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"A Racial Reckoning in Industrial Relations: Storytelling as Revolution from Within" is a book that challenges the systemic bias in industrial relations (IR) scholarship and calls for a rethinking of how race is addressed in the field. The collection of essays highlights the contributions of scholars of color that have been historically erased from the IR canon and emphasizes the need to center race and racial oppression in the development of critical IR theory. The book draws inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the racial dynamics in the workplace and advocates for the adoption of theoretical resources from Critical Race Theory (CRT) to reshape IR knowledge. It also emphasizes the importance of narrative strategies and giving voice to marginalized groups in understanding systems of labor relations rooted in sexism and racism. While the collection primarily focuses on US experiences and theorizations, it suggests the need for a broader reckoning in racialized IR landscapes across global, national, and local contexts. Overall, the book provides concrete strategies and ideas for incorporating critical race perspectives into IR research, pedagogical practice, and engagement in labor relations. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of a group of mobilized precarious workers in Tunisia's public sector, the author asks how workers' collective actions are shaped by and, at the same time, can act upon labor unions' responses to them. Findings suggest that unions can enable and simultaneously constrain precarious workers' collective actions. More important, workers learn from their interactions with the union, and this learning process can contribute to innovations in workers' mobilizing structure and repertoire of actions. The Tunisian case contributes to the debate on the relationship between precarious workers and institutionalized actors as well as to the study of mobilized precarious workers by elucidating the ways in which the workers' embedded and innovative agency plays out within and beyond a well-established labor union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The #MeToo movement became an important historical moment around the globe, illuminating the pervasive spectrum of sexual harm. This, however, did not exist without significant backlash, backlash which became one of the defining features of our study with men. We individually interviewed 31 single, heterosexual men about their experiences and understandings of contemporary masculinity, singleness and heterosexuality. During this process, participants talked significantly about the #MeToo movement and women's accounts of sexual violence, with a focus on the implications this might have for men and dating. Using a critical discursive approach, our analysis of men's talk was patterned by three interpretive repertoires: I just don't understand...; You can't do anything anymore!; and She's really only got herself to blame... Our analysis suggests that while #MeToo has succeeded in starting a conversation about sexual violence, work still needs to be done in interrupting traditional victim-blaming discourses, as exemplified though our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement studies clearly suggest that trust matters for processes of social mobilization: When engaging in costly, and potentially risky, contentious collective action on a common goal, activists and groups rely on the expectation that fellow protestors and allies will not fail them. To date, however, we lack research that explains which types of trust shape the emergence and evolution of social movements. Trust, we argue, is not simply an independent variable influencing mobilization, but is itself shaped—built, stabilized, weakened, or even destroyed—over the course of collective contentious action. To set the stage for a corresponding research agenda, this introduction to the special issue "Trust and Social Movements" bridges the gap between research on trust and social movement studies and clarifies the complex conceptual relationship between various types of trust and the dynamics of social mobilization. Furthermore, we identify overarching research questions, summarize the contributions to the special issue, and discuss key findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust, the belief that others will fulfill their expected obligations, is of vital importance to social movements. While most research focuses on how trust facilitates protests, this article examines how high-risk activism participants deploy various relational tactics to reduce uncertainties and risks. With an in-depth case study of Hong Kong's protest movement in 2019–2020, this article finds anonymity, preexisting ties, and bonding are the three common responses. Across various interpersonal settings, participants strategize personal trust or minimize their risk exposure, finding ways to collaborate with strangers or acquaintances. Trust is more than a preexisting resource; it can also be created during movement mobilization. Trust enables protest participation, and it also aids in logistics provisioning, as well as sheltering and aftercare of activists. Finally, government repression has worked in part because it aims to undermine the trust networks built up during the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the relation between interpersonal trust, repression, mobilization, and demobilization in authoritarian regimes. Does interpersonal trust impact mobilization in authoritarian regimes? Does an authoritarian regime's strategies of repression and cooptation fuel distrust among movement actors and consequently lead to demobilization? Through relying on qualitative analysis in Egypt in the aftermath of the January 2011 uprising, I argue that interpersonal trust plays a significant role in the mobilization process of opposition movements. Yet, when movement members' interpersonal trust levels and mobilizational capacities are high, authoritarian regimes utilize excessive repressive strategies to fragment and demobilize them. However, repression is not the only strategy utilized by regimes to demobilize the opposition. Other strategies, mainly cooptation and movement infiltration, are used by authoritarian regimes to fuel distrust among opposition movement actors and between movement actors and the citizens at large. These three strategies add to opposition movement's fragmentation and demobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining agonistic pluralism and social movements literature with trust studies, I propose a conceptualization for how the organizational dilemma is tackled in social movements. Defined as a trust-building organizational learning process, I show the role-played by social trust—meaning, the construction of the relational boundaries of a shared goal without diluting the heterogeneity of self-identities and interests—as an organizational prerequisite for democratic organization of a political group. Empirically, I identify four alternative pathways