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Municipal bureaucrats in the United States—mostly on the social side of the state (e.g. public health, welfare, educators, housing, and sometimes urban planners) but not exclusively so (e.g. district attorney offices)—have shown growing willingness to engage in political battles within the bureaucracy, connect with social movements, and construct oppositional identities centred on social and racial justice. Critical urban theories of the state highlight important constraints that shape state strategies, functions, and policies but tell us little about the contradictions propelling some bureaucrats into political contests over power and legitimacy. Consequently, we turn to theorists who conceive of the bureaucratic state as a contradictory and relatively autonomous field where conflicts between dominated and dominant bureaucrats overlap and converge with conflicts between dominated and dominant class forces (Bourdieu, Gramsci, Hall, and Poulantzas). Their observations are used to formulate the three propositions that underpin our theoretical framework. These propositions draw attention to the structural, relational, and conjunctural processes involved in forming individual bureaucrats into an insurgent political subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media and digital platforms have become essential tools for the new generation of youth activists. However, these tools subject youth to both new (and old) forms of surveillance and control. Drawing on in-depth interviews and social media walkthroughs with 61 youth activists, I examine hybrid tactics that these youth employ to resist surveillance and other forms of digitally mediated control as they participate in politics and social movements. I show that even in democracies like the United States and Canada, for individuals along intersecting axes of marginalization (e.g. race, gender), public political acts do not capture the full range of young people's political repertoires. Young people, especially those from marginalized groups, adopt hidden, under-the-radar tactics in response to pressures of social, state, and corporate surveillance. I develop the concept of "digital infrapolitics" referring to the ways in which digital politics and activism go below the radar under surveillance and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement fights to build an alternate future characterized by racial equality and justice, a priority is studying this projected image of what society could look like and how oppressed groups and activists who fight on their behalf feel this might be achieved. This article integrates knowledge from social movement studies, critical race theory, and futures research to add to this critical discussion. Specifically, I use the concept of social movement prospectus to investigate perspectives on future social change in relation to racial justice activism. Through analysis of interviews with 36 U.S. Black millennials about BLM and its potential impact on race relations in the United States, I examine the varied conceptualizations within this group of what success would look like for this movement and whether that success is likely to occur. Broadly, I find that Black millennials are skeptical about BLM's ability to effect social change, but are more optimistic when change is viewed in terms of cultural outcomes than structural ones. I consider the implications of these perspectives for the future of the movement, as well as for scholarship that investigates how social movements produce social change and shape the future of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mutual aid organizing is a social movement practice long sustained by queer/trans people, immigrants, people of color, and disability communities, among other communities pushed to the margins of society, with the emergence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and subsequent government failures in addressing unmet needs, mutual aid proliferated into new (and more socially privileged) communities in the United States and across the world. Amidst this landscape of extraordinary and unique crises, our study sought to understand the benefits experienced by those engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the state of Colorado, United States. Our team conducted semistructured individual interviews with 25 individuals participating in mutual aid through groups organized on social media or through intentional communities. We found that participants, who engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, built empathy, a sense of nonjudgement, and critical consciousness as they created common ground as humans. Participants also found mutual aid engagement to provide nourishing support, to hold pain among more people, and, simply to "feel good." We discuss the potential implications of these benefits for sustaining mutual aid movements through the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States and beyond. Key Points/Highlights: Mutual aid organizers during COVID‐19 experienced benefits to individual and collective well‐being.Mutual aid built a sense of empathy, nonjudgement, and critical consciousness among participants.Mutual aid provided nourishing support, an ability to hold pain among more people, and "felt good."Horizontal interdependent care models have benefits as we face complex crises of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to anthropological understandings of intersubjectivity by foregrounding the role of the environment. I begin by reviewing three key approaches that have emerged out of broader debates in the humanities and social sciences. The first mobilizes intersubjectivity as a way of explaining how a coherent social order is (re-)produced, given that the rational choice, for individuals, is to act in their own self-interest. Intersubjectivity in this view is the shared understanding that is achieved when actors adhere to normative constraints on interaction in order to fulfill an unconscious desire to be loved and accepted by others. The second approach to intersubjectivity challenges this idea, arguing that the motivations and expectations that individuals bring to interaction vary across ethnographic contexts, and for some, shared understanding is a false promise that masks the harmful intentions others are likely to have. Intersubjectivity, in this view, is organized by a desire to minimize exposure to others. The third approach treats intersubjectivity not as a possible outcome of interaction but as an existential