A theoretical framework for comparisons of social movement participation

This article attempts to draft a framework for the comparison of movement participation. The standards of comparison I developed at the movement level were the magnitude of mobilization potentials, the composition of multiorganizational fields, organizational characteristics, and action orientation. Utilizing this framework, I compared mobilization campaigns for three different types of activities conducted by three different movements: a campaign conducted by a labor union for, possibly, a strike, a campaign of the Dutch peace movement in a local community for a national demonstration, and campaigns by women's groups in a community for a variety of activities. I explain differences in motivational dynamics and levels of participation in terms of differing movement characteristics. Finally, I discuss the advantages of comparative work on social movements.     

Magda Mateus Cardenas,director of Centro Amauta,Cusco, Peru: interview

Magda Mateus Cardenas, trained as an anthropologist, is currently director of Centro Amauta, a feminist organization in Peru that addresses issues of gender, class, and culture. In this interview, Mateus Cardenas describes her long involvement with development organizations and grass-roots campaigns to improve women's status. She notes that, although many organizations have adopted a gender perspective, few comprehend its highly political, transformational aspects. Women's rights tend to be viewed by development agencies as just one more factor to be incorporated into development projects rather than as a perspective that changes views of development itself. A genuine gender perspective entails changes in the organizational, social, and political aspects of the themes of autonomy and empowerment, with adaptations of content and methods to local conditions. A precondition to women's emancipation is access to and control of financial and economic resources. This, in turn, requires training in technical skills and access to the marketplace on more competitive terms.     

How migration information campaigns shape local perceptions and discourses of migration in Harar city,Ethiopia

Migration-information campaigns informing potential migrants about the risks of the journey and the harsh life conditions in the destination countries have emerged as prominent tools of migration management in the last decades. Despite their growing importance, little is known about their local implementation in countries of transit and origin as well as their influence on potential migrants' perceptions and experiences. The central objective of this paper is to understand how migration-information campaigns are implemented on a local scale and how they shape the perception and discourses of migration in the region. We pursue a multi-scalar analysis of international migration management policies and their outcomes in a specific place and link them with local migration aspirations. The paper is based on qualitative empirical research carried out in Harar, a medium-sized city in the Harari regional state of Ethiopia. Drawing on interviews with government officials, NGOs, city dwellers, and return migrants, as well as the analysis of policy documents and scientific literature, we show how the local implementation of migration-information campaigns shapes the local perceptions and discourses on migration within which migration aspirations are embedded. We found that information campaigns did not take into account the complexity and multifaceted nature of local socioeconomic and political conditions which reflects the discrepancy between policy discourses at large and people's perceptions.     

Health perceptions of local community works: network women describe how flows of energy and space of action generate health and ill health

This paper presents a theoretical model on how flows of energy and space of action generate health and ill health in a local community work. Local community work was assessed through a case study of women's networks in a peripheral region of northern Sweden. The aim of the study was to analyse what participation in women's networks can mean for the members health perceptions. A purposeful selection of women's networks was made for the purpose of carrying out a qualitative follow-up study. Grounded theory was used to analyse the data and to generate a theoretical model. The meaning of participation in networks proved to be plural, as both health-deteriorating and health-promotive mechanisms were found. Two core categories "flows of energy" and "a space of action" as well as the four ancillary categories: social relations within the network; increased awareness of gender and power; becoming visible; and material prerequisites for networking were grounded in the data. We suggest that under certain circumstances local community work can be of crucial importance for health promotion.     

Transnational Debt Groups: The Challenges of Campaigning Within the Internationalising State

A central question facing transnational civil society campaigns is where they can exercise power most effectively in a globalising world. Is the nation state still a worthy site for struggle, or has power shifted significantly to the international arena? Taking transnational debt campaigning as a case study, and using Robert Cox’s concept of the internationalising state, this article examines these questions. While building common cause transnationally, and developing a transnational profile, were important dimensions of debt campaigning, the evidence from the study is that debt campaigns focussed strongly on national governments in order to influence international decision-makers. In this context, the article argues that transnational debt campaigns were re-articulating their governments towards greater accountability to domestic societies, countering the thrust towards the internationalisation of the state.     