to the (democratic) organizational dilemma: innovation through new organizational models; repetition of past experiences; reformulation of practices; and emulation of previous organizational models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists – and social scientists more broadly – have often resorted to 'public sociology' and 'activist research' (AvR) with the aim of producing useful knowledge for the common good and also supporting emancipatory social movements and progressive policies. I define AvR here as collective processes of cooperation between academic researchers and non-academics in order to benefit the latter. This approach bridges theory and practice in ways that enhance the consistency and legitimacy of sociology as an engaged science. Recent debates on public sociology, however, have overlooked the central role of AvR. To reverse this relative omission, I suggest a clear typology of AvR processes and practices that have been used and hold the potential to advance public sociology. I also contend that in contrast to views of AvR as a clearly demarcated method, it encompasses multiple research, collaborative and action techniques so that it may be better conceived of as a 'methodological toolbox'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As political theorists explore work beyond traditional workplaces, how should we understand the vast class of insecure, informal, and unsalaried workers whose existence defies traditional categories of employment? In asking this question, I revisit the political theory of the Marxist feminist and cofounder of the International Wages for Housework movement, Selma James, to explore her "internationalism of the unwaged" and her writings on wagelessness. An example of political theory in service of struggle, James's internationalism was widely circulated in anticolonial, Black radical, and autonomous Marxist circles in the 1970s. In this article, I argue that it was grounded in three intertwined and mutually reinforcing arguments: an account of how capitalist life is spatially divided into distinct workplaces; an anticapitalist theory of identity that explains social difference as maintained by the international division of labor and labor market hierarchies; and a diagnosis of work organization viewed from the perspective of the wageless worker. I trace how James developed these arguments about the spatial division of labor, hierarchies of identity, and internationalist political struggle and how her view of the common exploitation and division of workers formed the basis of a class-struggle identity politics. Her political theory was an important contribution to women's international thought and transnational feminist critiques of global forms of domination and exploitation. It also offers a critique of capitalism's organization of the displacement of work and workers and an account of wagelessness as a work situation, both of which illuminate capitalist organization of work and wageless life today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the lack of sufficient non-governmental prisoner re-entry services in the Czech Republic, many post-release activities are provided by faith-based organizations (FBOs). However, the Czech Republic is considered to be one of the most atheistic countries in the world. Most of the Czech population is at least apathetic toward organized religion. This study examines how re-entry FBOs present Christianity to the public in the religiously indifferent Czech Republic. The primary focus is on how the organizations present themselves to the public. We employ qualitative content analysis examining names, logos, mission statements, and other documents of 14 re-entry FBOs. The analysis reveals four general themes within the organizations' public presentations: Ambiguity when expressing religious topics, Christianity as an offer, Christianity as a form of social movement (self-legitimization), and Christianity as a pro-social lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a distinctive strategic model (Strategic Confrontational and Collaborative Interaction Model [SCCIM]) for nonprofit organizations acting within the business ecosystem. The SCCIM maps both confrontational and collaborative strategies and tactics, thus accommodating the extensive range of nonprofit interaction alternatives toward business. Whereas confrontational and collaborative methods are well researched in the nonprofit-political realm, a comprehensive overview of these nonprofit strategies in the economic sphere is currently lacking. This research builds on both the business management and social movement literature, extending existing approaches via case analysis with a nonprofit-centric perspective, leveraging stakeholder theory. The resulting encompassing model provides a theoretical framework that may generate alternative insights for further academic research in nonprofit–business interaction. In addition, the SCCIM may be leveraged as a tool for practitioners: first, to enhance nonprofits' strategies and tactics toward business, and second, to optimize the impact of the chosen interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban studies and planning literatures largely conceive of community organizations as either clients of neoliberal regimes or the advocates of marginalized communities. Whereas the first emphasizes structural constraints, the latter focuses on the conditions that permit organizations to exercise agency in planning arenas. This theoretical paper suggests that both frameworks reveal important mechanisms but belie the contradictory pressures facing community organizations. We turn to organizational and social movement literatures to argue that community organizations face two competing forces stemming from resource needs. First, they need money to maintain a staff and finance basic operations. As these are nonprofit organizations, money typically comes from external private and public grants. Second, for communities to support organizations and delegate them representative functions, the organizations need to be considered legitimate by the community. Though community organizations need both money and legitimacy, these resources conflict with one another. Too much dependency on external funders can undercut an organization's legitimacy to represent community interests in an autonomous and unconflicted way. Too much autonomy from external funders can enhance the legitimacy of organizations, but it can also result in financial destitution. Thus, rather than conceive of community organizations as structural puppets or the voice of the people, we suggest that most are positioned in a contradictory field that pulls them in conflicting directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an ethnography developed with social movements derived from the eviction process of an old popular district in the city of São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil, we analyze how an idea of neighborship is applied to the processes of struggle and their outcomes. In 2004, a land of over 