Quo Vadis Europa? Polarized civil society and plural futures

This project takes a deeper look into the constructed and alternative worlds of a range of EU civil society movements, mapping their contributions, activities, tensions and utopians.

This study suggests a novel interpretation of what is commonly seen as an increased polarization of civil societies in the EU, and how civil society (CS) resistance practices of utopian social projects seemingly clash with each other.

The focus in this project is to understand the "constructive resistance" of diverging civil societies, where they create new "utopian communities", in line with, or in stark opposition to hegemonic understandings of a liberal civil society.

Particularly, based on multi-sited ethnographic approaches, this project revolves around three case studies/actors (i) The Islamic Association/Moslem Brotherhood/in Sweden (IAIS), (ii) The radical left land occupation ZAD Nantes in France, (iii) The "Identitarian" movement in France and Germany (as part of the New Right).

Three questions guide the research: 1) What kind of utopian projects are emerging and how do they interact with each other within Europe today? 2) What (un)democratic visions do they articulate, and what kind of communities and alternatives do they construct within their environments? 3) In what way are the utopian and constructive resistance of these European civil societies interrelated to various civil resistance practices.