Search

The paper examines the relationship between local practices of dissent and the globally emerging ?civil society?. Scholarship exploring this question tends to be polarized: on the one extreme, it is suggested that local activism emerges organically out of local issues and concerns, and then attempts to fashion alliances with globally active movements and organisations which cohere with its sentiment and understandings of politics. On the other extreme, some scholars suggest that ?global civil society? colonizes local activism by imposing its own, Western concepts and political worldviews onto their local concerns and self?understandings. This polarisation is immediately apparent in perceptions of the relationship between international NGOS and the Bushmen in Botswana and their attempts to prevent their eviction by the state from their diamond-rich lands. The paper utilises Martin Heidegger?s notion of the ?world as a referential totality? in order to theorise the relationship between the local and the global. Re-inscribing the liberal term ?global civil society? as a complex and ever-evolving web of background meaning, as a referential totality against which we orient our existence, it recasts the question of the relationship between the local and the global away from such polarisations. The paper examines the case of the Bushmen?s activism to consider some of these questions: how do activists or dissenters located within postcolonial, indigenous, and local contexts uniquely appropriate norms and references available to them within the web of meaning? How does the appropriation of meaning by local contexts and the ?repetition? of certain types of practices, themselves affect the web? And, finally, what kinds of subjectivities are produced within it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latter half of the 1990s was an exceedingly interesting time for Israeli peace and settler movements. The rapid turnover in governments, policies and security was accompanied by an even more rapid turnover in communications technology. While by 2003 nearly all of the competing movements had created websites, they certainly did not make the decision to go on-line at the same time. Moreover, the innovations they chose to adopt vary considerably. This study surveys fourteen websites (7 peace movement and 7 settler movement) from 1996 through 2003 with two goals in mind. First, to describe the development of the websites. Second, to apply Peleg?s (2000) movement-countermovement model to how social movements choose to develop websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a range of women’s movements as the basis for mapping their strategies vis-à-vis states. Relying on the secondary literatures on selected women’s movements in Latin America, North America and West Europe, the paper investigates strategic dimensions of 1) insider v. outsider position; 2) separatist v. coalitional stance; and 3) movement autonomy v. state involvement. Two factors are identified as potentional influences upon women’s movements’ strategic behaviors: the context of movement emergence and anticipation of state reconfiguration. The paper concludes with a schema for testing hypotheses concerning women’s movements’ strategic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the politics of the social movement ?ATTAC? from a Gramscian perspective. It analyses the origins, organisational structure and political agenda of the movement in France and Germany and goes on to explore its relationship to the broader anti-globalisation movement. ATTAC is revealed as first and foremost a movement of critical, popular education. The paper employs the interrelated concepts of hegemony and ?historic bloc? to further scrutinise ATTAC’s political potential, in terms of both its rapidly expanding and diverse membership and its substantive policy positions. Acknowledging the enormous challenges faced by transnational civic opposition, the authors nonetheless conclude optimistically that ATTAC has a unifying, relatively coherent agenda among its diverse associations and as such may serve as the core movement around which transnational opposition can rally. They caution, however, that the continued success of the movement will ultimately hinge on how well ATTAC embodies Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual, dissolving the distinction between the ‘leaders and the led’, both locally and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental challenges posed by the ideological rivalry during the cold war years remains a phenomenon that international relations has had to grapple with ten years after. This is particularly the case when analyzed from the perspective of the spate of violent conflicts and the number of irredentist movements across Africa that has characteristically altered the tussle for power. This has impacted on the nature, function, the use and abuse of power in this part of the world. Since September 11 there has been a reification of power as an important variable in coercing stability and peace in the world. However, what is lacking is an analysis of this understanding and its effect at the domestic level (state). This paper seeks to explore the varied implications of this phenomenon on international politics and how it impacts on the exercise of power in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses the influence of the transitional measures included into the Annexes to the 2003 Act of Accession limiting the free movement of workers-nationals of the new Member States of the European Union, on the concept of the European Union citizenship and the free movement rights derived from the status of a citizen of the European Union. It also assesses legal means to challenge the transitional periods in question, in order to achieve the de facto equality between the nationals of the present Member States and the nationals of the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe entering the Union on May 1, 2004. The conclusions are alarming for the concept of European citizenship: a ?second class? of citizens has been created, to include the nationals of the 8 countries of Central and Eastern Europe, who will have much less rights under EU law than their compatriots from the 15 ?old? Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based upon interview and survey research, describes and analyzes the history of the European disability movement, how the movement’s history and ideology has influenced the structure and tactics of disability organizations today. The current challenge of the Europeanization of social policy is described and the response of disability organiozations, particularly in northern and western Europe is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The product of a larger study of the interaction of human rights and development, this paper argues that expanding contact and cooperation among human rights, development and environmental NGOs has created new patterns of NGO advocacy, which we refer to collectively as the new rights advocacy. The paper outlines the dimensions of these trends among NGOs, and focuses on two themes: the origins of this expanding interface, and its significance for thinking about NGOs as international political actors. First, the expanding interface between development and human rights NGOs has roots in international social movements such as the global women’s movement, and in a series of high-profile disputes over donor-funded development projects, in virtually every region of the world. We trace the growth of international NGO involvement in debates in India, Ecuador, and Chad/Cameroon, revealing patterns in environmental, human rights, development, labor, and indigenous people’s organizations engagement and collaboration in campaigning. Second, these new patterns of NGO advocacy prompt us to question existing models for understanding international NGO political activity. We argue that existing frameworks do not adequately capture its political significance, limitations, and variety, and we offer a broad, flexible approach that is cognizant of both political and organizational imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that attempts to bridge the theoretical gap between the literature of the state-society relationship and that of transnational activism. Review of literature of the state-society relationship; Patterns of transnational activism and strategies of transnational environmental non-government organizations (TENGO); State-society relationship and the role of TENGO.

This paper is about the potential of terrorism in African Islamic movements and militancy. It describes the factors that contributed to the resurgence of these movements and militancy. In order to lessen ambiguities related to the plethora of definitions given to the Islamist phenomenon, I examine its various characterizations as introductory information indispensable to our understanding of the topic. Beginning with the encounter of sub-Saharian Africa with Islam, it covers a number of movements in different countries in the African continent: Nigeria, Tanzania, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali, Chad and Sudan. In all of these countries, the emergence of Islamic movements, their socio-political status are reviewed and their present position in relation to the ongoing debate on their perceived radicalization or their supposed threat of violence or terrorism is ivestigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past 10 years, organizations of disabled persons around the world have come to see the international human rights framework as a strategic conveyor of the core ideas of a new, social model of disability. The human rights framing of disability positions people with disabilities as rights-holders, thereby discrediting medical/charity models of disability wherein people with disabilities are classified as sick people in need of a cure or handouts. This challenges the disability movement to equip its constituency to become active claimants of their rights. At the same time, the disability community faces the challenge of becoming claimants who are effectively embraced within the mainstream human rights movement. Here, the challenges are many, and the strategies of so doing are highly contested within the disability movement. This paper explores the origins of the shift to a rights-based approach within the international disability movement and examines the challenges that this refocus presents. It analyzes the conscious adoption of a rights-based approach to disability advocacy by organizations engaged in an emerging transnational advocacy network on disability and assesses both internal and external pressures related to this development. In so doing, the paper contributes to the critique that questions the human rights movement?s receptivity to new areas of standard-setting and challenges the hegemony of civil and political rights that prevails in mainstream human rights practice. Within this context, this paper provides an important case study of a much neglected but increasingly visible human rights issue area, offering some preliminary observations and suggestions for deepening the constructivist analysis of non-state actors in the progressive development of international human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument presented here is that the progressive antisystemic movements will find their greatest support in the semiperiphery. Democratic socialist parties and regimes that are coming to power in the semiperipheral countries will be the forereachers that show how the progressive transnational movements (feminism, environmentalism, labor, indigenism) can work together to democratize global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional analysis places social movements in the category of a global civil society, often as secondary actors to states and international organizations. Furthermore, movements have been studied traditionally in the context of real social interaction, not the virtual to which the internet gives special impetus. This paper challenges the conventional approach. Instead of presupposing a given place or role for transnational social movements in global politics, I ask questions about the new political reality they may