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.     

Understanding Meaning in Movements: A Hermeneutic Approach to Frames and Ideologies

Social movements contain structures of beliefs and values that guide critical action and aid activists' understandings. These are worthy of interrogation, not least because they contain points of articulation with ideational formations found in both mainstream politics and academia. They offer an alternative view of society, economy and polity that is grounded in protagonists' experience and struggle. However, the ideational content of social movements is often obscured by a focus on particular, immediate goals; by their orientation to certain forms of action; and by the mediated, simplified nature of their communication. Additionally, recent social movements display a tendency to coalition action, bringing a diverse set of political understandings in concert on highly specific campaigns. This conceptual article seeks an approach to identifying the messages within social movements that remains sensitive to their complexity, dynamism and heterogeneity. Through a critique of the concept of ‘interpretative frames’ as developed in social movement studies, I describe the novel concept ‘orientational frame’. In contrast to social movement scholars' tendency to focus on instrumental claim-making by movement organizations, I emphasize deeply held, relatively stable sets of ideas that allow activists to justify contentious political action. Through an engagement with Michael Freeden's morphological approach to understanding ideologies I attempt to draw frame analysis away from the positivistic attempt to delineate general processes into a hermeneutic endeavour more suitable to understanding the richly detailed, context dependent ideas of particular social movements.     

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.     

The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Vulnerability

The Occupy movement has generated a significant amount of scholarly literature, most of which has focused on the movement's tactics or goals, or sought to explain its emergence. Nevertheless, we lack an explanation for the movement's broad appeal and mass support. In this article we present original research on Occupy in New York City, Detroit, and Berlin, which demonstrates that the movement's heterogeneous participants coalesced around the concept of vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inability to adapt to shocks and stresses, and it inhibits social reproduction and prohibits social mobility. Rather than specifically discussing the wealth of elites per se, Occupy participants consistently expressed the feeling that the current political economic system safeguards elites and increases the vulnerability of everyone else. We argue that the Occupy movement has reworked the relationship among a range of political struggles that were hitherto disconnected (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements) and rendered them complementary through the politics of vulnerability.     

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.     

Occupy's predicament: the moment and the prospects for the movement

Occupy Wall Street has stalled in its attempt to make a transition from a moment to a movement. It had a sizable impact upon the presidential election, driving America's political centre of gravity toward the left, but has been unable or unwilling to evolve beyond its original core into a ‘full‐service movement’ that welcomes contributions from a wide range of activists at varying levels of commitment and skill and plausibly campaigns for substantial reforms. In contrast to earlier American social movements of the twentieth century, the Occupy movement began with a large popular base of support. Propped up by that support, its ‘inner movement’ of core activists with strong anarchist and ‘horizontalist’ beliefs transformed the political environment even as they disdained formal reform demands and conducted decisions in a demanding, fully participatory manner. But the core was deeply suspicious of the ‘cooptive’ and ‘hierarchical’ tendencies of the unions and membership organizations – the ‘outer movement’ – whose supporters made up the bulk of the participants who turned out for Occupy's large demonstrations. The ‘inner movement's’ awkward fit with that ‘outer movement’ blocked transformation into an enduring structure capable of winning substantial reforms over time. When the encampments were dispersed by governmental authorities, the core lost its ability to convert electronic communications into the energy and community that derive from face‐to‐face contact. The outlook for the effectiveness of the movement is decidedly limited unless an alliance of disparate groups develops to press for reforms within the political system.     

The Perennial Nature of the Catholic Worker Farms: A Reconsideration of Failure

Contemporary challenges in rural and environmental politics hinge on understanding what success and failure mean. One avenue of studying success and failure of political and social change efforts is to study social movements and intentional communities often equated with how many years such efforts persisted. The Catholic Worker movement's combination of a vision of radical social change, religion, nonviolence, hospitality, activism, and agrarianism involve publications, urban houses, and farms that constitute a movement and a network of autonomous intentional communities. The Catholic Worker movement's communal farms began in 1933 and at various points those efforts were deemed failures. Thus, the story of the Catholic Worker farms is one of impermanence and struggle for a desired ideal. However, what we are missing in condemning the farms to failure is the utter success since the 1970s of a strong agrarian and environmental strain of the Catholic Worker movement based on farm activity, activism, and cooperative economics. This study reconceptualizes failure in the language of process and context. The Catholic Worker farms case study refigures failure such that we can articulate a politics of possibility related to the dramatic challenges not only of society but also of the environment.     

The Women's Suffrage Movement

ABSTRACT

The women's suffrage movement is explored as a social movement and an argument is made that analysis of the outcomes of social movements is central to those engaged in effecting social change. A set of five factors that influenced the movement's success is explored. These factors are: (1) The framing processes of the Women's Suffrage Movement (WSM) enhanced collective and individual identity, while fueling participants' emotions and actions; (2) A movement community developed that supported the goals of the WSM and held a radical flank effect; (3) External resources were constant; (4) The WSM experienced an infusion of new ideas as a result of cross-national interaction; and (5) The WSM benefited from committed and innovative leaders throughout the movement. These factors are not viewed as exhaustive; rather they are components that were critical to success.     

