Showing papers on "Social movement published in 2016"

A discussion of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).

Abstract: Today in advanced capitalist societies there is a rift between radical theory and radical politics, caused by the twin crises of socialism and Marxism. Socialism as model and Marxism as a theoretical approach are unattractive because of the authoritarianism of existing socialist societies, because Marxism's designated revolutionary agent - the working class - does not act as a class, and because many of today's radical issues - nuclear war, ecology, feminism, gay liberation - have not been compellingly addressed within the socialist tradition. Neither socialism nor Marxism offers an integrative vision for many activists in today's new social movements. Marxism creatively informs work within various academic disciplines, but the Marxist notion that there are overarching, total explanations of social reality is considered dubious, if considered at all. The current contenders among general, transdisciplinary outlooks, such as deconstruction, stress the fragmentary nature of reality, indeterminacy, and the lack of a unitary agency for change. The various post-Marxisms - mainly filiations out of the Age (!) of Structuralism - have been debilitating for radical politics. Although there are important contributions in the "linguistic turn," emphasizing non-economic motivations, the fluidity of social contexts, the power of language, and the rhetorical construction of social movements and cultural trends, on the whole its message has been that materialist determinism has to be replaced with de-ontologized indeterminacy. Deconstruction might mean critical engagement by which wholes are broken apart so their vibrant elements can be reappropriated in changed frameworks. But in casting aside Marxist answers too many of its critics also set aside the questions these answers were meant to address.

Narrative Agency in Hashtag Activism: The Case of #BlackLivesMatter

Abstract: Hashtag activism happens when large numbers of postings appear on social media under a common hashtagged word, phrase or sentence with a social or political claim. The temporal unfolding of these mutually connected postings in networked spaces gives them a narrative form and agency. Applying Karlyn Campbell’s propositions about rhetorical agency to the case of #BlackLivesMatter, this essay shows that narrative agency in hashtag activism derives from its narrative form as well as from its contents and social context. Narrative agency is communal, invented, skillful, and protean.

Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice

Abstract: In 2014, a dedicated activist movement — Black Lives Matter (BLM) — ignited an urgent national conversation about police killings of unarmed Black citizens. Online tools have been anecdotally credited as critical in this effort, but researchers are only beginning to evaluate this claim. This research report examines the movement’s uses of online media in 2014 and 2015. To do so, we analyze three types of data: 40.8 million tweets, over 100,000 web links, and 40 interviews of BLM activists and allies. Most of the report is devoted to detailing our findings, which include: *Although the #Blacklivesmatter hashtag was created in July 2013, it was rarely used through the summer of 2014 and did not come to signify a movement until the months after the Ferguson protests.*Social media posts by activists were essential in spreading Michael Brown’s story nationally.* Protesters and their supporters were generally able to circulate their own narratives on Twitter without relying on mainstream news outlets.* There are six major communities that consistently discussed police brutality on Twitter in 2014 and 2015: Black Lives Matter, Anonymous/Bipartisan Report, Black Entertainers, Conservatives, Mainstream News, and Young Black Twitter.* The vast majority of the communities we observed supported justice for the victims and decisively denounced police brutality.* Black youth discussed police brutality frequently on Twitter, but in ways that differed substantially from how activists discussed it.* Evidence that activists succeeded in educating casual observers on Twitter came in two main forms: expressions of awe and disbelief at the violent police reactions to the Ferguson protests, and conservative admissions of police brutality in the Eric Garner and Walter Scott cases.* The primary goals of social media use among our interviewees were education, amplification of marginalized voices, and structural police reform.In our concluding section, we reflect on the practical importance and implications of our findings. We hope this report contributes to the specific conversation about how Black Lives Matter and related movements have used online tools as well as to broader conversations about the general capacity of such tools to facilitate social and political change.

Taming Wicked Problems: The Role of Framing in the Construction of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: While scholars have explained how business has increasingly taken on regulatory roles to address social and environmental challenges, less attention has been given to the process of how business is made responsible for wicked problems. Drawing on a study of ‘conflict minerals’ in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we examine the process through which companies became responsible for a humanitarian crisis. We contribute by: (1) bridging insights from contentious performance and deliberative approaches – to present a model of corporate political responsibilization for a wicked problem that explains how a ‘field frame’ of responsibility can emerge; (2) explaining shifting boundaries between public and private responsibilities and the changing role of the state as catalytic rather than coercive; and (3) showing how responsibility can be attributed to a target by framing an issue and its root cause in ways that allow such an attribution, and how the attribution can diffuse and solidify.

