Parenting as Activism: Identity Alignment and Activist Persistence in the White Power Movement

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and discusses implications for social movement persistence. We explain how individuals negotiate opportunities as parents to align and extend an activist identity with a movement's collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role to express commitment to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately sustain their activism. We suggest that parenting may provide unique opportunities for activists in many movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities and simultaneously affirm their identities as parents and persist as social movement activists.     

Zine infrastructures as forms of organizing within feminist social movements

This paper explores how feminist social movements are organized and re-generated across and through different media, both online and offline, using the example of zines. We critically examine the emergence and growth of an intersectional feminist zine community through a 6-year in-depth qualitative netnographic and ethnographic study. Theoretically, we build on work concerning feminist digital information and archival infrastructures, bringing it together with work on feminist digital activism. We make three key contributions: first to theorize zines and their communities as infrastructures, which cut across the social, digital, and material. Second in understanding the political potential of engagements in zine infrastructures in which the individual and collective are entangled, and third in revealing how the current generation of young feminists move across and work at the interfaces of formats to benefit from their synergistic, but also their agonistic, relations to form new affective solidarities.     

‘Not that kind of atheist’: scepticism as a lifestyle movement

This article examines atheist activists from a lifestyle movement perspective. I focus on how atheist activists adopt the term ‘sceptic’ as a distinct identity marker to represent their growing interest in other types of activism beyond atheist community building and criticism of religious beliefs. My data come from thirty-five interviews with Canadian atheist activists and participant observation in the province of Alberta. In contrast to previous social movement approaches to atheist activism, I deemphasize the importance of collective identity and instead attend to personal identity as the site of social change. My findings show that being a sceptic is a personally meaningful identity in the context of a relatively weak secularist collective identity. Moreover, atheist activists who also identify as sceptics wish to expand the boundaries of the atheist movement to include individualistic projects of personal affirmation based on science and critical thinking. This work contributes to our understanding of the everyday activities of activists who engage in individual action in the absence of a strong collective identity. In particular, this article expands our understanding of lifestyle movements beyond the current focus on socially conscious consumption. Instead, I return to the roots of lifestyle movement theory, that is, how one’s everyday choices serve as a form of protest. Finally, this work contributes to atheism scholarship, which has neglected the diversity of individual identities within atheist organisations and among atheist activists.     

‘We fight for all living things’: countering misconceptions about the radical animal liberation movement

This qualitative content analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Kollective (ELK) and Grassroots Ontario Animal Liberation (GOAL) network websites and Facebook pages explores how activism within the Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) intersects with other social movements. While most literature to date traces the RALM’s (dis)junctures with other forms of social justice activism through analyses of their broad ideological assumptions, or the views of renowned RALM scholars, this research provides authentic insights into the voices of Canadian, American and Mexican activists as they are represented in documents they author themselves. Like activists in anarchistic, anti-capitalist, immigrant rights, Indigenous, prison abolition, prisoner support and radical feminist movements, those in the RALM critique capitalism, colonialism, hierarchy, racism, sexism, state power and the prison industrial complex. Our research calls into question the existing narratives that depict the RALM as an extremist, single-issue movement oblivious to all other forms of social inequality, injustice, marginalization and oppression. Rather, RALM activists are building alliances with other radical social movements to achieve the common goal of ending both human and animal suffering and exploitation.     

Unobtrusively Stretching Law: Legal Education,Activism, and Reclaiming Title IX

We often understate the work that activists put into crafting movement tools. This article examines the space between legal texts and movement resources in a study of early activism surrounding Title IX. Though often hailed as a feminist law, the Title IX statute and regulations lay out a narrow set of individual rights and incorporate several conservative principles. In an analysis of early social movement mobilization surrounding Title IX by the Connecticut Women's Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF), we identify a distinctive legal framing technique tied to the often overlooked practice of lay legal education. In a legal education campaign that targeted schools, CWEALF placed Title IX's actual requirements alongside broader feminist ideas about gender socialization and civic responsibility to imply that the law mandated substantially greater reforms, a tactic we call unobtrusively stretching law. This article contributes to research on social movements and legal mobilization by illustrating how legal education can serve as part of the tool-making kit for social movements as they struggle to transform legislative compromises into movement resources.     

