Showing papers on "Social movement published in 2005"

Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and A New Social Movement

Abstract: Acknowledgments Series Editor's Introduction Introduction Part I Federal Policy and Urban Education 1. The Economic is Political 2. Macroeconomic Policy and Urban Poverty 3. Taxing Rich and Poor 4. Urban Children, Social Class, and Education Part II Metropolitan Inequities 5. Jobs, Public Transit, and Urban Education 6. Housing and Tax Policy as Education Reform 7. The Local (Challenging the Rules of the Game) Part III Social Movements, New Public Policy, and Urban Educational Reform 8. How Do People Become Involved in Political Contention? 9. Building a New Social Movement 10. Putting Urban Education at the Center

The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past

Abstract: The civil rights movement circulates through American memory in forms and through channels that are at once powerful, dangerous, and hotly contested. Civil rights memorials jostle with the South’s ubiquitous monuments to its Confederate past. Exemplary scholarship and documentaries abound, and participants have produced wave after wave of autobiographical accounts, at least two hundred to date. Images of the movement appear and reappear each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and during Black History Month. Yet remembrance is always a form of forgetting, and the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement—distilled from history and memory, twisted by ideology and political contestation, and embedded in heritage tours, museums, public rituals, textbooks, and various artifacts of mass culture—distorts and suppresses as much as it reveals.1

Social movements and organization theory

Abstract: Part I. Creating a Common Framework: 1. Organizations and movements Doug McAdam and W. Richard Scott 2. Where do we stand? Common mechanisms in organizations and social movements research John L. Campbell Part II. Political and Mobilization Context: 3. Institutional variation in the evolution of social movements: competing logics and the spread of recycling advocacy groups Michael Lounsbury 4. Elite mobilizations for antitakeover legislation, 1982-1990 Timothy Vogus and Gerald F. Davis 5. Institutionalization as a contested, multilevel process: the case of rate regulation in American fire insurance Marc Schneiberg and Sarah A. Soule 6. From struggle to settlement: the crystallization of a field of lesbian/gay organizations in San Francisco, 1969-1973 Elizabeth Armstrong Part III. Social Movement Organizations: Form and Structure: 7. Persistence and change among federated social movement organizations John McCarthy 8. Globalization and transnational social movement organizations Jackie Smith Part IV. Movements Penetrating Organizations: 9. How do social movements penetrate organizations? Environmental impact and organizational response Mayer N. Zald, Calvin Morrill, and Hayagreeva Rao 10. Organizational change as an orchestrated social movement: recruitment to a corporate quality initiative David Strang and Dong-Il Jung 11. Subventing our stories of subversion Maureen A. Scully and W. E. Douglas Creed Part V. Conclusion: 12. Social change, social theory, and the convergence of movements and organizations Gerald F. Davis and Mayer N. Zald 12. Two kinds of stuff: the current encounter of social movements and organizations Elizabeth Clemens.

The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism

Abstract: How do a few Third World political movements become global causes celebres, while most remain isolated? This book rejects dominant views that needy groups readily gain help from selfless nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Instead, they face a Darwinian struggle for scarce resources where support goes to the savviest, not the neediest. Examining Mexico's Zapatista rebels and Nigeria's Ogoni ethnic group, the book draws critical conclusions about social movements, NGOs, and 'global civil society'.

From movements to parties in Latin America : the evolution of ethnic politics

Abstract: 1. Introduction: toward a comprehensive theory of ethnic party formation and performance 2. Institutions, party systems, and social movements 3. 'A reflection of our motley reality': Bolivian Indians' slow path to political representation 4. 'We are the government': Pachakutik's rapid ascent to national power 5. 'It is not a priority': the failure to form viable ethnic parties in Peru 6. Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela: unlikely cases of ethnic party formation and success 7. Conclusions and Implications.

Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms

Abstract: In Transnational America , Inderpal Grewal examines how the circulation of people, goods, social movements, and rights discourses during the 1990s created transnational subjects shaped by a global American culture. Rather than simply frame the United States as an imperialist nation-state that imposes unilateral political power in the world, Grewal analyzes how the concept of “America” functions as a nationalist discourse beyond the boundaries of the United States by disseminating an ideal of democratic citizenship through consumer practices. She develops her argument by focusing on South Asians in India and the United States. Grewal combines a postcolonial perspective with social and cultural theory to argue that contemporary notions of gender, race, class, and nationality are linked to earlier histories of colonization. Through an analysis of Mattel’s sales of Barbie dolls in India, she discusses the consumption of American products by middle-class Indian women newly empowered with financial means created by India’s market liberalization. Considering the fate of asylum-seekers, Grewal looks at how a global feminism in which female refugees are figured as human rights victims emerged from a distinctly Western perspective. She reveals in the work of three novelists who emigrated from India to the United States—Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Amitav Ghosh—a concept of Americanness linked to cosmopolitanism. In Transnational America Grewal makes a powerful, nuanced case that the United States must be understood—and studied—as a dynamic entity produced and transformed both within and far beyond its territorial boundaries.

Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

Abstract: Water is a key component of critical ecosystems, a marketable commodity, a foundation of local communities and cultures, and a powerful means of social control. It has become a source of contentious politics and social controversy on a global scale, and the management of water conflicts is one of the biggest challenges in the effort to achieve effective global environmental governance.In Governing Water, Ken Conca examines political struggles to create a global framework for the governance of water. Threats to the world's rivers, watersheds, and critical freshwater ecosystems have resisted the establishment of effective global agreements through intergovernmental bargaining because the conditions for successful interstate cooperation -- effective state authority, stable knowledge frameworks, and a territorialized understanding of nature -- cannot be imposed upon water controversies. But while interstate water diplomacy has faltered, less formalized institutions -- socially and politically embedded rules, roles, and practices -- have emerged to help shape water governance locally and globally.Conca examines the politics of these institutions, presenting a framework for understanding global environmental governance based on key institutional presumptions about territoriality, authority, and knowledge. He maps four distinct processes of institution building: formal international regimes for shared rivers; international networking among water experts and professionals; social movements opposing the construction of large dams; and the struggle surrounding transnational water "marketization." These cases illustrate the potential for alternative institutional forms in situations where traditional interstate regimes are ineffective.

Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

Abstract: List Of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Doing It Yourself: Direct Action Currents In Contemporary Radical Activism 2. Tracking The Hegemony Of Hegemony: Classical Marxism And Liberalism 3. Tracking The Hegemony Of Hegemony: Postmarxism And The New Social Movements 4. Utopian Socialism Then ... 5. ... And Now 6. Ethics, Affinity, And The Coming Communities 7. Conclusion: Utopian Socialism Again And Again Notes References

From Colonialism to Green Capitalism: Social Movements and Emergence of Food Regimes

Abstract: This paper suggests that a corporate-environmental food regime is emerging as part of a larger restructuring of capitalism. Like past food regimes, it reflects specific social and political compromises, which I interpret through the social movement concept of interpretive frames. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 grew up in response to working class movements in Europe, and created a historically unprecedent class of commercial family farmers. When world markets collapsed, those farmers entered into new alliances, including one that led to the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. Lineaments of a new food regime based on quality audited supply chains seems to be emerging in the space opened by impasse in international negotiations over food standards. Led by food retailers, agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements that arose in the interstices of the second food regime. If it consolidates, the new food regime promises to shift the historical balance between public and private regulation, and to widen the gap between privileged and poor consumers as it deepens commodification and marginalizes existing peasants. Social movements are already regrouping and consolidation of the regime remains uncertain.