be shaping. What does the social look like in the world space outside anything governed by law and the political? How do we capture moves toward global responsibility, as well as resistance to assuming it? Why do people, for the most part, not resist? What blocks this realization? How are the barriers being challenged by new technology? To understand the reconfiguration of the social, the analysis draws on the works of such scholars as Dewey, Rousseau, Kac and Bergson. The argument then examines technology’s impact on social relations, in particular, the way it puts people in contact who would never otherwise be in contact with each other?hence the move from the physical to a different kind of space, the virtual space of the internet, and the possibilities it holds/as well as barriers to transforming society itself. Among the key questions to be addressed are: What is the promise of technology? What is the role of US hegemony in this? Why do people go to the internet to transform social realities?why not just transform groups already existing in their immediate environs? Or, what are the connections between mobilizing on the internet and hitting the street? How does the virtual inform the real? Why are people not responding to traditional political spaces, but creating new ones in virtual arenas? Is the internet the new social? Finally, how can we understand its educational and democratic potential? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the predominance of a state-centric methodology in the study of the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) process is not adequate to understand the process of transnationalization of politics that is currently taking place along the Western Hemisphere. Transnational advocacy networks of civil society organizations and social movements are engaged in building coalitions with key political actors within the 34 countries that participate in the FTAA initiative to advance an alternative view of hemispheric integration, by linking trade issues to a development agenda. Dominant approaches to hemispheric integration, interested in inter-state diplomacy and in the domestic politics associated to policymaking processes, are not able to grasp the emergence of a transborder political sphere increasingly influential in Hemispheric relations. The political significance of the transnational advocacy networks mobilized by the FTAA process is derived from their bottom-up attempts to create a common consciousness among its member organizations and across different sectors to challenge the hegemonic neoliberal approach to hemispheric integration. In this respect, the contribution of the discussion of social constructivism about issues of identity and understanding is particularly relevant. The possibility of hemispheric collective action at the level of transnational social movements necessitates the creation of a political subject/agent able of coalescing different sectors and political identities into a common hemispheric agenda. Agency entails the transformation of the normative understandings of the model of capitalism currently in dispute in the FTAA process. Drawing from the recent literature on transnational social movements, a neo-Gramscian ontology and the insights of social constructivism, the paper proposes a critical IPE framework to understand the process of bottom-up regionalization around the FTAA initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper argues for an incorporation of gender studies into peace theories, by analyzing what is missing by not confronting feminist contributions to a theory on violence. I take Johan Galtung’s theory of violence as a point of departure, as a theory that is widely uncontested in peace studies. Galtung’s articulation of direct, structural and cultural violence offers a unified framework within which all violence can be seen. On the other hand, confrontations with feminism enrich Galtung’s theory by seriously tackling issues of power and gender, which are essential to an understanding of violence as a process through which (violent) social relations are built, legitimized, reproduced, and naturalized. By understanding gender as a social construct that embodies relations of power, feminism shows that violence is made possible by the existence of power/gender relations. This has important implications for Peace Studies: only by taking gender seriously as a category of analysis, can prescriptions for a violence-free society be more than temporary solutions to deeply-ingrained attitudes to accept violence as ‘natural’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper proposes a framework for understanding the emergence of new human rights issues, rights omitted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as well as those mentioned but given little prominence until lately. In recent years, groups such as the mentally and physically disabled, Third World slumdwellers, South Asian Dalits (untouchables), AIDS patients, victims of corporate malfeasance, and the world’s poor have claimed internationally- based rights. In most cases, their efforts have met resistance from governments and powerful corporate interests. Even apparent allies among major human rights NGOs have voiced misgivings about new rights, arguing that rights proliferation may cheapen their traditionally central concerns, civil and political rights. My paper argues that the construction of new human rights norms involves four phases. First, politicized groups frame long-felt grievances as rights. Why and how they do so has received little scholarly attention. Second, they seek to place new rights claims on the international agenda, chiefly by convincing gatekeepers in major international human rights organizations to adopt and promote new rights. This seldom-examined stage is crucial since a handful of powerful NGOs jealously guard a perceived human rights core and exercise significant power in certifying new rights as worthy of international action. Third, NGOs spearhead new conventions before key international bodies. Finally, whether or not formally enacted, new norms require implementation not merely in domestic law but also on the ground. Highlighting the first two phases of this process, my paper draws on theories of social movements and transnational relations to develop new insights about the political construction of new rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between religion and militancy from a less-studied angle: instead of tracing the reasons that deeply religious people resort to militant behavior, it asks why deeply religious people do not resort to militant behavior when their coreligionists and compatriots do. