Abstract

After the 1970s, on one side industrial relations studies have paid decreasing attention to institutions than to mobilisation, and on the other sides social movement studies, given the perceived decline of the labor movement, had turned their focus away from economic conflicts and their structural determinants. Yet recently issues such as social struggles for global justice and against austerity, point to the importance of the social bases of protest. The study of these developments calls for the integration of these approaches. Alessandro Pizzorno’s analysis of the emergence and re-emergence of social struggles for recognition in the 1960s and 1970s was an example of such integrated approach than could be useful today as it was for the study of the Hot Autumn in Italy (Pizzorno et al 1973). In particular, from that research program we can learn how to combine attention to the transformation of the class bases of conflicts with consideration of class organizational tradition and innovation, the evolution of the repertoire of action, and the emergence of class consciousness among emerging social groups. The article first addresses the concept of struggles of recognition as a central concept in Pizzorno’s theorization, the cyclical transformation in the modes of representation and the emergence of a class struggle «in action» as they are presented in the work of Alessandro Pizzorno and his collaborators at that time.