Discursive opportunities and the transnational diffusion of ideas: ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control’ in Japan after the Aum Affair

A case study in the sociology of ideas, this article refines the theory of ‘discursive opportunities’ to examine how intellectual claims cross national and linguistic boundaries to achieve public prominence despite lacking academic credibility. Theories of ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control’ originally began in the United States in the 1960s as a response to the growth of new religious movements. Decades later in Japan, claims that so‐called ‘cults’ ‘brainwashed’ or ‘mind controlled’ their followers became prominent after March 1995, when new religion Aum Shinrikyō gassed the Tokyo subway using sarin, killing thirteen. Since then, brainwashing/mind control have both remained central in public discourse surrounding the ‘Aum Affair’ despite their disputed status within academic discourse. This article advances two arguments. Firstly, the transnational diffusion of brainwashing/mind control from the US to Japan occurred as a direct result of the 1995 Tokyo sarin attack, which acted as a ‘discursive opportunity’ for activists to successfully disseminate the theories in public debate. Secondly, brainwashing/mind control became successful in Japanese public discourse primarily for their normative content, as the theories identified ‘brainwashing/mind controlling cults’ as evil, violent and profane threats to civil society.     

After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March

The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” across the United States and internationally. Yet, a sole focus on these one‐day, physical events misses a great deal of activity. In this article, we examine social media activity related to the Women's March on the platform Instagram that was posted well after the 2017 march was over but before the 2018 march was fully planned. We do so to gain purchase on how individuals and organizations use social media to maintain movements between large events. We analyze a systematic sample of Instagram posts from two sources: (1) individual Instagram users’ public posts with the hashtag #womensmarch and (2) posts from the official Instagram account of the Women's March. Conceptualizing these posts as political performances, we use our findings to draw implications for the study of contemporary protest.     

The Leverage of Protest: Market,Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

How do social movements gain concessions from large corporations? The ability of protests to attain leverage by imposing disruption costs on their targets is widely assumed but less often tested. In this article, we assess the ability of protests to attain concessions by disrupting three broad sources of interest to firm officials: maximizing shareholder value, gaining positive media, and fostering a well-reputed image. In contrast to the body of research on the benefits to movements from shaping media discourses and damaging the reputations of their targets, we find that only market disruption provides protests with leverage. We show this through statistical analyses of an original database of protests against large corporations in the United States over five years, 2005–2009. This study advances social movement and organizational research by demonstrating the ways in which the interests of large corporations provide insurgents with means of attaining leverage over their targets. It also speaks to the broad debate over the importance of disrupting the material versus symbolic interests of movement targets. Our results suggest that when it comes to obtaining concessions from large corporations, it is material disruption and not symbolic disruption that provides movements with leverage.     

Recipes for Attention: Policy Reforms,Crises, Organizational Characteristics,and the Newspaper Coverage of the LGBT Movement, 1969–2009

Why do some organizations in a movement seeking social change gain extensive national newspaper coverage? To address the question, we innovate in theoretical and empirical ways. First, we elaborate a theoretical argument that builds from the political mediation theory of movement consequences and incorporates the social organization of newspaper practices. This media and political mediation model integrates political and media contexts and organizations' characteristics and actions. With this model, we hypothesize two main routes to coverage: one that includes changes in public policy and involves policy‐engaged, well‐resourced, and inclusive organizations and a second that combines social crises and protest organizations. Second, we appraise these arguments with the first analysis of the national coverage of all organizations in a social movement over its career: 84 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and AIDS‐related organizations in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal from 1969 to 2010. These analyses go beyond previous research that provides either snapshots of many organizations at one point in time or overtime analyses of aggregated groups of organizations or individual organizations. The results of both historical and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analyses support our media and political mediation model.     