Social Policy Expansion in Latin America

Abstract: Throughout the twentieth century, much of the population in Latin America lacked access to social protection. Since the 1990s, however, social policy for millions of outsiders - rural, informal, and unemployed workers and dependents - has been expanded dramatically. Social Policy Expansion in Latin America shows that the critical factors driving expansion are electoral competition for the vote of outsiders and social mobilization for policy change. The balance of partisan power and the involvement of social movements in policy design explain cross-national variation in policy models, in terms of benefit levels, coverage, and civil society participation in implementation. The book draws on in-depth case studies of policy making in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico over several administrations and across three policy areas: health care, pensions, and income support. Secondary case studies illustrate how the theory applies to other developing countries.

Framing energy justice: perspectives from activism and advocacy

Abstract: Concepts of justice are now routinely mobilised in environmental and climate change activism, with movements for environmental and climate justice emerging around the world. More recently, the concept of energy justice has gained prominence, most frequently framed in terms of access to affordable energy and fuel poverty but also related to the politics of energy infrastructures. To date however, there has been little critical interrogation of energy justice in relation to actions undertaken by activist and advocacy movements. In this paper, we set out an analysis of the concept of ‘energy justice’ from the perspective of framing. Drawing on research with organisations in Philadelphia, Paris and Berlin, the paper explores the articulation and elaboration of an energy justice frame. In so doing, it explores how such actors strategically frame their interpretation of energy justice, considers the overall emergence of an energy justice frame, and draws out an agenda for future research.

Introduction: The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins

Abstract: Throughout the world, political mobilizations by refugees, irregularized migrants, and solidarity activists have emerged, demanding and enacting the right to move and to stay, struggling for citizenship and human rights, and protesting the violence and deadliness of contemporary border regimes. These struggles regularly traverse the local and constitute trans-border, trans-categorical, and in fact, social movements. This special issue inquires into their transformative possibilities and offers a collection of articles that explore political mobilizations in several countries and (border) regions, including Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey and ‘the Mediterranean.’ This issue brings into dialog social movement literature, and especially the ‘contentious politics’ perspective, with migration struggles. It connects these to current debates underway within Critical Citizenship Studies and the Autonomy of Migration literatures around rights making, the constitution of ...

Social Activism in and Around Organizations

Abstract: Organizations are frequent targets for social activists aiming to influence society by first altering organizational policies and practices. Reflecting a steady rise in research on this topic, we review recent literature and advance an insider-outsider framework to help explicate the diverse mechanisms and pathways involved. Our framework distinguishes between different types of activists based on their relationship with targeted organizations. For example, “insider” activists who are employees of the target organization have certain advantages and disadvantages when compared with “outsider” activists who are members of independent social movement organizations. We also distinguish between the direct and indirect (or spillover) effects of social activism. Much research has focused on the direct effects of activism on targeted organizations, but often the effects on non-targeted organizations matter more for activists goals of achieving widespread change. Drawing on this framework, we identify and ...

The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism

Abstract: As datafication progressively invades all spheres of contemporary society, citizens grow increasingly aware of the critical role of information as the new fabric of social life. This awareness triggers new forms of civic engagement and political action that we term “data activism”. Data activism indicates the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication. Combining Science and Technology Studies with Social Movement Studies, this theoretical article offers a foretaste of a research agenda on data activism. It foregrounds democratic agency vis-a-vis datafication, and unites under the same label ways of affirmative engagement with data (“proactive data activism”, e. g. databased advocacy) and tactics of resistance to massive data collection (“reactive data activism”, e. g. encryption practices), understood as a continuum along which activists position and reposition themselves and their tactics. The article argues that data activism supports the emergence of novel epistemic cultures within the realm of civil society, making sense of data as a way of knowing the world and turning it into a point of intervention and generation of data countercultures. It offers the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool for the study of new forms of political participation and civil engagement in the age of datafication, and explores data activism as an evolving theoretical construct susceptible to contestation and revision.

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Abstract: This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements.

Learning from the Ground Up : Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production

Abstract: The dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production within social movements and activist contexts are often overlooked in scholarly literature, and sometimes even in the movements themselves. Given the academic emphasis on whether an action, campaign, or movement can be judged a “success,” the intellectual work that takes place in movements frequently goes unseen, as do the politics, processes, sites, and locations of knowledge production and learning in activist settings. Even social movement scholarship that draws upon or is embedded in movement actor perspectives has an expressed interest in “taking the measure of the new movements” (see Tom Mertes, 2004, p. xi, a collection of interviews with activists, originally published in New Left Review). The contributors to this collection, however, suggest that many powerful critiques and understandings of dominant ideologies and power structures, visions of social change, and the politics of domination and resistance in general emerge from these spaces and subsequently emphasize the significance of the knowledge-production dimensions of movement activism. Learning from the Ground Up also challenges ways in which grassroots and movement voices are often overwritten or otherwise marginalized in the context of purportedly “alternative” civil society networks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The interdisciplinary approaches adopted by the authors in this volume are as rich as the varied movements, processes, and dynamics of knowledge production that these chapters explore and elucidate.