The medicalization of Nonhuman Animal rights: frame contestation and the exploitation of disability

Nonhuman Animal rights activists are sometimes dismissed as ‘crazy’ or irrational by countermovements seeking to protect status quo social structures. Social movements themselves often utilize disability narratives in their claims-making as well. In this article, we argue that Nonhuman Animal exploitation and Nonhuman Animal rights activism are sometimes medicalized in frame disputes. The contestation over mental ability ultimately exploits humans with disabilities. The medicalization of Nonhuman Animal rights activism diminishes activists’ social justice claims, but the movement’s medicalization of Nonhuman Animal use unfairly otherizes its target population and treats disability identity as a pejorative. Utilizing a content analysis of major newspapers and anti-speciesist activist blogs published between 2009 and 2013, it is argued that disability has been incorporated into the tactical repertoires of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and countermovements, becoming a site of frame contestation. The findings could have implications for a number of other social movements that also negatively utilize disability narratives.     

THE SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE

Do so-called anti-globalization movements ignore gender issues? It would be erroneous to conclude – in accordance with mainstream feminist theory that considers all social movements alone with reference to ‘male hegemony’ – that alter-globalization movements are so inscribed into the patriarchal system as to silence feminist voices. In fact, the gender problematic is not absent from the debates of the Social Forums and all principal organizations take up gender onto their agenda. The opening of the alter-globalization discourse to the gender perspective occurs out of necessity and is not the result of a process of paying lip-service to a relevant topic. We will therefore reconstruct the normative mechanism whereby gender is set on the agenda and study concretely how the relevant actors experience and effect this appropriation. In doing this they encounter other activists with a long mobilization record, both feminists and post-feminists. This encounter may give rise to processes of alliance or processes of conflict. Gender thus constitutes a challenge for alter-globalization politics and indeed often a highly contested issue.     

Occupation, Biography and New Social Movements

Membership of 'new social movements' is generally associated with employment in the educated service class, particularly in the state sector. The nature of the employment experience is often said to be generative, in some way, of radical activism, even if only, in much modified versions of such theorising, through the reinforcement provided from the presence of networks of like-minded colleagues. On the basis of intensive biographical study of both environmentalist and feminist activists in a large industrial city, it is argued that though they are indeed located in the occupations referred to in the literature, their membership of NSMs cannot in general be attributed either to their experience of employment or of higher education. The propensity to radical activism is clearly established at an earlier date. It emerges from the intersection of socialisation within the family and personal life experience.     

Rethinking Gender and Violence: Agency,Heterogeneity, and Intersectionality

This paper is a consideration of the increasing diversity of images of gender violence and its victims, as both the grassroots antiviolence activists, and the scholars of the movements and the violence that inspires the activism, engage with cultural codes and feeling rules that tend to narrow the criteria for what constitutes gender violence and victimization. We are coming to better understand that social location, including but not limited to positions within patriarchal systems of stratification, shapes violence and victimization in many different ways. Since the inception of the women’s movement, the discourse of victimization has grappled with the implications of constructing ‘pure victims’, and despite the tremendous progress in the resources available to survivors of gender violence, we find the tensions between victimization and agency, and between simplicity and complexity, reemerging repeatedly in the stories victims, activists, and scholars tell about this social problem. Below, we review the sociological research and activism, in conjunction with the collective narratives in the social movements against gender violence, to show how the issues of perceptions of women who are framed as victims began and remain central to feminist research in this area. We also explore the newest visions of gender violence, that broaden theorizing and activism to include multiple dimensions of inequality and their intersections. Taken together, these debates reveal multifaceted layers of complexity that inform the contexts and lived experience of violence, and that continue to enter into our storytelling.     

Learning to feel: the neglected sociology of social movements

This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among animal rights activists, and more broadly, the applicability of the sociology of emotions to the field of social movements. I examine the case of a social movement which relies heavily on empathy in its initial recruitment, and which has been derisively labeled by outsiders as ‘emotional’. I explain recruitment to animal rights activism by showing how activists develop a ‘vocabulary of emotions’ to rationalize their participation to others and themselves, along with managing the emotional tone of the movement by limiting the kinds of people who can take part in debates about animal cruelty. The interactive nature in which emotions develop in social movements is stressed over previous approaches to emotions in the social movement literature, which treat emotions as impulsive or irrational.     