‘The Women Can Be Moved to Fill in the Gaps’: New Production Concepts,Gender and Suppliers

This article wishes to extend our understanding of New Production Concepts (hereafter NPC) induced restructuring in two areas. Firstly, it wishes to further explore the gender distinctions to be made when considering the impact of NPC on the labour process. In turn, this calls for a consideration of the extent to which NPC restructuring perpetuates, recasts and fortifies gendered divisions of labour within organizations. It will indicate how the introduction of NPC within a buyer and two supply organizations intensified prevailing gendered divisions of labour and disproportionately impacted upon women workers. It will also stress that women workers appeared to be more exposed to the implementation of policies designed to secure responsiveness to the satisfaction of customer requirements. However, while the evidence will reveal the importance of exploring distinctions within labour as part of a process of restructuring, it also highlights the linkages between these organizations. Secondly, therefore it aims to extend the territory of existing debates by highlighting a gender distinction across and between organizations. It will conclude by highlighting the importance of constructing an analysis of NPC‐induced restructuring which not only embraces a gendered analysis of change but simultaneously does not privilege research attention to particular ‘hermetically sealed’ workplaces, dislocated from a wider process of inter‐firm restructuring.     

Global Civil Society: Myths and Prospects

Is the concept of “global civil society” a Sorelian-type myth that captures intuitively an emergent political project? Or is it, rather, a discursive political terrain open to many interpretations, not all of which might be progressive? A radical democratic content would be one way of filling out the “empty signifier,” which “global civil society” is, but not the only one.

     

Tracing Protest Motives: The Link Between Newspaper Coverage,Movement Messages,and Demonstrators’ Reasons to Protest

Within the social movement literature, it is mostly assumed that the reasons why people join a protest demonstration are in line with the collective action frames of the organizations staging the protest. Some recent studies suggest, however, that protesters’ motives are only partly aligned with the messages that are broadcasted by social movements. This study argues that activists’ motives are for an important part shaped by mass media coverage on the protest issue. It investigates the link between people's reasons to protest, the campaign messages of the protest organizers, and newspaper coverage prior to the demonstration. Data cover 14 anti‐austerity demonstrations in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Results show that social movements depend a lot on other political actors to gain media visibility for their messages. Furthermore, the relationship between social movement frames and protest participant motives is mediated by newspaper coverage. Protest organizers’ are able to reach demonstrators via their own communication channels to some extent, but for many of their messages, they also rely on journalists’ reporting about the protest issue.     

‘Over the Pond and Across the Water’: Developing the Field of ‘Gendered Organizations’

This article is concerned with the development of gendered organizations as a field of study. It begins by exploring some of the factors that militate against integrating organization studies and gender studies and gendered organizations scholarship over national/continental divides. Increasingly doubtful about whether traditional (mainstream and critical) organization theories will or can adequately address gender, we contend that scholars of gendered organizations should ‘strike out’ on our/their own, ‘boldly going’ into unfamiliar territory to create new, innovative theories, concepts and ideas. We make various suggestions about possible future directions for theorizing and research.     

Global Visions: Global Civil Society and the Lessons of European Environmentalism

To illuminate the obstacles to the development of a global civil society, the experience of the most developed transnational social movement—the environmental movement—in the most developed supranational political system—the European Union—is considered. National differences are shown to be persistent and there is little evidence of Europeanization. It is argued that the impediments to the development of a global civil society are yet greater and that, despite the advent of antiglobalization protests, global civil society remains an aspiration rather thanan accomplished fact     

Antenarrative and Transnational Labour Rights Activism: Making Sense of Complexity and Ambiguity in the Interaction between Global Social Movements and Global Corporations

Abstract

This paper draws on antenarrative research and writing techniques to analyse the long-running transnational campaign seeking to improve respect for human rights in the supply chains of Nike and other major sportswear companies. The antenarrative approach challenges scholars to look beyond pre-existing expectations, both in terms of which actors and processes are likely to be most influential and in terms of what is motivating participation in those processes which are significant. In this paper we construct antenarrative accounts of two aspects of the Nike campaign and counterpoint each of our antenarratives with an established scholarly account based on more traditional narrative approaches. We conclude antenarrative analysis can provide useful insights into interaction between global activist networks and global corporations, particularly by drawing attention to the generative possibilities of the complex combination of ordered and disordered processes which often characterise that interaction.     