condition that makes meaningful interaction possible. In this article, I put these debates in dialogue with "protactile theory," which has grown out of a social movement in DeafBlind communities in the United States. Reading protactile theory through the lens of biosemiotics, ecological psychology, and existential phenomenology, I argue that the medium or "the thing we're in when we're together" is the basis of intelligibility for all intersubjective behaviors and capacities; it can define a way of being, is ethnographically graspable, and is central to how humans interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health policies and the problems they constitute are deeply shaped by multiple publics. In this article we conceptualize health policy counterpublics : temporally bounded socio-political forms that aim to cultivate particular modes of conduct, generally to resist trajectories set by arms of the state. These counterpublics often emerge from existing social movements and involve varied forms of activism and advocacy. We examine a health policy counterpublic that has arisen in response to new forms of HIV public health surveillance by drawing on public documents and interview data from 2021 with 26 stakeholders who were critical of key policy developments. Since 2018, the national rollout of molecular HIV surveillance (MHS) and cluster detection and response (CDR) programs in the United States has produced sustained controversies among HIV stakeholders, including among organized networks of people living with HIV. This article focuses on how a health policy counterpublic formed around MHS/CDR and how constituents problematized the policy agenda set in motion by federal health agencies, including in relation to data ethics, the meaningful involvement of affected communities, informed consent, the digitization of health systems, and HIV criminalization. Although familiar problems in HIV policymaking, concerns about these issues have been reconfigured in response to the new sociotechnical milieu proffered by MHS/CDR, generating new critical positions aiming to remake public health. Critical attention to the scenes within which health policy controversies play out ought to consider how (counter)publics are made, how problems are constituted, and the broader social movement dynamics and activist resources drawn upon to contest and reimagine policymaking in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines four books that delve into the issue of inequality in the United States. The authors argue that inequality and domination are interconnected and cannot be understood in isolation. They explore topics such as public-private partnerships, municipal bonds, and the impact of the market on healthcare. The authors also critique the New Deal, highlighting how it contributed to future inequality. Overall, these books shed light on the structures of domination that contribute to inequality in America. Another text explores how bonded debt and mortgage subsidies perpetuate inequality in American society. It argues that the close relationship between financial institutions and government officials has led to an uneven distribution of urban infrastructure, benefiting certain areas and populations more than others. The text also highlights the physical toll of inequality, such as poor housing conditions and health disparities. It concludes that these financial mechanisms and infrastructural dynamics contribute to systemic inequalities. The text further discusses the role of infrastructure in perpetuating inequality in modern America. It argues that the public-private partnership model has allowed private interests to prioritize profit over the common good, leading to inequality. The authors call for a rethinking of infrastructure as a category of analysis and explore the potential for mass democracy and alternative sources of capital to challenge and dismantle infrastructural domination. The text emphasizes the need for further research into the relationship between law, finance, and infrastructure in shaping society. [Extracted from the article]

This study explored Black and Latinx youth organizers' experiences of racism within national gun violence prevention organizing spaces. Interview data were analyzed from 17 Black and/or Latinx youth (Mage = 20.17, 47% women) across the United States who organized against gun violence. The findings identified three forms of racism that Black and Latinx organizers experienced in national organizations: (1) being tokenized for their racial identities and experiences without having real decision making power; (2) feeling a burden to educate their white peers about the structural causes of gun violence and how to improve organizing spaces for other youth of color; and (3) being silenced in their racially conscious organizing efforts to address the structural causes of gun violence in their communities. This research highlights how Black and Latinx youth gun violence prevention organizers contend both with structural racism in their everyday lives and racism in organizing spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the first presidential debate of 2020 featured a discussion about Antifa. While Biden argued that Antifa is "an idea, not an organization," Trump portrayed it as a "dangerous, radical group." The nature of Antifa sparks disagreements not only in politics but also in scholarly circles. Some view it as a loosely defined label for a fragmented collective. Others perceive it as a gang or a radical social movement. This article identifies four key factors that make it difficult to define Antifa: the anonymity of its members, the lack of identifiable representatives, the ambiguous affiliation boundaries, and the influence of external agents (including reporters, pundits, and detractors) shaping its identity. Faced with this challenge, I propose stepping back to reevaluate the underlying assumptions of the debate. I seek to complement current theories of social ontology and collective action by introducing an alternative approach centered around the concept of personification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the opposition of White conservative evangelicals to environmental protection efforts in the U.S. Topics discussed include the way the late evangelical leader Jerry Falwell portrayed environmentalists as competitors, the possible reasons behind the anti-environmental stance of the Religious Right movement, and the views of the White conservative evangelical community on climate change and other environmental issues.

