Social movement

About: Social movement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 23103 publications have been published within this topic receiving 653076 citations. The topic is also known as: movement & syndical movement.

A Brief Primer on Participation: Philosophy and Practice

Abstract: In countries with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, public participation is synonymous with participatory democracy. People there associate the very concept of democracy with the activity of participating in government decision making. Although many do little more than vote, the term embraces much more. In some European countries, namely Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries, public participation practices evolved largely from the labor movement, in particular with regard to co-determination of corporate management. It is only recently that participation has spread to governmental activities (Guild 1979). Participation in Germany, for example, is largely realized through the institution of political parties. To be involved, even at a local level, one must first join one of the local political parties. In recent years, however, Germany as well as the several other European countries has experienced the emergence of many social movements which demand more direct democracy, in particular in decisions related to environmental quality and technological choices (Brand 1987: 31).

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.

The Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Three Decades of Human Rights' Activism: Embeddedness, Emotions, and Social Movements

Abstract: The Madres de Plaza de Mayo is a community of mothers and human rights activists in Argentina that has remained active for almost three decades. Based on a qualitative analysis of archival and ethnographic data assembled through fieldwork, this article examines the crucial role emotions play in maintaining the Madres' embeddedness in territorially dispersed social networks. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo perform emotional labor within their movement to sustain their activism. The Madres' emotional geographies emerge through their individual and collective practices in key places, which are themselves layered with emotions. Over the years, such practices have allowed the Madres to create widespread networks of activists and to sustain a social movement community that extends all across Argentina. The Madres' emotional labor and their sustained activism over time demonstrate that an open sense of place (place understood as a network of social relations that flow across space) is more important than the local (...

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.