‘We fight for all living things’: countering misconceptions about the radical animal liberation movement

This qualitative content analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Kollective (ELK) and Grassroots Ontario Animal Liberation (GOAL) network websites and Facebook pages explores how activism within the Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) intersects with other social movements. While most literature to date traces the RALM’s (dis)junctures with other forms of social justice activism through analyses of their broad ideological assumptions, or the views of renowned RALM scholars, this research provides authentic insights into the voices of Canadian, American and Mexican activists as they are represented in documents they author themselves. Like activists in anarchistic, anti-capitalist, immigrant rights, Indigenous, prison abolition, prisoner support and radical feminist movements, those in the RALM critique capitalism, colonialism, hierarchy, racism, sexism, state power and the prison industrial complex. Our research calls into question the existing narratives that depict the RALM as an extremist, single-issue movement oblivious to all other forms of social inequality, injustice, marginalization and oppression. Rather, RALM activists are building alliances with other radical social movements to achieve the common goal of ending both human and animal suffering and exploitation.     

Early activism and work arrangements of young feminists in Mexico City

The study investigates the relationship between the activism and later work life of young Mexican feminist activists in the context of social movements’ institutionalization and the precarious employment situation. Using the biographical narratives of fifteen feminists in Mexico City who were core activists during the period of high mobilization of the abortion rights movement from 2007 to 2009, this study aims to answer two questions: How does activism impact contemporary activists’ work life in an era of professionalized and institutionalized social movements? And how do their feminist identities and practices differ according to the workplace? The results reveal that (1) young feminists joined women's movement institutions through their activism, although those employment opportunities were unstable, and (2) they used reflexive strategies to manage their feminist identities amidst the uncertainty and to reconcile their work life conditions and their feminist activist identities.     

Learning to feel: the neglected sociology of social movements

This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among animal rights activists, and more broadly, the applicability of the sociology of emotions to the field of social movements. I examine the case of a social movement which relies heavily on empathy in its initial recruitment, and which has been derisively labeled by outsiders as ‘emotional’. I explain recruitment to animal rights activism by showing how activists develop a ‘vocabulary of emotions’ to rationalize their participation to others and themselves, along with managing the emotional tone of the movement by limiting the kinds of people who can take part in debates about animal cruelty. The interactive nature in which emotions develop in social movements is stressed over previous approaches to emotions in the social movement literature, which treat emotions as impulsive or irrational.     

Narrative and Frame Alignment in Social Movements: Labor Problem Novels and the 1929 Gastonia Strike

Research on social movements and frame alignment has shed light on how activists draw new participants to social movements through meaning making. However, the ‘framing perspective’ has failed to interrogate how the form or genre in which frames are deployed affects the communication of meaning. The burgeoning literature on social movements and narrative would seem to point to one discursive form of importance to meaning making in social movements, but scholars have failed to connect their insights with the literature on framing. In this article, I analyze five novels published in response to a 1929 communist-led strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. I argue that labor movement activists deployed these long-form narratives for the purposes of ‘frame alignment,’ specifically ‘frame amplification’ and ‘frame transformation,’ and I show how these narratives conveyed frames in ways that other discursive forms could not. The study raises new questions about the selection and reception of discursive forms in social movements.     

MASTER FRAMING AND CROSS-MOVEMENT NETWORKING IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

This article maps the network of cross-movement activism in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, and explores the relationship between position in the network and cognitive use of different injustice frames. The study is informed by a neo-Gramscian analysis that views social movements as (potential) agencies of counterhegemony. Viewed as a political project of mobilizing broad, diverse opposition to entrenched economic, political, and cultural power, counterhegemony entails a tendential movement toward comprehensive critiques of domination and toward comprehensive networks of activism. We find that the use of a broadly resonant master frame—the political-economy account of injustice —is associated with the practice of cross-movement activism. Activists whose social movement organization (SMO) memberships put them in touch with activists from other movements tend to frame injustice as materially grounded, structural, and susceptible to transformation through concerted collective action. Moreover, the movements in which political-economy framing especially predominates–labor, peace, feminism, and the urban/antipoverty sector—tend not only to supply most of the cross-movement ties but to be tied to each other as well, suggesting that a political-economy framing of injustice provides a common language in which activists from different movements can communicate and perhaps find common ground.     

