Gendered and classed activist identity in the Russian oppositional youth movement

This article examines how activist identity is constructed in the Russian opposition youth movement Oborona. The research is based on fieldwork among youth activists in Moscow and St Petersburg. The author analyses how activist identity is classed and gendered, as well as its relations to the Russian civic field. The article suggests, first, that the activist identity is marked by an affiliation with the intelligentsia: activists have grown up in intelligentsia families and articulate their activities through the intelligentsia's ‘markers’, such as intelligence, discussion skills and education. Secondly, activists follow a dissidents' cultural model, by emphasizing the importance of non‐conformism and traditional dissident values, and draw parallels between the contemporary government and the totalitarian Soviet state. Thirdly, this traditional intellectual dissident identity is associated with cosmopolitanism through the movement's international connections and appropriation of the forms of action of global social movements. Sometimes the activist practices and aspirations conflict with the group's ideals. Furthermore, the activist identity is gendered and embodied in the right activist ‘look’, which is defined by masculinity. Regardless of the movement's liberal ideals in regards to democracy, questions of gender and sexuality are not discussed, and activists do not question traditional understandings of gendered divisions of labour.     

Place making,grassroots organizing,and rural protest: A case study of Anahim Lake,British Columbia

Contemporary rural social movements bring diverse interest groups and stakeholders together at the local scale in the pursuit of common visions and goals, often against the backdrop of an external threat. The challenge for a movement's leaders is to negotiate and design a rural agenda that resonates with this complex constituency. One way to approach this problem is to construct and politicize a local sense of place as a means of rallying insiders against outside forces and pressures. This article explores the place-making activities of rural leaders operating within a complex social setting through an analysis of a grassroots social movement in Anahim Lake, British Columbia. The study uses the concept of the “place frame” to explore how Anahim's activists created a local discursive framework that enabled them to bridge dissimilar environmental values and practices within the community. The removal of external pressures following protest, however, saw the dissolution of this alignment. In documenting this process, the article contributes to a fuller understanding of the significance of place in grassroots protest and activism.     

Charting a Discursive Field: Environmentalists for U.S. Population Stabilization*

This article seeks to extend our understanding of the forces that shape social movement messages. Using a framework that focuses on a movement's discursive field, I analyze the U.S. movement for population stabilization, which is made up of groups that call for stricter limits on immigration to the United States as a means to forestall environmental decline. Drawing upon data from a range of sources, including the Web sites of 10 environment‐oriented immigration‐reduction organizations, I make the case that this movement's particular field is composed of the discursive repertoires (or messages) of a set of environmental and nonenvironmental social actors and three central discourses: science, political economy, and nationalism. I argue that the movement's relative lack of success is partially attributable to its position in the discursive field in which it must operate.     

Imagining Animal Rights in Nineteenth‐century New York: Satire and Strategy in the Animal Protection Movement

In 1866, America's most widely circulating newspaper the New York Herald published an extended satire directed at Henry Bergh and his newly established American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the first animal protection organization to be established in the United States. This article takes the Herald authors' decision to satirize the animal protection movement by framing it in terms of animal ‘rights’ as an opportunity to consider the challenges associated with that frame. Weighing the ease with which the movement could be ridiculed through the concept of rights and the broader discursive landscape connected to the rights of blacks and of women in the wake of the Civil War, it argues that animal rights was far more useful as a framing strategy to the critics of the animal protection movement than it was to its proponents. In turn, the article suggests that the challenges associated with the concept of animal rights that are revealed in this satire help to explain the dominance for much of the movement's history of the animal welfare frame over that of animal rights.     

Building revolutionary subjectivity: creative tensions in the Plataforma de Afectados por La Hipoteca

ABSTRACT

The paper assesses the Spanish housing activists Plataforma de Afectados por La Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) as an example of left-wing convergence. From the perspective of the horizontal democratic practices and civil disobedience tactics they adopt, the paper acknowledges the anarchist, Marxist and reformist influences in PAH and reveals how the creative tension between activists of different persuasions has aided the movement’s relative success. In harnessing and transforming the revolutionary subjectivity of the movement of the squares in 2011, PAH has in turn led to a broader urban radical politics. This new revolutionary subjectivity captures PAH’s legacy and positioning within broader anti-austerity politics.     

