Towards ‘New Emotional Movements’? A Comparative Exploration into a Specific Movement Type

In this article we broaden the scope of earlier research that established a theoretical specificity for the Belgian ‘White March’ and ‘White Movement’, by comparing them to three similar movements and mobilizations that were also triggered by random violence. The comparisons suggest that we are dealing with a new type of social movement and mobilization, preliminarily referred to as ‘new emotional movements’. The three other cases under study are the ‘Snowdrop Campaign’ in the UK, the ‘Million Mom March’ in the US and the ‘Movement against Senseless Violence’ in the Netherlands. Four important features seem to characterize all cases: the central role of emotions and victimization in the mobilization and development of the movement; broad elite support; organizational weakness; and extensive media support. We distinguish two sub-types of new emotional movements: (1) an instrumental variant with clear-cut aims and demands; and (2) an identity variant with displays of solidarity and compassion as the main constitutive elements. In both cases the initiators lack prior organizational experience and the absence of mobilizing organizations is compensated for by mass media support. In the instrumental sub-type neither the victims nor their relatives take the initiative but lend support and give approval to amateur entrepreneurs. The main mobilizing emotion appears to be fear about the possibility of personal suffering, and this emotion is reflected in the formulation of clear-cut demands for the future prevention of similar events. This instrumentality results in elite support being considerably broad, yet partisan. In contrast, the victims themselves take the initiative in the identity variant, causing the movement to remain more or less without specific demands but ensuring a broad support that is not bounded by party lines.     

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.     

Scale shift in international tax justice: comparing the UK and Australia from 2008 to 2016

ABSTRACT

International tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage.     

Black Lives Matter: Racialised Policing in the United States

Abstract

In August 2014, 18 year-old Michael Brown was shot in his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri, launching a series of events that would lead to increased media scrutiny of police interactions with people of colour in the United States. Since then, the news has been filled with accounts of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and more than a dozen other African-Americans who have died at the hands of police. This article examines how the events surrounding Michael Brown’s death shifted the American public’s knowledge of police brutality, creating an opportunity for change. Using social movement theory and a comparison with other historical racial movements in the US, the article analyses how BLM both fits and defies the expectations of a social movement. I conclude with a discussion of some changes that are a direct or indirect result of BLM’s efforts.     

西方青年的“先进性”初探——以青年在新社会运动中的角色为视角考察

2008年起席卷全球的经济危机为资本主义制度下的普通民众套上了沉重的枷锁,在这一背景下,不少西方国家的工人、群众甚至包括大量青年发起了多次社会运动,旨在表达对资本主义制度的不满,为自己的权益进行斗争。本文通过分析青年在"阿拉伯之春"、"占领华尔街"运动、法国"反对养老金改革"运动等社会运动中的角色,认为西方青年已经成为当代社会运动的重要参与者,并发挥着积极作用,体现了一定的先进性,具体表现为:通过合理利用网络媒体为传统左翼政党和组织进一步开展社会运动提供新的思路;反抗资本主义制度;在社会运动过程中目标明确等。此外,青年参与社会运动对资本主义社会价值观的重建也具有一定意义。     

Conspiracy theories and social movements studies: A research agenda

It is surprising to note the scarcity of contributions in social movement literature related to so-called conspiracy theories. A considerable amount of the work on these topics has been produced in political science, history, media studies, social psychology and other disciplines. These accounts have often adopted a stigmatizing approach, looking at conspiracy theories as forms of pathologies (whether psychological, social or political). Moving from such a perspective to a constructivist one, I argue that conspiracy theories should represent an object of interest for social movement scholars: conspiracies supporters go into the streets to highlight their issues, protest against authority, propose alternative lifestyles and often claim to look for a better/different society. Applying the social movements toolkit can allow to better understand this phenomenon and apply critical perspectives in a more effective manner. On the basis of this premise, the first part of this article reviews the existing literature on conspiracy theories, also identifying the main lacunae; the second part outlines some possible research questions and lines of inquiry, moving beyond the classical theories in the field of social movement studies. The paper also introduces a number of new concepts, such as conspiracy mobilizations and conspiracy coalitions.     

“Should I Trust the Bank or the Social Movement?” Motivated Reasoning and Debtors' Work to Accept Misinformation

How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization in their community has been countering this misinformation for years? Why do people knowingly accept misinformation without even being upset about it? I address these questions by analyzing ethnographic data and interviews with 84 Chilean low‐income housing debtors, whom, like many Chileans, are victims of financial misinformation. While the state and banks had significant agency in inducing the unproblematic acceptance of misinformation, debtors also played an active role in the processes. First, debtors had to decide whom to trust, which was not only a cognitive problem about evidence but also a behavioral and practical problem involving risks. Second, debtors engaged in “motivated reasoning”—affect‐driven biased information processing—to dismiss the possibility of being misinformed, to downplay the significance of misinformation, and to direct blame away from misinforming institutions. The latter two practices reduced debtors' anger about being misinformed. The findings have implications for studies of social movement framing and counterinformation, for the cognitive psychology of misinformation, and for the sociology and social psychology of acquiescence.     

How volunteerism inhibits mobilization: a case study of shelter animal advocates

This paper presents an analysis of how volunteerism can neutralize impulses for mobilization. An ethnographic case study of shelter animal advocates, or individuals promoting shelter reform to ensure that companion animals impounded at animal shelters receive proper medical and behavioral care and are given opportunity for adoption, illuminates a specific set of mechanisms that explain why they have not engaged in collective action such as protest. The findings speak to the complex debate about the relationship between volunteerism, political engagement, and social change by identifying five processes that undercut shelter animal advocates’ capacity to act collectively in protest of how the shelter is run: (1) periods of grievance interruption; (2) exposure to the target’s institutional narratives; (3) relational ties to the target; (4) conflict avoidance; and (5) maintenance of identity as volunteers.     

Women’s Movements in Portugal and Spain: Democratic Processes and Policy Outcomes

Portugal and Spain underwent dramatic transformations between 1974 and the early 1980s, transitioning from dictatorships to democracies. In this article I explore why Portugal was faster than Spain in adopting key gender-rights policies (e.g., divorce, equal pay, state feminism) during the period in question. Bridging insights from the democratization, social movement, and women’s studies literatures, I argue that Portugal’s accelerated policy path on women’s rights can be explained by three complex factors: (1) the nature of the revolutionary transition, which structured options for women’s movements and for institutional actors; (2) the configuration of movement-party alliances; and (3) supranational pressures to reorganize the state-civil society relationship. The study contributes to the engendering of democratization processes in Iberia by paying close attention to the interconnected agency of women’s movements with other political actors at a time of regime transformation.