From Tourists to Anti-Tourists to Tourist Attractions: The Transformation of the Amsterdam Squatters' Movement

Urban social movements are increasingly confronted by the growth in urban tourism and its influence over city development. This growth promises to create new opportunities for mobilization, resistance, and compromise. For both tourists and activists, place matters. However, place matters differently for each group, bringing conflicts over how the city should respond to their different, and sometimes opposing, needs. In this article, I examine the Amsterdam squatters’ movement and its relationship with tourists. I trace four major periods of the interaction between activism and tourism, from initial unity, to separation, to mutual antagonism, up to their ultimate reconciliation. I show that the interplay between tourism and urban social movements is more complex than a relationship of exploitation and resistance. Tourism has both the power to radicalize and depoliticize movements. Likewise, movements can both repel and attract tourists. This analysis emphasizes the role power differential plays in the evolving relationship. A powerful squatters’ movement resisted tourism, but the movement in decline, shifting from political to cultural activism, made the strategic choice to compromise in order to maintain the movement.     

Rethinking Gender and Violence: Agency,Heterogeneity, and Intersectionality

This paper is a consideration of the increasing diversity of images of gender violence and its victims, as both the grassroots antiviolence activists, and the scholars of the movements and the violence that inspires the activism, engage with cultural codes and feeling rules that tend to narrow the criteria for what constitutes gender violence and victimization. We are coming to better understand that social location, including but not limited to positions within patriarchal systems of stratification, shapes violence and victimization in many different ways. Since the inception of the women’s movement, the discourse of victimization has grappled with the implications of constructing ‘pure victims’, and despite the tremendous progress in the resources available to survivors of gender violence, we find the tensions between victimization and agency, and between simplicity and complexity, reemerging repeatedly in the stories victims, activists, and scholars tell about this social problem. Below, we review the sociological research and activism, in conjunction with the collective narratives in the social movements against gender violence, to show how the issues of perceptions of women who are framed as victims began and remain central to feminist research in this area. We also explore the newest visions of gender violence, that broaden theorizing and activism to include multiple dimensions of inequality and their intersections. Taken together, these debates reveal multifaceted layers of complexity that inform the contexts and lived experience of violence, and that continue to enter into our storytelling.     

Habitus and social movements: how militarism affects organizational repertoires

2010–2012 were years of global protests. This wave of mobilization has been celebrated for its horizontal, leaderless, and participatory character. But this was not the case in all countries. In Israel, which saw the largest social contention in its history, the protest was marked by a dominant and centralized leadership and by cooperation with institutional actors and corporate media. Based on the study of the Israeli case, this research seeks to contribute to explanations of how movements’ organizational forms develop. Social movement scholars have shown that activists’ forms of organization are limited to a familiar repertoire of action. Building on previous scholarship, I argue that activists’ organizational repertoires are shaped by a habitus that familiarizes and routinizes certain practices. But while existing scholarship focuses on how organizational habitus develops within the field of activism, I expand the applicability of habitus and show how movement repertoires are also influenced by habit in fields unrelated and even antagonistic to activism. Based on participant observations and interviews, I show how in the Israeli case, militarism formed part of activists’ organizational habitus and contributed to the 2011 protests’ centralized and hierarchical character.     

The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature

Traditionally, philosophers have had most to say about the ethics of our treatment of non‐human animals (hereafter animals); it is only in recent years that social scientists have engaged with issues concerning humans and other animals. However, in the sociological literature and more generally in the emerging field of Human–Animal Studies (HAS), evidence of interest in the animal protection movement is slight. This review of Eliasian theory, Marxist realism, feminism, ecofeminism, and social constructionist theory – along with key activist approaches to animal activism and advocacy – indicates the theoretical richness of the topic that is nonetheless empirically poor. The animal protection movement is referred to here simply as the animal movement or where appropriate, as one of its three strands – animal welfare, animal liberation and animal rights. The article concludes with a discussion of how social movement theory (the ‘why’) and practice (the ‘how’) might be enhanced by social movement scholars working in collaboration with animal activists.     