1,000,000 m2, owned by a bankrupt industry, was occupied by an entire district of over 5,000 people. This "illegal" occupation had been going on for almost 8 years when a court decision ordered the land to be vacated. The case of the Pinheirinho dos Palmares neighborhood, as it was known, became an emblematic example of Brazilian housing policies, with its violent eviction drawing the entire country's attention. This article deals with the struggles that the evicted residents started and that resulted, at the end of almost 5 years, in the construction of a new district by the state, based on a new housing program. We are going to analyze how concerns about organizing the new neighborship from the old neighborhood relations were fundamental in the geographical and architectural production of the new district. The article seeks to intertwine the notions of resistance and neighborship, responsible for the new configuration of the district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is written in the wake of Guatemala's thirty-six-year civil war, grounded in the Cold War–Doctrine of National Security which understood Indigenous people as "internal enemy." People who joined social movements were also seeking security: bodily integrity, land, a living wage. For Indigenous people, it was security to be who they are: speaking their languages, practicing their spirituality and lifeways. Before, during, and after the war, hydroelectric projects have been identified with security, given their promises of light and progress. I explore how "scripts" like Race, The State, Citizenship, and The Plantation are inscribed into such objects and how obdurate such prescriptions are. Yet Akrich says that users may define quite different roles of their own. If this happens the objects remain a chimera (p. 208). Through several moments over the last seventy years in Guatemala, I show how various forms of "security"—bodily, communal, productive, national, and financial—are at stake and how hydroelectrics are always under contestation, always chimera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Wang Ruqi's contribution to the drafting of the 1950 Marriage Law, the first codified law promulgated by the People's Republic of China (PRC). It argues that Wang—who had been a legal specialist and a female political activist dating back to the 1930s and 1940s—was the actual author of the law's first draft. In rehabilitating Wang's long-forgotten contribution to the making of the Marriage Law, this study highlights that, first of all, lawmaking in the early years of the PRC was characterized by legal "professionalism," rather than the "vernacularism" that scholars in recent years have tended to ascribe to this period. Second, Wang was an exemplary figure of a new breed of "state feminists" in the PRC, which we term "state-legal feminists." State-legal feminists, like state feminists in general, were brought into the PRC state apparatus and took advantage of their role in the state to advance sociopolitical agendas. However, they differed from their fellow state feminists because they firmly believed that the state's will and intent could be best articulated and exercised through codified laws and legal institutions. The making of the Marriage Law thus exemplifies the state-legal feminist approach insofar as it resorted to a codified law to push for the political agendas of women's emancipation and restructuring families in China. While recent scholarship highlights the politicization of the law in the 1953 campaign to promote the Marriage Law, this study inverts this by addressing the legalization of political and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates residents' pro-environmental behavior from the unique perspective of government-resident interactions. Guided by social movement theory, how local governments regulate residents' waste-sorting behavior in Chinese rural tourism destinations is assessed. This longitudinal study (lasting from 2016 to 2022) uses participant observation, in-depth interviews (N = 25), and secondary data as the key research techniques. The dual roles of local governments (i.e., resource mobilization and power redistribution) jointly shape residents' pro-environmental behavior in the waste-sorting campaign. Resource mobilization enhances knowledge of waste-sorting and raises individuals' environmental consciousness. Power redistribution within groups activates social networks in rural communities and changes groups' social capital to influence residents' collective behavior. Results are discussed in relation to how the organizational-level resource mobilization and power redistribution influence the individual-level environmental psychological and sociological factors in shaping residents' waste-sorting behavior. Practical recommendations are offered for sustainable tourism management from a social interaction perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to conduct a spatial reading of civil resistance movements taking Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) #FeeMustFall in India as the case study. Amidst the penetration of neoliberal politics in public goods like health and education, the pay-per-user principle is not limited to the argument of efficiency of allocation of resources. It can be comprehended as the larger strategy of the ruling dispensation to deplatform dissent and homogenise state space on an ideological singularity catering to majoritarian and hegemonic nationalism. The paper shall focus on the spatial reading of civil resistance movements using Lefebvre’s characterisation of state space and Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony and nationalism in the context of JNU’s #FeeMustFall movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social movements suggests that when protesters use violence, public opinion often turns against them, unless the observers already view the protesters as extremists. This creates what we refer to as an "asymmetric liability," where by moderate protest movements are held to a higher standard of civility than more extreme ones. Based on a survey experiment surrounding the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, we show that violence undercuts Chinese public sympathy when movements are framed around rights-based agendas but has little impact when protesters are portrayed as separatists. Pairing our survey results alongside media trends offers suggestive evidence that mainland respondents became less sympathetic to anti-government protesters and slightly less sensitive to protest violence as state media began depicting protesters as radical separatists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We take a process perspective to review the literature on corporate responses to social activism and argue that theoretical advances have not kept pace with the extensive and expanding scope of the literature. We identify three critical assumptions in the literature, which we believe can be traced back to two overarching issues: a mechanistic conceptualization that ascribes