All in the family: The role of family networks,collective action frames,and identity in Latino movement participation

The family is often described as the foundation of Latino immigrant communities. Scholars interested in the political activism of Latino immigrants in the United States have consequently sought to examine the relationship between the family and recruitment to social movement participation. Overall, this research focuses on how the family can promote Latinos' political activism. However, less is known about the conditions under which the family may hinder activism. Family dynamics may be particularly demobilizing for certain segments of the Latino population with liminal or undocumented status. This article reviews two groups of the recent literature on Latino political mobilization: (a) social networks; and (b) collective action frames. By drawing on insights from social movement theory, the article concludes by arguing for more research that theorizes on the family as a group identity, powerfully enabling, and constraining Latino movement participation.     

Policies,parties, and protests: explaining student protest events in Latin America

ABSTRACT

What explains variation in the emergence of college student protests in Latin America? This study uses an original dataset of 4,700 college student protests to carry out a systematic analysis of student mobilization in the region. This article tests three hypotheses based on two distinct but complementary explanations. The political explanation argues that stronger organizational linkages with ruling parties have a demobilizing effect, while the explanation based on grievances claims that increases in enrollments and private expenditures promote mobilization. Regression analyses are used to tests these claims. Increased private spending does not affect mobilization, while expanded access to college does increase the frequency of protests. To gauge the effect of party linkages, two student-party linkages scores, based on an expert survey, are used. The findings show that stronger linkages with ruling parties lower protest frequency whereas linkages with the opposition do not have a significant effect.     

Isomorphism,Institutional Parochialism,and the Study of Social Movements

This study investigates whether the field of social movements is occupied by parochial concerns. Using a content analysis of two prominent journals that study social movements – Mobilization: An International Journal and Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social and Political Protest – it was found that the field is dominated by the study of Western movements, but is also relatively ‘worldly’ when compared to other academic sub-disciplines. Much work on the ‘global south’ is conducted by scholars who maintain personal associations and connections to regions of the world outside of the West. In addition, it was found that social movement scholars focus predominantly on the study of liberal movements as compared to conservative movements. The types of movements most commonly studied are also examined.     

Out of the Labs and into the Streets: Scientists Get Political

Scientists are participating in more visible and vocal forms of political action. In this essay, I sketch key moments in this shift, with the hope of generating new research questions and lines of sociological inquiry. Specifically, I ponder whether this is a new wave of science activism, and if so, how is it different from past forms of science activism? I also ask whether and in what form we, as sociologists, should “stand up for science”?     

Organizing “Below and to the Left”: Differences in the Citizenship and Transnational Practices of Two Zapatista Groups

This article examines the political transnational practices—that is, both the physical and symbolic border‐crossing political practices—of two Zapatista groups. This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of literature on transnationalism and citizenship by focusing on immigrants’ political transnational activities in the global South, as well as transnational activists’ practices in the global North influenced by the global South. I argue that transnational ideological and political influences are bidirectional, that is, influences also flow from the global South to the global North. In addition, I argue that different transnational practices are strongly shaped by structural opportunities and constraints on activists, in this case, by citizenship status and economic class. My arguments are drawn from fieldwork and in‐depth interviews conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area with two Zapatista groups, which I name the Localizers and the Globalizers.     

Network exceptionalism: online action,discourse and the opposition to SOPA and ACTA

Advocacy campaigns opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) illustrate that the dynamics of networked activism have symbolic as well as structural aspects, with implications for scholars and activists who have focused on the coordination possibilities of networks. This paper analyses the creation and movement of discourses of ‘network exceptionalism’ between advocates, online culture and news media. Networks operate functionally to disseminate ideas and link together people participating in social action (e.g. by embedding aspects of discourse in memes, which then propagate ideas swiftly), but also symbolically, inflecting discourses towards a focus on the exceptional – and essential – qualities of the internet. These discourses embed fears about the fragility and indispensability of the internet, as well as thrilling and threatening elements like Anonymous. They are carried by memes that link the structural dynamics of networked activism to the discourses of illness, threat and utility, and gain different inflections through the European campaigns to oppose ACTA. These discourses not only create spaces for discussing and expanding upon the value of the internet to communication rights, but also leave room for interpretations that may undermine these advocacy projects.     

