Local Armed Uprisings and the Transnational Image of Claim Making: The Kurds of Turkey and the Zapatistas of Mexico in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore why and how some local armed uprisings are able to go global with a transnational image of ‘social justice’ while others fail to build such image despite becoming transnational. The cases to be analyzed in the article are the pro-Kurdish mobilization in the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and the pro-Mayan Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) movement in Mexico. In explaining the relative success of the latter, the study seeks to make connections with the globalization literature in general and the transnational social movement literature in particular. Particularly, the article focuses on the ability of social movements to market their causes in international arena with a good image. Overall, this study lays out several key strategic differences between the two movements such as the holding and the use of arms, duration of armed resistance, and the leadership and organizational structure to unpack why some social movements are more successful to market their causes as a just cause within ‘global civil society’ and why others fail to do so ending with being listed as a terrorist organization.     

Strategic Planning in the ‘Empire of Speed’

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the latest wave of the social acceleration of time on the capacity for long-term strategic planning within contemporary global justice movements. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary body of literature on time and temporality, the article begins by delineating the changes to the future time perspective wrought by the shift from the modern ‘age of progress’ ruled by ‘clock time', to a global ‘network society’ characterized by speed, risk, and uncertainty. In the second, substantive part, the article draws upon several dozen semi-structured interviews with social activists in order to shed light upon the challenges to contemporary social justice movements posed by the pervasive sense of precarity and futurelessness associated with life in high-speed, global risk society.     

Cooptation and non-cooptation: elite strategies in response to social protest

ABSTRACT

The risk of cooptation – of being absorbed by powerful elites without gaining new advantages – is an important concern in studies of social movements and social change. Through cooptation, elites undermine movements by stripping them of their credibility as agents of change. This paper aims to explain why, despite its powerful rationale, cooptation does not occur more frequently. Building on political process theory and relational sociology, it demonstrates that cooptation appears rational only on the condition that cooperation is valued lower than political domination. But elite-movement interaction may result in mutually strategic relationships that are conditional on each side’s recognition of the other’s interest. Two empirical cases illustrate this possibility: the US Civil Rights Movement and Latin American participatory budgeting. In both cases, the actors involved chose a strategy of ‘mutually assured autonomy’ over cooptation.     

Mapping Strategic Engagements: WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND THE STATE

Abstract

Given that all women's movements share a unique relationship to the State – their exclusion from political power, often legally and occasionally constitutionally underpinned, has this exclusion shaped women's movements' strategies, which have had as their general goal women's political inclusion? Some similarities are evident across types of women's movements and across nations. In this article, I discuss the ‘strategic dilemmas’ that women's movements are likely to face, and I attempt to identify the range of strategic responses employed by feminist movements. I begin with a definitional distinction between women's movements and feminist movements, followed by a discussion of women's relationship to the State. I identify similarities across feminist movements in four strategic dimensions: (1) movement autonomy vs state involvement; (2) insider vs outsider positioning; (3) separatist vs coalitional stances; and (4) discursive and influence-seeking politics. These strategic dimensions shape different opportunities for women's movements across different state configurations, offering openings for some types of women's movements that may be unrecognized or unexploited by others. The article concludes with speculations concerning women's movements' strategic action in the context of state reconfiguration.     

The integrative power of online collective action networks beyond protest. Exploring social media use in the process of institutionalization

Abstract

In this article, we aim at expanding the event-based and protest-centered perspective that is typically adopted to study the nexus between social media and movements. To this aim, we propose a network-based approach to explore the changing role that these tools play during the dynamic unfolding of movement processes and, more particularly, over the course of their institutionalization. In the first part, we read the added value of social media as a function of the ‘integrative power’ of the networks they foster – a unique and evolving form of sociotechnical power that springs from the virtuous encounter between social media networking potential and social resources. In the second part, we investigate this form of power by focusing directly on online networks’ structure as well as on the type of communication and participation environments they host. We apply our proposed approach to the longitudinal exploration of the Twitter networks deployed in the period 2012–2014 during three annual editions of the transnational feminist campaign ‘Take Back The Tech!’ (TBTT). Results from our case study suggest that, over time, TBTT supporters do in fact make a differentiated use of social media affordances – progressively switching their communicative strategies to better sustain the campaign’s efforts inside and outside institutional venues. Thus, the exploration of the TBTT case provides evidence of the usefulness of the proposed approach to reflect on the different modes in which social media can be exploited in different mobilization stages and political terrains.     