Civil Society Reconsidered: The Durable Nature and Community Structure of Collective Civic Action

Abstract: This article develops a conceptual framework on civil society that shifts the dominant focus on individuals to collective action events—civic and protest alike—that bring people together in public to realize a common purpose. Analyzing over 4,000 events in the Chicago area from 1970 to 2000, the authors find that while civic engagement is durable overall, “sixties‐style” protest declines, and hybrid events that combine public claims making with civic forms of behavior—what they call “blended social action”—increase. Furthermore, dense social ties, group memberships, and neighborly exchange do not predict community variations in collective action. The density of nonprofit organizations matters instead, suggesting that declines in traditional social capital may not be as consequential for civic capacity as commonly thought.

Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks

Abstract: Globalization may offer modern feminism its greatest opportunity and greatest challenge. Allowing communication and information exchange while also exacerbating economic and social inequalities, globalization has fostered the growth of transnational feminist networks (TFNs). These groups have used the Internet to build coalitions, lobby governments, and advance the goals of feminism. Globalizing Women explains how the negative and positive aspects of globalization have helped to create transnational networks of activists and organizations with common agendas. Sociologist Valentine M. Moghadam discusses six such feminist networks to analyze the organization, objectives, programs, and outcomes of these groups in their effort to improve conditions for women throughout the world. Moghadam also examines how "globalizing women" are responding to and resisting growing inequalities, the exploitation of female labor, and patriarchal fundamentalisms. This book is an important addition to literature exploring feminism as well as to the broader discussion of the impact of transnational social movements and organizations in the globalized world.

The Uneven Geography of Global Civil Society: National and Global Influences on Transnational Association

Abstract: Recent decades have seen an explosion of transnational networking and activism, but participation varies widely around the globe. Using negative binomial regression, we explore how national and global political and economic factors shape this “uneven geography” of participation in transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs). Contrary to assumptions in popular discourse, we find a continued importance of the state and limited importance of global economic integration in determining participation in transnational associations. But while ties to the global economy do not significantly impact participation, a country’s links to global institutions enhance opportunities for transnational activism. Rich countries’ citizens are more active transnationally, but low-income countries with strong ties to the global polity are also more tied to global activist networks. This suggests that TSMOs do not simply reproduce world-system stratification, but ‐ aided by a supportive institutional environment ‐ they help sow the seeds for its transformation.

Where do we stand? common mechanisms in organizations and social movements research

Abstract: The premise of this volume is that both organizations and social movements are forms of coordinated collective action and, therefore, ought to be conducive to similar forms of analysis (Perrow 2000: 472–4; Zald and Berger 1978). Furthermore, the editors and contributors suspect that if students of organizations and social movements paid closer attention to each other's work, then opportunities for creative conceptual and theoretical cross-fertilization might occur, and our understanding of both organizations and movements might improve. To date, researchers in these fields have made limited progress in this direction. A few organization theorists have used social movement theory to generate new hypotheses for organizational analysis and provide insights into the development of organizational forms (e.g., Davis and McAdam 2000; Davis and Thompson 1994; Lounsbury 2001; Rao et al. 2000). But they acknowledge that social movement theory still has been employed only intermittently to explain these and other organizational phenomena (Swaminathan and Wade 2001). Social movement theorists have been somewhat more ambitious in capitalizing on organizational analysis to explain how social movements emerge and develop (e.g., Clemens 1993, 1997: chap. 2). In particular, the resource mobilization tradition drew on organizational analysis to argue in part that social movement organizations, like many types of organizations, tend toward bureaucratization, professionalization, and conglomeration, and that these organizations often adjust their goals in order to better fit their resource environments and survive (Kriesi 1996; McCarthy and Zald 1973, 1977; Zald and Ash 1966).

Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE

Abstract: In the late 1980s, I studied developments in environmental politics, a field that I had, until then, not examined in any detail. Given my background studying social movements and political institutions, I was intrigued by the ‘career’ of the environmental movement. In twenty years, it had transformed from a counter-cultural movement, practising the symbolic politics of street demonstrations, lifestyle choices, and alternative consumption (expressed in an elaborate and very visible urban circuit encompassing bookshops, wholemeal food stores, dress codes, communal households, and so on) to a more mainstream political force, seeking representation and influence through ‘green’ parties and professional lobbying (see Hajer, 1995). Upon reflection, it seemed obvious that much more was going on in environmental politics than fighting ‘environmental degradation’. The differences in style, both in terms of ways of life and of conducting politics, signalled that environmental politics was in fact a field of profound ‘cultural politics’. Environmental politics appeared to be a stage at which society reflected on its record: values were at risk, moral commitments were contested and the very form of conducting politics was questioned (Hajer, 1996).