Clothing and social movements: Tibet and the politics of dress

The ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies has brought a renewed outlook on new social movements and lifestyle movements. In this development on the symbolic challenge of contemporary movements, research has expanded to both music and art. However, little is known about the role of clothing in movements and how activists use it for social change. In making the case for a greater consideration of clothing’s tactical use in identity work, this paper explores the case of the Tibetan Lhakar movement. I argue that for Lhakar activists, clothing is the materialization of the political consciousness of the movement and symbolically acts as a mechanism of communication in shaping its political goals. By using social media to observe individualized collective actions of wearing Tibetan clothing, the paper demonstrates how activists frame and create new political opportunity structures for civic participation in a one party state that controls all speech and movement.     

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.     

Institutional Activism: Seeking Customary Forest Rights Recognition from Within the Indonesian State

This article aims to explain why the adat movement activists in Indonesia could expand their campaigns for state recognition of adat community rights to activities from within the state apparatus. We argue that three combined processes have contributed to the conjuncture that made institutional activism possible: the preparation of the 2014 national election offered activists opportunities to influence the government agenda; the emergence of a conscious strategy for conducting institutional activism; and the coalitions between some key state officials and the movement’s actors. This article also analyses the problems that institutional activists faced, in particular resistance from influential actors at various government units who were not sympathetic to the adat movement’s agenda. Therefore, the impact of this activism on policy changes so far remains limited. The authors’ personal involvement in this case of institutional activism to promote customary forest provided access to the information for this article.     

Determinants of Latin American Activism: Domestic and Transnational Political Opportunities and Threats

For decades Latin America has been and continues to be a vibrant source of activism as democracies emerge, civil societies strengthen, and movements turn an outward eye towards international forces. Social movements, organizations, and activists in Latin America mobilize around a diverse set of issues from neoliberalism to women’s rights and more. Yet, all groups must successfully navigate ever‐shifting domestic and transnational political opportunities and threats. This review first defines the political opportunity approach and discusses debates surrounding its utility and applicability at different phases of social movement activity, as well as growing debates about the importance of domestic versus transnational opportunities and threats for predicting movement mobilization, protests, and outcomes. Next the article discusses changing domestic and transnational political opportunities and threats throughout Latin America. It then turns to empirical application of the political opportunity model to various social movements, organizations, and activist groups working in Central and South America. This paper concludes with a brief revisit of the debate and points to future lines of inquiry. Additionally, it provides an interactive Google Map, which locates the prominent actors involved in Latin American activism, the international institutions that influence them, and Internet links for more information.     

‘Not that kind of atheist’: scepticism as a lifestyle movement

This article examines atheist activists from a lifestyle movement perspective. I focus on how atheist activists adopt the term ‘sceptic’ as a distinct identity marker to represent their growing interest in other types of activism beyond atheist community building and criticism of religious beliefs. My data come from thirty-five interviews with Canadian atheist activists and participant observation in the province of Alberta. In contrast to previous social movement approaches to atheist activism, I deemphasize the importance of collective identity and instead attend to personal identity as the site of social change. My findings show that being a sceptic is a personally meaningful identity in the context of a relatively weak secularist collective identity. Moreover, atheist activists who also identify as sceptics wish to expand the boundaries of the atheist movement to include individualistic projects of personal affirmation based on science and critical thinking. This work contributes to our understanding of the everyday activities of activists who engage in individual action in the absence of a strong collective identity. In particular, this article expands our understanding of lifestyle movements beyond the current focus on socially conscious consumption. Instead, I return to the roots of lifestyle movement theory, that is, how one’s everyday choices serve as a form of protest. Finally, this work contributes to atheism scholarship, which has neglected the diversity of individual identities within atheist organisations and among atheist activists.     

Place,space, networks,and the sustainability of collective action: the Madres de Plaza de Mayo

This article provides a framework for analysing social movements and explaining how collective action can be sustained through networks. Drawing on current relational views of place and space, I offer a spatialized conception of social networks that critically synthesizes network theory, research on social movements, and the literature on the spatial dimensions of collective action. I examine the historic and contemporary network geographies of a group of human rights activists in Argentina (the Madres de Plaza de Mayo) and explain the duration of their activism over a period of more than two decades with regard to the concept of geographic flexibility. To be specific, first I show how, through the practice of place‐based collective rituals, activists have maintained network cohesion and social proximity despite physical distance. Second, I examine how the construction of strategic networks that have operated at a variety of spatial scales has allowed the Madres to access resources that are important for sustaining mobilization strategies. Finally, I discuss how the symbolic depiction of places has been used as a tool to build and sustain network connections among different groups. I conclude by arguing that these three dimensions of the Madres’ activism account for their successful development of geographically flexible networks, and that the concept of geographic flexibility provides a useful template for studies of the duration and continuity of collective action.     