For over a century, abortion has been politically and socially contested, affecting people's lives through personal experience and/or public discourse. In the United States (US), abortion is sometimes exceptional—treated differently from other procedures, professions, and political issues—and sometimes an exemplar—an accessible example of a commonly occurring social, political, or personal phenomenon. It is, in other words, an excellent sociological case study. Yet the sociological literature on abortion is relatively thin. In this essay, we review research on abortion and opportunities for future sociological work in eight areas: gender; race; the body and embodiment; political economy; organizations, occupations, and work; medical sociology; law and society; and social movements. Sociologists have much to contribute to characterizing and understanding abortion, particularly following the 2022 US Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. The discipline also has much to learn from studying abortion as a case. With its multifaceted social and political status and intersections with key areas of sociological interest, abortion offers a generative case for advancing sociological concepts, subfields, and constructs. While not exhaustive, our review aims to spark interest and inquiry, showcasing how a topic that spurs strong opinions can also catalyze sociological insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the intermedia agenda-setting of the U.S. gun control movement in 2018, with a specific focus on the role of activism/advocacy media and ephemeral websites in shaping the movement discourse in news outlets. Structural topic modeling and cross-lagged correlation analyses of the Facebook URLs Share dataset show that activism/advocacy media played an important role in proposing unique agendas and aligning them with other news outlets. Meanwhile, ephemeral websites were prone to containing conspiratorial information, which could have been purposive to influence the movement. The study provides empirical insights into how various media actors interact to shape social movement discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the push for family-oriented eugenics and pronatalism within the United States, chronicling social and political movements and their impact on the American mother. The essay illustrates this problem through Edith Summer Kelley's Weeds (1923), a novel that utilizes eugenic rhetoric of the American Progressive Era to expose problems in American maternity and parturition. Kelley's female protagonists present not only a crisis of motherhood but also a crisis for American families, as unhappy mothers symbolized issues of dysfunction. This reading positions itself alongside historical examples of pronatalism and eugenics, and utilizes American media to argue that women felt compelled to reproduce in order to meet national standards of progress during the post-World War I era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most successful and influential contributions to examining the intersection between society and its effect on public action is Jurgen Habermas's landmark The structural transformation of the public space (1962). But as subsequent scholars pointed out, the Habermasian definition of "public sphere" needed to be expanded beyond its original historical context. This article contributes to that ongoing expansion by arguing that a social movement in the United States, social justice feminism, created an alternative public space in the United States by 1907 to the mainstream discourse championed by patriarchal political and social leaders about the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution. The alternative social justice feminist public space differed from Habermas's original conception in three important ways: it involved a more ideological viewpoint; it encompassed a myriad of cross-class and cross-gender coalitions; and the movement embraced direct political action, promoting and passing women's labor legislation as an "entering wedge" for the eventual inclusion of all workers under state protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details three developments of the last decade that have had significant effects on the cultural status and sociopolitical functioning of sport in the United States: (1) an unprecedented wave of sport-based protest and athlete activism; (2) new norms and conventions in the sporting establishment for dealing with athletic protest and social issues, especially with respect to media coverage and commentary; and (3) recent Right-wing ethnonationalist engagements with sport, including targeted criticism of both activist athletes and sport as well as populist mobilizations around sport. I summarize these developments and argue that they have made social issues in, and the symbolic significance of, sport more explicit, contested, and polarized than in earlier eras. This new era of contestation and polarization, in turn, has destabilized longstanding cultural norms and ideals about sport and its relationship to politics and social change. While questions remain about how lasting these changes will be, I suggest these new conditions and the cultural politics that come with them call for a reinvigorated critical, dramaturgical theory of sport—one which sees sport as a site of ongoing social struggle that has public meaning and symbolic significance well beyond the boundaries of sport itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legally excluded from the state through their status, undocumented Central Americans must also navigate belonging in social movement spaces that do not center their cultural experiences. Drawing on 25 interviews with Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans from multiple studies, we explore Central Americans' agency and identity development in immigrant rights organizations and in daily life. We employ the term, compounded foreignness, to capture the layered practices of exclusion they face for being unauthorized and for not fitting into dominant conceptions