The Institutionalisation of ‘TongNian’ and ‘childhood’ in China and Britain: Exploring Cautious Comparisons

This article engages with the question of how theorisation of the social construction of childhood can be applied across cultural contexts, taking China and Britain as examples. The paper draws on collaborative dialogue between scholars from the People's Republic of China and Britain, and literatures from both Anglophone and Mandarin sources. It takes forward emergent work on theorising childhood from diverse global perspectives by focusing on the institutionalisation of childhood in these countries, with particular reference to language, conceptualisation and legal frameworks relating to chronological age.     

Contested Cosmopolitanisms: Global Meetings and Local Mobilizations

This article analyzes the ways that Pittsburgh anarchist activists, politicians, and journalists framed the 2009 G‐20 meetings and protests through a content analysis of newspaper articles and activist documents. Our analysis found that cosmopolitanism was a central discourse, but it was also contested. Pittsburgh anarchists introduced an open‐community cosmopolitanism that prioritizes the local over the global as a site of struggle and also embraces expansion of rights and commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Somewhat unexpectedly, this open‐community cosmopolitanism was successfully transmitted beyond activist discourse into the public and the local media. The anarchist activist open‐community framing challenged Pittsburgh residents to question whether increased global corporate investments were best for Pittsburgh and, in doing so, fostered connections between local anarchist activists, local journalists, and local Pittsburgh residents. To reflect on the ways that activists contribute to ideas of cosmopolitanism, this article presents a theoretical model that incorporates individual and collective dispositions and multiple ideological standpoints. We also show how movement groups may strategically draw on these shared cosmopolitan dispositions to expand their movement base, communicate their messages, and challenge the hegemony of global capitalism.     

Shifting Loyalties: Support for a Global State and Nationalism

It has been suggested that the increasing power and prominence of global organizations may be undermining the nation state as an organizational form. In an attempt to understand how these dynamics may play out at the individual level a sample of US social movement actors were surveyed to measure support for nationalism and support for the creation of a global state. Support for a global state is hypothesized to be negatively associated with support for national governments. Multivariate binary and ordinal logistic regressions show a number of demographic and attitudinal variables are positively associated with nationalism and, generally, are negatively associated with support for a global state.

Se ha sugerido que el creciente poder y la importancia de las organizaciones globales pueden estar debilitando la nación estado como una forma organizacional. En un intento para entender la manera como estas dinámicas pueden interpretarse a un nivel individual, se realizó una encuesta a una muestra de actores del movimiento social estadounidense para medir el respaldo al nacionalismo y el apoyo a la creación de un estado global. El respaldo a un estado global de estar asociado negativamente con el apoyo a los gobiernos nacionales, es una hipótesis. Las regresiones logísticas ordinales, binares y multivariantes, que muestran un número de variables demográficas y de actitud, están asociadas positivamente con el nacionalismo y generalmente asociadas negativamente con el respaldo a un estado global.

有观点认为,全球性组织日益增长的权力和声望可能正在动摇作为一种组织形式的民族国家的地位。为求了解这种动势如何在个人层面上演变,本文选取了美国社会运动参与者作为样本进行调查,测量其对国家主义的支持程度和对建立全球性国家的支持程度。本文的假设是,对全球性国家的支持与对各国政府的支持负相关。多元二进制逻辑回归分析和有序逻辑回归分析结果显示,若干人口和态度变量与支持国家主义正相关,与支持全球性国家负相关。

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Institutional Environments,Sociopolitical Processes,and Health Movement Organizations: The Growth of Self‐Help/Mutual‐Aid1

This study examines the relationship between sociopolitical processes and health social movement organization formation. Two central research questions are posed: How do self‐help/mutual‐aid institutional environments characterized by professional actors, the state, and social movements influence organizational formation, and do these influences grow stronger or weaker as the self‐help/mutual‐aid movement matures? Analyses comparing the impact of institutional factors such as physician hegemony and autonomy, professional affiliation, state spending, and political ties on self‐help/mutual‐aid founding rates reveal negative effects of professionals but positive effects of the state. These relationships tend to grow stronger as the movement matures. For example, declining professional authority increasingly eases organizational foundings during movement maturity as does the beneficial impact on formation of state expansion in health markets and political ties. Implications are discussed.     