‘Globalisation’, Governance and social work: Some implications for theory and practice

Abstract

This article focuses cautiously on the implications of ‘globalisation’ for social work theory and practice. In drawing on recent debates it is argued that, despite its contested meaning, ‘globalisation’ points to a range of rapid and fundamental socioeconomic and political transformations that have impacted upon entire regions of the work. Some of these transformations are identified and analysed in terms of their consequences for transnational, national and local populations. It is proposed that the prevailing consequences of globalisation in terms of social inequality and allied modalities of governance are negative, and that this has important implications for the profession of social work. Effective strategies for confronting the challenges posed by ‘turbo capitalism’ may be found in alliances across global social movements and professional groups, including social workers. The challenges are profound.     

Citing history

ABSTRACT

Although rarely considered within the existing scholarship on social movements, even a cursory analysis of protest activity suggests that movements regularly invoke historical citations (whether consciously or not) while working to clarify aims and mobilize constituencies. In order to make sense of this process, and to account for the variations that arise among the different citation modalities favored by movements on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I draw upon the theoretical contributions of Marxist cultural critic Walter Benjamin and, in particular, on his exploration of ‘wish images’ and ‘dialectical images,’ their attributes, and their interrelationship. According to Benjamin, such images summoned the past either to project visions of future happiness (as with the wish image) or to deposit the witness before a moment of decisive, present-tense reckoning. After outlining the role of historical citation in social movements and in the broader cultural field through which these movements find expression, I analyze two recent protest events – the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, VA, in which wish images were actively deployed, and the 2017 Women’s Strike in New York City, where a dialectical image arose from the constellated nodes of the march’s route – to consider the relationship between citation modality and protest outcome. Following from this analysis, and in keeping with the unapologetically partisan nature of my investigation, I conclude by advancing some strategic recommendations for movements seeking – as Benjamin once enjoined – to ‘improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.’     

Organizational Elaboration as Social Movement Tactic: A Case Study of Strategic Leadership in the first US School-sponsored Program for Gay and Lesbian Youth

This research contributes to our understanding of two central and related problems in the study of social movements: tactical innovation and strategic leadership. Focusing on the leadership history (1984–2003) of the founder and director of the first US public school program for gay and lesbian youth, called Project 10 and located in the Los Angeles, California public school system, this case study illustrates the importance of leadership agency on the part of those ‘organizing from within’. Analyses herein indicate the significance of both institutional constraints and life course circumstances in determining leadership choices. This paper maps organizational obstacles and the tactical dilemmas they produced to explain how successful strategic choices get made. The case of Project 10 indicates that institutional constraints can be overcome tactically with organizational elaboration. Additionally, hybridity, assumed in the literature to produce organizational precariousness, is shown here to be a mechanism for stability, facilitating networks and resource acquisition over time.     

Understanding governmental activism

This article seeks to understand an understudied phenomenon: governmental players joining forces with non-governmental players in contentious actions against policies they want to prevent or redress. This behaviour, which we call ‘governmental activism’, problematizes important assumptions in the social movement literature on state–SMO dichotomies and on seeing ‘the state’ as a homogeneous and unified actor that solely provides the context for SMO activities. Governmental activism also problematizes assumptions on cooperation and ‘new’ modes of coordination in the governance literature. To understand governmental activism, we build on the strategic interaction perspective from social movement studies and on third-phase institutionalism from political science. In our analysis, we show the particulars of governmental activism. Our arguments are illustrated by empirical material on a case of municipal amalgamation in the Netherlands.     

