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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]

We examined the Supreme Court's workplace and educational gender-discrimination cases from the 1970s to the present, assessing how they discuss women, their status, and workplace and educational experiences. Our study is situated in scholarship on status hierarchies, gendered cultural frameworks, and sociolegal understandings of the role of justice ideology and social movement influences on court decision making. We used a novel method for assessing court opinions, a combination of computerized text and qualitative analysis, to distill distinct vocabulary and meanings articulated in opinions decided in favor of and against the original female plaintiffs. We found pronounced differences in the court's discourse, with women centered in pro-plaintiff opinions, where decisions rely on an egalitarian gender framework, and decentered in pro-opponent opinions that draw on a traditional framework. These gender ideological frameworks remain largely stable over time, albeit with some changes, revealing an ongoing discursive struggle over women's status in the court. [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]

Inspired by research on social movements, we extend the idea that activists look for opportunities to target firms to the realm of financially motivated shareholder activists. Focusing on activist hedge funds, we argue that hedge fund campaigns are more likely to succeed when boards are slow and less united and that, compared with more homogeneous boards, demographically diverse boards tend to act more slowly and with less unity. Although these attributes make demographically diverse boards more effective under "normal" circumstances, they become a liability in confrontations with activist hedge funds. We, therefore, hypothesize that when subject to governance and performance problems, firms become more likely targets of activist hedge funds when they also have demographically diverse boards. To further probe our theory, we explore the opportunity recognition of activist hedge funds in two ways. First, we posit that this opportunity will be recognized and exploited primarily by experienced activist hedge funds. Second, we argue that activist hedge funds' opportunity recognition is correct in so far that demographically diverse boards respond to activism campaigns in ways that are likely to benefit activist hedge funds. Using data on United States-based activism campaigns, we find support for our theory. By simultaneously studying problems and opportunities, this study establishes a foundation for examining when the disciplinary effect of shareholder activism may go awry and reveals why a strict business case for demographic diversity may be insufficient to align all shareholders behind board diversity. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1679. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high incarceration rate and systemic racism in the United States, along with entrenched social barriers, highlight the need for creative solutions to help formerly incarcerated individuals (FIIs) reintegrate successfully. This paper highlights social entrepreneurial ventures (SEVs) as powerful agents of social change, underscoring the significance of holistic approaches in successful reentry and transformation of FIIs. We delve into the potential of SEVs as catalysts for social justice within the critical HRD (CHRD) framework, examining SEV's role in advancing learning, challenging power dynamics, empowering marginalized communities, and propelling grassroots-led social change. In doing so, we also emphasize the significance of experiential learning and dialog in cultivating collective knowledge and action within these social movements. We analyze the structural, organizational, and individual factors that demonstrate how HRD and social entrepreneurship complement and broaden modes of engagement. Ultimately, we highlight the promising synergy between SEVs and the CHRD perspective, presenting a transformative approach for both HRD scholars and practitioners and argue that by embracing the values of empowerment, equity, and social justice, HRD can play a pivotal role in fostering more inclusive, equitable, and empowering organizational landscapes. [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]

