Back to Functionalism? Capturing Language and Pathologising Dissent: from Environmental Movements to Protests against Pandemic Policies

This chapter examines how traditional left flagships - such as public health, trust in science and environmental sustainability - have undergone a semantic reversal as neoliberal capitalism has appropriated and repurposed them to legitimise its interests. A systematic reflection on the complex consequences of these semantic reversals in the public sphere and in changing contexts and opportunities for political participation is still lacking. We examine how these processes have intensified in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ecological crisis, leading to the stigmatisation of protest movements and the shrinking of the space for political dissent. These semantic reversals, particularly evident in the case of COVID-related protests, allowed for a reproposition of interpretive schemes peculiar to the early days of structural-functionalist literature. This was also possible because these protests were framed as 'exceptional': it was precisely the persuasiveness of their discontinuity that justified the abandonment of interpretive tools accumulated over decades by different disciplines. By reading the covid phase not as an exception, but rather as an acceleration of pre-existing dynamics affecting political participation and representation, we recognise in the recovery of functionalist approaches an outcome of justification of existing power relations. By contrast, drawing on qualitative research, we argue for the need for different interpretive perspectives capable of unveiling the ongoing redefinition of the lines of political conflict and contextual processes of re-politicisation.