Social Movement

'@ is For Activism' examines the transformation of politics through digital media, including digital television, online social networking and mobile computing. Joss Hands maps out how political relationships have been reconfigured and new modes of cooperation, deliberation and representation have emerged. This analysis is applied to the organisation and practice of alternative politics, showing how they have developed and embraced the new political and technological environment. Hands offers a comprehensive critical survey of existing literature, as well as an original perspective on networks and political change. He includes many case studies including the anti-war and global justice movements, peer production, user created TV and 'Twitter' activism. "@ is For Activism" is essential for activists and students of politics and media. Note the version here is a pre-print proof which differs from the published version and should not be cited from.

In the common public perception, contemporary gardening is understood as suburban, as leisure activity, as television makeover opportunity. Its originary narratives are seen as religious or spiritual (Garden of Eden), military (the clipped lawn, the ha-ha and defensive ditches), aristocratic or monarchical (the stately home, the Royal Horticultural Society).

Radical Gardening travels an alternative route, through history and across landscape, linking propagation with propaganda. For everyday garden life is not only patio, barbecue, white picket fence, topiary, herbaceous border.… From window box to veggie box, from political plot to flower power, this book uncovers and celebrates moments, movements, gestures, of a people’s approach to gardens and gardening. It weaves together garden history with the counterculture, stories of individual plants with discussion of government policy, the social history of campaign groups with the pleasure and dirt of hands in the earth.

We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation around the world like dandelion seeds adrift on turbulent winds. We find ourselves, in the early twenty-first century, in a world where every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion. 1 We have entered a new historical era defined in large part by movement and mobility and are now in need of a new historical on-tology appropriate to our time. The observation that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was marked by an increasingly " liquid " and " mobile modernity " is now something widely recognized in the scholarly literature at the turn of the century. 2 Today, however, our orientation to this event is quite different. Almost twenty years into the twenty-first century we now find ourselves situated on the other side of this heralded transition. The question that confronts us today is thus a new one: how to fold all that has melted back up into new solids. 3

Abstract: In this paper, we outline a number of features of an interdisciplinary and pluralistic approach to economics. As a suitable example of how an interdisciplinary cooperation can unfold, we focus attention on the relations between institutional economics and psychoanalysis. In the first ...

This article addresses the identity politics that serve as a base for collective action for many groups active in fighting for LGBT rights and looks at queer theory and queer politics as an alternative to identity based politics. Queer theory is discussed through the work of several prominent queer theorists, as well as in comparison with post-colonial theories. Some suggestions are then made for undertaking a queer politics.

Sus banderas están en las movilizaciones callejeras, sus militantes trabajan en los barrios, sus dirigentes obtienen cargos en intendencias, bancas en las legislaturas y en el Congreso. Adhirió al kirchnerismo e integró sus gobiernos, pero en los mismos años demostró en la calle el rechazo a algunas de sus políticas. Denunció activamente el ajuste neoliberal del macrismo, pero negoció con sus funcionarios y logró más poder en el manejo de planes sociales. Algunos de sus seguidores marchan en reclamo por la situación laboral tras una imagen de San Cayetano; otros lo hacen en apoyo a la legalización del aborto.

El Movimiento Evita es una de las organizaciones sociales más grandes, discutidas y singulares de la Argentina, y un participante activo de su escena política. De alto perl público, enorme capacidad de movilización y agenda política propia, el Evita –que nació como tal en 2006- logró arraigo en cientos de barrios populares de casi todas las provincias, consolidó su capacidad de generar fuertes lazos entre los militantes –incluso de crear y “educar” cuadros políticos-, evitó siempre las discusiones ideológicas, hizo y deshizo alianzas sin haber sufrido una ruptura en más de una década de existencia.

Este libro –el primero en explorar en profundidad y especícamente al Movimiento Evita- recorre los orígenes, la identidad y las estrategias políticas del Evita y se pregunta qué implica el acceso a cargos de gestión en el Estado para un movimiento que hizo una bandera de la autonomía y que, como dice su líder Emilio Pérsico, quiere representar a “los últimos de la fila”. ¿Se burocratiza? ¿”Traiciona” sus ideales? ¿Se puede estar a la vez en la calle, en los barrios y en el Estado?

