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In recent years, coalitions of activists, artists, scholars, and community members have created archives composed of material related to social movements past and present with increasing frequency. These grassroots archives raise questions about the potential role of archives as generative spaces for democratizing history. This article explores this potential and the attendant challenges through a case study on an effort to preserve the memory of activism in São Paulo's urban peripheries during Brazil's civil-military dictatorship (1964–85)—an effort in which the author took part amid the rise of the far-right president and former dictatorship supporter Jair Bolsonaro. The postdictatorship culture of censorship and an ever-changing city relentlessly militated against the permanence of memory, not least through the destruction of physical archives and reference points in the urban landscape. The effort to organize and digitize precarious materials unfolded amid a larger campaign by activists to create an archive as part of a new university in the periphery. In this article, the author reflects on his experience working with communities through grassroots archiving to preserve at-risk historical sources, enhance local capacity, and broaden the practice of history beyond the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act provided for the gradual emancipation of eight hundred thousand human beings. It also confirmed the sovereignty of King-in-Parliament over all people residing in British dominions and resolved a long-standing dispute over whether enslaved people were private property or royal subjects entitled to legal safeguards. This debate first emerged in the late eighteenth century but acquired additional urgency following the 1807 abolition of the slave trade, when attempts to mitigate slavery through the enactment of ameliorative statutes and procedural reforms encouraged enslaved people to petition magistrates for redress in cases of abuse. Slaves vigorously defended their newly granted rights to bodily protection, sustenance, and family preservation through the instigation of legal complaints against overseers, managers, and slave owners. By the 1820s, enslaved litigants across Britain's empire were publicly and collectively petitioning colonial magistrates to intercede on their behalf. The judicialization of quotidian battles over the terms of enslavement refashioned colonial social relations, affirmed enslaved people's status as British subjects, and generated volumes of case files that circulated back to the metropole, where the Colonial Office cited them in critical assessments of slave law and where abolitionists used them to press for immediate emancipation. Enslaved people's legal activism was operationally antislavery; it eroded the power of colonial enslavers and prodded Parliament to pass the 1833 Abolition Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French's Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. The reviewers offer a reading of Lula and his legacies from perspectives that range from LGBTQ+ studies to racial politics, including an analysis centered on the story of a humble man that rose from below, "a most exceptional common man," from his humble beginnings up to his election as president; a review that underscores how the book addresses Lula's work with regards to human rights, including race and the LGBTI+ community; a deconstruction of the use of the word "cunning" as a positive term of appreciation, comparing Brazil's journey under Lula with the promise of post-apartheid South Africa; and a reflective commentary that seeks to understand how a figure like Lula is not born but created, in this case through class struggle. Finally, John French responds to these observations and offers additional insight on his book and the living legacy of Lula's Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1943 and 1945, groups of peasants took over dozens of villages and small towns in southern Italy and proclaimed the birth of independent republics. During their brief existence—sometimes just a few days—the peasant republics implemented revolutionary measures, including the redistribution of land and the establishment of people's courts. This article draws attention to these forgotten episodes and suggests that they can best be understood by adopting an anthropological perspective and viewing social mobilization through an experiential lens. It draws on court documents and personal accounts to examine the quasi-revolutionary experiences of the southern Italian peasantry. Revolutions in general can be seen as social dramas and political rites of passage in which the successive phases of rupture, liminality, and reaggregation are the distinct stages of a total process that generates a transformation. This approach makes it possible to disentangle the conceptualization of revolutions from structures as well as from ideology, culture, and agency; to comprehend revolutions that unfold unscripted or without the decisive leadership of a vanguard whose ideas and expectations pre-exist the revolution and therefore teleologically determine its development; and to initiate comparative analysis in regard to symbolism, morphology, and the dynamics of social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2019, Santiago de Chile became the epicenter of a violent and massive protest against social inequality. Known as the Estallido Social (the Social Unrest), Chileans took to the streets seeking to dismantle the pervasive social and economic system inherited from Augusto Pinochet's regime established half a century ago. Drawing from participant observations and interviews conducted during the protest, this essay examines the multiple efforts developed by scholars to document the vast repertoire of material generated during Santiago's demonstrations (e.g. graffiti, signs, flags, testimonies, and merchandise). In doing so, I aim to situate the Estallido Social within the recent efforts deployed by museums, archives, and libraries to capture the changing nature and manifestations of global protests in the past few years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first two decades of Indian independence, members of the Sarvodaya movement—India's popular, non-state program for Gandhian social uplift—sought to partner with representatives of Israel's developmental apparatus to build a communal agricultural settlement at Gandhi's former ashram. Working against the lure of large-scale, Nehruvian development, Cold War politics, and cool formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, Indian votaries of small-scale rural uplift saw in Israeli collective agriculture the chance to give Gandhian "constructive work" a practical program rooted in voluntary, village-based socialism—a goal that eluded Gandhi himself. Israeli planners saw their work with Indian civil society as a means of securing the formal diplomatic sanction largely stymied by India's relationship with the broader Muslim world. Gandhi's vision of the Indian "village Republic" and the Israeli model of agrarian collectivism both owed their origins to nineteenth-century utopian thought, and both projects felt anachronistic by the time of their decade-long joint effort, whose initial promise succumbed to realpolitik and the hegemony of the developmental state. Yet their work foregrounds the enduring international stake that Indian civil society maintained in development and nation-building, long presumed to have withered with the arrival of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of global 1968 protest movements in Canadian politics. Topics include the impact of social movements on Canadian historiography, the role of indigenous history and historiography within Canadian history, and political responses to 1960s protest movements in Canada in relation to austerity and neoliberalism.