of Latinidad. We demonstrate that undocumented Central Americans develop various strategies of belonging. For example, shared experiences of racialized illegality can lead to solidarity amongst undocumented immigrant youth across racial, ethnic, and national lines. When they are being negatively targeted, however, they use racialized illegality as racial cover –that is, a way to divert attention away from their illegality in relation to the state, as well as social and cultural foreignness from Latinidad. This means that some choose to pass as Mexican by adopting Mexican cultural norms and colloquial speech, while others take pride in their cultural difference as Central Americans. In other instances, they seek spaces and people who share their cultural identity. Importantly, while racial cover may work as a strategy for navigating these different forms of marginalization, racial cover can also cover up and make invisible Central American identities and needs. Together, these experiences reveal a level of agency and nuance needed to deepen our understanding of undocumented immigrants, Central Americans, and belonging in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements must find ways to intensify their efforts to maintain political relevance—and potential influence. But escalation comes with risks in the potential reactions from authorities, supporters, potential supporters, and opponents. I argue that recognizing two elements of escalation can help. First, we need to acknowledge that movements are not unitary actors and that a large movement cannot always stop putative allies from escalating in risky ways. Second, I argue that scholars and activists can do better in making sense of the dynamics of escalation by disaggregating three dimensions of aggression by tactics, claims, and venues, assessing the range of responses to escalation on each of these dimensions. Social movement organizers face continual pressure to find ways to escalate, but responses from authorities and allies can provide a brake on escalation. I illustrate my arguments with reference to contemporary movements of the left and right in the United States and conclude by discussing the importance (and danger) of certain government responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication research often sidelines and ignores racial dynamics in organizational practices and processes, even when considering social movements and protests over racism. The current interview-based project uses a critical lens to examine how a U.S. university employed a racialized script of silence in response to social protest about racism. We analyze how organizations maintain and promote whiteness through racialized discourses of bureaucracy, professionalism, and legality that coalesce into a seemingly neutral script of silence. We suggest attending to how racialized scripts are always already created and diffused through mechanisms that engage historically situated narratives and argue that organizational silence is best understood not as an absence but as a continuous presence of existing structures that limit and quiet dissent. The analysis has implications for connections among organizational silence, whiteness, and discourses, as well as research on organizational scripts and practices for organizational members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An organized response to sexual harassment (SH) in K‐12 schools in the US traces its development as a social movement to the larger women's rights movement in the late 1970s. It was an outgrowth of the social movement of feminist activists who protested and filed lawsuits to draw attention to SH in the workplace to gain recognition for the problem as one of equity for working women. The focus on SH in K‐12 schools did not begin as an academic pursuit or with an emphasis on research – rather shares its origins as an activist movement to rectify injustices. Authors document the unwritten history of this social movement, by examining the early roots to address and prevent SH in K‐12 schools. The authors review survey and intervention research from the initial movement through the past couple of decades, noting limitations and challenges for future efforts to prevent and eliminate SH in K‐12 schools. The role of youth activism in advancing the movement against SH in schools represents hope of a renewal of activism with a robust gendered perspective. Authors provide next steps for research and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Black Women and the Black Freedom Struggle" is a review of two books, "Jim Crow Capital" by Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy and "Strategic Sisterhood" by Rebecca Tuuri. The reviewer praises both books for their well-written and well-researched content, which highlights the roles of Black women in social justice movements in the United States. The books challenge previous histories that marginalized Black women's contributions and focus on the work of working- and middle-class women in the Black Freedom Struggles. The review emphasizes the importance of recognizing and celebrating the stories and people of earlier protest movements, especially in the context of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations happening across the country. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines connections between religious nationalism, extremist movements, and environmental politics, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks and debates in the United States since 2020. It begins with a brief history of ESG, then examines responses from mainstream conservatives and far-right groups to the growth of ESG. It argues that the current backlash against the use of ESG is part of a larger conservative culture war against "woke" politics. The article offers a detailed look at the role of the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action and its "ESG Hurts" campaign, and shows how climate denial, conspiracy theories, and hostility to race and gender politics are interconnected parts of a growing ideological movement rooted in Christian Nationalism and climate denial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Megan Thee Stallion is revolutionizing the representation of Black women in Hip-Hop by occupying polarizing positions in Hip-Hop culture. Megan represents the multiplicity of the Black girl/women's identities by navigating the confines of ratchet respectability, sexuality, and education. Her movements #HotGirlSummer and #HotNerdFall demonstrate the margins the everyday Black girl/woman must navigate: the expectation to be sexy, outgoing, and ratchet while simultaneously being educated/intellectual. Using Hip Hop feminist discourses of ratchet respectability and Black ratchet imagination, we argue that Megan's representation of a sexually liberated, ratchet-demic informs the construction of Black girl/womanhood. Utilizing Megan the Stallion's music, social media posts, and interviews, we will explore how Megan's representation of a sexually liberated, ratchet-demic informs the socio-educational identities of Black girl/womanhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States is currently witnessing a surge in labor activism that will likely embolden many workers to engage in occupational activism and thus enact their jobs in socially transformative ways. We illustrate this argument through a case study of K-12 educators who participated in a teachers' walkout and subsequently became engaged in efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their schools. We then outline an agenda for future research on occupational activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As demonstrated through the disregard for Black humanity and respondent Black social movements throughout Latin America, anti-Black systemic racism is a transnational phenomenon birthed from global White supremacy. Across the Americas, the hemispheric parallels undergirding collective resistance to anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence lend themselves to multifaceted interdisciplinary scholarly examinations. Using transnational anti-Black racism in Latin America as a point of departure, we advance a theorization of critical race theory in education capable of interrogating racist structures of coloniality, modernity, and White supremacy that operate globally to suppress Black humanity and humanness in general. To that extent, we draw from and reposition critical race theory (CRT) from its sociohistoric heritage in the United States and instead conceptualize transnational anti-Black racism vis-à-vis a Black Diaspora reading of CRT. Finally, we return to education as a key site of contestation for transnational anti-Black racism and draw implications for the meaning of this global theorization of CRT in urban education, praxis, and educational research. We end by charting new and old directions for CRT in educational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern state enjoys a near monopoly over the prosecutorial system. Public officials, including local district attorneys, state attorneys general, and career prosecutors, enjoy enormous discretionary powers to decide who to charge, to determine what charges to bring, to make particular bail recommendations, to set the terms of plea bargains, and more. Rather than examining the broad discretion of the public prosecutor, this Note instead examines lesser-known private prosecution systems, where individuals, groups, and corporations bring criminal accusations. This Note surveys the practice of private prosecution outside the United States. It then turns to look within the United States at the differing legal regimes that regulate private prosecution in the various jurisdictions that permit the practice. Ultimately, this Note asks what role private prosecution may have within modern social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore how risk transformed from being understood as a property of groups to being understood as a property of individuals by examining the history of public and private insurance in the United States. Rather than locate changes in how risk is managed in our society in the "great risk shift" that occurred with the emergence of neoliberalism, I suggest the individualization of risk in recent decades is only the latest instantiation of a recurrent conflict between security and freedom that has marked the evolution of capitalism. Seen from this longer historical perspective, the "personal responsibility revolution" appears not as the handiwork of neoliberal policymakers but, rather, as the unintended result of social movements that contested discriminatory practices in insurance markets. Thus, paradoxically, my account suggests that struggles against discrimination seeded the individualization of risk that is now the hallmark of neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although struggles for reparations for slavery and its legacies date back to the earliest period of US politics, they have received relatively little attention from political scientists. Focusing on reparations claims, I argue, can enhance the study of Black social movements and political thought. The recent resurgence of demands for redress for racial injustice, both in the United States and internationally, and contemporary divisions over the politics of memory suggest why reparations are an important indicator of the prospects for multiracial democracy. Because the language of reparations has been used to advance a range of political ends, I conclude by considering some of the dilemmas that remain unresolved in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on essays about how contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter take advantage of the media, online social networks and other communication technologies to advance their work in the U.S. Topics include an account of the success of these movements by their adaptation of platforms such as Twitter and Instagram and new styles of communication such as hashtags and memes, and arguments on the political imagination of Black Lives Matter.