Desiring Sameness? The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation

Abstract: Since the 1990s the dominant political discourse of social movements concerned with “sexual politics” has been that of seeking access into mainstream culture through demanding equal rights of citizenship. I focus on the changing politics of sexuality in the context of new forms of social governance associated with neoliberalism, central to which is professionalisation and particular forms of knowledge production. Changes in political organising, coupled with the growth in identity-based consumption and the greater visibility of lesbians and gay men as consumer citizens, have provided a variety of opportunities for new professional careers. I discuss these developments and suggest that a key aspect of this increase in professionalisation is the construction of the gay and lesbian subject as part of a national and, in some instances, an international constituency. Finally, I consider how, in recent years, new forms of professionalisation of knowledge production about lesbians and gay men have emerged, not only in terms of political and market interests, but also in the academy.

The work of economics: how a discipline makes its world

Abstract: What is the work of economics? How does it operate to establish facts and make them stable? Is it sometimes able to use the world as a laboratory? If so, what measures are necessary to organize the world as a laboratory for economic experiments? To what extent do these measures rely upon the efforts of nonacademic economists, and of other social agents and arrangements including think tanks, government policies, development programs, NGOs, and social movements? A recent “natural experiment” using the social world as a laboratory, carried out in Peru, produced remarkable results, enthusiastically received by economists in the United States and by international development agencies. The paper examines the work of organizing the socio-technical world required to produce this knowledge, the curious kind of facts that were produced, the connections among those involved in this work, in particular the organized work of the neoliberal movement, and the role of the new facts in making possible further efforts at economic experimentation.

From virtual public spheres to global justice: A critical Theory of internetworked social movements

Abstract: From the early 1990s when the EZLN (the Zapatistas), led by Subcommandte Marcos, first made use of the Internet to the late 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Trade and Investment and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social protest movements were emergent. These new movements seemed diffuse and unstructured, yet at the same time, they forged unlikely coalitions of labor, environmentalists, feminists, peace, and global social justice activists collectively critical of the adversities of neoliberal globalization and its associated militarism. Moreover, the rapid emergence and worldwide proliferation of these movements, organized and coordinated through the Internet, raised a number of questions that require rethinking social movement theory. Specifically, the electronic networks that made contemporary globalization possible also led to the emergence of “virtual public spheres” and, in turn, “Internetworked S...

A History of Thailand

Abstract: In A History of Thailand, Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit reveal how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree labour evolved into a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from southern China. They trace how a Buddhist cosmography adapted to new ideas of time and space, and a traditional polity was transformed into a new nation-state under a strengthened monarchy. The authors cover the contests between urban nationalists, ambitious generals, communist rebels, business politicians, and social movements to control the nation-state and redefine its purpose. They describe the dramatic changes wrought by a booming economy, globalization, and the evolution of mass society. Finally, they show how Thailand's path is still being contested by those who believe in change from above and those who fight for democracy and liberal values. Drawing on new Thai-language research, this second edition brings the Thai story up to date and includes a new section on the 2006 coup and the restoration of an elected government in 2008.

Global-net for Global Movements? A Network of Networks for a Movement of Movements

Abstract: This article focuses on the use of Computer-Mediated Communication by the movement for global justice, with special attention to the organisations involved in the movement and its activists. We examined data collected during two supranational protest events: the anti-G8 protest in Genoa in July 2001 and the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence in November 2002. In both cases, we have complemented an analysis of the Genoa Social Forum and ESF websites with a survey of activists, including questions about their use of the Internet. We then examine hypotheses about changes new technologies introduce in collective action. The Internet empowers social movements in: (a) purely instrumental ways (an additional logistical resource for ‘resource-poor’ actors), (b) a protest function (direct expression of protest); (c) symbolically (as a medium favouring identification processes in collective actors) and (d) cognitively (informing and sensitising public opinion).