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the following variables and militancy: perceived threat, perceived relative power between rival social movements, loyalty to doctrinal orthodoxy (however defined), and a number of other more mundane explanations (rural-urban cleavages, economic or political disempowerment, etc.). Using a ?most different systems? methodology, this study traces the relationship between the above variables through three cases whose obvious differences mask important commonalities in order to determine whether any generalizations can be made across the board. The relationship between these variables is explored, cross-sectionally?across three different cases with widely varying levels of general political and social conflict?and longitudinally?within each case over time. Preliminary results suggest that religious militancy arises as a result of heightened or sustained threats to a group?s core interests. While these interests frequently bear resemblance to those of nonreligious actors, they are shaped?often in important ways?by the specific ideological commitments of the group in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunger strikes have been an important tactic in many well-known social movements of the last century as with Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Irish nationalists, the student democracy movement in China and countless less-known instances. Examining current struggles in the world?from the Basque region of Spain, to Chechnya, Chiapas, Indonesia, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Turkey, or Zimbabwe among others?reveals the continued significance of hunger strikes as a form of contentious politics. However, despite the widespread use of hunger strikes and their important place in contentious political activities, social movement scholars have made few empirical or theoretical contributions to understanding this phenomenon. Many rich biographical, historical, and journalistic accounts of hunger strikes exist, often focusing on cultural or psychological characteristics of the actors or the legal, ethical, and theological considerations of their actions. This paper extends this research by looking at the comparative trends in hunger strikes in the 20th century and emphasizing the socio-political motivations that challenge the existing social order?including demands for statehood, political recognition, democracy, economic and social justice, and human, civil, and political rights. Despite the significance of existing studies, there is little theoretical rigor that ties hunger strikes to other social movements research, nor is there any extension of hunger strikes beyond individual cases. This paper addresses these concerns, examining trends in hunger strike activities, developing typologies for their existence, and discussing them comparatively so as to determine how each fits at a broader level with regard to social movement theory. Using data assembled from the New York Times Index from 1900 to the present, this paper thus examines how, when, where, and why they hunger strikes have emerged, and by whom have they been utilized to seek social change. It expands the theoretical significance of hunger strikes and their importance to contentious politics and social movement dynamics, thus beginning to fill an important void in the empirical and theoretical literature. In this regard, this paper establishes an important foundation for analysis of this unique protest form, making a key contribution to understanding their complexities and relevance to contentious politics and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to answer several vital questions about al-Qaida, including: What are the organization’s goals (are they messianic or grounded in more practical political concerns)? How is the movement structured (it is really networked as some claim or not)? What are its links to the broader radical Islamic movement? What methods does the organization use, and, more importantly, not use? What are its weaknesses? In answering these questions, the essay will highlight important disagreements and identify areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, considerable transnational feminist effort ? and money ? has gone to establishing women’s crisis centers in Russia to help combat violence against women. Yet, in the 1980s, if Russians had been polled, very few would have any idea what was meant by the term violence against women. This paper will explores the ways that transnational feminism has encountered the Russian women’s movement ? and the power inherent in each of these encounters ? in the processing of naming violence against women. By naming, I mean more than coming up with a term for the problem. I refer to the new understanding that the various forms of violence against women are a problem worthy of state response. Transnational feminism has served as precedent, an earlier movement in the cycle of movements challenging violence against women, a source of repertoires of action and discourse. Transnational feminism has also provided crucial foreign assistance. This intellectual and financial assistance has come with strings attached, yet has been essential to the development of a movement that many activists in Russia see as crucial to improving women’s citizenship. This paper draws upon a variety of literatures -- social movement literature (e.g. Tarrow), social constructivism (Finnemore 1996, Keck & Sikkink 1998), and feminist theory (e.g. Mohanty 2003) ? and fieldwork in Russia on the women’s crisis center movement in 1997, 1999, and 