Shifting Symbolic Boundaries: Cultural Strategies of the Animal Rights Movement1

How do activists create cultural change? Scholars have investigated the development and maintenance of collective identities as one avenue for cultural change, but to understand how activists foster change beyond their own movements, we need to look at activists’ strategies for changing their targets’ mindsets and actions. Sociologists need to look at activists’ boundary work to understand both the wide‐sweeping goals and strategies that activists enact to generate broad‐based cultural changes. Using data from participant observation and interviews with animal rights activists in France and the United States, and drawing on research on ethnic boundary shifting, I show how activists used two main strategies to shift symbolic boundaries between humans and animals, as well as between companion and farm animals—(1) they blur boundaries through focusing and universalizing strategies and (2) they cross boundaries physically, discursively, and iconographically. This study contributes a new theoretical and empirical example to the cultural changes studied by scholars of social movements, and it also provides a useful counterpoint to studies of symbolic boundary construction and maintenance in the sociology of culture.     

Constructing “Social Change” through Philanthropy: Boundary Framing and the Articulation of Vocabularies of Motives for Social Movement Participation*

I embrace Mills's (1940) conception of motives to offer new insight into an old question: why do people join social movements? I draw upon ethnographic research at the Crossroads Fund, a “social change” foundation, to illustrate that actors simultaneously articulate two vocabularies of motives for movement participation: an instrumental vocabulary about dire, yet solvable, problems and an expressive vocabulary about collective identity. This interpretive work is done during boundary framing, which refers to efforts by movements to create in-group/out-group distinctions. I argue that the goal-directed actions movements take to advance social change are shaped by participants' identity claims. Moreover, it is significant that Crossroads constructs its actions and identity as social movement activism, rather than philanthropy. This definitional work suggests that analyzing the category social movements is problematic unless researchers study how activists attempt to situate themselves within this category. Hence, methodologically attending to organizations' constructions of movement status can theoretically inform research which essentially takes social movements as a given, in exploring their structural components.     

Media and information praxis of young activists in the Umbrella Movement

Young people were key participants in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the media also played an important role in this protest. This study examines how Hong Kong’s young activists developed communication strategies and media practices to mobilize this social movement. A framework termed “media and information praxis of social movements” is proposed for the analysis. The findings showed that in their praxis, the young activists used their media and information literacy skills to initiate, organize, and mobilize collective actions. They not only used social media and mobile networks but also traditional mass media and street booths in a holistic and integrated approach to receive and disseminate information. Hence, these young activists served as agents of mediatization. The results also indicated that the young activists moved away from the traditional movement mode which just tried to motivate a large number of people to protest in the streets. They actively engaged in the new movement mode, which emphasizes the media and information power game. Their praxis in the Umbrella Movement reflects the trend toward the mediatization of social movements in Hong Kong.     

Conceptualising Generational Dynamics in Feminist Movements: Political Generations,Waves and Affective Economies

This article reviews efforts to account for dynamics of continuity, change and complexity in contemporary feminism, with a particular emphasis on the utility of the ‘generational paradigm’ of the wave metaphor. We draw on assessments of the wave classification from feminist historians, political theorists and social movement scholars to make a case for the concept of political generation as way to explore patterns of generational‐based contest and collaboration across the women's movement. While political generation allows for an assessment of the role of context in shaping the activist identities of feminists from different generations, it lacks the explanatory power to explain the continuing purchase of the wave metaphor and its function for feminist claims making. Here, we turn to work on the centrality of loss within the affective economies of feminism to explain the functions of the wave metaphor for different elements within women's movements. This analysis is grounded in a brief empirical case of the Irish women's movement characterised as highly fragmented and marked by generational dynamics.     