Activism and the academy: losing the ideological and material battles

Abstract

In this article written in the summer of 2018 Professor Michael Oliver sought to convey a sense of urgency about the need to reinvigorate the relationship between disability, the academy and activism. In his usual clear unswerving style that is both liberating and enabling in its directness he calls upon all engaged with the journal to remember that the foundations of disability studies emerged out of democratic organisations of disabled people and must remain committed to placing the experiences of disabled people at the centre of academic and activist enterprise. He places emphasis on the original purpose of the journal to build on the social model of disability in order to produce real social change expressing frustration about what he saw as an increasing ineffectualness within the academic community to confront what is really happening to disabled people. He is forthright when describing his hope that disability activists and academics will strengthen the future of disabled people, and the future of disability studies too, by working ever more closely together.     

Reclaiming,proclaiming, and maintaining collective identity in the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico: an examination of digital frontstage and backstage activism through social media and instant messaging platforms

This article starts from the recognition that digital social movements studies have progressively disregarded collective identity and the importance of internal communicative dynamics in contemporary social movements, in favour of the study of the technological affordances and the organizational capabilities of social media. Based on a two-year multimodal ethnography of the Mexican #YoSoy132 movement, the article demonstrates that the concept of collective identity is still able to yield relevant insights into the study of current movements, especially in connection with the use of social media platforms. Through the appropriations of social media, Mexican students were able to oppose the negative identification fabricated by the PRI party, reclaim their agency and their role as heirs of a long tradition of rebellion, generate collective identification processes, and find ‘comfort zones’ to lower the costs of activism, reinforcing their internal cohesion and solidarity. The article stresses the importance of the internal communicative dynamics that develop in the backstage of social media (Facebook chats and groups) and through instant messaging services (WhatsApp), thus rediscovering the pivotal linkage between collective identity and internal communication that characterized the first wave of research on digital social movements. The findings point out how that internal cohesion and collective identity are fundamentally shaped and reinforced in the social media backstage by practices of ‘ludic activism’, which indicates that social media represent not only the organizational backbone of contemporary social movements, but also multifaceted ecologies where a new, expressive and humorous ‘communicative resistance grammar’ emerges.     

Once in Parkland,a Year in Hartford,a Weekend in Chicago: Race and Resistance in the Gun Violence Prevention Movement

Generally ignoring firearm‐deaths by suicide, “common sense” divides gun violence into two distinct types of phenomena: urban gun violence and mass shootings. At a cursory level, these phenomena seem distinct because of the difference in the number of victims killed during a particular shooting, rather than subtypes co‐creating a master category defined by gun violence. As a result, gunshot deaths of black and brown bodies in urban settings, which constitute the majority of deaths by gun violence after suicide, are viewed as routine whereas gunshot deaths in suburban settings are extraordinary and worthy of outrage. In this article, we draw on ethnographic observation to compare protest vigils in urban communities comprised predominantly of people of color, in suburban areas that are mostly white, and at the national level in order to uncover the racialized processes of symbolic classification by which this “commonsense” view is produced and how it is challenged by activists. We use the framework of cultural pragmatics to analyze these vigils, making visible the racialized forms of domination that structure activism and, we contend, ultimately divide gun violence into two distinct phenomena rather than constituting a master category. We argue that cultural pragmatics provides a way to understand what it means to challenge culture as emphasized by the multi‐institutional politics approach to social movements.     

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.     