A través de entrevistas a decenas de integrantes del movimiento –desde sus líderes más importantes, como Pérsico, el “Chino” Navarro y Leonardo Grosso, entre otros, a militantes de base-, y mediante un trabajo etnográfico en locales, merenderos, congresos y movilizaciones, Francisco Longa construye un retrato equilibrado y persuasivo de un espacio político díscolo, plebeyo, verticalista y pragmático, que con sus particularidades ilumina el siempre dinámico mundo de las organizaciones sociales en la Argentina.

At the end of the 1970s a racist rock music movement known as White Power music emerged in Great Britain in connection with political parties of the extreme right and remains a vibrant force in racist social movements today. Throughout the 1990s, White Power music expanded significantly from its origins in a clandestine network of punk-inspired live shows and record promotions into a multi-million dollar, international enterprise of web-pages, radio stations and independent record labels promoting White Power musicians performing a wider range of musical genres. In this article, we view White Power music as a cultural resource created and produced by racist movements and used as a tool to further key movement goals.  Specifically, we examine White Power music’s role when used to 1) recruit new adherents, especially youth, 2) frame issues and ideology to cultivate a White Power collective identity, and 3) obtain financial resources. In doing so we rely upon in-depth interviews with W...

Captured and branded in the highly recognizable image of the pink ribbon, the politics of breast cancer at the start of the 21st century is markedly hopeful (given the grim statistics) and surprisingly compliant with the medical establishment’s defined health goals and approaches to addressing the breast cancer epidemic.  In keeping with this volume’s theme of “Working to be Healthy”, this chapter examines and evaluates how the pink ribbon message has shaped and organized social response to breast cancer. The work in question is “healthwork”, a term found in the critical health literature denoting the active and purposeful work that people do to look after their health (Mykhalovskiy and McCoy, 2002). Healthwork analysis tends to focus on personal care practices—taking medicines, dealing with healthcare practitioners, informal care-giving, health information seeking, etc.—that are then subject to examination of how those individual actions invite extended relations of governance and ruling (Mykhalovskiy, McCoy and Bresalier, 2004).  In this examination of breast cancer campaigns, the same analytic concern with governance is taken, but the health-related work is extended beyond personal care and self-surveillance to also include the volunteer work done by many concerned citizens in their contributions of time, energy, and money to support campaigns for the cure.

In this chapter, I argue that while the appropriation of the language and themes of the early women’s health movement frames pink ribbon activism as a highly personal, emancipatory, and socially-responsible individual effort, this brand of breast cancer activism instead serves to fund a limited biomedical research agenda that is largely shielded from public scrutiny.  This agenda has been universalized through endearing “hero” narratives of personal struggle that inspire civic engagement by complicit consumers rather than critical activists. Pink ribbon activism problematically diverges from the women’s health movement’s demand for participation in setting the research agenda and determining treatment strategies. This neglect is troubling, given that breast cancer discourse is so fraught with contested knowledge claims regarding disease aetiology, prevention, and treatment. While the pink ribbon message offers hope and optimism, it does so by suppressing many counterclaims, disputes, and ambiguities surrounding the problem of breast cancer. Instead of soft “pink”, a more critical social response to breast cancer is needed in order to ensure women’s informed participation in addressing this serious challenge to women’s health.

This research examines Indonesian Islamic revivalist movements’ perspectives on the concepts of the nation-state and democracy. The Islamic revivalist movements studied in this research include Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), Front Pembela Islam (FPI), Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), and Forum Umat Islam (FUI). Following the fall of the authoritarian Suharto’s regime in 1998, Indonesia witnessed an escalation of Islamic activism whose goals revolve around the implementation of Sharia (Islamic law) and, to a certain extent, the reestablishment of a caliphate (transnational Islamic state). To this end, revivalist movements have been staging frequent mass protests, mainly addressing Indonesian government policies that are deemed un-Islamic. Some of the protests have ended violently, which implies that their Sharia and Islamic state goals have become a source of conflict in Indonesian society. This research suggests that this violent activism stems from different versions of the conce...