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.     

Politics of Identity and Identity Policies in Europe: The Case of Peruvian Immigrants in Spain

The indigenous quest for self-determination is an attempt to give voice to local injustice in a universal language, and to make claims to difference via a right that applies equally to all peoples. This article explores recent developments in the transnational indigenous movement's struggle for the right of self-determination by pointing out that this polyvalence-like the indeterminacies of the concepts of "peoples" and "indigenous"-is a productive one that enables indigenous activists to make a unique intervention in international law. Their work aims at creating a new international legal personality based on collective rather than individual rights, and on an understanding of "peoples" as self-determining entities not necessarily aspiring to statehood. This new understanding hinges, in turn, on an emerging perception of the capacity to culture as a general human right. This article addresses recent anthropological texts critical of the transnational indigenous movement to show that the "self" in self-determination as articulated by indigenous activists is not only not accounted for and not protected under current international legal regimes, but is also "a self" through which radical claims to culture and territory are being made.     

Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social Movements

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from two social movement organizations, this article highlights the way that remembrances of the past are inserted into present interactions to help maintain a sense of movement continuity. Seeing collective identity and collective memory as intertwined dynamic processes, the article argues that the continuity of a social movement is maintained, in part, when movement members insert narrative commemorations that constrain current collective identity development. The process examined is that of “collective memory anchoring,” in which participants instrumentally and/or contextually bring forward the past during interactions in such a way that the formulation of elements in a movement's collective identity appears to mirror past formulations. The common constraints of preexisting networks, participants' shared cultural backgrounds, and a movement's collective action frames are explored.     

Social Structural Location and Vocabularies of Participation: Fostering a Collective Identity in Urban Agriculture Activism

Contextualized within the visible inequality that permeates its local food landscape and the broader elitist food culture of California's San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland's urban agriculture movement comprises actors with rich vocabularies of motive for participation. Drawing from 25 in‐depth interviews with movement activists, I uncover a racial and social class homogeneity among participants that contributes to the formation of a collective identity but also limits the movement's outcomes in important ways. This research draws from Bourdieu's theory of class distinction and social movement theories of collective identity formation to contribute to literature on the reproduction of class and racial privilege in alternative food activism. I find that narratives for movement involvement converge on three discourses: possession of education‐derived knowledge to contend with the agroindustrial complex, the conflation of the creation of community through urban food growing with inclusivity, and a missionary‐like desire to educate others as to the benefits of growing their own food. I argue that the movement could benefit from a more diverse repertoire of action generated from a greater integration of racially and economically diverse actors working together to reorient the food system toward local food production alternatives.     

Inequality and the Self: Exploring Connections from an Interactionist Perspective

Symbolic interactionism provides a major contribution to understanding inequality by illuminating the various manifestations and contexts of inequality at the micro, everyday level of social life. Drawing on a spectrum of symbolic interactionist theory and research, we examine the range of symbolic and interactional manifestations of social inequality, the consequences of being the object of patterned interactional affronts, and the strategies people use to negotiate interactional stigmatization in everyday life. We argue that symbolic interaction's unique contribution to understanding inequality results from two of the perspective's central features. First, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the necessity of investigating social life in situated social interaction. Second, it highlights social actors' capacities to interpret and construct lines of action rather than respond directly to the stimuli they encounter. Symbolic interactionist research and theory thus contribute to a more complex understanding of social stratification than that provided by perspectives focused exclusively on macroscopic structural factors.     

