Topic
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.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a framework for rethinking the conservation and appropriation of biological diversity from the perspective of social movements, arguing that biodiversity, although with concrete biophysical referents, is a discourse of recent origin.
Abstract: This paper proposes a framework for rethinking the conservation and appropriation of biological diversity from the perspective of social movements. It argues that biodiversity, although with concrete biophysical referents, is a discourse of recent origin. This discourse fosters a complex network of diverse actors, from international organizations and NGOs to local communities and social movements. Four views of biodiversity produced by this network (centered on global resource management, national sovereignity, biodemocracy, and cultural autonomy, respectively) are discussed in the first part of the paper. The second part focuses on the cultural autonomy perspective developed by social movements. It examines in detail the rise and development of the social movement of black communities in the Pacific rainforest region of Colombia. This movement, it is argued, articulates through their practice an entire political ecology of sustainability and conservation. The main elements of this political ecology are discussed and presented as a viable alternative to dominant frameworks. Key words: political ecology, social movements, rainforest, biodiversity, afrocolombians, global networks.
759 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how and why social media platforms have become powerful sites for documenting and challenging episodes of police brutality and the misrepresentation of racialized bodies in mainstream media.
Abstract: As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in the summer of 2014, news and commentary on the shooting, the protests, and the militarized response that followed circulated widely through social media networks. Through a theorization of hashtag usage, we discuss how and why social media platforms have become powerful sites for documenting and challenging episodes of police brutality and the misrepresentation of racialized bodies in mainstream media. We show how engaging in “hashtag activism” can forge a shared political temporality, and, additionally, we examine how social media platforms can provide strategic outlets for contesting and reimagining the materiality of racialized bodies. Our analysis combines approaches from linguistic anthropology and social movements research to investigate the semiotics of digital protest and to interrogate both the possibilities and the pitfalls of engaging in “hashtag ethnography.”
754 citations
TL;DR: In the last decade, the framing perspective has gained increasing popularity among social movement researchers and theorists as mentioned in this paper, but there has been no critical assessment of this growing body of literature, which suffers from several shortcomings including neglect of systematic empirical studies, descriptive bias, static tendencies, reification, reductionism, elite bias, and monolithic tendencies.
Abstract: In the last decade the framing perspective has gained increasing popularity among social movement researchers and theorists. Surprisingly, there has been no critical assessment of this growing body of literature. Though the perspective has made significant contributions to the movements literature, it suffers from several shortcomings. These include neglect of systematic empirical studies, descriptive bias, static tendencies, reification, reductionism, elite bias, and monolithic tendencies. In addition to a critique of extant movement framing literature, I offer several remedies and illustrate them with recent work. The articles by Francesca Polletta, John H. Evans, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, and Ira Silver in this special section address several of the concerns raised in this critique and, in so doing, contribute to the integration of structural and cultural approaches to social movements.
745 citations
Book•
26 Nov 2008
TL;DR: 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 as discussed by the authors.
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.
743 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how social movements contribute to institutional change and the creation of new industries and show that movements can help to transform extant socioeconomic practices and enable new kinds of industry development by engaging in efforts that lead to the deinstitutionalization of field frames.
Abstract: This article examines how social movements contribute to institutional change and the creation of new industries. We build on current efforts to bridge institutional and social movement perspectives in sociology and develop the concept of field frame to study how industries are shaped by social structures of meanings and resources that underpin and stabilize practices and social organization. Drawing on the case of how non-profit recyclers and the recycling social movement enabled the rise of a for-profit recycling industry, we show that movements can help to transform extant socioeconomic practices and enable new kinds of industry development by engaging in efforts that lead to the deinstitutionalization of field frames.
739 citations