Debating US Contemporary Feminism

The US women's movement has challenged societal norms, policies, laws, and culture since its inception. However, at the same time, it has inspired debates about its goals, ideology, tactics, and outcomes. These debates emerge from two main sources: the mainstream media as it reflects dominant culture and among feminist activists and/or scholars. I elaborate on three of the most contentious aspects of contemporary feminism through a series of questions: Is the movement still in existence? What is the relationship between generations of feminists? And finally, how have feminists addressed diversity, privilege, and inclusion in the movement, particularly around issues of race‐ethnicity? I conclude that while the movement still exists, feminists continue to struggle with generational relations, and contemporary activists have not created an inclusive and diverse movement. However, I argue that these debates and struggles are evidence of a vibrant movement that continues into the 21st century.     

From Tourists to Anti-Tourists to Tourist Attractions: The Transformation of the Amsterdam Squatters' Movement

Urban social movements are increasingly confronted by the growth in urban tourism and its influence over city development. This growth promises to create new opportunities for mobilization, resistance, and compromise. For both tourists and activists, place matters. However, place matters differently for each group, bringing conflicts over how the city should respond to their different, and sometimes opposing, needs. In this article, I examine the Amsterdam squatters’ movement and its relationship with tourists. I trace four major periods of the interaction between activism and tourism, from initial unity, to separation, to mutual antagonism, up to their ultimate reconciliation. I show that the interplay between tourism and urban social movements is more complex than a relationship of exploitation and resistance. Tourism has both the power to radicalize and depoliticize movements. Likewise, movements can both repel and attract tourists. This analysis emphasizes the role power differential plays in the evolving relationship. A powerful squatters’ movement resisted tourism, but the movement in decline, shifting from political to cultural activism, made the strategic choice to compromise in order to maintain the movement.     

Life-Spheres,Networks, and Sustained Participation in Social Movements: A Phenomenological Approach to Political Commitment

This article proposes an account of individual participation in social movements that combines structural and cultural factors. It aims to explain why certain activists continue to be involved in social movements while others withdraw. When activists remain embedded in social networks relevant for the protest issues and, above all, when they keep a symbolic linkage between their activism and their personal life-spheres, sustained participation is likely to occur. When these two factors become progressively separated from each other and the process of self-interaction by activists loses its strength, disengagement can be expected. The argument is illustrated with life-history interviews of activists who have kept their strong commitment to a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement, and others that, in contrast, have abandoned their involvement. The findings support the argument that the interplay of the structural positions of actors and the symbolic meanings of mobilization has a strong impact on commitment to social movements and hence on sustained participation or disengagement. In particular, the interviews show the importance of a sense of coherence and of a holistic view of one's personal life for keeping commitment over time. This calls for a view of individual participation in social movements that draws from social phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in order to shed light on the symbolic (subjective) dimensions of participation, yet without neglecting the crucial role played by structural (objective) factors.     

Youth,activism, and social movements

There has been considerable debate over the extent and role of young people's political participation. Whether considering popular hand‐wringing over concerns about declines in young people's institutional political participation or dismissals of young people's use of online activism, many frame youth engagement through a “youth deficit” model that assumes that adults need to politically socialize young people. However, others argue that young people are politically active and actively involved in their own political socialization, which is evident when examining youth participation in protest, participatory politics, and other forms of noninstitutionalized political participation. Moreover, social movement scholars have long documented the importance of youth to major social movements. In this article, we bring far flung literatures about youth activism together to review work on campus activism; young people's political socialization, their involvement in social movement organizations, their choice of tactics; and the context in which youth activism takes place. This context includes the growth of movement societies, the rise of fan activism, and pervasive Internet use. We argue that social movement scholars have already created important concepts (e.g., biographical availability) and questions (e.g., biographical consequences of activism) from studying young people and urge additional future research.     

Predictors of Feminist Activism among Social Work Students in the United States

While social workers advocate against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and restrictive reproductive practices, there have been virtually no studies on the reasons behind their feminist activism. To address this oversight, this study documented the extent of feminist activism among American undergraduate social work students (n = 159). When moving to explanatory analysis, our data suggest that feminist activism was related to greater educational attainment, knowing activist peers, recognizing heterosexism, and internalizing a commitment to social justice. Moreover, electoral activism was tied to the rejection of traditional gender norms in the family and perceptions of social movement tactics were crucial to protesting for women's rights.