Loadenthal, Michael. “Cells, Communiqués and Monikers: The Insurrectionary Networks of Anti-State Attack.” In Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, edited by Uri Gordon and Ruth Kinna, 326–40. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019.

Abstract:
Spanning over a century, the insurrectionary spirit of anarchism has been on the forefront
of direct, unmediated attacks on the state and capital. Insurrectionary praxis is based on an ethic of informality, clandestinity and temporality, and as a result, its cells exist in secret only as long as deemed necessary for a particular action. Unlike social movement organisations and above-ground campaigns, the cells that populate the insurrectionary milieu are not something to ‘belong to’ but something to ‘act through’; a momentary assemblage of likeminded individuals united for a particular attack by voluntary association and through shared affinity.

While the modern cell networks gained visibly in Europe around the millennium,
their rapid replication has led to similarly styled formations in dozens of countries from the Americas to Asia. This franchised replication is aided by the use of adoptable monikers – static labels used to associate an attack with others, and to ideologically tag them as insurrectionary. Oftentimes, these are acronyms whose names communicate the politics of the attackers, such as the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), International Revolutionary Front (IRF) as well as older, not explicitly insurrectionary monikers such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The use of moniker-linked attacks, which form into a campaign of sorts, is a distinctive feature of the insurrectionary cells. For example, in June 2013, a Greek of the FAI cell bombed a vehicle belonging to a prison director overseeing the incarceration of comrades. This attack marked ‘act one’ of the Phoenix Project, and would be followed by thirteen additional attacks, spanning eight countries out over a twelve-month period. The Phoenix Project highlights the strength of the adoptable moniker, as through its usage, an arson targeting an Indonesian hotel and the sabotage of Italian fuel pumps can be united into a shared, global effort, and not understood as disparate acts of lone wolves. This chapter will explore how the insurrectionary anarchist networks utilise the cell model, the communiqué and the adoptable moniker to allow for the creation of a globally dispersed, decentralised, open involvement movement united in its rejection of capitalism, the state and those who would seek to control it.

The sociology of social movements has often drawn a fine line between individualistic “lifestyle movements” and more politically oriented collective action. Yet, this distinction belies the fact that seemingly individualistic movements can generate cognitive maps and associational ties necessary for wider mobilization. Drawing on a qualitative study of the Indian men’s feminist movement Men’s Action to Stop Violence against Women (MASVAW), we examine how an ostensibly individualistically oriented lifestyle movement can create the potential for collective action through forging social networks of like-minded individuals who can draw on local knowledge of specific situations to quickly mobilize their peers. Through this, we contribute to the literature on social movement networks by synthesizing theorizing on lifestyle movements with theorizing on activist social networks, demonstrating how networks can shift movements between different modes of coordination, from individualistic and ...

Kategoria kultury obywatelskiej stanowi jedno z pojęć służących do opisu współczesnej rzeczywistości społeczno-politycznej W ujęciu klasycznym (civic culture) jest ona definiowana jako kombinacja trzech podstawowych typów kultury politycznej: parafialnej, poddańczej i uczestniczącej (Almond, Verba, 1963) Jako przeciwwagę dla "klasycznego" modelu kultury obywatelskiej (określanej jako "lojalna"-allegiant culture) w ostatnich latach wprowadzono kategorię asertywnej kultury obywatelskiej (assertive culture, Dalton, Welzel, 2014) Celem niniejszego artykułu jest odpowiedź na pytanie o możliwości opisania współczesnych ruchów protestu za pomocą kategorii asertywnej kultury obywatelskiej Innymi słowy jest to pytanie o przydatność dotychczasowej definicji kultury obywatelskiej do zobrazowania przeobrażeń zachodzących we współczesnej sferze publicznej, a w szczególności w  obszarze oddolnej aktywności społecznej. Przeprowadzone analizy pozwalają zgodzić się z tezą mówiącą o potrzebie redefinicji „klasycznej” definicji kultury obywatelskiej w kierunku modelu asertywnego, z zastrzeżeniem dotyczącym zaufania pomiędzy członkami opisywanych ruchów. Punktem odniesienia dla postawionego
w artykule problemu są ruchy protestu, będące od kilku lat coraz częstszym „aktorem” w przestrzeni publicznej.