The author discusses the significance of the political and social movements in the U.S. associated with the year 1968, particularly concerning the concepts of liberalism, feminism, and what is called Third-Worldism, or Third World identification. She discusses the impact of the Vietnam War on U.S. politics, the connection between race and resistance, and decolonization.

The article discusses the author's views about the political and social conditions in Italy during 1968, and it mentions student protests, the involvement of young people in social movements, and various protests involving secondary school students in Italian cities in 2017. Political participation and direct action events such as sit-ins and marches in Italy are assessed, along with graffiti slogans and a feminist movement in Italy in the 1970s.

The article discusses the transformation of Paris, France as a center for postcolonial immigrant elite and anti-colonial nationalism between 1919 and 1938. Topics addressed include the Parisian cosmopolitanism that induced political movements, the nature of anti-colonial nationalism as one transcending community boundaries, and the living conditions of immigrants. Among the anti-colonialists who once resided in Paris are Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Zhou Enlai of China and Messali Hadj of Algeria.

The article explores the post-World War II housing crisis and squatter campaigns in France with a focus on the city of Marseille. Emphasis is given to a movement by activists and squatters for a universal human right to housing to be enjoyed by citizens regardless of social differences. Other topics include the activities of the Mouvement populaire des familles (Popular Movement for Families (MPF)), communist support for squatters, and populist sympathy.

The article presents an examination of the transnational homophile movement and the history of the International Committee for Sexual Equality (ICSE). It discusses the history of transnational activism and explores how the ICSE was able to connect homophile movements and groups around the world to form a cohesive group and promote the civil rights of homosexual minorities across the globe. It explores the inter-war period activism of the World League for Sexual Reform, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, it examines the 195 International Congress for Sexual Equality and discusses the passage of resolution endorsing gay rights by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011.

The article presents an examination freedom in India and applies the critical category of difference in its assessment of the Gandhian nonviolent resistance to British colonialism. It discusses the application of Western concepts in explaining the historical development of India and examines how this practice, which is grounded in Western historical experiences, creates negative conceptualizations of Indian development. It explores how the type freedom sought by the Gandhian movement differed from Western concepts of freedom and examines the historical roots of India's notion of freedom.

