Showing papers on "Social movement published in 2008"

Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes

Abstract: In Territories of Difference , Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book Encountering Development , analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. His analysis is based on his many years of engagement with a group of Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia’s Pacific rainforest region, the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN). Escobar offers a detailed ethnographic account of PCN’s visions, strategies, and practices, and he chronicles and analyzes the movement’s struggles for autonomy, territory, justice, and cultural recognition. Yet he also does much more. Consistently emphasizing the value of local activist knowledge for both understanding and social action and drawing on multiple strands of critical scholarship, Escobar proposes new ways for scholars and activists to examine and apprehend the momentous, complex processes engulfing regions such as the Colombian Pacific today. Escobar illuminates many interrelated dynamics, including the Colombian government’s policies of development and pluralism that created conditions for the emergence of black and indigenous social movements and those movements’ efforts to steer the region in particular directions. He examines attempts by capitalists to appropriate the rainforest and extract resources, by developers to set the region on the path of modernist progress, and by biologists and others to defend this incredibly rich biodiversity “hot-spot” from the most predatory activities of capitalists and developers. He also looks at the attempts of academics, activists, and intellectuals to understand all of these complicated processes. Territories of Difference is Escobar’s effort to think with Afro-Colombian intellectual-activists who aim to move beyond the limits of Eurocentric paradigms as they confront the ravages of neoliberal globalization and seek to defend their place-based cultures and territories.

Forage for thought: Mobilizing codes in the movement for grass-fed meat and dairy products

Abstract: This study illuminates how new markets emerge and how social movements can effect cultural change through market creation. We suggest that social movements can fuel solutions to three challenges in creating new market segments: entrepreneurial production, the creation of collective producer identities, and the establishment of regular exchange between producers and consumers. We use qualitative data on the grassroots coalition movement that has spurred a market for grass-fed meat and dairy products in the United States since the early 1990s. Our analysis shows that the movement's participants mobilized broad cultural codes and that these codes motivated producers to enter and persist in a nascent market, shaped their choices about production and exchange technologies, enabled a collective identity, and formed the basis of the products' exchange value.

A Political Mediation Model of Corporate Response to Social Movement Activism

Abstract: This paper uses a theory of social movement outcomes, the political mediation model, to explain why certain corporations targeted by boycotts are more likely to concede to boycotters' demands. Hypo...

Precarity as a Political Concept, or, Fordism as Exception:

Abstract: In 2003, the concept of precarity emerged as the central organizing platform for a series of social struggles that would spread across the space of Europe. Four years later, almost as suddenly as the precarity movement appeared, so it would enter into crisis. To understand precarity as a political concept it is necessary to go beyond economistic approaches that see social conditions as determined by the mode of production. Such a move requires us to see Fordism as exception and precarity as the norm. The political concept and practice of translation enables us to frame the precarity of creative labour in a broader historical and geographical perspective, shedding light on its contestation and relation to the concept of the common. Our interest is in the potential for novel forms of connection, subjectivization and political organization. Such processes of translation are themselves inherently precarious, transborder undertakings.

Issues and methods in comparative politics : an introduction

Abstract: Part 1: Why, How, and Problems of Comparison 1. Why compare countries? 2. How to compare countries 3. Comparing many countries 4. Comparing few countries 5. Case studies as comparison Part 2: Comparing Comparisons 6. Economic development and democracy 7. Violent political dissent and social revolution 8. Non-violent political dissent and social movements 9. Transitions to democracy 10. Institutional design and democratic performance 11. Human rights 12. International relations and comparative politics Part 3: Comparative Methods and New Issues 13. Common themes and different comparisons 14. New challenges for comparative politics

A new social movement: Sport for development and peace

Abstract: In recent years, national and international sports organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), universities and schools have conducted programmes in low- and middle-income...