From the New Ecological Paradigm to Total Liberation: The Emergence of a Social Movement Frame

Drawing on theories of social movements and environmental sociology, this article considers a frame transformation that is taking place within ecological social movements. This transformation produced a new frame: “total liberation.” We explore this phenomenon by analyzing interviews with activists, fieldwork observations, and documents from radical environmental and animal rights movement networks in the United States. Beyond introducing the total liberation frame, the article expands current understandings of how and why frame transformations occur through a consideration of how multiple frames, as well as intra‐ and intermovement tensions and influences, shape frame transformation.     

Moral Reflexivity and Dramaturgical Action in Social Movement Activism: The Case of the Plowshares and Animal Rights Sweden

Drawing on Durkheim's sociology of morality, which identifies ideals and norms as the key components of morality, this article outlines a theoretical model for understanding how social movements can bring about legitimate social change. Social movement activists, we propose, can be conceptualized as followers and pursuers of sacred ideals. As such, they frequently come into conflict with existing norms in society. To manage this dilemma, activists must downplay their role as norm breakers while emphasizing their identity as followers of ideals. This in turn requires moral reflexivity in the staging of collective action. The article shows how dramaturgical control (Goffman) is exercised towards this end among activists engaged in two social movements in Sweden: the Plowshares peace movement and Animal Rights Sweden. The article further examines the internal stratification, or ‘moral hierarchies’, within the two activist groups in the light of the proposed model. The closer the activists were able to adhere to the sacred ideal, the higher the social status they enjoyed within the group.     

A life of one’s own: republican freedom and disability

This article outlines a republican perspective on disability. We argue that a commitment to ensuring the republican freedom of disabled citizens offers a promising account of what disabled citizens are owed as a matter of justice. A republican perspective offers a particular diagnosis of the injustice of disability disadvantage, both in relation to individuals (dominium) and the state (imperium), that is congenial to prominent concerns voiced by the disability rights movement. This article also offers a brief outline of three republican remedies: the right of social participation, the right of opportunities for civic contribution, and the right of democratic contestation. These remedies constitute key guidelines for the robust institutional protection of disabled citizens’ republican freedom.     

Transnational Normative Struggles and Globalization: The Case of Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador

Since the 1990s, the indigenous rights movement has catapulted from resource-poor, local activists to global activists. The rise of transnational indigenous rights movements has paralleled and interfaced with significant structural developments at the international and state-systemic level, raising questions about the interplay between global and local politics as arenas of social change. To trace these transnational networks to the articulation of norms supportive of indigenous claims, we examine two cases of transnational indigenous activism and domestic responses in the Andean region of South America. We find that the additional dimension of domestic and transnational mobilization that first contests existing international norms, such as neoliberalism and individual rights, and then seeks to diffuse normative changes at both the domestic and international levels provides new insight about norm formation, transformation, and diffusion in international politics in favor of anti-globalization and community equality norms on local, national, and global levels.     

Unobtrusively Stretching Law: Legal Education,Activism, and Reclaiming Title IX

We often understate the work that activists put into crafting movement tools. This article examines the space between legal texts and movement resources in a study of early activism surrounding Title IX. Though often hailed as a feminist law, the Title IX statute and regulations lay out a narrow set of individual rights and incorporate several conservative principles. In an analysis of early social movement mobilization surrounding Title IX by the Connecticut Women's Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF), we identify a distinctive legal framing technique tied to the often overlooked practice of lay legal education. In a legal education campaign that targeted schools, CWEALF placed Title IX's actual requirements alongside broader feminist ideas about gender socialization and civic responsibility to imply that the law mandated substantially greater reforms, a tactic we call unobtrusively stretching law. This article contributes to research on social movements and legal mobilization by illustrating how legal education can serve as part of the tool-making kit for social movements as they struggle to transform legislative compromises into movement resources.