The politics of niche-regime conflicts: Distributed solar energy in the United States

Abstract: In the U.S. utilities have attempted to slow the growth of distributed generation (DG) solar by reversing policy support, and they have greater financial and political resources than the solar industry. Empirical analysis of all major cases of niche-regime conflict over net metering policies in the U.S. shows that utilities are testing a range of strategies to slow the growth of DG solar, and outcomes vary by strategy type. An additional analysis of four case studies of DG solar conflicts shows that niche organizations can partially overcome the political power of regime organizations via three mechanisms: form coalitions with political parties that support the niche technologies, gain support from countervailing industrial organizations, and form coalitions with social movements to mobilize political protests and petitions. The political opportunity structure (in this case the party in control of the state government) affects the pattern of niche-regime strategies and interactions.

LGBT Parents and Social Media: Advocacy, Privacy, and Disclosure during Shifting Social Movements

Abstract: Increasing numbers of American parents identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). Shifting social movements are beginning to achieve greater recognition for LGBT parents and more rights for their families; however, LGBT parents still experience stigma and judgment in a variety of social contexts. We interviewed 28 LGBT parents to investigate how they navigate their online environments in light of these societal shifts. We find that 1) LGBT parents use social media sites to detect disapproval and identify allies within their social networks; 2) LGBT parents become what we call incidental advocates, when everyday social media posts are perceived as advocacy work even when not intended as such; and 3) for LGBT parents, privacy is a complex and collective responsibility, shared with children, partners, and families. We consider the complexities of LGBT parents' online disclosures in the context of shifting social movements and discuss the importance of supporting individual and collective privacy boundaries in these contexts.

Digital action repertoires and transforming a social movement organization

Abstract: An emerging research agenda focuses on social media's influence on political activism. Specific attention has recently been paid to digital social movement organizing and action repertoire developm...

The Consequences of Social Movements

Abstract: Social movements have attracted much attention in recent years, both from scholars and among the wider public. This book examines the consequences of social movements, covering such issues as the i ...

Collective Action in the Age of the Internet

Abstract: This article examines how the Internet transforms collective action Current practices on the web bear witness to thriving collective action ranging from persuasive to confrontational, individual to collective, undertakings Even more influential than direct calls for action is the indirect mobilizing influence of the Internet’s powers of mass communication, which is boosted by an antiauthoritarian ideology on the web Theoretically, collective action through the otherwise socially isolating computer is possible because people rely on internalized group memberships and social identities to achieve social involvement Empirical evidence from an online survey among environmental activists and nonactivists confirms that online action is considered an equivalent alternative to offline action by activists and nonactivists alike However, the Internet may slightly alter the motives underlying collective action and thereby alter the nature of collective action and social movements Perhaps more fundamental is th

Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution

Abstract: This book examines how Indigenous peoples’ rights and Indigenous rights movements represent an important and often overlooked shift in international politics - a shift that powerful states are actively resisting in a multitude of ways While Indigenous peoples are often dismissed as marginal non-state actors, this book argues that far from insignificant, global Indigenous politics is potentially forging major changes in the international system, as the implementation of Indigenous peoples’ rights requires a complete re-thinking and re-ordering of sovereignty, territoriality, liberalism, and human rights After thirty years of intense effort, the transnational Indigenous rights movement achieved passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007 This book asks: Why did movement need to fight so hard to secure passage of a bare minimum standard on Indigenous rights? Why is it that certain states are so threatened by an emerging international Indigenous rights regime? How does the emerging Indigenous rights regime change the international status quo? The questions are addressed by exploring how Indigenous politics at the global level compels a new direction of thought in IR by challenging some of its fundamental tenets It is argued that global Indigenous politics is a perspective of IR that, with the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ collective rights to land and self-determination, complicates the structure of international politics in new and important ways, challenging both Westphalian notions of state sovereignty and the (neo-)liberal foundations of states and the international human rights consensus Qualitative case studies of Canadian and New Zealand Indigenous rights, based on original field research, analyse both the potential and the limits of these challenges This work will be of interest to graduates and scholars in international relations, Indigenous studies, international organizations, IR theory and social movements

Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement

Abstract: What is fat activism and why is it important? To answer this question, Charlotte Cooper presents an expansive grassroots study that traces the forty-year history of international fat activism and grounds its actions in their proper historical and geographical contexts. She details fat activist methods, analyses existing literature in the field, challenges long-held assumptions that uphold systemic fatphobia, and makes clear how crucial feminism, queer theory and anti-racism are to the lifeblood of the movement. She also considers fat activism’s proxy concerns, including body image, body positivity, the obesity epidemic and fat stigma.

