The Nationalist Party of America: Right-Wing Activism and Billy Roper's White Revolution

This profile examines the emerging Nationalist Party of America and its leader, Billy Joe Roper. Founder and chairman of White Revolution, a neo-Nazi group and Internet social networking site, Roper was a write-in candidate in the November 2010 Arkansas gubernatorial race. Drawing parallels with David Duke's political campaigns in Louisiana, this profile paints a picture of a rising star in a reactionary movement fueled by racism and his attempt to enter mainstream politics. I introduce portions of his party platform and conclude by discussing some consequences of right-wing political activism for the USA.     

The life of the Tea Party: Differences between Tea Party and Republican media use and political variables

The Tea Party has been identified by most mass media sources as a separate but related element of the Republican Party. This study adds to a new body of literature on the Tea Party by using polarization literature and survey data to (a) separate Tea Party Republicans (TPR), Tea Party Non-Republicans (TPNR), and Non–Tea Party Republicans; (b) identify the role of Tea Party affiliation (or lack thereof) on political interest and media use; and (c) assess the role of media use by these three groups on political interest and voting. This study found that partisan media plays an important role for all three groups and it especially has the strongest role for those who do not align themselves with the Republican Party. Specifically, both TPR and TPNR were more likely to be politically interested and rely on partisan media than Republicans who are not affiliated with the Tea Party.     

The Collective Artistry of Activism: A Review of Making Trouble: Life and Politics

Lynne Segal's autobiography upholds the feminist tradition of writing about women's marginalized experiences but she does so without creating the traditional unitary isolated subject. Consciously or not, she has written an autobiography that is psychosocial, often focusing on the social in favor of the psyche. This review discusses this unique book, which writes a life always within a rich cultural context. We are taken from her childhood life in Australia to her days as a single mother in the political and cultural maelstrom of 1960s London. Here her book becomes not just autobiography but also a cultural history of radical movements and the change they created. Written clearly with personal stories from other women, Segal's book is a timely reminder of how simply complicated social activism can be.     

The Politics of Habitus: Publics,Blackness, and Community Activism in Salvador,Brazil

This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus—their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil.     

Multiculturalism and Activism:

No abstract available for this article.     

中东社会转型中的政党政治

政党竞争是政治生活中重要的组成部分,其相关状态反映了某一国家或地区政治生活的真实状况。阿拉伯革命之后中东地区政党竞争开始出现,但随之而来的是诸多消极表现。中东政党竞争中的困境是社会意识、政党发展程度、国内其他政治力量以及外部干涉等多种因素互相影响的结果。由于这些因素将长期存在,因此中东地区的政党制度的发展和完善还需要一定的时间。     

Crafting Mass Dairy Production: Immigration and Community in Rural America

In many parts of rural America, agrofood producers compete for a larger share of global markets by mechanizing, deskilling, and flexibly relocating to reduce labor costs. They recruit new immigrant workers but sow transience rather than sustainable rural growth. The industrialization of U.S. dairy farming appears to be aligned with these processes, and yet the large‐scale dairy farmers who have replaced small craft producers face a paradox: The more they rationalize production on their farms, the more vulnerable their herds become to stress and illness, compromising production. Focusing on three competing dairies in Kansas, I examine how farmers variously organize work among immigrant employees to promote herd health while expanding their operations. Evidence from 22 months of ethnographic research and repeated interviews with farm owners, managers, employees, and extension agents suggests that enhancing production requires promoting employee citizenship at work—especially among immigrant employees possessing the fewest citizenship rights outside of work. In contrast to the high labor turnover endemic to other forms of industrialized food production, the distinctive human‐animal relations central to dairying encourage farm owners and employees to cooperate, with promising results for farms and rural communities.     