As regenerative agriculture grows in popularity, policy and decision-makers have become interested in its practices. Yet, little is known about those factors driving its adoption among farmers and ranchers. To better understand these drivers, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 farmers and ranchers across the United States (US) who self-identified as practitioners of regenerative agriculture. In doing so, we asked about relational values, which reflect one's perspectives around the links between humans and nature. We also asked about economic and environmental drivers for adoption. In the analysis, we used qualitative coding to identify the range of values and factors driving adoption across our sample. We found that 1) improving the health of people, soils, and ecosystems - through farming practices and related social configurations - was a primary driver for adoption, 2) that relative economic privilege, particularly across two extremes - privileged idealism and less privileged necessity - correlated with most drivers for adoption, 3) that a shift away from industrial agriculture was at once a moral, economic, and environmental imperative for many practitioners, and 4) a systems view of social-ecological relationships was seen as a key to adoption and societal transitions. While our sample represents only a narrow segment of the regenerative agriculture movement in the US, our findings can serve as a useful starting point for understanding the drivers for its adoption. Our findings may also inform conversations on regenerative agriculture's potential to support food-related sustainability transitions. The discussion situates our work amidst sustainable agriculture and social movement studies, questions of equity in food systems transitions, and the benefits of studying values in developing policy-relevant solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article presents a reflection on the reactivation of decolonial theories and concepts through a research-activist project and perspective. The work is based on qualitative research carried out during my master's degree at the University of Bristol. It places itself between Bristol's Black communities and their relationship with an ontology of Whiteness enforced by White institutions. By using the concept of 'acting white' (Fordham 2008), and reflecting on my own movement between Black and White spaces, I address this ontological struggle both as a member of the Bristol Black community as well as through my role as a researcher. I use my position as a way of reflecting more deeply on the movement between White and Black spaces, how this engages our longer history of decolonial activism, and what this means for mitigating the imposition of the ontology of Whiteness on my own research and role in my community. This research, which followed the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020, took place in a context of renewed engagement with decolonisation, and heightened awareness of the conditions of Black spaces for those within the Bristol community, which are brought into the discussion surrounding Black identity and community in the UK and Bristol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Susceptibility to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 depends on how those diseases spread. Many studies have examined the decrease in COVID-19 spread due to reduction in travel. However, less is known about how much functional geographic regions, which capture natural movements and social interactions, limit the spread of COVID-19. To determine boundaries between functional regions, we apply community-detection algorithms to large networks of mobility and social-media connections to construct geographic regions that reflect natural human movement and relationships at the county level in the coterminous United States. We measure COVID-19 case counts, case rates, and case-rate variations across adjacent counties and examine how often COVID-19 crosses the boundaries of these functional regions. We find that regions that we construct using GPS-trace networks and especially commute networks have the lowest COVID-19 case rates along the boundaries, so these regions may reflect natural partitions in COVID-19 transmission. Conversely, regions that we construct from geolocated Facebook friendships and Twitter connections yield less effective partitions. Our analysis reveals that regions that are derived from movement flows are more appropriate geographic units than states for making policy decisions about opening areas for activity, assessing vulnerability of populations, and allocating resources. Our insights are also relevant for policy decisions and public messaging in future emergency situations. [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]

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]

Academic and activist conversations about the position of men in feminism often operate under the assumption that women are the movement's key beneficiaries and men are privileged outsiders lending their support. I use 59 interviews from a broader project on feminist and LGBTQ+ activism in the United States to illustrate how men's orientation to feminism is shaped by whether social movement organizations adopt what I call woman‐centered or identity‐fluid politics. While woman‐centered politics treat men as allies whose intentions must be vetted by women, identity‐fluid feminism imagines men as insiders with their own independent investment in the movement. I argue that the tension between these two models of identity politics gives men a liminal "insider‐ally" position within feminism. Although feminist men are given a tentative authority to speak for the movement, the persistence of woman‐centered understandings of feminism means men's insider status is contested, especially when they dominate feminist spaces, compromise women's sense of safety, and seek leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

INTRODUCTION: In this article we focus on two women's movements, Abortion Rights in Australia and the Iranian women's protests, that have resisted dominant oppressive discourses and systems. These movements have pushed back on the regulation of women's bodies, choice, and reproductive rights, and are demanding social justice against violence, key areas of concern for critical social work (CSW). METHODS: The theoretical lenses of feminist transnationalism and intersectionality will inform critical analysis based on our case studies describing activism on reproductive justice (RJ) and social justice. FINDINGS: Both movements centre women's choice and control over their bodies--in one case, the removal of access to abortion in the USA (United States of America) has incited protests to protect women's reproductive right to choose, and in the other, Iranian women have taken to the streets to demand their rights to gender equality and protest the systematic violence against women and their bodies. Consideration of the contribution of women's activism to social work education is presented. CONCLUSION: While these movements are not equivalent, they demonstrate political and collective activism to fight for women's right to choose. The article concludes with how social movements can help us develop strategies of hope and collective action. The pedagogy of solidarity and community of practice can amplify social work education to both reflect and encourage activism. [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]