The article reflects on archiving works about Black Lives Matter and police violence in the U.S. Topics include the Sandra Bland Digital Archive project about African American woman Sandra Bland's death in police custody in 2015, a sampling of language and literacy practices of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and insights on the mass protests and uprisings in summer 2020 following the murder of African American George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

While T.H. Marshall's famous three-tiered general analysis of citizenship stands as a landmark development, no one has examined how during the Progressive Era (1890–1920) and thereafter a female group of thinkers and labor leaders in the United States redefined the previously restricted definition of citizenship to produce an ameliorative response to the new trends of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Reformers such as Florence Kelley and Jane Addams established the principles of industrial citizenship in various publications. Kelley then started a movement called social justice feminism to effectuate this new theory. Social justice feminists' goal of a gender-specific agenda to provide an entering wedge for the eventual inclusion of all workers under the state's protection originally centered on court action and legislation. Then, labor leader Rose Schneiderman brought the fight of industrial citizenship in the United States to female workers even extending the concept to African-American female laundry workers from 1925 to 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of family medicine and primary care in the United States is precarious, afflicted by chronic underinvestment. Family physicians and their allies should not expect different policy outcomes without adopting a different theory of change and tactical approach to reform. I argue: (1) high-quality primary care is a common good, as asserted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; (2) a market-based health system captured by extractive capitalism is inimical to primary care as a common good; (3) professionalism has both aided and constrained family physicians as agents of change for primary care as a common good; and, (4) to actualize primary care as a common good, family physicians must embrace "counterculture professionalism" to join with patients, primary care workers, and other allies in a social movement demanding fundamental restructuring of the health system and democratization of health that takes power back from interests profiting from the status quo and reorients the system to one grounded in healing relationships in primary care. This restructuring should take the form of a publicly financed system of universal coverage for direct primary care, with a minimum of 10% of total US health spending allocated to Primary Care for All. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research examined the perspectives of both White and Black racial justice activists on the roles of White allies in the struggle for justice for Black people in the United States. Study 1 used Q methodology, a mixed‐methods approach, which identified four distinct perspectives about the role of White allies from a sample of activists (33 White and 22 Black Americans): (1) mobilize to support Black leadership, (2) interpersonal activism, (3) avoid dominating Black people's efforts, and (4) lifelong learning. In Study 2, we interviewed activists (22 White and 12 Black Americans) to understand their evaluation of, and preference for, each of perspective identified in Study 1. Thematic analyses showed that each perspective had its pros and cons regarding considerations of how to best use ingroup advantages without dominating the movement. Our findings contribute to our understanding of potential tensions in solidarity‐based social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women endure the most severe and sustained forms of harassment on the internet. In response, activists around the world are mobilizing against conduct that endangers women online. At a time when feminist discourses are both popular and contested, this research explores the extent to which feminist ideas are influencing activism against online harassment. This research centers on a network of activists located in the United States who seek to combat one form of online sexual harassment: non-consensual pornography. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this research asks: how do activists relate to feminist perspectives, issues and approaches? Data analysis reveals among activists a flexible feminist politics that structures the scope and scale of their work. Ultimately, their caring, expansive and institutionally focused approach has enabled these activists to successfully address non-consensual pornography at the legislative and regulatory level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on democratic socialism in the U.S. He argues that American leftists, except for those sectarians who rant to themselves, are all social democrats in their everyday practice. He also discusses ways for social democrats in the country to define the possible and seek to achieve it, such as recognizing that changes never occur unless social movements pursue a strategy that wins concessions from the authorities, and the need to prioritize on efforts for reforms that will improve the lives of the people.