The article presents an in-depth exploration into the social conditions and politics of Japan in 1968, noting the shifts in public perception and reaction to violence performed by the government. Several activist and dissident movements among students and citizens are described as case examples of a larger international social phenomena of the 1960s regarding political participation and cultural identification. Analysis is also given to the depiction and portrayal of political demonstrations and conflict between state actors and dissidents within the media of the nation.

The article presents an investigation into the historical study of the social events and movements of 1968 in Western society and its transnational elements. The specific social conditions of East and West Germany are used as examples for broader inquiry of the international social developments in public dissent. Comments are given noting the lack of clear analysis in regards to the globalized aspects of the subject. It is suggested that the complexity of non-national ideologies being manifested in local national terms is worthy of investigation itself.

The article presents an in-depth historical examination of the social conditions and ideologies of 1960-1975 in Europe and the United States, highlighting the development of large scale countercultural movements. The notable growth of public reactions to generational senses of disillusionment from social norms and ideals in the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Germany are discussed. The political elements of the ideological shifts relating to the national and cultural pressures of the Cold War are also examined, citing ways in which countercultures influenced policy decisions in their respective countries.

The article discusses the concept of "bourgeois feminism." This concept has its origins in Marxian socialism, in which working-class women are portrayed as victims of industrial capitalism. The most influential socialist activist in the areas of women's issues was the German socialist Clara Zetkin. She viewed the women's rights movement as a danger to the counter-revolution. Many socialists vehemently opposed the term "bourgeois feminism." The author states the concept of "bourgeois feminism" relied on reductionist constructions of class status and political interests that did not accurately portray the realities of women's lives.

The article investigates the question of mass participation in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in 1937. The author analyzes the proliferation of repressive measures both in and through unions by tracing party directives from the Central Committee down to union members. Moreover, the author contends that repression was a mass phenomenon. Repression was closely related in 1937 with a campaign for union democracy, a mass movement for secret ballots and worker participation. Furthermore, the paper also highlights Stalinism, social movements and comparative genocide.

For a long time, the American Historical Review (AHR) ignored environmental history. Representing notable exceptions to this pattern were American History Association (AHA) presidents F.J. Turner and Henry Adams and the biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. A partial explanation for this lack is that such ecological factors as rainfall, cattle, and fish were long‐term phenomena, while historians have tended to concentrate on short‐term events. In the 1920s, works on ecological changes were written by scientists and widely read. Ecology was maturing as a science. French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache's Principles of Human Geography (1921) influenced French historians Marc Blochand Lucien Febvre (Geographical Introduction to History (1925). Most notably, Fernand Braudel's 1000‐page La Mediterranée et la monde Mediterranée a l'epoque de Philippe II (1949, with many revisions and translations since) emphasizes long‐term history with its stress on environmental factors in human history. These and other French scholars played primary roles in promoting great interest among historians in environmental history, which occupied a firm place in historiography by 1960. The use of the atomic bomb in World War II and its subsequent “improvement,” space exploration, and widely read literature on environmental matters helped make human control of the environment an urgent matter, despite Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's indifference to the subject. In 1976 historians, dissatisfied with the AHA's comparative indifference to environmental factors, founded the American Association for Environmental History. Awareness that indifference to environmental factors might cause extinction of the human species is increasing, even among historians outside the realm of environmental studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the influence of James McGready and his Great Revival movement in the transformation of Kentucky into a border state society in the eighteenth century. Reasons for Kentucky's susceptibility to the ideals of the Great Revival; Attacks on profanity in the light of egalitarian revision of honor; Challenge to the notions of honor and masculinity among slave owners.

Discusses how a majority of the film section is devoted to Germany. An attempt to explore history on film; Questions concerning history and memory; Situations of social change; German filmmakers who depict the Third Reich.