Event Coalitions in the Pittsburgh G20 Protests

Protests at events such as the 2009 Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in Pittsburgh frequently require activists to engage in some type of coalition work. This article examines two event coalitions created to organize the Pittsburgh G20 protests: the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project (PGRP), consisting of local anti‐authoritarians, and a loose alliance of individuals and organizations brought together by the Thomas Merton Center (TMC), a local peace and justice movement center. I show how the organizational structure and early decisions of the PGRP made it more effective than the TMC alliance and how those choices were affected by preexisting network structures, social movement organizations, ideological alignments, and relationships in the local movement community. The experiences of activists in event coalitions, both positive and negative, then affect the shape of the movement community and subsequent coalitions and campaigns.     

Management‐capacity building in the Pittsburgh region

This article describes the strategy for management‐capacity building employed by The Forbes Funds in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Like many other cities, Pittsburgh's capacity‐building industry has grown dramatically in recent years and is somewhat fragmented. But The Forbes Funds, along with other philanthropic organizations, have played an important role in developing a coherent system of management support services for nonprofit organizations in the Pittsburgh area. The article concludes with lessons that can be applied in other regions of the country.     

Holding on to Steel: Pittsburgh Culture in the Age of Globalization

In the first half of the twentieth century, Pittsburgh stood at the crossroads of relentless work, immense industrial output, and immigrant culture. The city became notorious for immense steel output. Gone are the days of Pittsburgh as ‘hell with the lid taken off’, as the downfall of the steel industry made way for a post-industrial region now largely defined by the service sector. Many factors combined to bring about the decline of heavy industry in and around Pittsburgh, one of which was the process of globalization, found in increased competition abroad and the demand for technological improvements in steel manufacturing. Economic transformation and social dislocation resulted. Globalization triggered a drastic economic episode, which had lasting effects on Pittsburgh culture. The decline of industry in Pittsburgh in the 1980s altered the commercial makeup of the region, which spurred greater attention to industrial cultural markers. This paper argues that the downfall of industry eroded the foundational symbols on which Pittsburgh culture formed, leading to active attempts to preserve many of them.     

Eventful events: local outcomes of G20 summit protests in Pittsburgh and Toronto

How do transnational summit protests affect local activists and the internal dynamics of organizations and movements in a host city? This paper uses Sewell’s concept of ‘eventful temporality’ to explore the impacts of the G20 summit protests in Pittsburgh (2009) and Toronto (2010) Interviews, and field notes are analyzed to show how the mobilizations enhanced the skills of local activists, increased connections between their movements, changed local tactical preferences, stirred emotions, and spawned and shaped new campaigns. The summit protests mobilized new activists, but also exhausted and demobilized some existing protesters. The findings suggest the need for a more nuanced and temporally sensitive framework for understanding outcomes.     

Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/‐monophthongization in Pittsburgh1

In this paper we test the hypothesis that monophthongal /aw/ is semiotically associated with local identity in Pittsburgh. We compare results of an experimental task that directly elicits participants' sense of the indexical value of /aw/‐monophthongization with the occurrence of this variant in the same people's speech. People who hear monophthongal /aw/ as an index of localness are unlikely to have this feature in their own speech, and many of the people who do monophthongize /aw/ do not associate this variant with localness. Exploring how four of these participants talk about this feature and its meanings, we show that the indexical meanings of speech features can vary widely within a community, and we illustrate the danger of confusing the meaning assigned by hearers to a linguistic form with the meaning users would assign to it. We suggest that a phenomenological approach, attending to the multiplicity and indeterminacy of indexical relations and to how such relations arise historically and in lived experience, can lead to a more nuanced account of the distribution of social meanings of variant forms than can studies of perception or production alone.     

Soziologische Theorie, Methoden, Migrationssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Wirtschaftssoziologie, Mitbestimmung, Umweltsoziologie

Literaturbesprechungen

Soziologische Theorie, Methoden, Migrationssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Wirtschaftssoziologie, Mitbestimmung, Umweltsoziologie