Bringing the Moral Economy back in … to the Study of 21st-Century Transnational Peasant Movements

Abstract: James Scott's The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976) appeared at a time when “peasant studies” had begun to occupy an important place in the social sciences. The book's focus on Vietnam, as well as its novel argument about the causes of rural rebellion, attracted widespread attention and unleashed acerbic debates about peasants' “rationality” and the applicability of concepts from neoclassical economics to smallholding agriculturalists. In this article, I analyze E. P. Thompson's notion of “moral economy” and Scott's use of it to develop an experiential theory of exploitation. I then discuss other influences on Scott, including Karl Polanyi, A. V. Chayanov, and the Annales historians. “Moral economy” and “subsistence crisis” are concepts that Scott elaborated mainly in relation to village or national politics. In the final section of the article, I outline changes affecting peasantries in the globalization era and the continuing relevance of moral economic discourses in agriculturalists' transnational campaigns against the WTO.

Movement-relevant Theory: Rethinking Social Movement Scholarship and Activism

Abstract: The dominant American social movement scholarship has become detached from the concerns of actual social movements. But the dramatic growth of social movement activity in recent years, especially the global justice movement, is creating the conditions for an emerging new direction in social movement scholarship which prioritizes the relevance of such work to the movements themselves. A problem in the current social movement literature is that the different schools of thought tend to overemphasize particular variables and pit them against one another. Rather than simply seeking to emphasize a different variable in the lifecycle of a social movement, a movement-relevant approach has the potential to transcend these schisms (such as structure versus culture). At the same time, this approach does not categorically reject earlier theoretical perspectives, but instead seeks to glean what is most useful for movements from these earlier works. Likewise, this emergent direction entails a dynamic engagement with th...

Unpacking “transnational citizenship”*

Abstract: ▪ Abstract What “counts” as transnational citizenship? Like the related notions of global or transnational civil society, the term's appeal to internationalists is greater than its conceptual precision. However, a wide range of empirical trends do raise questions about the nation-state-based approach to the concept of citizenship. In an effort to avoid conceptual stretching, this essay assesses the degree to which the concept of transnational citizenship helps to address issues raised by “globalization from below.” Because many approaches to citizenship focus on the dynamics and texture of participation, this review incorporates recent findings in sociology, anthropology, and geography into the political science discussion. The essay is organized by propositions that bring together analysis of two distinct empirical literatures, on transnational civil society and on migrant civic and political participation. The review concludes by contrasting two cross-cutting sets of definitional choices. The discussion...

Frames of protest : social movements and the framing perspective

Abstract: Chapter 1 Frames of Protest: A Roadmap to a Perspective Part 2 I Framing and Mobilization Processes Chapter 3 Explaining Suffrage Mobilization: Balance, Neutralization, and Range in Collective Action Frames Chapter 4 Collective Action Frames in the Gay Liberation Movement, 1969-1973 Chapter 5 Strategic Framing, Emotions, and Superbarrio-Mexico City's Masked Crusader Part 6 II Non-Movement Framing: The State and Media Chapter 7 Official Frames in Social Movement Theory: The FBI, HUAC, and the Communist threat in Hollywood Chapter 8 Mobilizing the White March: Media Frames as Alternatives to Movement Organizations Part 9 III Framing and Political Opportunities Chapter 10 Framing, Political Opportunities, and Eastern European Mobilization Chapter 11 Political Opportunities and Framing Puerto Rican Identity in New York City Part 12 IV Refining the Perspective Chapter 13 What a Good Idea! Ideology and Frames in Social Movement Research Chapter 14 Clarifying the Relationship between Framing and Ideology Chapter 15 Breaking the Frame Chapter 16 Strategic Imperative, Ideology, and Frame Chapter 17 Comparative Frame Analysis 18 Index 19 About the Contributors