2002. It is part of a draft manuscript titled, Naming Violence Against Women in Postcommunist Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several rationales have been advanced for attempting to ‘nix’ (abolish) rather than ‘fix’ (reform) the major institutions of global economic management. Some of these relate to the balance of forces in international political economy; some of them are derived from an understanding of the last quarter-century of global economic turbulence; some are based upon the strategies and tactics associated with international meetings; finally, others take heart from the movement against South African apartheid, and promote a similar campaign of financial sanctions to overthrow (not reform) ‘global apartheid’. What strength can be found in the analysis behind these various rationales, and what weaknesses are most obvious? Focusing mostly upon Southern African social movements, as well as state-led initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, we can consider the results of the nix it versus fix it strategies. Key events will be taken into consideration, such as the World Conference Against Racism, Doha WTO Ministerial Summit, Monterrey Financing for Development Conference, World Summit on Sustainable Development, World Water Forum, Cancun WTO Summit, and the last two G8 meetings. Southern Africans from both state and social movements had very different agendas, which illustrate the prospects and limitations of the pro-globalisation and the ‘deglobalisation’ discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the significance of countermovements is widely acknowledged in the social movement literature, the study of their emergence and interaction with both social movements and the state has received comparatively little academic attention. In recent years, a number of social movement scholars have highlighted this deficiency in the literature and called for a more extensive analysis of countermovements. The state is traditionally a central actor in influencing movement-countermovement dynamics; while the battles between movements and countermovements continue to directly involve the state, for instance as epitomized by legal battles brought before courts, the political competition between movements and countermovements is increasingly bypassing the centrality of the state. Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified today than by the contests being waged between movements and countermovements on the Internet. The use of the Internet by social movement and countermovement organizations highlights the interaction between opposing groups while frequently rendering the role of the state less important than in more traditionally fought movement-countermovement battles. This paper examines movement-countermovement dynamics and the role of the state using the political competition between the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement and its organized opposition as a lens through which to view the interaction between rival parties. I question how the relationship between the sovereignty movement, its organized countermovement, and the federal government has shaped the development of the movement and its impact thus far. I begin by briefly reviewing the literature on movement-countermovement dynamics and the role of the state. Next, I document the rise of the sovereignty movement, discuss the emergence of its organized countermovement, and describe the relationship of the movement and countermovement to the federal government. In the sections that follow, I demonstrate that while an active competition between the sovereignty movement and countermovement is currently being waged on the Internet that the role of the federal government continues to remain paramount in shaping the direction and impact of the sovereignty movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the extent to which, and the conditions under which, supranational agents are able to take advantage of their discretion to pursue their own policy preferences ? for example, by seeking to advance the process of European integration beyond the lowest-common denominator preferences of the EU member governments. Faced with the threat of such supranational activism, I argue, member-state principals adopt both administrative procedures and oversight mechanisms in order to limit supranational discretion; yet these control mechanisms are themselves costly and are unlikely to be perfectly effective in preventing agents from pursuing their own preferences. In this context, I argue that the autonomy and influence of a given supranational organization depends primarily upon the efficacy and credibility of various control mechanisms established by member-state principals, and that these vary both across organizations and over time, leading to varying but predictable patterns of supranational autonomy and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the possibility of reconciling cosmopolitan ethics with feminism in the context of global politics. Specifically, it will examine two different contemporary approaches to cosmopolitanism - discourse ethics and rights-based ethics - in an effort to dtermine whether or not they may be seen as compatible with feminism. Here, feminism will be understood as a social and political movement with particular goals, and also as a set of ideas, including a particular understanding of the nature of morality. I will argue that many of the ideas and principles in both discourse and riths-based ethics are incompatible with feminism. That said, it will also be argued that, in spite of the emphasis on particularity in both feminist theory/ethics and feminist practice, that this does not preclude it from embracing many of the broader moral principles of cosmopolitanism, including the extension of moral concern and action beyond the borders of particular communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Debates over electoral reform are pervasive in the United States. A host of key political developments of the 20th century are telling in this regard, including direct primaries, expanded voting rights, campaign