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Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses social protest in the European Union before and after the economic and financial crisis (2007 onwards) and relates it to changes in social metabolism and the dynamics of the trade union and green movements.

Paper long abstract:

The crises that the world has experienced since 2008 have altered both the configuration of social metabolism in Europe and social protest. Inter-territorial inequality and the rise of social inequalities are probably the most cited expressions of these crises. But it is much less well known that the growth of inequality is directly related to the biophysical dimension of the crisis. Indeed, it not only has there been a rupture in the processes of economic growth, but the patterns of material consumption and international trade in materials have been profoundly altered, generating two differentiated Europes: those countries that have maintained or even increased their material consumption (central and northern Europe) thanks to the maintenance of material imports, and those that have seen their material consumption fall drastically to occupy an increasingly subordinate position in the material and energy trade. Expressions of social protest have also changed, with environmentalist protests being displaced by the rise of class protests. The traditional environmentalism, in special the green parties, has misunderstood this relationship by emphasising the ecological aspects of environmental problems to the neglect of the social ones. But also, in recent years a new environmentalism has emerged in which the concern about the social issue and its environmental dimension is evident. In this paper we explore these processes, paying attention to changes within some strands of the environmental movement that show a high capacity to adapt to this new social context. A clear example is the social movement emerged around food and agroecology.