Temporal blindspots in Occupy Philadelphia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the disjunctive temporalities of Occupy Philadelphia’s political constituencies. Drawing on both an ethnographic participant observation study of the Occupy Philadelphia movement and Philadelphia’s neoanarchist political communities, and on recent social scientific theorization of events, the paper argues that contradictory ideas about temporal timescales, momentum, duration, sequences, and rhythms of tactical and strategic action problematized interaction and coordination among movement participants. These points of coordinative disjuncture can be traced back to differences in participants’ ideas about prefigurative politics and strategic temporalities. Limning the temporal expectations and experiences of social movement participants, this paper contributes to the examination of both linkages and disjunctures between eventful temporalities experienced in moments of protest and in social movements with diverse timescales.     

The struggle for ‘our streets’: the digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement

ABSTRACT

The Ferguson Movement of 2014 and 2015 reached national salience immediately following the murder of Michael Brown, after residents took to social media platforms to report from what many activists called ‘ground zero.’ Some popular and scholarly conversations have couched the movement largely through its online manifestations; this study, however, places the movement within the intersections of digital and physical space as well as the broader political context of St. Louis. Triangulating data from 21 unstructured interviews with local activists in St. Louis, Missouri with GIS and digital media analysis, we illustrate how activists in the Ferguson Movement organized within St. Louis’ physical space and challenged popular arguments about resistance in digital space. Consequently, we argue that social movements’ placeness remain important despite recent emphases on digital media.     

Investigating the organizational everyday: a critical feminist approach

ABSTRACT

This article considers the possibilities and limits of applying institutional ethnography, a feminist theoretical and methodological approach that contributes to collective projects of investigating and transforming social life. Elaborating on the approach, the article reports on an ethnographic exploration of visual artists’ experiences and struggles in Canada's art world – a project that started from the standpoint of practising visual artists, examined their work and relations, and explicated practices and logics of art and valued work conditioning their lives. Speaking back to formal or text-based investigations of particular institutions, the article grapples with how to engage in research that more fully reveals the ‘social,’ attending to everyday life, to the ‘life work’ that people do, and to social forms that are threaded through intersecting, localized intimate and institutional spheres.     

Recognizing experiential knowledge in the process of qualification of peer helpers: an analysis of an educational program for service users in France

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes an innovative training program enabling the qualification of peer carers, working within the sector of ‘social inclusion’. Since the French national debate on social work conducted within the ‘Estates General’ of 2015, peer workers have become key players in training programs in virtue of their experiential knowledge and their understanding of issues related to the process of social exclusion. This article addresses the role of peer helpers’ experiential knowledge in the training process. Because of their ‘experiential’ and ‘empirical’ knowledge about questions linked to the process of exclusion, peer helpers have become key players in social work teams and within social institutions, thus contributing to new methods of socio-educational intervention. What impact will this recognition of peer helpers’ and service users’ experiential knowledge have on education in social work? This article gives an account of an 8-month training program for peer helpers examined on the methodological level through a process of Participant observation, and based on data from comprehensive interviews carried out with a panel of peer helpers.     

Wind,coal, and copper: the politics of land grabbing,counterinsurgency, and the social engineering of extraction

ABSTRACT

The multiplicity of violent techniques employed to impose land control and extraction remains under acknowledged. This article reviews research conducted between the years 2014 and 2018 and draws on three case studies: wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany, and copper mining in Peru. The idea of 'engineering extraction' is advanced through counterinsurgency to acknowledge the extent of extractive violence, arguing that the term ‘land grabbing’ is indeed a more appropriate term than ‘land deals’. Engaging with the land grabbing literature, the three cases seek to advance discussions around ‘the political reactions “from below”’ by emphasizing ‘insurrectionary’ positions with resistance movements fighting land deals and extractive projects. This is followed by offering a typology of ‘hard’ coercive techniques and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification that surfaced in each case. The conclusion reflects on the social technologies of resource extraction, recognizing how social discord, ecological and climate crises are engineered and enforced.     