limited reflexivity to managers and an overreliance on variance theorizing. In order to tackle these challenges and propel future research, we suggest a research agenda that revolves around an enhanced role for managerial reflexivity in theory development and a stronger emphasis on the process-oriented view of the relationship between activism and response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variation in neighborhood problem-solving? We argue that collective action infrastructure —place-based connections, organizations, knowledge, and practices formed while organizing—can reduce the costs of local collective action, even in communities without preexisting social and civic organizations. We adapt theories from the social movements literature about mobilizing structures and personal networks to the neighborhood context and propose that, even absent preexisting structures, an initial act of organizing in the face of a salient problem can itself facilitate future organizing. In contrast to expectations that local organizations will disband quickly upon achieving their initial goal, we argue that, because neighborhood problem-solving involves fixed costs and overlapping constituencies, local organizing infrastructure is often repurposable across issue areas. Observational data, a natural experiment, and a survey experiment from an online survey of residents across Mexico City demonstrate these downstream effects of organizing, even across unrelated issues. [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]

The confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd in America and a global Black Lives Matter response triggered anew the global struggle for racial justice. Using cyber, remote, and in-person ethnographic methods, this paper explores racial identity, allyship and processes of becoming during the spring and summer of 2020. Building on theories of 'the struggle for recognition', I situate becoming within the interplay of what I call epistemic, affective and reciprocal authenticity. Within this project, I address identity, redistribution and the reconfiguration of conceptual distinctions between justice and dignity. The analysis reflects a time of racial tension in a provincial Northeastern town in England, UK – a predominantly white and marginalised location. I amplify the personal testimonies, conversations and written words of three quite different activists to highlight the nuanced refractions of lived experience and a developing antiracism. These collaborators reveal how their antiracist becomings, in the light of 2020 events, incorporate affective, epistemic and reciprocal authenticities that bring to the fore new potentialities for racial justice, white allyship and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an alternative vision of public sociology. Whereas public sociology is often defined through the actions of professional sociologists, this article calls for a recognition of reverse tutelage in public sociology. Here, publics are seen as sociological interlocutors who can, and often do, produce sociological theories and analyses that can inform professional sociology. I demonstrate this reverse tutelage by focusing on anticolonial and anti-racist social movements, including the Zapatistas, Black Lives Matter, Palestine Action, and Cops Are Flops. I highlight how they produce sociological theories of power, neoliberalism, race, bordering, and violence that can orient professional sociology toward relational forms of analysis that build connections between different sites of resistance. In doing so, I highlight how the boundary between what Burawoy terms "professional" and "critical" sociology is much more porous than initially theorized and that critical sociology—from wider publics—can significantly shape professional sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management and organization studies (MOS) scholars have recently brought attention to the lack of engagement with social equity and justice in tackling grand challenges. We argue that environmental justice (EJ) can deepen MOS' engagement with social equity in addressing grand challenges, particularly climate change. Through a bibliometric analysis and qualitative review, we explore scholarly communities within EJ literature and draw connections to MOS research. We develop three bridges between EJ and MOS scholarship: (a) investigating organizational roles and processes in distributing environmental benefits and burdens within socioecological systems, (b) situating the firm within structural and historical contexts that create and perpetuate environmental injustices, and (c) prioritizing the goals, perspectives, and agency of activists and neglected voices within environmental conflicts and solutions. Ultimately, this review aims to build meaningful pathways to embed EJ in MOS research on grand challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A US experiment (n = 1506) demonstrated how a new approach to writing protest stories challenges press patterns in the United States of underrepresented groups. News stories that explain the goals and background of a protest—a concept called legitimizing—and that humanize—rather than criminalize—a person whose death sparked a protest led news audiences to better understand the protest and those involved in the social movement. We also found that those with conservative political beliefs perceived these stories as less credible than those written following journalistic norms typical in the United States that tend to cast protesters and their causes in a negative light, although the opposite was true for those with liberal views. Results are discussed in relation to the protest paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue brings theoretically driven analyses to bear on the COVID-19 pandemic, a development which shines a singularly revealing light on some of the most significant political, cultural, and social trends of the 21st century. Leading off with three explicitly theoretical treatments of the pandemic, this issue directs several complementary lenses at the early stages of the pandemic as it unfolded in the US and Europe. The initial contributions grapple explicitly with the ways in which social conflicts, social solidarities, and social traumas have been refracted—and in many cases magnified—by the pandemic in terms of cultures and forms of communication. The focus then shifts to how pandemic risk governance during the pandemic operates in different levels and domains of the social architecture as conceptualized in theoretical treatments of social actorhood pioneered by James Coleman. In the second part of the issue, the theme of politics takes center stage. The upsurge of politically distinctive protests in the United States related to pandemic restrictions—as well as social and racial inequalities rendered visible by the pandemic—is the subject of the first piece. The final article explores the historical specificity of the many popular mobilizations in relation to the pandemic across the globe and across the