Search

Using the case of the 2012 student conflict in Québec, we show how social movements can temporarily transform politics. We define politics as the set of rules and individual and collective practices that regulate relations between actors regarding a community's government. We show three ways in which the 2012 student conflict transformed politics. Firstly, the six-month conflict created a new division around which politics reorganized itself. Secondly, political parties and student unions modified their daily practices, redefining their relationships and policies of alliance. Finally, the prolonged experience of mobilization transformed activists' relationship to politics by rearticulating the distinction between institutional and protest politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the growing importance of social media, their political effectiveness remains understudied. Drawing on and updating resource mobilization theory and political process theory, this article considers how social media make "political engagement more probable" and determine the success of online social movements. It does so by examining the mainstreaming of the Canadian ";user rights" copyright movement, focusing on the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook page, created in December 2007. This decentralized, grassroots, social media-focused action--the first successful campaign of its kind in Canada and one of the first in the world--changed the terms of the Canadian copyright debate and legitimized Canadian user rights. As this case demonstrates, social media have changed the type and quantity of resources needed to create and sustain social movements, creating openings for new groups and interests. Their success, however, remains dependent on the political context within which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the formal "carriers" of the goals and agendas of social movements, social movement organizations (SMOs) are committed to both institutional and identity politics. Given this dual engagement, SMOs must attempt to reconcile their intraorganizational strategies for representation and mobilization with their intergroup strategies for instrumental action in the policy process. In this article, these tensions are explored in a case study of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and its involvement in the policy debate on reproductive technologies over 15 years. The article reveals how the NAC's capacity to influence and participate in the formulation of policy on reproductive technologies was challenged by its inability to resolve competing demands: those of institutional politics, which called for professional advocacy; and the internal demands emanating from its grassroots member groups, for deliberation and participation. The article also attributes the NAC's diminished effectiveness in the policy process to broader changes in the relations between the Canadian state and social movement organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the recent Canadian campaign seeking redress for the infamous "Chinese head tax" as a vantage point from which to consider whether recognition-seeking social movements are undermining the cause of egalitarian redistribution. Methodologically, the article seeks to complement the normative theorizing and conceptual model-making that have tended to characterize the "recognition versus redistribution" debate by focusing more concretely on the dynamics of an actual social movement campaign. The article demonstrates how this approach can help to identify important nuances in recognition campaigns that blanket claims about recognition's impact both ignore and serve to obscure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "blood activism" describes the range of collective challenges that arose among victims of Canada's tainted-blood scandal in the 1990s. This article examines the emergence of blood activism in Canada from the perspective of social movement theory, paying particular attention to the tensions between victims who contracted HIV through tainted blood and those who contracted Hepatitis C, the so-called "forgotten victims" of the tragedy. This study discusses how changes in the "political opportunity structure"—loosely defined in the literature as aspects of the movement's external environment—influenced the nature of political action pursued by victims of tainted blood, the negotiation of the movement's collective identity and policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which used the case of the gay liberation movement, to examine the impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1992, on social movement politics in Canada. Details on the first gay rights demonstration in Canada during August 1971; Examination of equality in lesbian and gay rights; Survey of gay liberation ideology and strategy.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)