“Anarchy all over Baščaršija”: Yugoslavia's new socialist culture and the New Primitives poetics of the local

The paper analyses Sarajevo's music movement of New Primitives and its “poetics of the local” as a struggle against the cultural hypocrisy of Yugoslavia's “new socialist culture” and its privileging of “external‐cosmopolitan” as apotheosis of cultured refinement and sophistication while denigrating “local‐parochial” as epitome of uncultured primitiveness. I argue that the movement's praxis is best understood as a call to reject externally‐imposed frames of reference as the basis for self‐understanding, and to embrace a socio‐cultural awareness that the only way to be in the world is to be authentically “primitive”– i.e. to exist as a distinct and autochthon socio‐cultural self.     

A History of the Black Women's Movement in Brazil: Mobilization,Political Trajectory and Articulations with the State

This study examines the trajectory and consolidation process of the Black Women's Movement (BWM) in the Brazilian public sphere since the 1980s. Our objective is to understand the processes that underlie the constitution of this social movement, as well as its points of convergence and divergence with the black and feminist movements. Furthermore, this study discusses the movement's process of institutionalization/bureaucratization, its articulation with the Brazilian state and the relationship between gender and race in its internal structure and external claims. The study is based on two research projects conducted between 2005 and 2011. The first, carried out between 2005 and 2007, deals specifically with the consolidation of the BWM, while the second, a four-year study completed in 2011, focuses on the relationship between the black movement and the adoption of race-based public policies in Brazil and Colombia. Data for this research were collected from the BWM's internal documents (a compilation of pamphlets, newsletters and proposals), government documents and informal conversations and semi-structured interviews with 12 black women activists from different regions of the country. Throughout the work, we consider the BWM's internal processes of creating an autonomous movement as well as its external processes of bureaucratization and interconnection with the state. Focusing on these parallel processes allows us to better understand the movement's internal conflicts, its articulations with other social movements, its challenges and methods of navigating political/institutional spaces and the ways in which the emergence of black women as political actors has impacted Brazil's public sphere.     

Differential Impact of Repression on Social Movements: Christian Organizations and Liberation Theology in South Korea (1972–1979)*

During the height of authoritarianism in South Korea (1972–1979), Christian activists challenged the state along two dimensions. First, protesting Christians formed formal social movement organizations to better garner the resources to sustain their social movement. Second, they waged a discursive battle that challenged the legitimizing rhetoric of the state. By 1979, Christians developed a social movement industry involving the network of formal organizations as well as systematizing their rhetoric of protest in the guise of a Korean liberation theology; Minjung Theology. Drawing upon archival data and social movement theory, this study traces the rise and development of both the Christian social movement industry and Minjung Theology. We find that the emergence and evolution of mobilizing structures and movement frames were influenced by the state's repressive apparatuses and legitimizing rhetoric, respectively. Likewise, Christians’ attempts to mobilize and challenge the legitimizing rhetoric of the state further contributed to the closing of the political opportunity structure. This study empirically verifies recent theoretical work emphasizing the importance of considering the differential impact of repression on various components of a social movement.     

Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies

The current "cultural turn" in the study of social movements has produced a number of concepts formulating the cultural–symbolic dimension of collective actions. This proliferation, however, has resulted in some confusion about which cultural–symbolic concept is best applied to understanding cultural processes involved in social movements. We articulate a new definition of ideology that makes it an empirically useful concept to the study of social–movement mobilization. It is also formulated as autonomous of concepts such as culture and hegemony and of other cultural–symbolic concepts presently used in the movement literature to explain participant mobilization. We demonstrate the usefulness of our ideology concept by analyzing letters written to Martin Luther King, Jr. from segregationists opposed to the integration of American society. The analysis indicates that the letter writers particularized segregationist culture, creating ideologies that fit their structural, cultural, and immediate circumstances, and that the ideologies they constructed thereby acted to mobilize their countermovement participation. The particularizing resulted in four differentiated ideological versions of segregationist culture. The empirically acquired variety of ideological versions is inconsistent with the role attributed to cultural–symbolic concepts in the social–movement literature and requires theoretical clarification. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for social–movement theory of the variety of segregationist ideologies.     