Myth,Play, And Alchemy

UNTAET and the East Timorese have pursued formal reconciliation processes as part of the nation-building effort in newly independent East Timor. These formal reconciliation processes aim for closure and operate in the realm of national politics. In the meantime local communities have been dealing with the issues of reintegrating refugees and rebuilding social relationships through an inventive adaptation of traditional practices of reconciliation. In contrast to the formal elite-level strategies, the grassroots strategies are more concerned with process than formal outcomes.     

Rural brewing,exclusion, and development policy-making

This article highlights the economic role of women in the brewing industry in rural and periurban areas of sub-Saharan African countries. Local beer drinking is a form of social exchange and a reward for time-intensive work. Modern beer brewing in rural areas is a family operation. Beer is produced for subsistence and for sale. Locally brewed beer has a lower alcohol content than commercial brews. The author refers to Pradervand's (1990) study of local brewing in five east and west African countries. Pradervand found that men spent an estimated CFAF 18 billion per year on local brews compared to the value of total national exports of CFAF 21 billion per year in 1996. The male Kitui in rural Kenya were found to spend 60% of their weekly income on beer. Women dominate brewing in eastern and southern Africa. Rural beers are grain based (maize, millet, or sorghum), but may also be made from bananas, bamboo, sugar cane, or coconut. An estimated 25% of women in a village survey in Tanzania reported that beer was brewed one to four times a month. Another survey in the 1980s found that 73% of women brewed beer at some time. Beer brewing is a very significant economic activity for rural women. It provides higher levels of income and employment. Urban brewing by women has a negative image that rural women's beer brewing does not have. Grain for brewing comes from family farms or markets. Women's clubs are used as income generation groups for loans and as support groups. Women's beer brewing is not supported by development interventions or recognized by UN agencies. There are resource implications due to an estimated 5%-30% of annual wood consumption used for beer brewing. If women's role in beer brewing is ignored, male-dominated commercial interests will further marginalize rural women.     

Women and work in rural Taiwan: building a contextual model linking employment and health

This paper is based on ethnographic research in a rural Taiwanese village in which married women with children are a major source of labor for local industry. Responsibility for job and home exposes these women to repeated stressors that can increase their susceptibility to illness. Existing explanatory models linking employment and women's health, however, do not explain adequately the women's response to their wage labor and the consequences of the social aspects of their work on their health. This paper describes women's work and its meaning, and discusses the way in which micro phenomena such as meanings and health states are linked to macro phenomena such as national political-economic processes and the world capitalist system.     

Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in "Masculine" Roles

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a rei•cation of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.
This paper seeks to add to the contemporary debate on women's military service the subjective dimension of gender and national identities of women soldiers serving in "masculine" roles. I use a theory of identity practices in order to analyze the interaction between state institutions and identity construction. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that Israeli women soldiers in "masculine" roles shape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier through three interrelated practices: (1) mimicry of combat soldiers' bodily and discursive practices; (2) distancing from "traditional femininity"; and (3) trivialization of sexual harassment.
These practices signify both resistance and compliance with the military dichotomized gender order. While these transgender performances subvert the hegemonic norms of masculinity and femininity, they also collaborate with the military androcentric norms. Thus, although these women soldiers individually transgress gender boundaries, they internalize the military's masculine ideology and values and learn to identify with the patriarchal order of the army and the state. This accounts for a pattern of "limited inclusion" that reaf•rms their marginalization, thus prohibiting them from developing a collective consciousness that would challenge the gendered structure of citizenship.     

The centre and the local: Policy and practice in rural education provision

This paper examines the factors that are currently affecting the viability of small primary schools (90 pupils or less) in England and Wales. It is argued that the contemporary pattern of rural schooling provision is a reflection of the uneven interplay between the central state, the local state, small schools and their communities. Recent legislative reforms have increased the explanatory significance of national education policies and locally-managed schools, at the expense of disempowered local education authorities. An analysis of policies in a sample of authorities shows how the centralization of educational control, since 1988, has created a more unsympathetic educational and economic environment for smaller schools. However, a review of locally-based support strategies including interschool co-operation, anti-closure campaigns and voluntary fund-raising shows that the future for small primary schools may not be as pessimistic as past trends and a narrow focus on the educational policy framework would suggest. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of studying the impact of individual and collective social action within the context of wider structural factors shaping rural localities.     

