The ambivalence of creative activism as a reorganization of critique

This article identifies an emerging type of critique and defines it as creative activism. It is argued why this is distinguishable from earlier similar forms of protests and shown why traditional theories of political art, social movements and citizenship are in themselves insufficient to accurately describe and understand the normative ambivalence of what is also known as culture jamming. Irony and utopia are proposed as analytical concepts supplementing these existing theoretical frameworks. It is also demonstrated how these alternative perspectives can be fruitfully applied to understand the reorganization of critique regardless of whether one views creative activism suspiciously as a societal symptom or more optimistically as a democratic potential.     

“Profits to the Danes,for us – Hog stench?” The campaign against Danish swine CAFOs in rural Lithuania

The paper analyzes a grass-roots campaign to limit the expansion of Danish-owned industrial hog operator Saerimner in Lithuania. The industrialization of livestock production as well as local responses to the restructuring of meat production are interpreted within the broader context of the incorporation of peripheral regions into global agro-food markets. Unlike in Western Europe and North America where the industrialization of hog production is proceeded by the displacement of small hog producers, in Eastern Europe the expansion of multinational corporations is occurring by the buying up, retrofitting and modernizing of factory-farms inherited from the socialist-era. It is argued that the bitter environmental legacy of Soviet-era factory farming has shaped rural population responses to the new wave of multinational acquisitions in the region. Anti-corporate hog campaigning is analyzed within the context of growing activism among rural constituencies displaced from commercial agriculture. The importance of effective organization and leadership in grass-roots activism is emphasized as well as the growing role of non-farming interests is shaping the rural policies of the country.     

Choreographing Resistances: Spatial–Kinaesthetic Intelligence and Bodily Knowledge as Political Tools in Activist Work

Abstract

Bodies have been used as a political tool in activism, but many scholars have ignored activists’ highly sophisticated and intelligent ways of using their moving bodies. This paper focuses on analysing three choreographies of resistance: the group crawling performance for striking nurses in Helsinki in 2007, the protest by Greenpeace at a nuclear construction site in 2007 and a protest in the 1989 Chinese student movement. The purpose is to shed light on how resisting choreographies can generate interactions and relations between agents keeping these interactions dynamic by the motivations and affections of these agents. I will apply Edmund Husserl’s and Edith Stein’s phenomenological method of analysing movement and their notion of kinaesthesia. One of the keywords here is ‘the kinaesthetic field’ that offers a new perspective to account for resisting choreography and its dynamics in socially, politically and emotionally complex environments. Drawing on Howard Gardner’s notion of kinaesthetic intelligence, I suggest that the core element of kinaesthetic intelligence is not only control of one’s bodily motion but also capabilities for working with kinaesthetic fields. The paper argues that the activists can operate gestures, the vulnerability of the body and timing by drawing various agents into their choreography. When activists are able to express their political ideas as concrete gestures, postures or kinaesthetic relations, it also supports their capabilities of articulating their moral intuitions. Even when witnesses disagree with protesters’ positions, protests frequently force them to reconsider their own.     

Lesbian Blood Drives as Community-Building Activism in the 1980s

As gay men began voluntarily withdrawing from blood donation in the early 1980s, lesbians in community with gay men in several U.S. cities organized drives to replenish the blood supply. These drives were sometimes the continuation of previously established drives by gay–lesbian organizations or faith communities, sometimes new initiatives in response to HIV/AIDS. However, after the initial publicity, mention of lesbian blood drives in print is both scarce and brief. Focusing on drives organized from 1983 to 1992 by a group known as San Diego Blood Sisters, this article is an initial step in documenting lesbian blood drives to inform and enrich conversations about histories of responses to HIV/AIDS, theoretical discussions of how community connections in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer spectrum are enacted and understood, and emerging research on intersections of gender and sexuality as they are expressed through blood donorship.     

‘Eventually the mine will come’: women anti-mining activists’ everyday resilience in opposing resource extraction in the Andes

This article explores the experiences of women anti-mining activists in rural communities in Andean Peru and Ecuador. The article analyses women activists’ experience of negotiating conflicts with large-scale mining companies, as well as within their communities, using the concept of resilience to understand their continued commitment to this work in a context of conflict, intimidation, and violence. Women activists’ resilience is demonstrated in their determination to fight the arrival of mining, despite being among an increasingly small minority of their communities who continue to oppose the mining companies; their commitment to collective action and to occupying their lands; and their tenacity in campaigning against resource extraction while simultaneously recognising that ‘eventually the mine will come’.     

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.     

当代中国的能动司法论析

能动司法在时下中国的司法实务界已经如火如荼地展开,而法学理论界对于能动司法的蕴涵却展露出莫衷一是的极大争议。从一开始,我国法学理论界和法律实务界对能动司法的界定就遗憾地依凭着殊异的理路与立据,从而造生出法学理论界的能动司法与法律实务界的能动司法的争论与对立,二者对于能动司法的讨论并非在同一个意义上展开。对此,唯有通过对能动司法的实质、主体、内容与方式做一番辨异方可厘清。     

司法的困境： 在法条主义与能动司法之间

在中国的语境下,能动司法与法条主义适成反对。一方面,这种显见的对立使得司法在裁判方法上顾此失彼,陷入了两难的困境。另一方面,法条主义与能动司法的理念与方法也急需进一步澄清。利用法律论证的理论资源,透过一种"整体性"的司法裁判思路,或可使法条主义与能动司法在方法论上得到一定的"协调",走出这一司法困境。同时,这也为提出"弹性"的法条主义和解明能动司法的界碑提供了可行的方案。     

Youth Organizing,Identity-Support,and Youth Development Agencies as Avenues for Involvement

SUMMARY

What are the differences in outcomes among youth organizing and other efforts to involve young people at the community level?

This paper examines differences in developmental outcomes among youth organizing, identity-support, and traditional youth development agencies, with the finding that there are significant differences in outcomes such as civic activism and identity development. It reports that youth organizing agencies show higher levels of youth leadership, decision making, and community involvement in comparison with other agencies, and concludes that deliberate approaches to staffing and decision-making can influence youth outcomes.