The rise of far-right movements calls for greater understanding of how the public responds to such movements. In the context of the United States, we examined the role of normative beliefs about the Alt-Right in shaping public reactions toward the movement (three studies, total N = 1,379). Specifically, we examined how perceived prevalence (high descriptive norms) and acceptability (high injunctive norms) of the Alt-Right are linked to public attitudes toward that movement. We found limited evidence of a threat response—that is, perceived prevalence of the Alt-Right did not consistently predict more negative reactions toward it, such as fearing its potential harm to society. There was, however, more consistent evidence of a normalization response—that is, perceived acceptability of the Alt-Right predicted more positive reactions toward it, such as showing leniency toward their activities. These findings underscore the importance of far-right movements in possibly shaping normative standards in society, and how such norms are linked to public attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the way news media framed the protests following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. It utilizes 510 tweets from 13 different U.S. media outlets in a mixed-methods content analysis of images tweeted by those media outlets. It looks at how protestors and police are portrayed as well as the role of race in the news images. Civil liberties, as opposed to law and order, are found to be a dominant frame. These findings suggest a change from previous research. Images of protestors were likely to include signs that are readable. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high overdose mortality rates in the United States poses several questions: Why have they been increasing exponentially since 1979? Why are they so high? And how can they be greatly reduced? Building on past research, the causes of the increase seem to be deeply rooted in US social and economic structures and processes, rather than due only to opioid prescription patterns or the advent of synthetic opioids. Given this, we consider what changes might be needed to reverse the exponentially-increasing overdose mortality. We use a path dependency argument to argue that the United States political, economic, and public health systems have helped create this crisis and, unfortunately, continue to heighten it. These same systems suggest that proposals to expand harm reduction and drug treatment capacity, to decriminalize or legalize drugs, or to re-industrialize the country sufficiently to reduce "communities of despair" will not be enacted at a scale sufficient to end the overdose crisis. We thus suggest that in the United States serious improvements in overdose rates and related policies and structures require massive social movements with a broad social change agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While considerable attention has been devoted to the repertoires of social movements, we know considerably less about how the repertoires of industry groups evolve as those industries face movement-driven contention. This is particularly important for environmental movements, which regularly target industries seen as contributing to environmental harms and risks. Focusing on contention surrounding hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), we compare the repertoires of the two central industry associations promoting fracking in the Marcellus Shale region of the United States: one that is more transgressive and likely to counter-attack activists (Energy in Depth) and one that is more conventional and likely to tout the industry's economic benefits (Marcellus Shale Coalition). We examine the tone and topical content of each of these industry groups' communications between 2009 and 2019. We examine a number of specific features of industry groups' communications: whether they use a more positive or negative tone, and the extent to which their communications address activism, government regulation, jobs/economy, and climate change. We find that the more transgressive association focuses far more directly on countering activism, both in the timing and content of communications. Both engage with government roughly evenly, and each engages with the politics of climate change in unique ways. We develop insights for our understanding of how targets strategically respond to environmental activism, and how industry groups develop a meta-level division of labor to engage multiple audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative governance research examines the role of individuals, organizations, and partnerships within a community to understand why particular interorganizational networks emerge. We take a different tact, arguing that communities adopt collaborative governance models based upon exposure to the models and the individual and organizational resources in a community. We conducted a web-based national-level scan of communities in the United States (N = 1,162) for the presence of one model of collaborative governance, education-focused collective impact. We found that spatial proximity, poverty rate, and individual resources each predicted the existence of collective impact in a U.S. county. Implications for collaborative governance research are drawn from the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry David Thoreau is one of the most influential writers in the North American tradition. His passages about nature have inspired generations of environmentalists and literature lovers, while his political thought has been branded as anarchist and claimed by different social movements. This article looks at Thoreau's political philosophy in order the reconstruct the components of his patriotic thinking. A parallelism can be drawn between the theoretical construction of nationalism in the United States and among the Romantics of continental Europe, while divergences between the two processes cannot be overlooked. An explicit examination of Thoreau's patriotism can open new lines of research, such as the relationship between ecosystem and human communities, and their operationalization in the collective imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest is the result of complex multilevel processes. It is triggered by contextual factors such as political opportunities or events, it depends on organizations' mobilizing capacity as well as on the type of people who protest, and it is shaped by the characteristics of the populations they come