Understanding Social Movements: theorising the disability movement in conditions of late modernity

This article draws upon qualitative research carried out by the author and funded by the ESRC. One of the central aims of this research was to investigate the nature of the UK disability movement's ‘struggle’ and to evaluate critically the idea that it is a ‘new’ social movement. Consideration of the disability movement in relation to both ‘new’ social movements and to wider social movement theorising has suggested that it may not be possible to understand this movement, entirely, by using any of the existing models. This article concludes by outlining the possible starting point for a new approach to understanding the disability movement based upon forging a closer link between citizenship and social movement theory and upon a focus on the nature of engagement. Empirical evidence from the research is included in this article in the form of quotations from respondents, all of whom are/were members of organisations that are run by disabled people. All respondents' names have been removed to maintain their anonymity.     

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.     

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.     

Cultivating Better Food Access? The Role of Farmers' Markets in the U.S. Local Food Movement

The local food movement has grown substantially in the United States in recent years. Proponents have hailed this growth as a shift away from a conventional food system rife with inequality toward one that introduces more just outcomes for society. While the movement's development and popularity have proliferated, little research has examined nationally how successful it is at delivering on its promises. By combining the social movement and food system literatures with quantitative methodology, this article examines the accessibility of the farmers' market across the United States. Using multivariate logistic regression, the analysis focuses on several identifying characteristics of individuals within and characteristics of neighborhoods across the United States to explore what increases (or decreases) the likelihood of a farmers' market being located within their boundaries. The results suggest that several social, economic, and racial differences exist between those living in areas with farmers' markets and those in areas that do not. Additionally, the analysis found that several neighborhood characteristics significantly influence the likelihood of a farmers’ market being present, including a neighborhood's socioeconomic status, the quality of neighborhood infrastructure, participation rates in social support programs, and the prevalence of poverty. In addition to posing questions of accessibility for the local food movement this research contributes to our understanding of grassroots social movements by examining the avenues and potential limitations that they negotiate while ensuring their stated goals are reached.     

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.     

You Are What You Eat: Slow Food USA's Constitutive Public Relations

This article employs a constitutive, or meaning-generating, approach to investigate how the Slow Food USA social movement employs public relations to counter commercial food industry messages. It argues that Slow Food successfully employs the rhetorical public relations techniques of definition, identification through narrative building, and enactment to build relationships and attract broader support of the sustainable food movement, to translate its somewhat lofty messages to mainstream audiences, and to encourage supporters to live the Slow Food lifestyle. Examining Slow Food's public relations through a rhetorical approach expands theory and practice by answering the call to explore how noncorporate entities successfully use public relations techniques.     

Chilean Feminism(s) in the 1990s Paradoxes of an Unfinished Transition

This article discusses the changes experienced by the feminist movement in post- transition Chile from the perspective of two specific issues. First, the fundamental "paradox' facing this movement today, that is, its relative success in "gender mainstreaming' together with feminism's increasing weakness as a political actor. And second, the relevance of external and internal factors in transforming feminism and the role each has played in its current situation. The article attempts to answer some of the queries posed by this two-fold process: What explains the feminist movement's absence from public spheres? Why was the movement's previous creative force not translated into renewed political power in the democratic context? What factors have contributed towards the lack of articulation among actors who had been able to form a visible movement for the rest of society in the past? And, to what extent have structural transformations conditioned the changes experienced by feminism? The article is structured in three sections. The first analyses some of the social and political factors relevant for the reconfiguration of the movement in the 1990s through an analysis of the political system. The second concentrates on the object of study itself, that is, the feminist movement. It seeks to reconstruct its trajectory, origins and development, the changes it has undergone throughout the transition process and, especially, its present characteristics. Finally, some concluding remarks are provided.     

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.     

The English Student Movement: An Evaluation of the Literature

This article explores the state of the field of student movement research. I suggest there could be seen to be stagnation within the field of investigation, and resultant under‐researching of some countries student movements, and I will make specific reference to the student movement of England in the late 1960s/early 1970s as a case in point of this. I argue that there has been unsatisfactory sole‐causalities, such as issues of youth, issues seen as ‘triggers’, and political factors, attributed to the English student movement, and that this fails both to understand fully the significance and individuality of the English student movement, but also assumes a fit with New social movement (NSM) theory. I argue that we cannot automatically equate NSM's and student movements without thorough empirical research, and that we need to look to a synthesis of social movement theories in order to understand fully student movements.     

Power,capital, and immigration detention rights: making networked markets in global detention governance at UNHCR

With the expanded use of immigration detention and migration management practices worldwide, detention has emerged as a key issue for United Nations and international human rights institutions. A growing international rights movement seeks to make the practice fairer and more humane, leading to the dominance of a mainstream detention rights agenda and counter‐hegemonic system of governance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Geneva and elsewhere, this article examines the capital, knowledge, and technological expertise that went into the construction of UNHCR's Global Detention Strategy. I highlight the rational calculation undergirding this global detention rights agenda, including the transnational policy networks of NGOs, INGOs, and academics that facilitate the movement's moral authority and capitalist growth. Their practices have become powerful neoliberal development tools, which give veracity to human rights agendas and attract oppositionally‐figured abolitionist praxis.