The first of this term’s SSPSSR Staff and Postgraduate Seminars is today at 16.30. The seminar will also be available for you to join online at http://bit.ly/1vba8DF. To view online, you’ll need to have Microsoft Silverlight installed.
Speaker, Dr Alexander Hensby, Research Associate, University of Kent will be discussing supportive non-participation in the 2010/11 student protests against fees and cuts.
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Abstract: As a topic in its own right, political non-participation is understudied in the social and political sciences. Whilst existing approaches tend to focus on emerging gaps between patterns of engagement and public policy (e.g. Pattie et al, 2004) as well as individualistic rational disincentives (Olson, 1965), less tends to be said about the sociological factors which might cause non-participation. Taking its lead from studies by Oegema and Klandermans (1994) and Norgaard (2006), this talk uses recent student protests in the UK against fees and as a case study for exploring how non-participation is produced and sustained in everyday life.
Drawing from original survey and interview data, findings indicate that supportive non-participants – who made up around half of students overall – generally lacked the appropriate social context through which to convert their engagement into participation. Not only did the majority lack strong social ties to participants, they were often influenced ‘counter-grievances’ expressed by students who were outright opposed to the protests. More generally, non-participants were found to lack confidence in their own political knowledge, whilst raising doubts over the motivations and decision-making abilities of those who do participate. In sum, whereas network access and collective identification are commonly seen to help produce and sustain political participation, it is concluded that networks of collective dis-identification might help to produce and sustain political non-participation. This leaves many young people ‘caring but not committed’ towards political campaigns, and politics more generally.