depth knowledge of radical politics in areas such as gender, human rights, anti-imperialism and climate politics. Key cases covered in the module will be: the backlash against gender and LGBTQ+ equality, climate justice, human rights, and the cooption of feminist struggles over sexual violence to justify borders, the politics of greenwashing and the rise of homonationalism.
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Occurrence | Teaching period |
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A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
This module explores the contemporary politics of co-optation and backlash of and against social movements. Ferree and Hess (2000: 141) understand co-optation as “being absorbed into the policy structures that one has been fighting against”. In the context of rising right wing populism, neoliberalism and the questioning of hard-won gains by sexual, racialised minority communities and groups and social movements in the areas of climate justice, democracy and anti-capitalism, social movements face a moment of historical crisis. Different social actors - including right wing parties, states, corporations - seek to depoliticise radical claims for human rights, social justice and emancipation (co-optation) and at the same time movements face mounting forms of often violent confrontation (backlash). This includes for example, greenwashing, the commodification of gay activism, gender mainstreaming, the pacification of black power and black feminism, the rise of Men’s rights campaigns and ‘#All Lives Matter’.
Subject content
At the end of the module students should be able to:
have a deep and systematic understanding of the political phenomena of backlash and co-optation and of their relation to the broader field of politics, human rights and social movement studies
demonstrate a detailed understanding of current theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of backlash and co-optation and creatively apply them to different cases and contexts in contemporary politics
Academic and graduate skills
Develop their ability to evaluate a range of literatures and sources covered in the module to formulate academically-informed views on a range of cases of backlash and co-optation
Use ideas at a high level of abstraction. Develop critical responses to existing theoretical discourses, methodologies or practices and suggest new concepts or approaches.
Flexibly and creatively apply the deep knowledge acquired in the module to unfamiliar contexts, synthesise ideas in innovative ways, and generate original solutions.
Use personal reflection to analyse one’s own possible complicity with the phenomena of backlash and co-optation.
Develop their capability to support effective communication and respond to challenges in seminar classes.
Students taking the module will be introduced to the central issues surrounding the politics of both backlash and co-optation in contemporary social movements, and in doing so explore what this tells us about wider politics of social movements, civil society and the state, hegemony and the ubiquity of liberal power, as well as debates on depoliticisation/politicisation. The module will offer a firm conceptual grounding in co-optation and backlash by both scholars and activists and subsequently explore a different case each week which speaks to the evolving politics of backlash/co-option.
Content by teaching week
1 Introduction to the concepts
2 Gender and the far-right
3 Racial equality and the far-right
4 Anti-imperialism, human rights and neoliberalism
5 Fossil fascism
6 Greenwashing and fairtrade
7 Handmaidens of capitalism
8 Femonationalism
9 Homonationalism
10 Conclusion and critique
Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
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Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
Students will receive written timely feedback on their formative assessment. They will also have the opportunity to discuss their feedback during the module tutor’s feedback and guidance hours.