political spectrum. In this article, we see how the popular mobilizations vary not only in terms of their political orientation, but in their general orientation toward information and authority—increasingly crucial issues in a world facing a trust deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scholars express concern for the continued resilience of democracy in the face of multiple crises. In times of crisis, social movements articulate grievances and make demands of political leaders and policymakers. In contrast to the wave of pro-democracy movements following the 2008 global financial crash where protesters demanded accountability from elites, mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic has defied expectations in several key ways. First, the expectation for protesters to mobilize primarily online in the face of the restrictions and risk associated with large gatherings has not been upheld. Instead, we have witnessed widespread "offline" mass protests. Second, despite high mortality rates and significant disparities in the effectiveness of national public health responses, we have not witnessed widespread mobilizations demanding governments do better to protect citizens from the virus. Instead, we have seen two radically different responses: At one extreme, veterans of "pro-democracy" movements have "pivoted," using their skills and experience to either make up for weak government responses to COVID-19 (Hong Kong) or to reinforce government efforts to contain it (Taiwan). At the other extreme, "antidemocratic" and predominantly far right-wing movements have mobilized against public health measures, circulating COVID negationist and conspiracy messages. Indeed, the political weaponization of disinformation has been a notable feature of pandemic mobilization. I analyze these contrasting trends, highlighting the challenges they pose for the effective handling of the pandemic, and their broader implications for democratic legitimacy and resilience. In so doing, I call attention to the ways that mobilization during the pandemic challenges scholars to revisit some of our assumptions about the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and how they can foster or erode democracy. The analysis also suggests that scholars analyzing the impact of information disorders on democracy need to pay careful attention to offline protest as well as online transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how a global health crisis affects the causes and consequences of social movements. Drawing on media coverage, press releases, emails, and other available primary data sources, we examine how the pandemic changed the opportunities and conditions for activists on the right and left and those they challenge. We begin by considering the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the concomitant government response, which alters the structure of political opportunities activists face. We then look at the development of a range of protest campaigns that have emerged in response, assessing changes in opportunities for activists to reach and mobilize target constituencies, the construction of grievances, nature of alliances, as well as innovation in tactics and organization. Finally, we consider the potential outcomes of these protests during the pandemic and extending afterward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article analyses Polish underground publishing during the late Cold War using the NOW-a publishing house as an example. The innovation of my approach lies in an attempt to bring closer Western and Eastern studies on various aspects of resistance. The subject of Polish resistance has already been studied, but more can be done with reference to the concept of everyday resistance. Protest sites are examined in this article in relation to the question of how urban and rural geography can play a role in bringing a movement together. The contribution revives Charles Tilly's concepts to study Polish resistance and to see historical developments from a social movement perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the different meanings behind the narratives of "family," "childcare," and "child protection" in public discourses against the National Strategy for the Child (NSC) 2019–2030 in Bulgaria. These meanings are seen as reflecting the intertwining and cumulative effects of transnational and local influences in the anti-gender movement. Using frame analysis as an approach in social movement studies, the aim is to analyse the main ideas of NSC opponents—conservative far-right non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and citizens who joined the discussion during the public debate on the Strategy in January 2019. We differentiate between the discourses of the NGOs and the critical citizens, paying attention to the way they use the narrative of return—return to traditional family forms and child-rearing models. The conservative NGOs declared themselves to be defenders of Bulgarian children and families against the liberal policies of the European Union (EU) and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) lobbies. The citizens' discourse is directed against the child-centred philosophy of the Strategy, seen as a threat to both the children themselves and parents' rights, but it rarely mentions LGBT and gendering as a danger. The discussion revealed the deep distrust of citizens and parents towards the state and its institutions, which was amplified and instrumentalized by the far-right NGOs who mobilized and organized a mass social movement against the Strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do states protect minority rights in a context of domestic resistance? Recent decades have seen rapid divergence on LGBT rights worldwide, with Africa presented as "norms antipreneur" in the face of international pressure. Yet, in 1996, South Africa was the first country in the world to provide constitutional protection on grounds of sexual orientation. This article develops an original theory on LGBT rights protection using a conflict-to-rights framework. Employing process tracing, elite interviews and archival sources, I show how a situation of insurgency allows LGBT activists to build networks and increase egalitarian attitudes to attain in-group status. Continued violence also works to block public participation in policy-making while dividing opposition forces, allowing a tiny group of activists to effectively lobby for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group identification has been proven to be one of the best predictors of social protest, as it seems to influence the relationship between mobilization and radicalism, an issue that has scarcely been researched to date. The purpose of this study, within the framework of the new dynamics of proactive mobilization, is to analyse the mediating role of group identification in the intention of radicalism, comparing social movements with a power orientation (political) and with a cultural orientation (ecofeminisms). Causal models were used to evaluate the