Transnational Social Movements,Civil Society,and a Secret State: The Idea of a Nuclear-free World through Israel's Vanunu Affair

Studies on transnational social movements in world risk society tend to emphasize their centrality and effectiveness as the result of two major transformations: the decline of the nation-state as a primary locus of power and sovereignty, and the rise of assertive civil societies' subpolitics. Drawing on the ‘Vanunu affair’ (the Israeli technician who was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for making public Israel's nuclear secrets), and the reactions it elicited at the local and global levels, the article analyzes the obstacles that may prevent the effective influence of anti-nuclear transnational social movements, and their difficulties in contributing to global framing. These obstacles are related mainly to the cultural politics of a ‘secret state’ that constructs national sovereignty, and mobilizes the local civil society, by means of nuclear secrecy and opacity.     

Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and,Yes, from American Sociology

The U.S. Constitution includes civil and political rights—as individual rights—but does not include what is internationally understood to be “human rights,” namely rights we enjoy as equals, including economic, social, and cultural rights, and protections for vulnerable persons, such as children, minorities, mothers, and refugees. The United States has not ratified any international (United Nations) or regional (Organization of American States) human rights treaty, is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, and is no longer a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It might be concluded that Americans do not know what human rights are. It is more complicated than that. While opinion polls show that Americans often endorse individual rights—e. g., the rights of women—they do not frame them as being interdependent or being within the purview of government. Can we conclude that human rights have no place in the United States? Not at all. This article concludes by showing that many U.S. institutions of higher learning have programs in human rights and that some academic associations, including the American Sociological Association, recognize human rights.     

Social media teams as digital vanguards: the question of leadership in the management of key Facebook and Twitter accounts of Occupy Wall Street,Indignados and UK Uncut

Recent protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street in the US, the indignados/15M movement in Spain, and UK Uncut have witnessed the rise of social media teams, small activist groups responsible for managing high-visibility and collective activist social media accounts. Going against dominant assertions about the leaderless character of contemporary digital movements, the article conceptualises social media teams as ‘digital vanguards’, collective and informal leadership structures that perform a role of direction of collective action through the use of digital communication. Various aspects of the internal functioning of vanguards are discussed: (a) their formation and composition; (b) processes of internal coordination; (c) struggles over the control of social media accounts. The article reveals the profound contradiction between the leadership role exercised by social media teams and the adherence of digital activists to techno-libertarian values of openness, horizontality, and leaderlessness. The espousal of these principles has run against the persistence of power and leadership dynamics leading to bitter conflicts within these teams that have hastened the decline of the movements they served. These problems call for a new conceptual framework to better render the nature of leadership in digital movements and for new political practices to better regulate the management of social media assets.     

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 Polish Parliament and the Making of Politics through Abortion: Nation,Gender and Democracy in the 1996 Liberalization Amendment Debate

The collapse of communism across East Central Europe was marked by a renewal of debates around reproduction, with abortion debates surfacing in Romania, Germany and Poland. Reproductive politics and more specifically abortion debates typically come to the forefront in times of crisis or societal transformation. Struggles over women's reproductive rights in Poland, as evidenced by continuing debate around the legal status of abortion, are in this postcommunist context intimately related to and bound up with ongoing symbolic and concrete re-definitions of Polish nationhood, identity and citizenship. Focusing on the connections between discourses of Polish nationhood, gender and democracy, this article offers a detailed and critical engagement with debate in the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament) during the second reading of the 1996 liberalization of abortion amendment. Using a discourse analysis methodology, the article argues that abortion is a symbolic issue through which anxieties about postcommunist reform are raised, nationalist pasts and futures are imagined and through which political projects are articulated.     

Protest,Cyberactivism and New Social Movements: The Reemergence of the Peace Movement Post 9/11

This paper examines ways in which the Internet and alternative forms of media have enhanced the global, yet grassroots, political mobilization in the anti-war effort in the post 9/11 environment. An examination of the role of cyberactivism in the peace movement enhances our understanding of social movements and contentious politics by analyzing how contemporary social movements are using advanced forms of technology and mass communication as a mobilizing tool and a conduit to alternative forms of media. These serve as both a means and target of protest action and have played a critical role in the organization and success of internal political mobilizing.     