Inverting the boomerang: examining the legitimacy of North–South–North campaigns in transnational advocacy

The boomerang model is typically used to describe campaigns in which international NGOs respond to requests from local activists, often from marginalized populations, for assistance in addressing local needs. Such campaigns are perceived to represent local interests and have some accountability to local actors. However, while the local–international–local pattern is often accurate, it does not capture the full spectrum of campaign development. This article theorizes an international–local–international or ‘inverse’ boomerang, in which international NGOs facing an international policy blockage initiate a transnational campaign, recruiting local activists to assist in the international advocacy effort. The article demonstrates the theory's plausibility using several cases of Northern‐initiated advocacy. It then examines the implications of the model for campaign legitimacy. It finds that inverse boomerang campaigns benefit from the same presumptions of legitimacy as traditional boomerang campaigns, but that representivity and accountability are substantially weaker, potentially disempowering the campaigns' claimed stakeholders.     

Politicians and Social Movements: The Impact of Electoral Victory on Local,National, and Transnational Activism by Hmong Americans in Minneapolis–St. Paul

Political opportunity theory predicts that increased access to the political system benefits social movements by disadvantaged groups. To test this prediction, this paper evaluates the impact of two elected Hmong American officials on social movement campaigns in their community during their time in office. Content analysis of newspaper reports is used to (i) create a sample of nine local, national, and transnational social movement campaigns in the community; and (ii) determine in which of four possible ways the elected officials supported the campaigns: favorable media interviews, speeches at events, event organization, and legislation initiation. Only the two transnational campaigns which mobilized the entire community received all four types of support. The paper concludes that elected officials, even former activists from an ethnic minority community, carefully select the causes they will fully support. After electoral victory, social movements must still actively engage sympathetic politicians in order to turn an opening in the political system into actual access to power.     

The Dual State: The Unruly "Subordinate", Caste, Community And Civil Service Recruitment In North India, 1930–1955

Abstract  This paper explores the nature of the everyday state in historical perspective in colonial and postcolonial Uttar Pradesh, north India, through the lens of civil service recruitment. It argues that social relationships between different cadres of the revenue and police services effectively created a bureaucratic space in which citizens' approaches to the state recreated forms of ambiguity in the reach and authority of state power. In this sense, it provides a deeper historical basis for anthropological and sociological work on the nature of the "fuzzy" everyday state in postcolonial India. But it develops this literature further, arguing that important structural changes over independence in 1947, also transformed the ways in which caste and community lobby groups represented their corporate interests through bureaucratic recruitment. These lobby groups, as a result of disjunctions in state power and discourses, between centre, province and locality, were often able to subvert systems of caste and community reservation. In the process, their actions emphasized the inability of the state at central and provincial levels to adjust to local political identities that depended on hybridity.     

National and local public relations campaigns during the 1946 steel strike

Although scholars recognize the importance of public relations in the process of negotiations between management and organized labor, few have attempted to document such efforts or to analyze their effects. This review of public relations activities at the local and national levels during the 1946 steel strike indicates that national public relations campaigns, conducted by the union and the steel trade association, had virtually no impact on the resolution of the strike at the local level, and local public relations programs, conducted by the union local and a small manufacturing company, did little to further management or union goals at the national level. If anything, the national programs only confused the community by offering messages that did not necessarily correspond to the local situation.     

The Role of Indigeneity NGOs in the Legal Recognition of Adat Communities and Customary Forests in Indonesia

The main assumption of indigeneity NGOs in Indonesia is that state recognition will strengthen indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and forests against ongoing or future dispossession. In Indonesia, legal recognition has become central to the approaches of indigeneity NGO campaigns, while the local realities and problems among indigenous communities seem to receive less attention. Has legal recognition of indigenous communities turned into a national NGO project that does not solve the communities’ land and forest-related problems? In this article, we compare two locations where communities have succeeded in obtaining state recognition. By focusing our analysis on the steps in the recognition process, from articulating community problems to eventually solving them, we show how indigeneity NGOs have had a dominant role, but achieved limited success. Instead of resulting in community autonomy and tenure security, the legal recognition process reproduces state territorialisation over customary forests and communities.     