finance reform, and more. This examination of public financing of campaigns in the city of Seattle, state-level term limits in Michigan, and national voter registration reform reveals, however, that electoral reform was not on the agenda of second wave feminists in the U.S. When women were involved in these policy debates, it was not typically as women but instead as members of ?good government? groups (e.g., the League of Women Voters) making ungendered arguments for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates in security studies in the U.S. and Europe have drifted almost completely apart. In Europe it is common to present the theoretical landscape in terms of, say, critical security studies, the Copenhagen School, traditionalism and feminism. In the U.S. it is more common to see the major debate within security studies as being the one between offensive realism and defensive realism! Previously, almost all theoretical inventions in IR were made in the U.S. Currently, distinct theories are widely associated with places like Aberystwyth (Critical Security Studies), Paris (Bigo’s Bourdieu-inspired work) and Copenhagen (securitization). The new European approaches differ not only from security studies in the US, they also stand apart from most work done in other parts of the world. Are these theories peculiarly ‘European’ and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the emergence of these European security theories. The explanation draws partly on the political context in the different regions, and partly on features of the intellectual fields, International Relations and Security Studies. The theories are also assessed briefly as to their relevance and usefulness. To what extent are they bound to local, European problems or relevant to the issues that are addressed elsewhere and vice-versa for the theories that flourish in the U.S. and the periphery respectively? Can they travel to the other parts of the world in a helpful role? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work shares findings and implications from a dissertation exploring how multi-issue, transnational coalitions and structures, able to mobilize large swaths of civil society across the world, are created and sustained. It is based on over 100 semi-structured interview-conversations and participant observation at the World Social Forum in 2003 and the European Social Forums in 2002 and 2003. Processes and their constitutive mechanisms were culled from this evidence, in an inductive-deductive spiral operationalizing McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly?s most recent explanatory framework from the Dynamics of Contention. The episode of contention is identified to be that of ?globalization?, which is then broken down into ?global economic integration? and ?internationalization?. It is within the latter that this study of the social forums and the ?global movement of movements? is located, and I call this process ?the internationalization of activism?. I argue that this process is made up of three smaller processes: mobilization, scale shift, and actor constitution. Reframing the research question around these three processes, I then explored: how and why activists are mobilizing in unprecedented numbers, locales, and complex networks; how and why they are broadening their focus to include the transnational level; to what extent they are forging a single collective actor or identity; and what is the role of the World Social Forum in these processes. This study corroborated McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly?s hypotheses of robust mechanisms that constitute each of these processes, identified additional mechanisms in each, and concluded that one global collective actor is emerging around the shared demand for ?deep democracy?. Implications for scholars, activists and policymakers were then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the inroads of feminist scholars, mainstream international relations scholarship continues to construct war in masculine terms and combatants as male. Feminist theorisations about women’s involvement in nationalist movements highlight the often troubled relationship between nationalism and feminism, yet even this body of scholarship has not yet produced substantial work on the specific matter of women’s participation as combatants: a role that fundamentally challenges the enduring image of women as natural peacemakers. This paper examines the gendered implications for security studies of women’s involvement as combatants in nationalist guerrilla and terrorist organisations, focusing on women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and republican and loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Movement to Save the Narmada) has spearheaded a multifaceted campaign opposing the building of a network of dams on the Narmada River in India. In advocating its position, the NBA has utilized a wide-ranging repertoire or both institutional and extra-institutional political actions at the local, state and transnational levels. This paper explores the development of the NBA’s repertoire by linking concepts of mechanisms with political opportunity structures, resource mobilization and framing. It contends that explanation of a movement’s repertoire must cover both institutional and extra-institutional tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the Yearbook of International Associations show that, since the mid-1980s, a larger percentage of transnational social change organizations were organized within either the global North or South than was true in the past, when most groups organized across the North-South divide. I explore two different explanations for this organizational pattern. One might interpret the regionalization of transnational organizing as a result of the failures of prior organizing efforts to overcome the North-South polarization that divides the international community. In other words, we may be seeing a parallel of Benjamin Barber?s ?jihad,? or local resurgence against attempts to globalize political discourse. Alternatively, the regionalization might reflect