Culture, Power, and Institutions: A Multi-Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements*:

Abstract: We argue that critiques of political process theory are beginning to coalesce into a new approach to social movements—a “multi-institutional politics” approach. While the political process model assumes that domination is organized by and around one source of power, the alternative perspective views domination as organized around multiple sources of power, each of which is simultaneously material and symbolic. We examine the conceptions of social movements, politics, actors, goals, and strategies supported by each model, demonstrating that the view of society and power underlying the political process model is too narrow to encompass the diversity of contemporary change efforts. Through empirical examples, we demonstrate that the alternative approach provides powerful analytical tools for the analysis of a wide variety of contemporary change efforts.

Contention and Ambiguity: Mining and the Possibilities of Development

Abstract: The last decade and a half has witnessed a dramatic growth in mining activity in many developing countries. This article reviews these recent trends and describes the debates and conflicts they have triggered. The authors review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an extraction-led pathway to development. They then describe the different types of resistance and social mobilization that have greeted mineral expansion at a range of geographical scales, and consider how far these protests have changed the relationships between mining and political economic change. The conclusions address how far such protests might contribute to an ‘escape’ from the resource curse, and consider implications for research and policy agendas.

With and beyond the state — co-production as a route to political influence, power and transformation for grassroots organizations

Abstract: This paper reviews the use of co-production — with state and citizens working together — as a grassroots strategy to secure political influence and access resources and services. To date, the literature on social movements has concentrated on more explicitly political strategies used by such movements to contest for power and influence. Co-production, when considered, is viewed as a strategy used by citizens and the state to extend access to basic services with relatively little consideration given to its wider political ramifications. However, co-production is used increasingly by grassroots organizations and federations as part of an explicit political strategy. This paper examines the use of co-productive strategies by citizen groups and social movement organizations to enable individual members and their associations to secure effective relations with state institutions that address both immediate basic needs and enable them to negotiate for greater benefits.

The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy

Abstract: The Global Commonwealth of Citizens critically examines the prospects for cosmopolitan democracy as a viable and humane response to the challenges of globalization Arising after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decisive affirmation of Western-style democracy, cosmopolitan democracy envisions a world politics in which democratic participation by citizens is not constrained by national borders, and where democracy spreads through dialogue and incentives, not coercion and war This is an incisive and thought-provoking book by one of the world's leading proponents of cosmopolitan democracy Daniele Archibugi looks at all aspects of cosmopolitan democracy in theory and practice Is democracy beyond nation-states feasible? Is it possible to inform global governance with democratic norms and values, and if so, how? Archibugi carefully answers questions like these and forcefully responds to skeptics and critics He argues that democracy can be extended to the global political arena by strengthening and reforming existing international organizations and creating new ones, and he calls for dramatic changes in the foreign policies of nations to make them compatible with global public interests Archibugi advocates giving voice to new global players such as social movements, cultural communities, and minorities He proposes building institutional channels across borders to address common problems, and encourages democratic governance at the local, national, regional, and global levels The Global Commonwealth of Citizens is an accessible introduction to the subject that will be of interest to students and scholars in political science, international relations, international law, and human rights

Occupancy Urbanism: Radicalizing Politics and Economy beyond Policy and Programs

Abstract: This article proposes a narrative of city contestations beyond policy and programs. It considers why Indian metro elites, large land developers and international donors paradoxically lobby for comprehensive planning when confronting ‘vote bank politics’ by the poor. Poor groups, claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims, open up political spaces that appropriate institutions and fuel an economy that builds complex alliances. Such spaces, here termed ‘occupancy urbanism’, are materialized by land shaped into multiple de-facto tenures deeply embedded in lower bureaucracy. While engaging the state, these locality politics remain autonomous of it. Such a narrative views city terrains as being constituted by multiple political spaces inscribed by complex local histories. This politics is substantial and poses multiple crises for global capital. Locally embedded institutions subvert high-end infrastructure and mega projects. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ helps poor groups appropriate real estate surpluses via reconstituted land tenure to fuel small businesses whose commodities jeopardize branded chains. Finally, it poses a political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well-meaning progressive activists and the rhetoric of ‘participatory planning’. This is also a politics that rejects ‘developmentalism’ where ‘poverty’ is ghettoized via programs for ‘basic needs’ allowing the elite ‘globally competitive economic development’.