mediating role of group identification in the relationship between social participation and radicalism in 920 participants from the general population. We found the existence of two action models in the relationship between participation and radicalism. In the case of political participation, the direct effects between the two variables are higher. However, in the case of ecofeminisms, the indirect effects are higher via self-categorization with the group. Group identification appears as a mediating variable in radicalization processes, especially in movements with a cultural orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the uptick in awareness of racial and other sociocultural diversity owing to recent social movements particularly in the United States but also in many countries in Europe, deep understanding of identity and bias is lacking and remedies for policy and practice inequities in the education sector remain. Steadily increasing racial and linguistic heterogeneity demands better understanding on the part of school leaders—and the larger school staff—to redress inequity and improve schooling for all students. This study utilized in-depth interviews to gather secondary school leaders' perspectives on, and level of engagement with, diversity in Fribourg, Switzerland. Findings revealed that school leaders are, overall, inadequately prepared to tackle difficult, identity-charged conversations or to confront their own positionality and subjectivity vis-à-vis newcomer students. Recommendations are made for aspiring and current school leaders to become active by practicing diversity-engaged leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional athletes increasingly use their popularity to speak out about political topics off and on the field. However, only few studies explore how audiences react to political speech in elite sports. Existing research has tended to focus on very few high-profile cases, usually in the United States, such as Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest. Going beyond single cases, this paper investigates factors that systematically influence public support for elite athletes' political activism. We integrated a vignette experiment into a survey of the German population (N = 1002). Using multi-level regression models, we analyze how public support for athlete's political acts varies with political topics, the specific political action carried out as well as the local reference of the issue in question. Moreover, we also compare the level of public support for political actions between athletes and non-athlete celebrities. Findings indicate that support is subject to conditions: Athletes receive more support when their critique refers to political topics abroad (as opposed to domestic topics) and when non-disruptive actions are chosen, for example, expressions of opinion instead of boycotts. The specific message has the strongest influence on support: actions and statements that express a progressive political claim for stricter environmental protection receive more support compared to a rather conservative claim for border security. Findings add to the state of knowledge by showing which forms of political activism meet with broad acceptance and which are likely to polarize audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of queer activism on the labor movement, particularly in relation to LGBTQ+ workers. It highlights the challenges faced by queer workers, such as low wages, harassment, and difficulty addressing grievances, and how they are turning to unions for support. The article emphasizes the importance of intersectionality and the specific challenges faced by queer workers of color and trans workers. It also addresses the impact of difficult working conditions on LGBTQ+ individuals, including their likelihood of turning to informal economies. The Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated economic disparities for LGBTQ+ workers. The article concludes by noting recent advancements in workplace anti-discrimination legislation in the United States and the support of labor organizations for these rights. However, there is concern that these rights could be undermined by employers' religious freedom, and anti-LGBTQ+ organizations have successfully passed laws that roll back queer rights. Queer self-organizing networks within labor have emerged, advocating for anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies and greater recognition of queer issues within unions. Building alliances and coalitions between organized labor and LGBTQ+ justice movements is seen as crucial for achieving economic and sexual justice. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the relationship between organized labor and the climate movement in the United States. It highlights the breakthrough that occurred during the 2023 auto workers strike, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) endorsed the transition to climate-safe cars and trucks. The article explores the concept of "climate alienation," where workers contribute to climate destruction through their labor, and how this has influenced labor's reluctance to support climate protection measures. It also discusses the emergence of a labor-climate movement that aims to challenge the "jobs vs. climate" frame and promote a just transition to a more sustainable economy. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of labor's support for climate protection and the potential for unions to propose plans for climate-safe production that increase worker power and address inequalities. [Extracted from the article]

Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing deliberative democratic values. However, this raises two important questions: (1) what actions should count as deliberation and (2) whether we should demand more from activists than merely provoking or encouraging deliberation in a society. Building on current research on activists' actual engagement with deliberation, we argue that the standard of taking a "deliberative stance" (being respectful, sincere, and public-minded) is a good starting point for addressing both questions. By taking a deliberative stance, movements benefit from deliberation themselves and contribute to deliberative systems. However, we should also acknowledge that forms of deliberation change, and discovering new forms is a crucial part of what movements do for democracy. We propose to adopt a principle we call "reflective inclusion," which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our understanding of what deliberation may look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates a route to occupational activism whereby individuals with significant experience in a social movement enter organizational positions that have been established to address those same movement's concerns. Utilizing data on the career pathways of 800 individuals from the field of sustainability in higher education, we formulate and test hypotheses related to whether or not individuals with more experience in the environmental movement