activists? efforts to take advantage of institutional openings in order to maximize their influence in global political arenas. Data from the Yearbook on the ties between regionally organized transnational social movement organizations and other non-governmental organizations are used to assess the extent to which transnational organizations relate to groups within or outside their own regions. The analysis showed that groups in the global South were more likely to maintain cross-regional ties than were their Northern counterparts. On the other hand, Northern groups were significantly more likely to report only regional ties. Environmental and women?s organizations were the most likely to maintain only regional ties while economic justice and human rights organizations were the most likely to report cross-regional ties. I conclude that these findings best support the argument that the regionalization of transnational social change organizations signals their adaptation to the institutional environment rather than polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first highlights the value of Gramscian concepts to avoid the pitfalls of structuralism. Yet, most IR scholars drawing on Gramsci tend to concentrate on dominant political-economic forces and structures. They recognize the importance of subaltern forces, but these are not their primary focus. Cultural studies approaches deepen the analysis of subaltern forces, as agent of change in their own rights. Analyzing the dialectical relationship between political discourses (theories) and practices emerging from social movements and organic-intellectuals, the paper examines the role of cultural and socio-economic struggles, the processes taking place within and among subaltern forces, and how they challenge dominant structures of power and the neoliberal common sense. Based on fieldwork research, it draws from the experiences of sociopolitical forces (anti-FTAA movements), rooted in specific historical context, insisting on the need to avoid a solely state-centric approach. This analysis of the practices and knowledges of subaltern forces challenges the dominant understanding of hegemony and counter-hegemony in the field of IR. It also questions the role as intellectuals in reproducing these dominant understandings and power relations, by highlighting the assumptions that intellectuals tend to make about subaltern forces, but which not necessarily reflect the complexities of their day-to-day practices in resisting dominant structures of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social movements literature has developed increasingly sophisticated understandings of movement emergence and evolution. The contentious politics model, in particular, has given us a more sophisticated look at movement-government interaction. What remains underexplored, however, in the contentious politics model are the dynamics within the movement itself. This is particularly true in the case of movements, which are themselves made up of movements. Existing concepts do not seem sufficient to account for these ‘movements of movements’, in other words, movements that emerge on the borders of existing group interests that do not lead to entirely new movements of their own. Intermovement relationships are dynamic and ongoing, sometimes perhaps even helping to sustain one another. Using the AIDS Treatment Access movement as an illustration, this paper will examine how social movements ‘cross-fertilize’ one another. The sheer number of movements in today’s society ensures there is ample opportunity not only for tactical diffusion but also information exchange that can create alignments of interest promoting collective action across groups and movements. Furthermore, these ideas can take on a life of their own, being adopted and expanded long after their originators have disappeared. In the case of AIDS, the movement evolved to reflect the spread of the disease as well as the increasingly successful efforts to combat it. As the infection patterns shifted socially and geographically, the AIDS movement too was reconstituted. The actors changed and the focus moved to developing countries, but the driving motivations of the movements lived on in the Treatment Access movement. With the shift to the developing world, these motivations had resonance with other movements. They found common ground on combating AIDS, yet each maintained their existing missions and adapted the treatment access message to their existing frames. This alliance of movements goes a long way toward explaining the speed with which treatment access became one of the most prominent global issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World revolutions are clusters of revolutionary activity and social movements across several countries that successfully change the world order and incite thoroughgoing social transformations. We seek to identify world revolutions in a data set that covers revolutionary activity from 1492 to 1992 in twenty-four countries at the core of the world-system and in close geographical proximity to them. Our statistical analyses investigate the thesis that patterns of societal revolutions indicate a small number of clusters, some of which qualitatively altered the world order and deserve to be called world revolutions. Determining which clusters can be called ?world revolutions? involves interpreting the content and spread of ideas and organizational forms through history. We employ data pertaining to revolutionary situations, wars, economic cycles, hegemony, the outcomes of revolutions, and various other economic and control variables. Our approach is grounded in a world-system theory that also incorporates aspects of world polity and social movement theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military rule, military occupation, and land grabs for military bases (even if sanctioned by international executive agreements or legislatively ratified treaties) vitiate and undermine democratization. On the one hand, democratic theorists from John Locke to Robert Dahl contrast pluralist theory with rationales for authoritarian governance. On the other