Gender,globalisation, and democracy

This article discusses the link between gender, globalization and democracy in relation to women?s empowerment. Analyzing gender relations within the processes of development planning involves five approaches: 1) welfare, 2) equity, 3) anti-poverty, 4) efficiency, and 5) empowerment. In addition, a new approach, which combines efficiency and empowerment, must be added to highlight the problematic nature of the direction of causality assumed by traditional theory of development. The rise on women's representation in national parliament can be attributed to the increase of women's economic power and women's political struggles. However, promotion of globalization produces new opportunities for feminist politics, as well as difficulties, which include: the emergent position of productive engagement in which an efficient economy and democratic society are seen as interdependent; and increase in parliamentary representation correlates with increased paid employment for women. In conclusion, the author underscores that globalization is a gendered process which is restructuring social relations on a large scale and the challenges it bring provide opportunities for women in development.     

Coleman Advocates for Children And Youth: a pioneering child advocacy organization (1974-2008)

Coleman Advocates for Youth and Children is a pioneering 30-year-old child advocacy organization founded by several affluent community members and children's service professionals to stop housing abused and neglected children in juvenile hall. Today, low-income youth and parents in families of color are now assuming leadership in developing a unique hybrid approach that integrates community organizing with more traditional child advocacy strategies and focuses on increasing affordable housing and improving the city's educational system. The strategies employed by Coleman have also evolved, shifting from insider advocacy with administrative officials to public campaigns targeting the city budget process, to local initiative campaigns, and most recently to electoral politics. This organizational history features the issues mission and structure, leadership, managing issues, advocacy strategies and community relations, and funding.     

Remembering the imperial context of emancipation commemoration in the former British slave-port cities of Bristol and Liverpool, 1933–1934

This article considers the marking of the centenary of British emancipation in 1933 and 1934 in two former slave-trading provincial port cities, Bristol and Liverpool. Nationally, this centenary was used by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society to celebrate white abolition heroes and promote contemporary campaigns against ‘modern-day slavery’. However, in Bristol and Liverpool this picture was complicated by both cities’ particular historic involvements in transatlantic slavery and contemporary imperial and demographic contexts. Looking at ‘local’ dimensions to this ‘national’ commemorative occasion brings to the fore variations which emphasise the influence of civic identities, racial contestations and the distinctly imperial context of this memorial discourse seen through these interwar ports of empire.     

The rising importance of local government in the United States: Recent research and challenges for sociology

Local governments have gained increasing responsibilities for public well‐being according to a variety of social science literatures. The rise of the local state is often seen as a part of a broader process of state‐rescaling or downward shift in national governance under neoliberal development. Yet attention to local government lags in political sociology, which conventionally elevates the national federal state as its object of interest. I summarize four recent bodies of literature that address the new role of local governments. Taken together, these literatures speak to different sides of the debate about whether the rise of local government is detrimental to citizens' well‐being. I explain how greater sociological attention to the local state can contribute to this debate as well as inform political sociologists' understanding of the U.S. nation‐state itself and provide directions for future research.     

What is Flint? Place,storytelling, and social media narrative reclamation during the Flint water crisis

ABSTRACT

The Flint Water Crisis became a national news story in January of 2016, when major publishers such as The New York Times began covering the story. In the same month, an influx of social media activism occurred in response to the crisis, with citizens developing hashtag campaigns such as #FlintFwd in order to disseminate news and stories from a citizen’s perspective; these campaigns often positioned Flint positively ? as a recovering community ? rather than a city in the middle of a public health crisis, and often addressed not a national public but a local audience. This paper considers Flint-based social media activity to investigate the emergence of place-based activism within the ostensibly global network of social media. In doing so, it identifies three key themes; 1) leveraging social media to forward a critique of deficient journalistic storytelling; 2) using the affective process of storytelling via social media to claim authority over their own material offline existence, and 3) using place-based storytelling to implicate others as witnesses via the global network of social media. These themes coalesce around a distinctly critical logic of connectivity. This logic extends the notion of connectivity articulated by Van Dijck and Poell [2013. Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14.] and the strategies of platform activism explored by Tufekci [2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.] to explain how social media works to expose discrepancies between the public story of the water crisis and material, lived conditions of Flint, rendering visible a discursive identity of Flint thus far unrecognized.