David Clarke

This points to a broader shift for social psychology: collective action participation is not only something to be predicted from prior beliefs and states — it is a site where identities, empowerment, and social change are produced in practice.

Acting together made alternative social relations feel feasible, compelling, and widely shared, reshaping how participants engaged in the struggle — from opposing the existing order to enacting the kind of society they sought.

Interviews from Chile’s 2019 uprising suggests that a prefigurative understanding of participation was not simply carried into the mobilisation — it was consolidated and transformed through collective action.

Collective action research has become very good at explaining why people protest — focusing on what people bring: beliefs, motivations, and psychological states. This tends to background what can happen *through* participation, including how action comes to be understood in radically different ways.

These are often described as prefigurative politics — efforts to enact desired future social relations through present-day practices. But how do participants themselves come to see them that way?

In many contemporary uprisings, people don’t just confront power — they do so while also organising participatory assemblies, caring for each other, and making decisions horizontally.

Enacting desired change in the present: Explaining prefigurative collective action in Chile’s 2019 social explosion Contemporary mobilisations increasingly confront existing power structures while experimenting with alternative social relations – a dynamic often discussed as prefigurative politics. Yet social psychological research on collective action has prioritised explaining why people participate, paying l...

New preprint (with @profjohndrury.bsky.social ) on prefigurative politics in Chile’s 2019 social explosion, based on interviews with participants in demonstrations and cabildos🧵: 

New re-vamped @crowdsidentities.bsky.social website, with new @sussex.ac.uk brand formatting -- looks good!

www.sussex.ac.uk/research/lab...

Interested in the psychology of disruptive behaviour at music events? Well have a read of this. Highlights include me, @lewisdoyle.bsky.social & @sanjeedah.bsky.social throwing ourselves around in mosh pits for science (plus in-depth interviews & a big old survey). dx.doi.org/10.1111/asap...

New from @daclarkecruz.bsky.social and colleagues - towards a new way of thinking about and studying collective action

Our latest piece "Prefigurating Democracy: The Pro-Palestinian Student Camps as Eventful Protests" is just out in @socquarterly.bsky.social!! 💫🇵🇸 doi.org/10.1080/0038...

Call for contributions for the small meeting on the social psychology of prefigurative politics is open! 🤩 This is a slightly different conference, check out the info sheet to learn more - even if you haven't worked on prefiguration yet 😉

So excited about this!

drive.google.com/file/d/1nsof...

Save the date! Next September we work on integrating social psychology and prefigurative politics, in a beautiful location :)

@fmsmallfield.bsky.social @metesefauysal.bsky.social @daclarkecruz.bsky.social @eddieclarke.bsky.social @helenlandmann.bsky.social

Crowds & Identities and friends gather to wish a temporary farewell to @daclarkecruz.bsky.social at Eat Central, @sussex.ac.uk

Petition: Demanding recognition of the genocide and ending scholasticide and complicity in Palestine Esteemed colleagues, We, the undersigned academics and scholars — including current and former members of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) as well as colleagues working in poli...

Political psychology exists to expose dehumanisation, moral disengagement, and complicity in oppression. #ISPP’s leadership enacts them. A society that will not call genocide by its name has abandoned its foundations. Sign the petition 👇

Petition: Demanding recognition of the genocide and ending scholasticide and complicity in Palestine Esteemed colleagues, We, the undersigned academics and scholars — including current and former members of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) as well as colleagues working in poli...

If you also want organisations with a spine who can speak truth to power when atrocities take place, then sign the petition and boycott the next #ISPP conference unless its current leadership decides to condemn the genocide in Gaza. Enough is enough.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

A response by former ISPP leadership to this statement below on Gaza and Israel published last week by current ISPP leadership: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Today is the 5th anniversary of David Graber's death. And with everything happening in the world, his work is now more relevant than ever before.

Today is the 5th anniversary of David Graber's death.

And with everything happening in the world, his work is now more relevant than ever before.

I read ISPP's statement early this morning and I have been thinking about it since, trying to wrap my head around the goal of this second statement and what it actually says to its readers.

When “political” psychology hides in lab-coat abstractions while a people are massacred and starved, it’s not just irrelevant but complicit. (2/2)

Human rights orgs: Israel is committing genocide and using starvation as a method of war against Palestinians.

‘Foremost’ political-psych society: dialogue is the answer; we are concerned by the, ehm, suffering that has "transpired" mysteriously in the region.

Shame on the signatories.

(1/2)

Anas Al-Sharif pictured with his two young children that he is holding. They are all smiling.

Anas Al-Sharif was one of the most remarkable reporters of his generation. For 673 days, he defied Israeli threats to kill him.

Al Jazeera now confirm their crew in Gaza City have all been assassinated:

RIP reporters Anas Al-Sharif & Mohammed Qareqea and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher & Mohammed Nofal

One of these days a senior politician will actually say something positive about the 10 million people living and working in the UK who happen to have been born abroad, but that day is not today

Vegans! Please consider participating in our online study on communicating about veganism 🌱 prize draw £25 voucher

universityofsussex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Collective Memory, Social Identity and Collective Future Imagination in the Crowd: A Case of Anti‐Right‐Wing Protests in Germany In the early 2024, over three million people in Germany took to the streets to protest a secret plan by right-wing extremists to deport individuals with migration background, publicised as ‘re-migrat...

New publication alert!
Our latest article is now published in the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 🎉
“Collective Memory, Social Identity and Collective Future Imagination in the Crowd: A Case of Anti-Right-Wing Protests in Germany”
🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Join us Sunday morning at #ISPP2025 to talk about prefiguration with @fmsmallfield.bsky.social @daclarkecruz.bsky.social @yasemingacar.bsky.social

@drselintekin.bsky.social @adriennewhitworth.bsky.social @pjsaaved.bsky.social @dennisnigbur.bsky.social @daclarkecruz.bsky.social @kayleighsmith.bsky.social @samreenchhabra.bsky.social @lindajbell.bsky.social

Sustainability talks and visa walls: reflections from the NEST conference 2025 on whose voices are heard - Energy Demand Research Centre

A vital blog exposes how “visa walls” quietly shape who gets heard at academic conferences. As the authors argue, “we must design our spaces to reflect the diversity of the world we hope to sustain.” Change begins with confronting what keeps people out, not through empty promises to include them.

1. Starmer was warned and warned that his benefits cuts were not just cruel and unfair, but a political disaster. He dismissed the warnings, even this week, as no more than "noises off". Now, as the disaster materialises, he's desperately backtracking.
Here's an idea: how about listening? 🧵

Fantastic PhD studentship opportunity for someone -- please share.

Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Elite Sport (Co-funded by Brighton & Hove Albion FC)

www.sussex.ac.uk/study/fees-f...