hand, historical pluralism evinces elitist practices. A focus on the diversity of power sharing is missing or underdeveloped. To what extent do anti-militarist social movements demonstrate the ability of popular activity from below to outstrip elitist liabilities embedded in much pluralist theory? And how effectively have civil society organizations in Asia opposed the continued, expanded and renewed presence of the U.S. Armed Forces? This paper focuses on civil society organizations (CSOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the larger anti-militarist social movements within which they have contended in the Philippines and Japan (especially, Okinawa). The paper further distinguishes among DJANGOs (Development, Justice and Advocacy Nongovernmental Organizations) and POs (People's Organizations) with only passing attention to QUANGOs (Quasi Nongovernmental Organizations) supported by government funding and sponsorship. Amplifying a preferred future for a totally demilitarized Okinawa, trend analysis and focused structured comparisons identify likely and unlikely obstacles and opportunities to a totally demilitarized Okinawa by 2025. Similarities and differences between the two cases appear policy-relevant! In turn, that identification generates prescriptions useful in guiding practical activities of organizations advocating removal of foreign military bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s struggles for equality are by no means new. One constant of women’s movements is that they vary cross-culturally and that gender social change is something that women in a culture do for themselves. This poster presentation will examine the role o ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some separatist struggles fought through violent means, while others are contested without bloodshed? Much of the literature on separatist conflicts focuses on the turn to violence by separatist groups. We reverse this focus and ask why central go ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much research on civil wars focuses on characteristics of the state, this paper analyzes the role of opposition groups. Following Kalyvas (2000), I argue that groups with cohesive, developed organizational structures are more likely to negotiate pea ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will attempt to ascertain whether or not there exist any similarities in the demands made by opposition groups in the region during the modern period. A comparative approach will be applied to a variety of political movements adhering to Marxia ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyze the changing repertoires and strategies employed by transnational environmental social movement organizations (TESMOs) to engage and communicate with actors and segments within what Thomas Olesen has termed 'transnational publ ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews social activism for a better environment in China is the past 15 years. It is not merely a historical review, but also a discussion of competing interpretations of the political revelance of this movement and the new social-political forces it has generated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores current state security tendency to label ordinary protests and opposition as "low level terrorism" or social movements as "terrorist environments" and the political and democratic consequences of such a ?politics of fear?. The judic ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses on going field work in Lawndale, Chicago on the variable form of street gangs. It provides data to support the notion that the gang is a variable form that, in given conditions, can be mobilized in social movements for their own inter ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a model to evaluate how conceptions of international legitimacy on the use of force have influenced European public opinion, social movements, and foreign policy elites in response to the ad hoc coalition of the willing assembled for t ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, while much of what is happening with some of the “Left” regimes in Latin America can only be characterized as alternative modernizations, there are more radical thoughts and practices emerging from the space of some social movement ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful establishment of Anti-Personal Landmine BanTreaty (Ottawa Treaty) in 1997 was a culmination of the transnational civil movements against landmines, which encouraged the change from the status quo (no regulation) to a drastic state (total b ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic changes of the past 25 or 30 years have been accompanied by the broad dissemination of social, cultural, and political information to all corners of the globe. This phenomena has contributed to a number of important socio-political dev ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed paper begins by outlining a set of continuities and differences between traditional, critical and feminist security studies. It argues that while there are continuities in terms of a broadening and deepening of security studies, differences e ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of Thomas Hobbes in the genealogy of modern political thought is debatable not least because it depends in the first instance on what one considers to be the determinants of such genealogy. Michel Foucault’s reading of Hobbes, foregrounding as i ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mutually constitutive, two-way relationship between rights and identity politics is emerging as a critical focus of research on processes of globalization. There is scholarly consensus that over space and time law influences the identities of its subj ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of municipal foreign policy draws on such experiences as the Cities for Peace movement, the anti-Apartheid municipal movement of the 1980s, and the nuclear-free zone movement of the 1970s. It asserts that politicians who are most accessible and a ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]