‘I Can't Put a Smiley Face On’: Working‐Class Masculinity,Emotional Labour and Service Work in the ‘New Economy’

The growth of the ‘service economy’ has coincided with the large‐scale detachment from the labour market of low‐skilled men. Yet little research has explored exactly what it is about service work that is leading such men to drop out of the labour market during periods of sustained service sector employment growth. Based on interviews with 35 unemployed low‐skilled men, this article explores the men's attitudes to entry‐level service work and suggests that such work requires skills, dispositions and demeanours that are antithetical to the masculine working‐class habitus. This antipathy is manifest in a reluctance to engage in emotional labour and appear deferential in the service encounter and in the rejection of many forms of low‐skilled service work as a future source of employment.     

Beyond recruitment: Predictors of differential participation in a national antihunger organization

Surprisingly little research has sought to explain differential participation after recruitment into social movement organizations (SMOs). This study examines the influence of several sets of predictors on participation by members of a national organization in the antihunger movement. The findings highlight the importance of incentive, ideological, and microstructural factors for differential participation and suggest that favorable perceptions of SMOs also promote participation. Final remarks address the implications of the findings for the social movement and voluntary organization literatures.     

Introduction: Resistance in the Twenty‐First Century

This essay introduces the articles that comprise a special issue of Sociological Forum titled “Resistance in the Twenty‐First Century.”     

The new ‘hidden abode’: reflections on value and labour in the new economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976 : 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine‐grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy.     

Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden

While there is a substantial scholarly literature depicting the abuses and exploitation of domestic workers in the informal cleaning sector, there is virtually no work that examines conditions in the formal market. This is not an oversight. For many, commodifying domestic labour entrenches gender and economic inequalities; we all should simply clean up after ourselves. We seek to offer a fresh approach: the vital question for those concerned with the women performing this work for pay is not whether to commodify reproductive labour, but rather what form the market will take and what conditions might render it a decent job. In order to make such an assessment, we need to look beyond worst‐case scenarios in the informal sector, and study instead the evolution of the formal market. Only by also examining the content and terms of the work can we address how not to perpetuate inequalities such as the gendered division of labour and its intersection with nationality, race and class. In this article, we analyse the market for household services in Sweden's gender egalitarian social democracy, where a recent tax policy fostered the rapid expansion of a formal market for domestic cleaning. We conclude that domestic cleaning can be a decent job and that there is no inherent contradiction between a market for household services and a social democratic political economy.     

‘I Just Couldn’t Fit It In’: Gender and Unequal Outcomes in Academic Careers

This article reports on the findings of two pieces of research that were designed to test and challenge widely accepted theories about the causes of gender inequity in academic employment at the national level, and subsequently in a more detailed case study of one of Australia's largest and most prestigious universities. Both research projects used large‐scale surveys to capture information about levels of human capital, family responsibilities, career preferences, workloads and objective experiences of appointment and promotion. The case study, conducted in 2002, also utilized focus group discussions with particular groups of women who seemed, from the survey data, to be located just under the glass ceiling. The case study research confirmed the earlier national survey research which concluded that discrimination or bias in appointments, promotions and workloads were not significant in explaining men's domination of the senior levels. It also confirmed the significant gender differences in some kinds of human capital (particularly possession of a Ph.D.). But it also pointed to a quite particular explanation for the failure of women to progress to Level D (associate professor/reader) which involved other more general demographic changes — particularly, high rates of separation and divorce, far higher rates of partnering among men than women and the impact of older children's needs.