This article presents a quantitative study of differential participation in low- and high-risk activism in the Danish refugee solidarity movement. Distinguishing between low- and high-risk activism, it shows the fruitfulness of combining what are often considered competing theoretical explanations related to (1) values, (2) microstructures, and (3) emotions. We analyze data from a unique survey of 1,856 respondents recruited via Facebook. The results show that low- and high-risk participation strongly correlate but are influenced by different factors. For low-risk activities, the most important factors are emotional reactions, structural availability, and predispositions in the form of basic human values. For high-risk activity, the important factors are prior history of activism and emotional reaction. Values, microstructures, and emotions interact in relation to participation in both kinds of activism, which points to promising avenues for integrating and developing the theoretical framework of differential participation and recruitment.

This essay posits American journalism as a particular realm of public knowledge production, inflected with its own professional practices as well as the way in which those practices subjugate technologies of representation. Taking the Arab Spring of 2011 as a case study in journalistic knowledge production, this article analyzes three epistemological conditions underscoring the Arab Spring’s development as an object of knowledge: the use of social media tools within the practice of journalism, the representational authority of the individual reporter, and the articulation of journalistic knowledge to broader institutions of liberal democratic power. While these are by no means the only possible themes of investigation, by looking at how journalistic practices rendered the Arab Spring sensible and worthy of public consideration, this essay hopes to reveal them as temporally and technologically contingent, but also linked to the values of liberal democracy that undergird journalism’s role in American public life.

The  aim  of  this  paper  is  to  analyse  the  newspaper  made by the opposition to Francoism in the Canaries in the period 1959 - 1975.
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Este  artículo  recopila  y  analiza  las  publicaciones  periódicas realizadas por la oposición al franquismo en  Canarias en el período 1959 - 1975.

The Iraq War’s enduring conflict has proven resilient in its on-and-off relationship with the US and international forces occupying.  Streamlining a more sustainable counterinsurgency plan remains a critical link to securing stability designed to promote Iraqi nation-rebuilding efforts.  While the smart power approach to foreign policy has yet to realize its potential full effect, recruitment of younger generations into recurrent violence via Islamist co-optation persists with threat to bleed across the region.  Military, diplomatic and politically weighed strategies struggle to contain the violence by advancing innovative methods to counter and disengage while supporting Iraqi democracy, not altogether unlike US operations in Afghanistan.  COIN directive requires in-depth analysis of the socialization of teenage youth as they undertake transnational violence into adulthood.  Nation building through better concerted and inclusive effort of relief, intelligence, military and policymaking drive is the key to tapping the potential of next generation Iraqis as immediate and future leaders.  Youth at risk raised with a history of violence will otherwise require constant intervention.  Policy transition moving towards internal stability and an exit strategy has the resources to launch effective social programming for political infrastructure and business strategy to guide better negotiation in resource and conflict management.  Media’s role in promoting proactive social networks promises to be a game-changer for ground game where youth are enabled to access it.  International support and inter-alia networking then remain to be fully realized if Iraq and the US are to emerge from the war in two pieces.

Unemployed protests are the most important form
of socioeconomic contention in Tunisia. Calls
for employment and condemnations of corrupt
recruitment procedures have fueled large-scale
protests since the mid 2000s. Despite massive discontent, unemployed
mobilization has thus far lacked political leverage.
In this working paper, we assess if the dynamics
of mobilization in Tunisia can explain unemployed
protests’ lack of political leverage. Our study reveals
that the majority of unemployed mobilization can
be characterized as unorganized and spontaneous.
Protest actors raised limited claims, mostly demanding
their own employment, and making use of disruptive
protests, such as street and railway blockages. The
nation-wide scene of unemployed mobilization, on the
other hand, is captured by the 2006-formed Union des
diplômés chômeurs (Union of Unemployed Graduates,
UDC). In this working paper we compare these
two forms of activism by the unemployed: those of the
UDC and the unorganized unemployed protests, using
the Gafsa mining basin as our case study.
We have identified two divergent trajectories since
2011. The UDC has expanded its membership, offices,
and contentious actions, and increased its levels of
organization and professionalism. By contrast, the
Gafsa mining basin protesters fragmented, despite an
increase in discrete protest events. We try to explain
these dynamics by explicating the social meaning
of the activists’ grievances. We then compare their
mobilization networks before looking at how diverse
activists have perceived political opportunities
and threats since 2011. Finally, we will try to draw
conclusions on the different forms of unemployed
activism and their interplay with political change in
Tunisia.

