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Using ethnographic research from Pakistan, this paper argues that social accountability programmes that overlook the role of intermediaries in clientelistic states risk undermining the wider democratising projects they seek to support. It proposes a theory of 'isomorphic activism' that describes how these public authorities appropriate others' opportunities to participate in politics and, in the process, undermine democratic norms. Isomorphic activism is shown to be more likely when programmes are based on ideals of civil society that render activism a technical exercise, depoliticise it and blind donors to power inequalities. The challenges the paper highlights are important given calls for development programmes to change by whom and how politics is done, whilst granting local ownership to participants and demonstrating value for money. They should also be of interest to those concerned by the spread of reductive views of civil society activism within donor organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores 'near‐peer' gender and sexuality workshops taking place in UK secondary schools in support of the nationally required relationships and sex education curriculum. In line with UK law, these workshops promote respect, kindness and communication in a framework that explicitly validates LGBTQI+ identities, relationships and family structures. Based on interviews with 24 gender workshop facilitators, we explore the kind of practices that are needed to create spaces in which young people can openly reflect on their views about gender and sexuality, and advance the above‐noted goals of promoting respect, kindness and empathy for people of all genders and sexualities. We argue that gender workshops constitute an important and under‐explored space of 'everyday' activism. We further argue that through practices of atmosphere curation and the near‐peer relational dynamic between facilitators and participants, these workshops create valuable spaces for young people to critically reflect on their views and attitudes about gender and sexuality in a way that does not exist elsewhere. This work extends understanding about the kinds of spatial practices that might be needed to bring forth more positive gender cultures, and deepens our understanding about the experiences and functioning of 'everyday' work for social change that takes place outside of 'high profile' activist sites such as marches, demonstrations and protests. This paper explores gender and sexuality workshops given in secondary schools in the UK as spaces of everyday gender activism. We argue that through atmosphere curation and the near‐peer relation these workshops create space for young people to explore and examine their views on sex and gender that do not exist elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper foregrounds the centrality of reproductive politics in constituting the spaces of migrant activism. Addressing social reproductive issues as racial issues, it exposes how "premature death" and questions of survival shape migrants' lives throughout the uneven geographies of racial capitalism. Drawing on the political experiences of the "No Evictions Network"—a migrant and activist‐led group campaigning for asylum seekers' rights in Glasgow (Scotland)—the paper suggests the concept of "political reproduction", grasping the interchange between care, trust, empowerment, political subjectivation, and the overcoming of barriers towards political action that take place within spaces of migrant activism. Building upon migrant voices and Black and Brown histories of organising, the paper explores the racialised, gendered, and classed character of reproductive activist labour in these spaces, evidencing the ways the notion of "political reproduction" breaks racialised and gendered constructions of political work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of our theories and models within social psychology implicitly refer to 'types' or subgroups of people who engage in collective action (activists, protestors), or do not (sympathisers, bystanders). Other frameworks differentiate between actors based on their adoption of tactics (benevolents, activists, radicals). How, empirically, do we distinguish sympathisers from activists? Activists from radicals? This paper describes recent research that adopts person‐centred statistical approaches (e.g., latent profile analysis, latent transition analysis, latent growth mixture models) to address three contemporary puzzles of collective action research. We present research showing that the methods are useful in identifying and explaining sub‐groups of people who seek to bring about change in qualitatively different ways. The methods are also useful for understanding volatility in collective action as well as identifying and understanding variation in how people sustain, increase, or diminish their commitment over time. There is nothing so practical as a good method and person‐centred statistical approaches are an important complement to variable‐centred approaches in social psychological research on collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A description of partnership between a school of psychology and a human rights organization that offers asylum services is used as a basis for probing the ethical complexity of activism. "Doing good" is complicated by the insertion of asylum evaluation services into the reductionist and metrics‐based evaluative mechanisms utilized in conventional psychological services and demanded by U.S. and European immigration proceedings. Conceptualization of migration through the lenses of decoloniality, necropolitics, and critical refugee studies lays bare the extraordinary complexity of the journey of involuntary migrants. Some consequences of the imperative to reduce such complex suffering to simple psychometric parameters and medicalized diagnoses are explored, and the paper ends with a plea for a situated, culturally sensitive, and clinically complex understanding of the human suffering entailed by involuntary migration. Activism, it is suggested, is best practiced within complex ethical frameworks that ensure that, at a minimum, we do no harm to those we seek to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, after George Floyd's murder and with the mobilisation of Black Lives Matter activism, many UK institutions announced social media pledges to tackle racism. The cultural sector promised honest conversations about race, racism and whiteness and offered hope for social justice. However, not long after claims of imminent change on the part of cultural organisations, it went quiet. Conversations about race, racism and whiteness, once again, were not a priority. Rightly, young activists question the performative nature of cultural institutions expressing anti‐racist commitment and social justice values. Drawing upon the experiences of museum education, engagement and activism, the key question addressed in this paper by the author and members of the Our Shared Cultural Heritage Young Collective is: How do young people understand and experience the processes of engaging in education and activism in what they perceive to be overwhelmingly white middle‐class cultural institutions? The authors argue that museums can be useful, relevant and interesting to young people if museum staff actively seek to learn from them through participatory action research. The authors share some highlights, challenges and complexities of our 'youth‐led' work in the heritage sector, in the hope that museums and galleries, as well as other arts and cultural organisations, might learn and benefit from our experiences and knowledge of young people's activism in the heritage sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black artists, activists, and residents describe their sense of place as part of efforts to claim community space in the midst of racialised dispossession in Oakland, California. “Vibe” is a term used to describe this relationship. The author explains the term by drawing on ethnographic and archival data from research conducted in Oakland between 2019 and 2020. This paper explores vibe as the means by which black life is emotionally, relationally, and geographically made possible in the midst of structural racial violence. The author breaks vibe down into three modalities, or structures of relation, through which vibe is commonly evoked: hustle, care, and openness. These forms of relation are unpacked using the story of one local Black business owner. Vibe, thus, is more than a description, but an expression of relation that is politically, culturally, and economically central to Black geographic imaginaries and struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the generative capacity of activist movements defending their community assets from commodification or closure to produce new forms of social infrastructure. We explore this through the case study of activism along the Westway, a motorway in West London. The area has a strong tradition of community activism, particularly in the 1960s and the 2010s. Through a Participatory Action Research approach, we elaborate a historical account of the formation of social infrastructure under the Westway and surrounding spaces. In doing so, we develop a framework—processes, alliances, and capacities—to understand how communities and activist groups contesting the loss of community spaces can generate new forms of social infrastructure—both physical spaces such as play spaces or cultural venues, and social and caring relationships such as friendships or support networks. These informal spaces and alliances can shed light on how to build alternative, bottom‐up forms of social infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]