African and European American Women's Volunteerism and Activism: Similarities in Volunteering and Differences in Activism

This study examines the relationships of gender and ethnic differences in the experiences of stressful life events, coping-specific responses, and self-reported depression. Seventy high-school aged respondents, 40 boys and 30 girls, responded to a self-reported questionnaire that asked questions on the perceived distress of related life events (i.e., person, family, peer, acculturation events), coping-specific responses, and depression. The findings provide important data on gender and ethnic variations in the ways Southeast Asian-American adolescents deal with life stress and depression. These findings have important implications for social work practice and future research on the psychosocial adjustment with both immigrant and ethnic children and adolescents.     

Protest Movements and Citizen Discontent: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party

Why do citizens indicate support for protest movements such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street? There have been two general sets of explanations. One set emphasizes that support comes from those for whom the existing party system, and the ideological differentiation that corresponds to party divisions, are irrelevant. The second set takes the opposite tack, and emphasizes that the only thing that supporters of protests movements find lacking in the party system is extremity. Using some underexplored data, we present evidence that both accounts are incorrect for the case of these recent movements (Occupy and the Tea Party): what provokes support for protest movements is not ideology itself but a fundamental rejection of the current state of the party system, which we call disgruntlement. What ideology does for supporters is provide a sense of political friends and enemies (or near and far), which then can channel the direction that this disgruntlement takes. Further, ideologues with more education are more resistant to the appeal of the protest movement associated with the other political camp.     

Understanding Race and Ethnicity in Rural America1

Abstract Rural sociologists have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the race and ethnic relations literature by focusing on the unique social position of minority communities in rural areas. Reservations, colonias, and rural African-Americans in the South are located in close proximity to the historic institutions established for their exploitation and oppression—slavery, for example. As such, these communities represent a legacy from which much can be learned. The potential impact of this work is readily seen in the context of the past contributions of rural sociologists. This discussion concludes with a review of the work of scholars studying race and ethnicity in rural areas in the early, middle, and later years of the discipline of rural sociology.     

Quality Controlled: An Ethnographic Account of Tea Party Messaging and Action

What strategies do Tea Party movement organizers use to achieve frame alignment, that is, uniformity of grievance, purpose, and action, with their participants? Evidence to answer this question is gathered from a year‐length participant‐observation case study of one city‐based Tea Party organization, primarily through the meetings of its localized grassroots chapters. Principal findings are that Tea Party organizers employ quality control of off‐message grievances, for example, abortion, as well as any action or communication that would or could be perceived as racially prejudicial, or otherwise inflammatory. Formally, these findings demonstrate the influence of organizational hierarchy on grassroots practice. Substantively, they demonstrate the complex relationship between a broader conservative ideological repertoire as empirically deployed by participants, and the more focused frame alignment attempts of a particular social movement organization. In short, the findings elucidate the importance of interaction and organizational structure as they influence social movement messaging and action.     

Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US

ABSTRACT

Women’s political underrepresentation in right-wing parties remains a global phenomenon. Despite their rejection of “identity politics,” the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and the United States’ Republican Party have launched formal initiatives to recruit women legislative candidates. In this article, we ask: How do right-wing women advocate for increasing women’s representation within parties that explicitly reject group identity politics? More specifically, we examine 1) how party elites frame the UK’s Women2Win and the US’s Project GROW campaigns, and 2) the role that women play in each of these initiatives. Through interviews with party elites and content analyses of news articles and campaign materials, we show that right-wing women in both countries function as strategic party actors, advocating for women’s representation tactically within the specific ideological and electoral context of their party.     

关爱的失落与寻求——农村留守儿童基督教信仰状况调查

近年来,对于留守儿童的研究已有不少,但关于留守儿童的基督教信仰状况及基督教信仰对留守儿童的影响的研究十分阙如。本文根据作者参与留守儿童服务期间的调查和观察,对留守儿童基督教信仰的动因及基督教信仰给他们的影响做了初步的描述和探讨,希望引起更多的人关心和研究影响留守儿童成长的信仰因素。