Laurence Cox presents his recent book Why Social Movements Matter, written at the Collège in the framework of Geoffrey Pleyer's initiative "Mouvements sociaux à l'âge global". The 21 st century sees social movements written large on the map of the world, while journalists, intellectuals, novelists, celebrities and politicians invoke specific movements as current events or for dramatic effect. Yet the significance of widespread popular mobilisation as such is barely a subject of public reflection other than in dismissive and misdirected comments on "populism".

Why should the wider public care about social movements in general, and how can they grasp them? How can party-political militants understand their workings? What should scholars and students in other fields know, and how have movements shaped our intellectual world? Too often scholars of social movements-in the English-speaking world at least-allow the accidents of university processes and cultural trends to decide the future (if any) of the field. But can we justify our work to these wider audiences and position the study of movements as a central intellectual tool to understanding the world we live in? This talk presents some of the issues raised by trying to convince others that social movements matter.

Of the many studies of Bolivia’s popular uprisings of 2000–2005, Raquel
Gutiérrez Aguilar’s participatory-observer account stands out. In addition
to furnishing an innovative framework for understanding the “rhythms” of
social struggle during those years, the book grapples with some of the
tensions and dilemmas common to diverse emancipatory struggles. This
translation of the 2008 original makes the analysis available to English readers.

... The 'stranger' is the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. ... This understanding goes beyond the incompatibility between cultures, beyond a perception of cultures as being well ... in the real multiculturalism of the present - where, to use Simmel's terms, bridges are seen as ...

Este trabajo estudia la protesta estudiantil en 2011. En la primera parte se analizan las movilizaciones del estudiantado y en las tres siguientes se estudia
la estructura de oportunidad política (EOP), las estructuras de movilización y
los marcos de la acción colectiva y discursos políticos. El ciclo de protesta se explica, en buena parte, por una EOP favorable debido al apoyo que consiguió
el movimiento en diversos sectores sociales y en algunos de la clase política. Sin embargo, tal grado de movilización no se habría producido sin la Mesa Amplia Nacional Estudiantil (MANE), que aglutinó las principales organizaciones estudiantiles y, al plantearse como un espacio amplio, fue desbordada por el enrolamiento de estudiantes no organizados. El éxito del movimiento fue coronado por unas estrategias discursivas, basadas en la reivindicación de la educación como derecho, que contrarrestaron la argumentación del Gobierno y articularon a su lucha diversos actores.

Women's social and political agency within the noMUOS protests in Niscemi, Sicily Abstract This article examines the largely female-led contemporary environmental and antimilitary protests occuring at Niscemi, Sicily. Known as the noMUOS movement, these protests are aimed against the US army's installation of large satellite antennas or " MUOS. " This article focuses on women's activism, contextualising it within in the local community, where such a degree of female political participation has not been previously seen. Women's activism is primarily taking place within the spontaneous group known as " Mothers against MUOS " , which expresses a particular form of political agency (incorporation of protest) that has important social consequences for gender relations. Keywords: Sicily, USA NAVY, noMUOS social movement, female agency, political anthropology «Eravamo come delle befane che al freddo e all'addiaccio si aggiravano nel bosco per controllare cosa stavano costruendo dentro la base» Ersilia, attivista comitato " mamme noMUOS " di Niscemi 1. L'emergere di nuovi regimi discorsivi nello spazio globalizzato In questi ultimi anni si sono bene accreditati nello spazio politico globalizzato dei nuovi regimi discorsivi, aventi per oggetto oltre che la governance ambientale globale (inerente l'impatto dell'agire umano sull'ambiente fisico e biotico, Brosius 1999), anche la governance economica e finanziaria e la governance militare globale (in cui molteplici soggetti politici agenti a diversa scala – burocrazie regionali, nazionali, istituzioni transnazionali, movimenti ambientalisti, cittadini-attivisti – danno corpo a " nuove forme dell'agency politica ") e/o la contestazione di riconfigurate strutture di dominio economiche, industriali e politiche (Brosius, ivi: 277). All'interno di questa arena politica altamente globalizzata, Brosius sottolinea come, per quel che riguarda il concreto impatto dell'azione umana su determinati contesti fisici e biotici, l'agenda della conoscenza antropologica non possa non

