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Paper short abstract

Drawing upon fieldwork between radical environmental and ‘freedom’ activists in Australia, this paper explores how a pressure for de-polarisation has become entangled with anticipations of collapse, while presenting a challenge to established activist group tactics.

Paper long abstract

Over the last few years, an imperative for certain social movements to ‘bridge’ polarisation within society has come to the fore. Drawing upon my doctoral fieldwork between radical environmental and ‘freedom’ activists in Australia, this paper explores how a pressure for de-polarisation has become entangled with anticipations of collapse, while presenting a challenge to established activist group tactics.

The call to bridge polarisation in environmental activist groups has become a rhetorically generative position to build a mass movement of ‘unlikely alliances’ which reach out over the divide between left and right. Under this guise, polarisation becomes threaded into anticipations of collapse, where social collapse is both observable within covid-19 lockdowns and recent bushfires and floods, and anticipated for the future as the faultlines of the climate and ecological crisis deepen. However, unlike ecological dimensions of collapse which are tied to ‘tipping points’ and ‘thresholds’ of no return, social collapse is theorised by activists as reversable through acts of ‘love’ against fascism and localised deliberation across ‘the divide’. The application of this rhetoric within existing activist groups is fraught with complexity, creating internal pressures to move away from established protest aesthetics of non-violent direct action, such as disruption to infrastructure, that have become a key part of the activist's identity.

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In the Netherlands, the anti-nuclear power movement is confronted with a government depoliticising nuclear power as inevitable. It seeks ways to politicise the discussion without losing its credibility through radicalisation, both in its local-national collaborations and in its framing.

Paper long abstract

In the Netherlands, a combination of right wing politics, political turmoil around wind parks and the hope for a painless solution to the climate crisis, have opened up new avenues for nuclear power. The Dutch government is now planning to build two or more new nuclear power stations, claiming this to be inevitable. This has led to a revival of the anti-nuclear movement.

This paper analyses how the anti-nuclear power movement navigates realities and imaginations of polarisation and depoliticisation in its strategies. It builds its argument on ethnographic research of the resistance against nuclear power at two levels: at the national level where an environmentalist group protests how the development of nuclear power interferes with more effective climate policies, and locally, where local inhabitants experience living in a sacrifice zone where both nuclear and renewable energy infrastructure are planned. They fear the everyday realities of their rural land being industrialised and their village being overrun by workmen and trucks.

The paper shows that the state uses a citizens’ assembly to depoliticise discussions on nuclear energy, thus pre-empting both local and national resistance. The anti-nuclear movement counters this through different polarisation strategies. On the one hand, it seeks politicisation by redefining greenness at the national level. On the other, it downplays its radicality by choosing not-too-activist strategies and framings at the local level in order to be acceptable there. The paper end by briefly reflecting on the role of the anthropology researcher-lecturer in these strategies of polarisation.

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Collective actors in post-collective Europe narrate crisis in ways that both deepen and unsettle political polarisation. This paper examines how these narratives shape mobilisation, responsibility, and possibilities for re-worlding amid social-ecological immiseration.

Paper long abstract

How do social movements make sense of crisis amidst political environments marked by growing polarisation? This paper examines the ambivalent role of crisis narratives in shaping mobilisation within three post-collective contexts: the tenant movement in Sweden, the food sovereignty movement in Hungary, and the climate movement in Czechia. Building on critiques of “crisis” as an episodic rupture, we adopt the concept of social-ecological immiseration to analyse how collective actors interpret worsening conditions as structural, relational, and historically embedded.

Across the three movements, actors draw on divergent relationships to the state and distinct post-collective legacies, ranging from Sweden’s social-democratic imaginaries to post-socialist suspicion toward the critique of capitalism. These situated experiences generate contrasting crisis narratives: some frame crisis as a technocratic or institutional problem, while others articulate it as a manifestation of long-term structural harm rooted in capitalism. Such narrative differences both intensify polarisation—by sharpening ideological boundaries—and enable mobilisation, as polarisation becomes a catalyst for articulating responsibility, alternative futures, and forms of collective action.

Rather than treating polarisation solely as divisive, the paper shows how it can function as a productive field of struggle, shaping when actors build alliances and collectively imagine social-ecological transformation. By foregrounding narratives and practices from below, the paper contributes to anthropological debates on how crisis and polarisation are lived, contested, and potentially re-worlded in a troubled, multipolar world.

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This paper examines polarisation in Polish youth climate activism. As media amplify civil disobedience, shaping "radical" activist imaginaries, they trap movements in homogenous socioeconomic bubbles. Despite shared green values, clashing perceptions sustain affective distance, limiting outreach.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines youth environmental activism in Poland as a site of polarisation, where media-amplified imaginaries of civil disobedience and "radical" disruption shape everyday moral evaluation and symbolic boundary-making. In the post-communist context of low institutional trust, these movements, despite proclaiming inclusivity, often remain embedded in socioeconomically homogenous bubbles. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Polish climate activists and focus groups with environmentally aware non-activist students, I demonstrate how relational and affective barriers, as much as strategic disagreement, shape non-participation.