Volunteerism: Social Issues Perspectives and Social Policy Implications

Abstract: This analytic review focuses on theory and research on volunteerism. First, we define volunteerism as freely chosen helping activities that extend over time and that are often performed through organizations and on behalf of receptive causes or individuals. Next, we link these definitional features to the Volunteer Process Model, which depicts volunteerism as a process with three sequential and interactive stages (antecedents, experiences, and consequences) and at multiple levels of analysis. Then, we use this model to organize the empirical literature on volunteerism and selected work on social movements. Finally, we discuss implications for social policy issues relevant to individuals, organizations, communities, and societies.

Embeddedness and Identity : How Immigrants Turn Grievances into Action

Abstract: The social and political integration of Muslim immigrants into Western societies is among the most pressing problems of today. Research documents how immigrant communities are increasingly under pressure to assimilate to their “host” societies in the face of significant discrimination. In this article, we bring together two literatures—that on immigrants and that on social movement participation—to explore whether Muslim immigrants respond to their societal situation by engaging in collective political action. Although neither literature has given much attention to immigrant collective action, they do provide predictive leverage relative to the influence of grievances, efficacy, identity, emotions, and embeddedness in civil society networks. Our analyses are comprised of three separate but identical studies: a study of Turkish (N = 126) and Moroccan immigrants (N = 80) in the Netherlands and a study of Turkish immigrants (N = 100) in New York. Results suggest that social psychological mechanisms known to ...

Mining and social movements: struggles over Mining and social movements: struggles over livelihood and rural territorial development in the Andes

Abstract: Social movements have been viewed as vehicles through which the concerns of poor and marginalised groups are given greater visibility within civil society, lauded for being the means to achieve local empowerment and citizen activism, and seen as essential in holding the state to account and constituting a grassroots mechanism for promoting democracy. However, within development studies little attention has been paid to understanding how social movements can affect trajectories of development and rural livelihood in given spaces, and how these effects are related to movements' internal dynamics and their interaction with the broader environment within which they operate. This paper addresses this theme for the case of social movements protesting contemporary forms of mining investment in Latin America. On the basis of cases from Peru and Ecuador, the paper argues that the presence and nature of social movements has significant influences both on forms taken by extractive industries (in this case mining), and on the effects of this extraction on rural livelihoods. In this sense one can usefully talk about rural development as being co-produced by movements, mining companies and other actors, in particular the state. The terms of this co-production, however, vary greatly among different locations, reflecting the distinct geographies of social mobilisation and of mineral investment, as well as the varying power relationships among the different actors involved.

Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries

Abstract: How do social movements promote diversity and alternative organizational forms? We address this question by analyzing how cooperative enterprise was affected by the Grange—a leading anticorporate movement in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. State-level analyses across three industries yield three findings. First, the Grange had positive effects on cooperatives and mutuals during the nineteenth-century populist struggles over corporate capitalism. Second, these effects were stronger where corporations counter-mobilized to block challengers' political efforts. Grangers pursued economic organization as an alternative to politics and in response to blocked political access. Third, the Grange continued to foster cooperatives even as populist revolts waned. It did so, however, by buffering cooperatives from problems of group heterogeneity and population change, rendering them less dependent on supportive communities and specific economic conditions. These findings advance research at the movements/organizations interface by documenting movement effects and by isolating different causal pathways through which mobilization, counter- mobilization, and political opportunity shape economic organization. The results also provide economic sociology with new evidence on how social structure moderates economic forces, and help revise institutional analyses of American capitalism by showing how cooperatives emerged as significant, rather than aberrant, elements of the U.S. economy.

The Growing Engagement of Emergent Concerned Groups in Political and Economic Life: Lessons from the French Association of Neuromuscular Disease Patients

Abstract: This article discusses the notion of emergent concerned groups and explores how these groups contribute to shaping the relations between technoscience, politics, and economic markets. The first par...

Performing politics Image, embodiment, and affective solidarity during anti-corporate globalization protests

Abstract: This article brings together the anthropological, sociological, and related literature on media, emotion, and performance to explore the role of counter-summit protests within anti-corporate global...