Townsend Middleton's The Demands of Recognition is an invitation to think through the everyday dilemmas of ethnic minorities as well as the state anthropologists who certify them as 'scheduled tribes' in contemporary India. Through an extended case study of Nepali-speaking groups that are collectively known as 'Gorkhas', Middleton shows how late liberal governmentality and what he calls the 'ethno-contemporary' make and remake each other. As the postcolonial state has devised affirmative action policies to redress the historical disadvantages of socially marginalized groups, a new kind of 'ethnopolitics' has emerged to claim the loaves and fishes offered by the state. In turn, this new ethnopolitics has compelled the state to rethink its classificatory schemas and mechanisms in order to decide which groups ought to be considered as 'tribes', and hence, merit affirmative action. In most cases, the primary aim of ethnopolitics in contemporary India is to enter official lists or 'schedules' that record castes and tribes as well as other groups deemed to be 'backward' enough to warrant affirmative action. The situation with the Gorkhas was no different after their demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland went unmet a generation ago. By undertaking a fine-grained ethnographic exploration of the Gorkhas' ethnopolitics and the travails of their interlocutors within the postcolonial ethnographic state, Middleton challenges us to interrogate our received notions of ethnicity and about the place of anthropology in our world.

Cities are increasingly important arenas of civic activism, especially in form of so-­‐called neighborhood initiatives and grassroots urban movement. As research presented here shows, conceptual and symbolic " battles for space ", usually associated with city planning processes, were crucial for the emergence of grassroots' urban initiatives in Poland. As a result of intensive networking, urban activists became an important and highly visible lobby group, especially in the context of their relations with local governments, influencing not only political decisions, but also the functioning of local as well as national administration. Nowadays in Poland the grassroots urban movement is one of the most visible factors affecting public administration practices concerning planning and development, pushing for innovations and participatory mechanisms in all spheres of urban policy.

Der Beitrag entfaltet den Schlüsselfigurenansatz als einen alternativen Ansatz innerhalb der Bewegungsforschung, der helfen soll, Prozesse der ungewissen und instabilen Ordnungsbildung in der Frühphase einer Bewegung zu rekonstruieren und zu erklären. Es wird zunächst gezeigt, dass ein Rückgriff auf klassische Ansätze der Leadership-Forschung fruchtbar sein kann, um soziale Bewegungen in ihrer Formationsphase und in ihrer flüchtigen sozialen Gestalt fassen zu können. Dieser Rückgriff macht aber erhebliche Modifizierungen nötig, die sich in der Unterscheidung von Führungs- und Schlüsselfiguren ausdrücken. Dieser Perspektivwechsel, oder genauer: der modifizierende Rückgriff auf funktionalistische Perspektiven birgt das Potential, analytische und theoretische Schwachstellen innerhalb der Bewegungsforschung zu beheben. Das Potential des Ansatzes wird exemplarisch am Beispiel der unabhängigen DDR-Friedensbewegung vorgeführt.

Before youth can be accepted as important players in school decision making, the concept of “student voice must gain acceptance among powerful stakeholders in the school. Using social movement theory as a lens, the paper examines the consequences of positioning a student voice effort inside or outside of school walls. The paper finds that positioning influences the legitimacy, sustainability, and scope of changes that a student voice initiative can pursue.