The findings show media-mediated imaginaries of activism: non-activists, whose views are shaped by media emphasis on “controversial” strategies such as road blockades, perceive climate activism as homogeneous, costly and ineffective form of disruption, despite supporting environmental goals. They value pragmatic local initiatives (workshops, education) over confrontational, loud and "illogical" tactics, while activists, despite internal tactical diversity, prioritize symbolic action and systemic change. This perceptual chasm, with non-activists seeing the spectacle, and activists emphasizing values, amplifies affective barriers: non-activists feel uninvited, fear moral judgment, and sense impermeable "activist" boundaries.

The paper reveals activism's ambivalence - while disruptive tactics build identity for some activist groups, others reject civil disobedience entirely, yet both alienate potential allies through clashing imaginaries. Factors beyond political stance, such as symbolic boundaries, social media narratives, and divergent perceptions of individual versus collective climate responsibility, shape youth climate attitudes and fuel polarisation in Polish evolving activism landscape.

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Ecologies of anti-Zionist Jewish space are proliferating across the world. Though premised on polarity, they prefigure new kinds of unity. Ethnographic engagements with them require principalled reintroductions, rather than mystifying reconciliations, of polarization.

Paper long abstract

Jewish rejections of the Israeli genocide have accompanied their own rejections by communities, families and institutions. Emerging anti-Zionist formations accordingly participate in political solidarity, communal reorganization, and spiritual reimagination in the wake of reductive narrativizations. Articulations of polarity –– the very designation of “anti-Zionist” itself –– thus concomitantly figure new possibilities for unity. In order to ethnographically understand and attune to such futures, polarization must be treated as a pole in itself -– a moral, tactical positioning that is continuously negotiated with commitments to solidarity, belonging, and imaginaries beyond the polar. This cannot be done through bypassing polarization, but rather by reintroducing it as a valid site of anthropological inquiry against epistemological and structural constraints that have historically obscured it from disciplinary focus (Deeb & Winegar 2016).

This paper draws on ethnographic movement mapping of anti-Zionist Jewish formations in London, histories of entanglement between the disciple of anthropology and the Zionist project, and my current preparations for fieldwork with anti-Zionist Jews across Oceania. I begin by tracing the mobilizations of polarity within new ecologies of Jewish space as both moral refusals and pathways towards belonging. Next, I problematize the lack of ethnographic scholarship on anti-Zionism within the anthropology of Jewishness with reference to disciplinary entanglements with the Zionist project. Finally, I discuss the stakes of reintroducing polarization to anthropological analysis in terms of my forthcoming ethnographic fieldwork.

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This paper shows how, despite political polarisation and high tensions between activists and border guards in the field of migration, solidarity groups managed to build contingent forms of cooperation with border guards.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines morally ambivalent forms of cooperation between grassroots groups supporting migrants and refugees and Border Guards in Poland during the heightened migrant influx at the Polish–Belarusian border. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews, and an online survey conducted under the Christian-conservative Law and Justice government (2015–2023), the paper explores how political polarisation shaped practices of solidarity, dissent, and collaboration in a context of border militarisation, pushbacks, and the so-called “hybrid war” with Belarus.

I argue that while dominant polarised narratives framed activists and state actors as irreconcilable opponents, forms of cooperation nonetheless emerged. These interactions were situational, largely concealed, and contingent, taking place predominantly at the level of individual actors rather than through institutional frameworks. Such micro-practices cut across ideological divides, enabling limited humanitarian action while simultaneously generating tensions within activist networks around complicity, responsibility, and the limits of solidarity.

The paper sheds light on the potential for cooperation between border guards and activists even within a state apparatus focused on border militarisation and pushbacks. It contributes to broader discussions on cooperation between humanitarian action, activism, and the state in contested borderlands.

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Paper short abstract

Government backing of canceled academic events on surrogacy has stigmatized both the topic and the scholars studying it. Growing authoritarianism has also divided LGBTIQ+ movements, deepening fragmentation and reinforcing the stigma experienced by some of the families interviewed in our research

Paper long abstract

In contemporary Spain, state-affiliated institutions have increasingly adopted measures that adversely affect families who engage in surrogacy arrangements. This institutional stance is manifested through the lack of a regulatory framework governing surrogacy, as well as through its systematic characterization as an illicit and immoral practice in official public discourse. Government narratives frequently invoke notions such as “exploitation of women,” which are embedded in the preambles of legislative instruments that do not directly concern surrogacy. Within this social environment, feminist movements have also become more radical, this time promoting positions close to censorship and stigmatization of families who resort to surrogacy.

Furthermore, governmental endorsement of the cancellation of academic events addressing surrogacy has contributed to the stigmatization not only of the subject matter but also of the scholars engaged in its examination. This rise in authoritarianism has even divided LGBTIQ+ movements, which have become fragmented, further fueling the sense of stigmatization felt by some of the families we interviewed as part of our research.

These developments indicate a significant authoritarian turn in the institutional governance of surrogacy, giving rise to an increasing need for cooperation between the more tolerant associations and a sector of academia that wants to be able to study the issue without being cancelled.

This polarization at the political, media and social levels force anthropologists to occupy the public and media space more intensely, to disseminate their data more widely and to take a stand in favor of complex thinking, beyond the academic sphere.