There is a long history of small groups of white activists engaging in social movements for racial justice led by Black Indigenous and People of Color in the United States. Yet organized white antiracism has received much less study than white racism. From forging antiracist identities to crafting racial justice organizing strategies, white people's involvement in BIPOC‐led liberation struggles has proven both promising and problematic. This article explores what scholars know about white people's involvement in US‐ based racial justice efforts in order to pose central questions and quandaries for future study. It focuses on white antiracist activism in the United States beginning in the Civil Rights era. During the late 20th century, US‐based racial justice campaigns became fragmented across diverse networks and issue areas making it harder to locate groups of white people collectively aligning with a visible and unified social movement for racial justice. This appears to be shifting. Racial logics and racist regimes have proven themselves eminently flexible, and investigating how white people have tried to join social movements for racial justice illuminates important areas for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rise of climate justice movements worldwide, climate justice concerns are insufficiently addressed in recent U.S. policy, and public understanding is not yet widespread. To explore possible avenues for climate justice communication, this analysis examines U.S. climate activists' recommended target audiences and communication strategies. Drawing on 67 conversational interviews and 112 online surveys with activists, the analysis discusses strategies for engaging two high-priority audiences: (1) social justice advocates who do not see the climate crisis as a justice issue and (2) climate action advocates who do not view climate justice as integral to climate solutions. The analysis also identifies a low-priority audience category of climate justice deniers, or people who—independent of their views on the climate crisis itself—are apathetic to its social justice implications. These results propose a novel audience segmentation for climate justice communication and consolidate activists' recommendations for engaging each audience, thus providing a grounding for further experimental work. [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]

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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]

Intersectionality is core to contemporary feminist rhetorical criticism. It is also a complex concept with great potential for promoting social change by shifting discourses about identity in the public sphere. Therefore, communication scholars have a vested interest in teaching the basics of intersectional criticism to undergraduate and graduate students across the humanities, especially in upper-division undergraduate communication courses that deal with rhetorical criticism, feminist rhetorical theory, women and or gender studies, social movements, critical cultural studies, media studies, or other related topics. I recommend teaching intersectionality as an analytic framework for rhetorical criticism with second-wave feminist music. The unit begins by briefly overviewing the key goals and rhetorical tactics of second-wave feminists. Students then read intersectional criticism of second-wave rhetoric and criticism of rhetorical theory that fails to consider the intersectional experience of identity. The unit culminates with students working in groups to conduct an abbreviated rhetorical criticism of popular music associated with the United States's second wave of feminist movements. The abbreviated rhetorical criticism asks students to analyze the embodied and situated components of musical argumentation. They present their findings to the class in a multimedia presentation that engages many sensorial and rhetorical possibilities, much like music does. Rhetorical Criticism, Feminist Rhetorical Theory, Women/Gender Studies, The Rhetoric of Social Movements, Critical Cultural Studies, Media Studies. In this unit, students will learn how to analyze second-wave feminist rhetoric through an intersectional lens using musical case studies. First, students will study the history of second-wave feminist movements. They will then read about the core tenants of intersectional thinking before exploring how rhetorical critics use intersectionality as an analytic framework. Next, students will engage popular music with feminist messages that emerged during the second wave in an abbreviated rhetorical criticism textured with historical context and focused on embodied experiences of musical appeals. They will present their findings in a multimedia format for their classmates. By the completion of this unit, students should learn to apply intersectional theory to an analysis of a musical rhetorical tactic and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of that tactic. [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.