from. To effectively study the antecedents that operate at various levels, social movement research needs to integrate data from multiple analytical levels and systematically examine the relationships across the various levels. While large N statistical techniques of multilevel modelling are well understood, less is known about applying multilevel analysis research examining small number of cases. The article develops conceptual and methodological tools for multilevel analysis of protests in studies with a small number of cases. First, it demonstrates the empirical requirements associated with analyzing three types of multilevel effects: contextual effects, composition effects, and cross-level interactions. Next, specific multilevel small N designs that can be used to examine the three multilevel effects are presented. The last section uses the multilevel approach to examine the demobilization of anti-Iraq War protests in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary Religious Left (RL) in the United States has proven to be somewhat of an enigma, both for academics and for the activists and voters who desire such a movement to thrive. In this paper, I look at one piece of the puzzle: is the RL able to mobilize supporters to political activity? Combining data from both the individual and movement level, this paper tests whether activity at the movement level of the RL can translate into individual supporters' political activity. Using existing data for 2008 and newly collected data on the RL in the 2016 election cycle, I find that the movement was successful in mobilizing constituents in 2008, but not in 2016. This can be linked to the Democrats' effort to engage religious voters in 2008, and its inability to do so in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to support the Euromaidan from abroad. Existing research has documented social movements within their national boundaries and the participation of young people in them. However, it has rarely examined the expansion of social movements beyond their national boundaries and the engagement of young immigrants in such movements. Drawing on a larger qualitative study, this article presents the findings about what motivated 24 young Ukrainian immigrants residing in the USA to support the Euromaidan movement of 2013–2014 and compares their motivations to those of the protestors in Ukraine. We argue that motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to support the Euromaidan from abroad manifest themselves in symbolic or psychological causes. Our findings demonstrate that the individual motivations were driven by an ideological commitment to systemic change in Ukraine, manifested through young Ukrainian immigrants' (1) desire to end injustice, (2) solidarity with fellow Ukrainians, (3) moral obligation to raise awareness among the US public, and, most prominently, (4) sense of agency to contribute to the long-awaited change in the homeland. Our findings also show that overall, the motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to join the movement aligned with those of the protestors in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article works with a comparative, hemispheric approach to address potential sites, propositions, and sources for postextractive energy transitions. Specifically, the focus is on case studies from within the United States and Latin America to consider energy paradigms and their future in relation to the "energy state," or the centralized governance apparatus that has historically organized power infrastructures. Like the physics term that references any discrete value of total energy that remains fixed, but that is potentially mutable because of its transitive properties, the modern energy state is addressed as an entity that has the capacity to undergo massive reconfiguration and transition. The energy state is not discrete, however, and is embedded within a global infrastructure of capitalist dominance, power inequalities, and commodity contingencies. Despite its current imbrication with the colonial/modern infrastructures of petrol extraction, the energy state, it is argued here, has the capacity to be reimagined and remade. By focusing on popular movements within the western hemisphere, and by learning from the lessons of energy pasts, presents, and futures, the article proposes the move to radical interdependency, which could be legislated by a substantially altered state apparatus during the implementation of a new energy paradigm. Unsurprisingly, land rights, social and multispecies justice, and antiracist social movements are central to enlivening the new energy state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Garnering coverage across the political spectrum is a major challenge for burgeoning social movements. The #MeToo movement stands out due to the volume of attention it generated. Yet, it is unclear how news media across the partisan spectrum covered the movement using different sexual violence language markers, latent topic, and word choices and which accusations and events drove media attention. To examine this, we used Media Cloud to extract 17,877 news articles from nine media outlets across the political spectrum, containing specific n-grams or co-occurrences of (1) "metoo," (2) "sexual misconduct," (3) "sexual harassment," and (4) "sexual assault" from October 2017 through February 2018. The analyses first examined whether language and attention differed across the ideological news ecology and then turned to time-series modeling of these discourses to examine what drove press coverage and structural topic modeling (STM) and term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) analysis to understand latent topics and language usage. Findings reveal that (1) left-leaning media dedicated more relative attention across all topics—#MeToo, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, and sexual assault—relative to centrist and right-leaning media. Moreover, across the right, left, and centrist media, the language markers "misconduct," "harassment," and "assault" decreased over the study period, while the mentions of #MeToo movement increased during the same period; (2) stories relating to entertainment and those accusing politicians, especially those belonging to the party in power at the Federal level, seemed to be by far the strongest driver of news media attention; and (3) we further observed partisan differences in topics of news coverage and language usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]