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle

Abstract: Introduction -- Singing civil rights : the freedom song tradition -- Scenarios for revolution : the drama of the Black Panthers -- The poetical is the political : feminist poetry and the poetics of women's rights -- Revolutionary walls : Chicano/a murals, Chicano/a movements -- Old cowboys, new Indians : Hollywood frames the American Indian movement -- "We are [not] the world" : famine, apartheid, and the politics of rock music -- Acting up against AIDS : the (very) graphic arts in a postmodern epidemic -- Environmental justice ecocriticism : race, class, gender, and literary ecologies -- Will the revolution be cybercast? : new media, the battle of Seattle, and global justice -- Reflections on the cultural study of social movements.

Age for Leisure? Political Mediation and the Impact of the Pension Movement on U.S. Old-Age Policy

Abstract: This article elaborates a political mediation theory of the impact of social movements on states and policy, positing that the influence of mobilization and specific strategies of collective action depends on specified political contexts and the type of influence sought. Examining the influence of the U.S. old-age pension movement, which involved millions of people, this article appraises the mediation model using state-level data from the 1930s and 1940s on Old Age Assistance—the main support for the aged at the time-and a Senate vote for generous senior citizens' pensions in 1939. Our models control for other potential influences, notably public opinion, which is often ignored in empirical studies and sometimes claimed to be responsible for causal influence mistakenly attributed to challengers. We employ pooled cross-sectional and time series analyses and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FSQCA), which is especially suited to appraising the combinational expectations of the political mediation...

White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide Web

Abstract: Over the previous decade, white supremacist organizations have tapped into the ever emerging possibilities offered by the World Wide Web. Drawing from prior sociological work that has examined this medium and its uses by white supremacist organizations, this article advances the understanding of recruitment, identity and action by providing a synthesis of interpretive and more systematic analyses of thematic content, structure and associations within white supremacist discourse. Analyses, which rely on TextAnalyst, highlight semantic networks of thematic content from principal white supremacist websites, and delineate patterns and thematic associations relative to the three requisites of social movement culture denoted in recent research - namely identity, interpretational framing of cause and effect, and political efficacy. Our results suggest that nationalism, religion and definitions of responsible citizenship are interwoven with race to create a sense of collective identity for these groups, their members and potential recruits. Moreover, interpretative frameworks that simultaneously identify threatening social issues and provide corresponding recommendations for social action are employed. Importantly, and relative to prior work, results show how the interpretation of problems, their alleged causes and the call to action are systematically linked. We conclude by discussing the framing of white supremacy issues, the organizations' potential for recruitment, and how a relatively new communication medium, the Internet, has been cheaply and efficiently integrated into the white supremacist repertoire. Broader implications for social movement theory are also explored.

Islamism and Social Movement Theory

Abstract: There is a new, but still limited, realisation that the perspectives developed by the ‘social movement theory’ can be useful to illuminate aspects of Islamist movements. This is a welcome development. Yet it is also pertinent to point to some limitations of the prevailing social movement theories (those grounded in the technologically advanced and politically open societies) to account for the complexities of sociopolitical activism in contemporary Muslim societies, which are often characterised by political control and limited means for communicative action. The article argues for a more fluid and fragmented understanding of social movements, which may better explain the differentiated and changing disposition of such movements as Islamism. In this context, I propose the concept of ‘imagined solidarities’, which might help illustrate modes of solidarity building in such closed political settings as the contemporary Muslim Middle East.

Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms

Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Community and Solitude: Social Relations in the City. 2. Spaces of Difference and Division. 3. The Politics of Space: Social Movements and Public Space. 4. Capital and Culture: Gentrifying the City. 5. Embodied Spaces: Gender, Sexuality and the City. 6. Spatial Stories: Subjectivity in the City. 7. Making Space: Urban Cultures, Spatial Tactics. Conclusion. Bibliography. Index.