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM VS. ETHNOMETHODOLOGY*

Are ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism essentially the same? An examination of these perspectives suggests that each offers a unique contribution to sociological knowledge. Although both perspectives have been influenced by pragmatism, ethnomethodology shares affinity with James' philosophy while symbolic interactionism is allied with Dewey's and Mead's. Both perspectives emphasize meaning and constraints, but each offers critically different conceptualizations of them. Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology share a verstehen outlook, yet each perspective uses different methods to gain “understanding.” Hence, these perspectives differ philosophically, conceptually, and methodologically.     

The Process of Cognitive Liberation: Cultural Synapses,Links, and Frame Contradictions in the U.S.-Central America Peace Movement*

Based upon qualitative interviews with thirty-two Central American peace activists, this article elaborates the process of “cognitive liberation” through the application of frame analysis. In addition, I seek to explain the diffusion of this social-psychological state from Central to North America. Attention is given to the role of the church as a common cultural link that functioned as a micro-mobilizing context, which provided missionaries who served as “meso-mobilizing actors.” The term frame contradictions is introduced to specify the condition in which irreconcilable differences between a movement's frame and its opponent's frame are exposed, thereby facilitating frame adoption. I conclude that some type of cultural link is necessary for the development of a common frame that can integrate groups cross-nationally and that can provide agents of mobilization to serve as a synapse through which frames can be transmitted from one country to another.     

PARTICIPANT NARRATIVES AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN A METAPHYSICAL MOVEMENT

In this article we explore social movement solidarity through an examination of narratives offered by participants in a metaphysical movement. Drawing from contemporary social movement theory, we focus on how members develop a carefully built collective identity that perpetuates movement goals and ideology. Data for this project are drawn from in-depth interviews with local psychics, participant observation in various metaphysical fairs, and document analysis. We find that the movement's collective identity is centered around several narratives that help establish boundaries, identify antagonists, and create a collective consciousness. Together these narratives form a web of belief that binds members to the movement. The data we present in this article have implications for understanding other expressive movements, as well as for social movement theory in general.     

Ideological Contention: Antonio Gramsci and the Connection Between Race and Social Movement Mobilization in Early Twentieth-Century Italy

This article introduces the concept “ideological contention” into the study of social movements and demonstrates the concept through an analysis of the relationship between race and mobilization in modern national contexts. The analysis links the emergence of scientific racism to the period of large nation state consolidation and the development of liberal political ideologies across Western nations. The paper demonstrates that movement struggles within the context of a national ideological framework impact the organization, process of ideological elaboration, and strategic choices a movement makes. I explore how ideology organizes, coordinates, and mobilizes movement members in political processes through a study of Sardinian worker, peasant, and communist struggles in the context of a modernized and industrialized Italy (1917–1920). I argue that reevaluating the theoretical and empirical relationship between ideology and the frame perspective could strengthen analyses of social movement struggles.     

The significance of feminist infrastructure: #MeToo in the construction industry and the green industry in Sweden

To better understand the interplay between digital activism and feminist infrastructure, this study investigates #MeToo activism in the Swedish construction industry and green industry. Both are industries in transition characterized by a dissonance between formal incentives, that encourage women and others to work in environments previously dominated by white men, and the informal power structures hosting a toxic masculinity. Based on media texts and interviews with key persons from the industries, the article situates #MeToo in a local context and shows how it was embedded in a supportive social, cultural, and technical infrastructure. In both industries, at the time of #MeToo this feminist infrastructure was already in place consisting of: an awareness of the problem of sexual harassment and abuse, knowledge of feminist explanatory models, established feminist online networks, and a supportive feminist culture, which together with widespread digital and feminist literacy became instrumental in the organization of the movement. Social media connected activists and created a critical mass by supporting the uniting of conflicting identity positions around shared differences. The established feminist infrastructure meant that the #MeToo activism, by articulating a widespread affective dissonance, pushed open doors that were already half open and forced them wide. This can explain some of the movement's success in Sweden.