The Strategic Manipulation of Transnational Temporalities

Abstract

While it is now widely recognized that globalization is socially constructed, time is often still seen as a natural unalterable force. Drawing on the literature on the social construction of time, we explore the role of human agency in the interaction of time and globalization by developing the concept of temporal systems. These systems are assemblages that bring together temporal artefacts such as clocks and schedules, the temporalities of the natural world and the body, and social practices involving agency, power, and organization. We then explore, through four illustrative examples, how such systems interact with and constitute globalization. These examples are: the initial emergence and contemporary operation of world standard time; the manipulation of the future and speed in global financial markets; the rise of informal international organizations in global governance; and the role of temporality in the strategic behaviour of multinational corporations.     

The Merit of Party Institutions: Women’s Descriptive Representation and Conservative Parties in Australia and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Generally, right-wing political parties tend to fall behind their left-wing counterparts on women’s representation. Conservative parties emphasize individual merit rather than structural barriers as an explanation for low levels of women succeeding in candidate selection processes. Some right-wing parties have made more progress than others. Comparing parties within the conservative family, we aim to reveal what institutional factors may retard or promote women’s representation. We find that the decentralization of the candidate selection process combined with electoral losses created opportunities for critical actors to act to increase women’s representation to around 20% in Australia, some 15 years earlier than in the United Kingdom.     

From bodies as ‘meat’ to bodies as ‘flesh’: the expression of performance management as ‘sacrificial acts’ within professional rugby

ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue that to extend the research on performance management we need to examine further how organisational members interweave the technology of such management into their work. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, we question the notion that technology acts on bodies in a linear manner as ‘meat’ to be manipulated. His reversible ontology suggests that these materials can be woven into the flesh of organising in a multitude of ways. Specifically, we refer to professional rugby, and the manner in which its players utilise the technology of performance management, to forge a localised expression of sacrifice. We suggest that this expression provides a means for players to define and evaluate themselves against ‘good rugby’. As forms of evaluation may vary in organisations, we recommend that researchers do not solely associate performance management with metrics but also look to other, more localised, expressions to inform their work.     

Capital,conflict and convergence: a political understanding of neoliberalism and its relationship to capitalist transformation

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue against influential analyses of neoliberalism that prioritize variegation and the role of ideas as key theoretical foci relevant to understanding neoliberalism’s diffusion into myriad national and political settings. Rather, we contend that crucial to understanding neoliberalism is the role of politically-produced convergence around market rationality that reflects two core processes: the reorganization of production and the ascendency of financialization. We present a theorization and analysis of neoliberalism’s political production and diffusion over time, explaining its contested evolution and impact across diverse settings (both ‘North’ and ‘South’) and emphasizing its ever-intensifying symbiotic relationship with the consolidating world market in which the former has increasingly come to serve as the latter’s operating system (OS). Further, we posit that neoliberalism’s form, function and impact demand analytically prioritizing the leverage of constellations of ideological and material interests within the contradictory context of consolidating relations of production and financialization. Our analysis thus challenges many previous expositions of neoliberalism for their failure to locate neoliberalism’s manifestation as arising out of social conflict within particular junctures that privilege certain social forces and ideas over others. We also distinguish our position by highlighting how manifestations of neoliberalism in various settings have combined to yield a greater world market in which variegation has gradually given way to ever-intensifying disciplinary pressures towards market-policy conformity (mono-policy). While current populist movements may well turn out to be important counter movements to neoliberal hegemony, especially if they can internationalize, the disciplining effect of the world market renders many nationally-oriented policy alternatives costly and politically fraught.     

From state-bound subjects to global subjects: notes toward an Althusserian theory of globalized subjectivity

ABSTRACT

This article puts Louis Althusser's conception of subjective production via ideological interpellation in dialogue with contemporary Global theories – especially those of Saskia Sassen and Manfred Steger. It does this to offer a more robust framework for understanding subjective production that captures subjective transformations in the age of globalization. The article looks at how Sassen's work captures transformations of social and institutional structures in globalization and then looks at Steger's account of subjective transformations. It then turns to the ways in which Althusser's understanding of the intertwining of subjectivity with institutions and social practices can help bridge the gap between Sassen and Steger and can also help us understand the rise of what I call ‘global subjects’ and a ‘global subjectivity’ that can be in conflict with more traditional ‘state-bound’ subjects. I use the example of globalized regimes of care work in order to help make sense of these distinctions.