gain access to sustainability manager positions, and whether or not entry patterns change as the roles become more institutionalized. These questions matter because although movements pressure organizations to address issues such as equality, diversity, and sustainability, it is individuals inside organizations who are best positioned to institutionalize movement-aligned practices and policies. And if those individuals have movement backgrounds, they can be carriers of movement praxis and ideals. Through our analyses, we find that although individuals with more experience in the environmental movement have a higher likelihood of entering sustainability manager positions overall, their advantage diminishes as the positions become institutionalized as formalized organizational roles. Our findings contribute to scholarship on occupational activism and in particular to outstanding questions regarding the role of occupations and occupational members in furthering social movement ideals and initiatives inside organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the adoption of digital media platforms affect the success of environmental movements? We address this question by using a representative sample of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) from Hong Kong and examining the linkages between their digital media adoption and reach and their level of success. Guided by the agenda setting theory, we test whether the digital strategies are related to the shifts in the media and government agenda from 2007-2018. Our findings show that the adoption of digital media contributes to ENGOs' own media visibility and specific issue salience in the news media agenda, and that the extent of digital reach of ENGOs is also associated with ENGOs' visibility in the news media. Furthermore, although we find no direct relationships between the digital adoption and the government agenda, we argue that the legislative processes on biodiversity and green energy issues in Hong Kong suggest a pattern of mutually reinforcing interactions between the media agenda and the policy agenda. It is therefore likely that digital strategies contribute to policy changes indirectly, that is, by increasing issue salience in the local news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on Della Porta's work on social movement events, critical junctures, and legacies, this article studies the discursive practices, emotions and networks of the instant 48-hour mobilizations of the anti-European Super League (ESL) movement in English football in April 2021. In doing so, we show how this case reveals a new generation of conflict between the different supporter demographic and corporate constituencies that characterize elite football in England, and their politicized temporal structures. Showing how social movement 'legacy' operates as a multifaceted concept of power and time, we argue that the 'puzzling out' of a new post-ESL regulatory regime in football reveals the tensions between what are considered legitimate, and illegitimate, practices, which characterize the moral economy of the contemporary English football crowd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rights often fall short of challenging oppression because they are enmeshed with conservative institutions, such as the law and the state. Despite these shortcomings, grassroots organisations contesting border regimes in Berlin often make use of human rights in their everyday mobilisation. They engage in autonomous forms of mobilisation outside the state and construct non-legal notions of human rights that are emancipatory for racialised migrants. However, these same organisations also address demands to state authorities by using legal notions of human rights. In this article, I draw on the framework focusing on abolition and non-reformist reforms, which have been developed by activists and scholars in their resistance to policing and the Prison-Industrial Complex. I innovatively extend its use to propose a nuanced understanding of grassroots approaches to human rights. Specifically, I argue that these approaches entail the concurrent pursuit of short-term reformist reforms and border abolition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that the religious governance in Croatia was shaped by the specific position that was given to the Catholic Church in Croatia as the historical and moral guardian of the Croatian people. We describe how the fusion of religious and national identity occurred and how it was connected to the relationship between the Catholic Church and the political party that governed Croatia in the 1990s, as well as the relationship between the state and minority religious communities. The article also deals with the issue of whether religious nationalism, which is very strong at the levels of society and national self-consciousness, played any role in the governance of religious diversity and how it has influenced social movements that have reconfigured mutual recognition of different religious communities in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the "protest paradigm" have long explored how a society's mass media system frames the social movements occurring within that society. This study adopts a social movement diffusion perspective to sharpen the transborder dimension of the protest paradigm. Specifically, we introduce the concept of the "diffusion-proofing" protest paradigm, given that an understudied and undertheorized function of the protest paradigm is the prevention of the import of exogenous social movements. Taking the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as an example, we investigate how mainland China's mass media acted to prevent movement diffusion. Four transborder components of the diffusion-proofing protest paradigm are proposed: reactions, attributions, consequences, and solutions. Through content analysis, we argue that by highlighting these transborder components, China's newspapers attributed the movement's rise to foreign intervention, emphasized the movement's negative effects on both Hong Kong and mainland China, and revealed the uncompromising nature of China's reaction and the urgency of cross-border cooperation for containing the movement and its diffusion. Further, we identify two modes of reporting: a mainly descriptive mode that relied on a local framework to depict the movement and its local context and an evaluative mode that emphasized the level of deviance and foreign intervention, thus amplifying the movement's transborder effects and the need to prevent its diffusion. Notably, the level of deviance acts as a mediating channel between the two modes, transforming the local framework into a transborder one. The diffusion-proofing protest paradigm is also found to vary across media types and periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperatives, post-growth organizations, common good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns or ecovillages are examples of alternative forms of organizing economic exchange. Their social practices embody and