Negotiating Sustainability: Climate Change Framing in the Communications,Energy and Paperworkers Union

Environmental problems are often reduced to a catch‐22 that portrays sustainability‐oriented policies as disastrous for resource sector workers. Despite efforts by many industry leaders to frame climate change in “jobs versus environment” terms, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has supported ambitious greenhouse gas reduction policies. Using interviews with union members and staff, this study examines CEP's climate change framing. It finds that CEP extended the environmental justice master frame to define its response to climate change, neutralize anti‐Kyoto rhetoric, and work with the environmental movement. CEP's framing was accomplished through negotiation processes that continue to unfold as members work out the union's positions relative to their own values, experiences, and interpretations of what is possible. These findings suggest sustainability can be understood as an emergent, localized, and contested social order, and point to “self‐negotiation” in longer‐term social change struggles as a potential area of further study.     

Focusing on Focusing Events: Event Selection,Media Coverage,and the Dynamics of Contentious Meaning‐Making

Despite the prevalent assumption among scholars of social movements and contentious politics that transformative contentious events are also the focus of public attention and discussion, there has been little attempt to substantiate this. After making a case for why to focus on focusing events and suggesting that these events should be thought of as products of a dialogical contentious meaning‐making process, we develop a coverage attribute‐based method for identifying focusing events. For illustrative purposes, we apply our method to the coverage of contentious events during the “first” intifada by Israeli‐Jewish, Jewish settler, and Palestinian newspapers. Findings from analyses of 11,868 news items reveal that newspapers are likely to strategically quiet contentious events that are strategically amplified by newspapers affiliated with opposing or targeted parties, and vice versa, depending on their interpretation of these events as political opportunities or threats. Analyses of variations across and within contending parties reveal the role of structure and agency in the dialogical seesaw‐like dynamics of contentious meaning‐making.     

De Jure vs. De Facto Rights: A Response to “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and,Yes, from American Sociology”

Blau's ( 2016 ) argument for a Constitutional Project implies that changes in the U.S. Constitution would ensure fundamental adherence to human rights standards. We disagree with the assumption that legal and institutional instruments are guarantors of human rights practice. Instead, we see rights practices as the function of power struggles that include but go far beyond formal law. Instead, we emphasize an important distinction between de jure human rights instruments and de facto human rights practice, arguing that the focus on de jure instruments and legal discourse misses the significant effect of social movements and direct action that secure rights practice. De jure instruments may codify human rights and enumerate them as important, but they do not carry the authority of enforcement. We argue that the pursuit of human rights must be reframed to include both de jure and de facto human rights terrains. While charitable provisions from generous states can temporarily relieve specific human rights abuses, universal human rights practice requires establishing the fundamental political primacy of the people through the processes of the human rights enterprise.     

The Road Through Paris: Climate Change,Carbon, and the Political Dynamics of Convergence

Abstract

This article tracks the key events that set the stage for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris, particularly as they relate to politics of convergence. One side of this coming together is an intersection of issues, where new terrestrial and aquatic carbon sequestration programs have blurred the margins of climate change mitigation and resource grabbing. These programs, enclosing forests, farmlands, and oceans, are likewise fused together in what can be described as an emerging ‘carbon complex’ that is part of the wider blue/green economy. On the reverse side, the clear intersection of issues as witnessed by radical, and historically sectoral, agrarian/social justice movements is causing them to intertwine in resistance. The realm of climate change has proven to be an exceptional space of struggle and countermovement building. Political interactions between movements have become increasingly sophisticated—requiring frameworks that address environmental, agrarian, and oceanic issues at once, as the issues have become ever more complex. Agrarian/social justice movements maintain that their agendas for food sovereignty and climate justice hinge upon exposing fault lines in the system and advocate overall system change. COP21 and its parallel side events were together a landmark moment, but part of a much more involved process, ‘the road through Paris’, along which movements had carved out transnational and local spaces of convergence against the backdrop of a global carbon complex.