Masculinities in Cyberspace: An Analysis of Portrayals of Manhood in Men's Rights Activist Websites

Abstract: A growth in cultural ideologies concerned with men and masculinities in contemporary American society has recently emerged. Men’s rights activist (MRA) groups embody a movement emphasizing the crisis of masculinity. Despite men’s privileged societal status, MRAs seek to establish resources for men to utilize in elevating their perceived subordinated position in society in relation to women and social minorities. Little research has systematically investigated MRAs on the Internet, which is rapidly becoming a primary source of information and social connectedness for people. Through a content analysis of the 12 most prominent MRA websites, we explore the various strategies used by contemporary men’s groups designed to provide support for men in their pursuit of social legitimacy and power. Two primary categories of MRAs with distinctive ideological strategies emerged from this analysis: Cyber Lads in Search of Masculinity and Virtual Victims in Search of Equality. Though both groups promoted men’s entitlement to social power, Cyber Lads utilized themes of explicit aggression towards and devaluation of women, while Virtual Victims adopted political and social movement rhetoric to address men’s issues. The implications of these websites are discussed in terms of gender equality and their potential effects on individual men and women.

Masses, Crowds, Communities, Movements: Collective Action in the Internet Age

Abstract: This article investigates two questions: One, how might the very differently structured social collectives on the Internet – masses, crowds, communities and movements – be classified and distinguished? And two, what influence do the technological infrastructures in which they operate have on their formation, structure, and activities? For this, we differentiate between two main types of social collectives: non-organized collectives, which exhibit loosely coupled collective behavior, and collective actors with a separate identity and strategic capability. Further, we examine the newness, or distinctive traits, of online-based collectives, which we identify as being the strong and hitherto non-existent interplay between the technological infrastructures that these collectives are embedded in and the social processes of coordination and institutionalization they must engage in, in order to maintain their viability over time. Conventional patterns of social dynamics in the development and stabilization of col...

Decolonizing Food Justice: Naming, Resisting, and Researching Colonizing Forces in the Movement

Abstract: Over the past 15years social movements for community food security, food sovereignty, and food justice have organized to address the failures of the multinational, industrial food system to fairly and equitably distribute healthy, affordable, culturally ap- propriate real food. At the same time, these social movements, and research about them, re-inscribe white, patriarchal systems of power and privilege. We argue that in order to correct this pattern we must relocate our social movement goals and practices within a decolonizing and feminist leadership framework. This framework challenges movement leadership and scholarship by white people who uncritically assume a natural order of leadership based on academic achievement. We analyze critical points in our collabora- tion over the last four years using these frameworks. Doing so highlights the challenges and possibilities for a more inclusive food justice movement and more just scholarship.

Undermining Resistance Mobilization, Repression, and the Enforcement of Political Order

Abstract: This study examines attempts by authorities to undermine overt collective challenges, such as protests, riots, or armed attacks, by targeting activities that precede and/or support such behavior. A...

Commoning as a postcapitalist politics 1

Abstract: This chapter explores how the process of commoning offers a politics for the Anthropocene. It needs to step outside of the ways that the commons have generally been understood to reveal the political potential of communing. The chapter discusses the capitalocentric framing of the commons and raise concerns about how this framing limits the potential of commoning as a politics for the Anthropocene. Capitalocentrism names the way that a diversity of economic relations is positioned as either the same as subordinate to, or contained within 'capitalism'. The chapter discusses a predominant framing of commons as a 'thing' that is associated with publically owned or open access property. It focuses on three examples from the past and the present that provide insights into ways of commoning the atmosphere and reveals how a politics of commoning has been enacted through assemblages comprised of social movements, technological advances, institutional arrangements, and non-human 'others'.

Identity Economics 2016: Where Do Social Distinctions and Norms Come From?

Abstract: Identity economics provides a framework to analyze economic outcomes by establishing people's identities--not just pecuniary incentives--as primary motivations for choice. The heart of the framework is social difference and norms. This paper engages the emerging economic research into sources of divisions and norms: individuals, families, schools, governments, and social movements. The task at hand is to further to develop the micro-foundations of identity, in order to build a socially framed understandings of human motivation that will yield more robust accounts of behavior and institutions and yet better predictions of the implications of policy.