reproduce alternative moral values to the ones dominating the economy and society. They are regarded as prefigurative: They prefigure an alternative economy, both by creating imaginaries of an alternative future and by showing their viability in their everyday practices. As such, they are important actors for a social transformation of the economy which is also reflected in an increasing scholarship on alternative organizing and prefiguration in organization studies. However, the meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative organizing in this literature is not always made explicit and differs across research work. Furthermore, how prefigurative organizing relates to alternative organizing remains rather vague, as does its close relationship to anarchism. In its first part, this paper therefore informs about the main use of the concept of prefiguration in social movement studies and organization studies and describes the various meanings attached to it in this literature. It then develops a definition of prefigurative organizing that not only allows to differentiate it from alternative organizing but also to reflect its inherently political nature—its intricate linkage to multiple struggles, tensions, and conflicts. In the second part, the paper presents a systematic overview of various types of struggles around prefigurative organizing and briefly introduces each of them with reference to exemplary research. Finally, the paper argues that studying prefigurative organizing involves an alternative praxis in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The resource mobilization (RM) theory has long discovered the significance of money for protests; yet can this insight be applied to nowadays' decentralized movements, characterized by the absence of organizational leadership and more creative and spontaneous participation from below? While the RM perspective is anchored in a political economy of organizational fundraising, it is time to bring in Viviana Zelizer's economic sociology to understand how participants utilize the role of donors, consumers, savers, and investors for the movement purpose. Focusing on Hong Kong's prodemocracy movement, this article theorizes the full panoply of 'monetary mobilization' to revise RM's narrow conception. By offering a safer and anonymous channel of expression, monetary mobilization emerges as a substitute for in-person participation for risk-averse citizens with financial means. Money is always loaded with symbolic meanings and ethical considerations so that it also functions as a vehicle of the moral outrage and utopian aspirations. Participants are keen to establish a proper relationship between sponsors and beneficiaries by exercising diligent oversight to prevent its corruption. Contrary to the instrumentalist conception, money is per se not a fully fungible and all-purpose resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the mutually constitutive nature of activism and family life in the context of a high-risk protest movement, by focusing on the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews with individuals who participated in the 2019 Movement, this article captures how politics penetrated individuals' private lives through everyday family practices, and depicts the ways in which the protest movement undermined or fostered family cohesion. The findings illustrate the heterogeneity of family political interactions during political upheaval: while families were often sites of conflict and repression, which amplified political dissonance and reinforced hegemonic power relations within the domestic sphere, they could also become spaces of activism where individuals exchange political ideas and muster resources for collective actions. This study bridges the literature of family and social movement, by demonstrating how family lives and political participation are interwoven, and simultaneously structure protest participants' biographical and social movement trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do the media cover far-right protests? News coverage matters for the entrenchment of the far right in contemporary democracies, but little comparative research has looked at what drives news attention to far-right mobilization. We apply a classic input–output process model of news selection bias to test the hypothesis that the visibility of far-right protests events depends on the characteristics of protest initiators, type of action, and reactions. We appraise this via logistic regressions on an original dataset of 5972 protest events retrieved from online press releases by far-right groups (input) and national quality newspapers (output) in 11 European countries (2008–2018). The analysis confirms that news media are particularly responsive to contentious action, protest around migration issues, and action–reaction chains between political opponents. Our findings shed light on the role of news organizations in the success of the far-right and on the pathways by which these movements shape public agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study offers an outlook on the current situation of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the field of harm reduction in Mexico. Analyzing Mexican harm reduction civil society organizations (HRCSOs) is necessary for three reasons: because they have historically represented a sensible alternative to drug policy proposals that emanate from the logic of the State; because they have the organizational and cognitive potential and the legitimacy to protect illicit substance users (with or without problematic use) from the risks and harms that drug policies may pose to this population; and because they are in a crisis that not only threatens the viability of their healthcare projects aimed at vulnerable populations but also, potentially, their own existence. The present article seeks to answer two questions—one descriptive and one explanatory: (a) What are the characteristics of Mexican CSOs that work in the field of harm reduction? (b) How do these organizations operate in a complex and dangerous environment? To answer these questions, the study uses data on the organizations' structures and dynamics that were obtained through 20 semistructured interviews that were conducted with members of these organizations. The article describes HRCSOs on three levels: (a) the individual that establishes a radical habitus and acquires the identity of a harm reduction activist through identity construction; (b) the collective of activists that, through the creation of trust, becomes an HRCSO with its structures, programs, and resources; and (c) the harm reduction social movement that, through cooperation and conflict, becomes a field of activism. The study seeks to have two contributions to literature: (a) providing a preliminary mapping of the anatomy of HRCSOs and the field in which they operate; and (b) sensitizing society and decision-makers on the transcendence of these organizations for social and political life. [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]