A Social Movement Perspective of Stakeholder Collective Action and Influence

Abstract: This article provides a social movement theory—based explanation for the emergence and influence of corporate stakeholders. The author argues that stakeholder influence originates in the collective action of potential stakeholders. Collective action binds individual stakeholders together, assists in the formation of a common identity and interests, and provides the means for stakeholder strategic action. The author suggests three main factors that explain the emergence of stakeholder collective action and its consequent influence: mobilizing structures, corporate opportunities, and framing processes. By focusing more on the collective action necessary for stakeholder influence, we also gain a better understanding of how negotiation processes might unfold between stakeholders and corporate decision makers.

New Academic Fields as Admittance-Seeking Social Movements: The Case of Strategic Management

Abstract: Numerous histories of the early days of individual academic fields have been written, but scholars generally have stopped short of proposing generalizable frameworks or testable propositions for why these focal fields survived and prospered. We integrate logics from social movement theory and the sociology of science to model the rise of an aspiring academic community as an admittance-seeking social movement consisting of three major elements: differentiation, mobilization, and legitimacy building. We offer propositions based on in-depth analysis of the rise of a specific field—strategic management—within the administrative sciences.

Confronting the State, the Corporation, and the Academy : The Influence of Institutional Targets on Social Movement Repertoires

Abstract: Analysts have shown increased interest in how social movements use tactical repertoires strategically. While the state is most often the guarantor of new benefits, many movements—from labor to the environmental movement—target corporate, educational, and other institutions. Employing a unique data set of protests reported in the New York Times (1960–90), this research examines how repertoires are, in part, contingent on the institutional target a movement selects. In particular, the authors consider the role of each target's vulnerabilities and its capacities for response—repression, facilitation, and routinization—as explanations for the degree of transgressive protest each target faces. The results provide strong evidence for considering targets as a central factor in shaping forms of social protest.

Social Movements for Global Democracy

Abstract: This groundbreaking study sheds new light on the struggle to define the course of globalization. Synthesizing extensive research on transnational activism, Social Movements for Global Democracy shows how transnational networks of social movement activists-democratic globalizers-have worked to promote human rights and ecological sustainability over the predominant neoliberal system of economic integration. Using case studies of recent and ongoing campaigns for global justice, Jackie Smith provides valuable insight into whether and how these activists are succeeding. She argues that democratic globalizers could be more effective if they presented a united front organized around a global vision that places human rights and ecological stability foremost and if they were to directly engage governments and the United Nations. Illuminating the deep-seated struggles between two visions of globalization, Smith reveals a network of activists who have long been working to democratize the global political system.

Blurring Boundaries: Recognizing Knowledge-Practices in the Study of Social Movements

Abstract: Social movements are arising in unexpected places, producing effects not normally associated with our traditional understandings of either politics or movements. No longer, and perhaps never, solely the highly visible, modernist expressions of resistance to the state, movements are not only enacting politics through protest and cultural contestation, but are generating diverse knowledges. From heated debates over the meaning of Italy's alter-globalization movement; to careful direct-action strategizing in Chicago's cooperative bookstores; to conferences on Native American environmental justice issues, contemporary movements are important sites of knowledge creation, reformulation and diffusion. We call these "knowledge-practices." Building on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social movements, we argue that when we recognize movements as processes through which knowledge is generated, modified and mobilized, we gain important insights into the politics of contemporary movements. This recognition also has important methodological implications. It requires that we shift the mode of engagement in our research, blurring established social scientific boundaries and promoting a more relational-symmetrical approach.

Environmental Justice at the Crossroads

Abstract: The field of environmental justice emerged at a crossroads of social movements, public policy, and academic research ‐ what we call environmental justice praxis. Now, the field finds itself again at a crossroads as it expands to address new populations, problems, and places. In this article, we first outline the competing definitions of the problems of environmental inequality and environmental racism from the perspective of social movements, policy, and research. Second, we identify the expansion of the field in two key areas: new issues and constituencies and new places and sites of analysis ‐ specifically the relationship between the local and the global. This expansion leads to increasingly sophisticated spatial methodologies and social theories to examine problems of environmental injustice. Finally, we identify three promising trends in the field: refining the mechanisms and processes of environmental injustice, a renewed focus on the state and the environment as key actors, and a revitalized focus on the interactive and continually evolving relationship between scholarship and social movements.

Is an Alternative Globalization Possible

Abstract: Building on Polanyi’s concept of the “double-movement” through which society defends itself against domination by the self-regulating market, this article sets out some key organizational and ideological hurdles that the contemporary “movement of movements” must surmount to challenge the hegemony of neo-liberal globalization. After outlining neo-liberalism’s failures, it makes an argument for the possibility of “counter-hegemonic globalization,” defined as a globally organized project of transformation aimed at replacing the dominant (hegemonic) global regime with one that maximizes democratic political control and makes the equitable development of human capabilities and environmental stewardship its priorities.

Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective

Abstract: Preface vi 1 Introduction 1 2 Gender Violence and Social Movements 25 3 Punishment, Safety, and Reform: Interventions in Domestic Violence 48 4 Gender Violence as a Human Rights Violation 77 5 Poverty, Racism, and Migration 102 6 Violent "Cultural" Practices in the Family 127 7 Women and Armed Confl ict 156 8 Conclusions 179 References 187 Index 207

Communication and Political Mobilization: Digital Media and the Organization of Anti-Iraq War Demonstrations in the U.S.

Abstract: The speed and scale of mobilization in many contemporary protest events may reflect a transformation of movement organizations toward looser ties with members, enabling broader mobilization through the mechanism of dense individual-level political networks. This analysis explores the dynamics of this communication process in the case of U.S. protests against the Iraq war in 2003. We hypothesize that individual activists closest to the various sponsoring protest organizations were (a) disproportionately likely to affiliate with diverse political networks and (b) disproportionately likely to rely on digital communication media (lists, Web sites) for various types of information and action purposes. We test this model using a sample of demonstrators drawn from the United States protest sites of New York, San Francisco, and Seattle and find support for our hypotheses.

Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes

Abstract: Over the last two decades, indigenous populations in Latin America have achieved a remarkable level of visibility and political effectiveness, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. In "Struggles of Voice", Jose Antonio Lucero examines these two outstanding examples in order to understand their different patterns of indigenous mobilization and to reformulate the theoretical model by which we link political representation to social change.Building on extensive fieldwork, Lucero considers Ecuador's united indigenous movement and compares it to the more fragmented situation in Bolivia. He analyzes the mechanisms at work in political and social structures to explain the different outcomes in each case. Lucero assesses the intricacies of the many indigenous organizations and the influence of various NGOs to uncover how the conflicts within social movements, the shifting nature of indigenous identities, and the politics of transnationalism all contribute to the success or failure of political mobilization.Blending philosophical inquiry with empirical analysis, "Struggles of Voice" is an informed and incisive comparative history of indigenous movements in these two Andean countries. It helps to redefine our understanding of the complex intersections of social movements and political representation.

How Adolescents in 27 Countries Understand, Support, and Practice Human Rights

Abstract: An understanding of human rights among young people forms a foundation for future support and practice of rights. We have used data from 88,000 14-year-olds surveyed in the 1999 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study to examine country differences in students' knowledge pertaining to human rights compared with other forms of civic knowledge, and in students' attitudes toward promoting and practicing human rights. A hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis examines student-level predictors (e.g., gender and school experiences) and country-level predictors (e.g., history of democracy) of rights-related knowledge and attitudes. Countries with governments that pay more attention to human rights in intergovernmental discourse (i.e., dialogue between nations and international governing bodies) have students who perform better on human rights knowledge items. Students' experiences of democracy at school and with international issues have a positive association with their knowledge of human rights. Significant gender differences also exist. Looking at rights-related attitudes, students with more knowledge of human rights, more frequent engagement with international topics, and more open class and school climates held stronger norms supporting social movement citizenship, had more positive attitudes toward immigrants' rights, and were more politically efficacious. Implications are drawn for psychologists and educators who wish to play a role in increasing adolescents' understanding, support, and practice of human rights.