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This article discusses the artwork of Azadeh Akhlaghi, a visual artist from Iran. Akhlaghi's series, titled "By an Eye-Witness," explores the documentation of past deaths in Iran's history, focusing on violent and traumatic events. The artist stages scenes depicting the deaths of poets, journalists, students, intellectuals, and political activists, imagining how these events would have been captured if mobile phone cameras had existed at the time. Akhlaghi's work challenges the official version of national history and invites viewers to consider the impact of photography on our understanding of historical events. [Extracted from the article]

The forceful removal of Robert Mugabe in 2017 brought about high expectations of political transformation and debates on civil society's role in Mugabe's downfall. This paper examines civil society's role in the removal of Mugabe and the continuities and changes brought by the Emerson Mnangagwa regime. The paper contributes to studies that convincingly show that the Mnangagwa regime has failed to bring fundamental change to the 'new dispensation.' However, these studies do not capture civil society's role in Mugabe's downfall, its expectations of life after Mugabe, and people's lived experiences in the new dispensation. This paper locates this gap in the methodology employed by studies on the transition from Mugabe to Mnangagwa – these studies mostly analyzed policy documents, published literature, and newspapers. This methodology did not capture the voices of grassroots activists and organizations. Therefore, this paper used in-depth interviews to capture civil society's role in the downfall of Mugabe, its expectations of the new dispensation, and its lived experiences in the new dispensation. The paper argues that civil society played a sanitizing role in the ZANU-PF factional battles and the new dispensation that was an embodiment of hope has turned out to be an unanticipated horror since the expectations that the masses had have not been met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brand activism has become a popular term for describing how brands are becoming involved with controversial sociopolitical issues. The activist brand is thus characterised by its engagement with controversy and understood in and through macro-level cultural oppositions which it continuously orbits and positions itself against. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with a conceptual gaze at the activist brand's inherent controversy that enables an understanding of the online micro-level dynamics and processes that transform the online activist brand. Drawing on a narrative approach, the paper develops an ante- and counternarrative framework to explain how these complex micro-level dynamics and processes of resistance transform the brand. The framework allows us to approach the activist brand as the result of a complex network of antenarratives and counternarratives, which the brand flows in and out of, retells, supports, and resists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should climate activists be optimistic or pessimistic about the climate crisis and their efforts to confront it? This paper analyses common narratives in the climate movement through the lens of the philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism, arguing for three points. Firstly, most dominant narratives within the climate movement resemble philosophical optimism through their commitment to political progress and inherent value of climate action. Secondly, optimistic narratives within the climate movement should be rejected, as climate optimism places an overwhelming mental burden on climate activists and drives the climate movement towards bad responses to the inefficacy problem. Finally, the paper sketches pessimism as a better framework that can act as a moral source for climate activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing of the research. Many brands have started acting as political activists, taking public actions in favor of or against contentious issues such as immigration, police brutality, abortion, LGBTQIA + rights, or racism. Brand activism appears to be a strong paradigm change such that brand management is becoming a hot topic among scholars and companies. Purpose of the paper. Authenticity is the key variable of the activist strategy; however, its characteristic elements remain unknown. Thus, this study analyses consumers' perceptions of Ben & Jerry's-an historical activist brand-to understand, first, whether it is perceived as authentic; and second, to identify possible factors contributing to authentic brand activism. Methodology. Data was collected from the American Instagram profile of Ben & Jerry's. All comments were manually checked and analyzed using Infranodus. We performed text network analysis and topic modeling to gain insights from the collected text corpus as well as a users' sentiment analysis. Based on the obtained positive consumer perceptions, we then examined the official Ben & Jerry's website, attempting to detect constitutive elements of its authenticity. Results. Some exciting word clusters emerging from topic modeling reveal that activism is a critical element of Ben & Jerry's consumers' evaluation, becoming a topic of discussion at the same level as the brand's products. Additionally, sentiment analysis contributes important insights, confirming the crucial relevance of authenticity in brand activism strategies. Potential constitutive elements of the authenticity of Ben & Jerry's emerged from the in-depth analysis of consumer perceptions crossed with the examination of Ben & Jerry's official website. Research limitations. The study employed user comments on posts, which are declarations, not actions. This analysis was also restricted to the United States and only considered a three-year period. Managerial Implications. This research offers significant insights for practitioners who look to implement activist strategies. First, although it is challenging and uncommon to develop authenticity, we confirm its crucial role in brand activism. Second, it is essential to grasp consumers' perceptions to understand how they could react to a company's activist stances. Additionally, this study reveals potential constitutive elements of authenticity in brand activism, which can be further explored in future research and applied by companies looking to enter the political arena. Originality of the paper. This paper provides the groundwork for an in-depth identification of constitutive elements of authenticity in activist strategy. By examining a well-known activist brand and following positive consumer sentiments, we identified crucial and peculiar elements that could help to build authentic brand activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A well-known public figure of the first Czechoslovak state, Ignác Schultz, who had emigrated from Hungary, was a representative of self-sacrificing activism. The political changes in the autumn of 1938 had an impact on his activities and living conditions as well. The present paper aims to provide some insights into Schultz's activities during the Second World War, which can still be best described in terms of activism. The paper also seeks to draw attention to the fact that Schultz tried to remain an activist after the Second World War, but that, in an ideological reversal, he committed himself to Zionism, in the face of unfavourable political events in Czechoslovakia, and remained committed to the idea until his death in 1954. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the pedagogic device is viewed as a crucial element within the sociology of education, little research explores its historical development. This paper explores some iterations of the pedagogic device over the last 40 years, focusing on its origins in South America. By exploring Bernstein's ideas of the pedagogic device and pedagogic rights alongside Freire's understanding of activism, this paper demonstrates a dual purpose for the pedagogic device – of and for transmission and interruption. The theoretical proposition of this paper was informed by empirical work co-produced with 26 teacher activists working in Chilean compulsory schooling. The findings from the broader project show that teacher activism is not external to the pedagogic device but a cornerstone to it. By demonstrating the potential of the pedagogic device for interruption and transformation in Chilean schooling, we provide a retrospective account of the Southern influences on its development, revealing the importance of the Global South in shaping one of Bernstein's enduring ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a summary of a conference organized by ISSEI and the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora that took place in Berlin in July 2023. The conference focused on the crisis of democratic institutions in Europe and the search for solutions. The article includes seven articles based on papers presented at the conference, covering topics such as the role of intellectuals in public debates, the history of Zionism, the life of Czechoslovak public intellectual Antonín J. Liehm, the disappointment with European integration in Romania, transcultural theater productions, the capacity of human brains to absorb information, and the history of Western liberalism. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of good public debate. [Extracted from the article]

Since people began interacting in computer-mediated spaces, there has been a need to block or silence abusive users. In 2014, Gamergate--a purported campaign for "ethics in game journalism," which often seemed a misogynist protest against women in computer gaming-- brought the issue of online harassment to popular attention and inspired a wave of tools and techniques to mitigate online abuse. Yet, it remains a serious problem. Individuals, particularly activists and political dissidents, can face intense harassment on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), designed to silence their speech. This paper proposes a method to block likely abusers on X, using Kashmiri dissidents and Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) harassers as a case study. We first interviewed six Kashmiri dissidents who use social media for their activism to better understand their unique online experiences. Then, using a combination of text analysis and social network analysis, based on a sampling of accounts provided by the interviewees, we developed a novel filtering method. Our tests indicate that the model is 97% effective at identifying accounts that were previously blocked for harassment. This model could be useful for screening interactions on X, and preemptively filtering any it identifies as potential harassment. While it may no longer be appropriate for protecting Kashmiri users--many of whom have fled social media platforms--this model could be used in other minority communities and on other social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a Foucauldian theorisation and an in-depth study with eight disabled student activists in England, this paper explores how persistent marginalisation and ableism in higher education has triggered a wave of activism among disabled students, who, just before the advent of the pandemic, had organised a structured movement, Disabled Students UK. We employ Foucault's ideas of the care of the self and others to discuss the formation of disabled students as activist subjects fighting discrimination in English higher education, in a moment in which the intersection between inclusive policies and austerity measures exposed the ableism rooted in academic practices. This paper promotes discussion on the nurturing relationship that exists between the individual and the community in constituting disability activism and disabled activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"African Activists in a Decolonizing World: The Making of an Anticolonial Culture, 1952-1966" by Ismay Milford explores the consolidation of anticolonial thought and action in the post-war period, focusing on activists from four British colonies. The book analyzes various paper objects, such as pamphlets and party newspapers, produced by anti-colonial liberation movements. It also examines the transnational nature of activism, spanning Africa, Asia, and Europe, with a particular focus on East and Central Africa. While the book primarily focuses on paperwork, it provides insights into the broader decolonization movement and the international dimensions of anti-colonialism. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the understanding of collectivism and sisterhood among Oraon tribal women in the Netarhat Field Firing Range movement. Further, this study discusses tribal women's consciousness of repressive operations of the state and of their experiences of triple oppression as a tribal group, as women, and as activists. Tribal women's goals, however, are much more than women's liberation; they demand tribal autonomy and the right to forest resources so that tribal people can live peacefully in their regions. This study also looks at how a group of women shared their gender-based grievances as well as their everyday struggle under militarized control of their villages. Often, women's groups are at the forefront of rallies and marches, mobilizing the villagers and attending village meetings, but the male-dominated society rarely views women's revolutionary accomplishments as an effort of sisterhood. The state government agreed to the tribal demand not to re-notify the Netarhat Field Firing Range Project, not only because of the efforts of the men of the society but also due to women's willpower, solidarity, and bravery within the movement. Using the narrative approach, this research aims to explore tribal women's lived experiences and everyday struggle during the Netarhat field firing range project with reference to fieldwork conducted in the villages of Mahuadanr, Banari, Navatoli, and Sakhuapani where tribal women activists played a key role. Until now, tribal women's lived experiences, narratives, and consciousness during the different contemporary movements of Jharkhand have been ignored by most scholars. Studying this site is very relevant to understanding tribal women's questions, issues, and feminist standpoints. The fieldwork for this paper was conducted as part of the author's PhD research in Chotanagpur and the Kolhan regions of Jharkhand state, India. The study found that the Netarhat Field Firing Range movement was based on truth claims and followed the Gandhian ideology of non-violence to achieve rights. Further, this paper explores the sisterhood and solidarity amongst tribal women activists, and how non-tribal activists helped strengthen the tribal movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European governments have become more active in economic affairs since the great financial crisis of 2008; the Covid-19 epidemic and Russia's war in Ukraine have triggered a variety of government interventions. What is less obvious is the increased non-customary state activism in the form of 'patriotic economic policy' in EU periphery, particularly in Hungary, in and out of crisis times. The successive Hungarian governments under PMV. Orbán have systematically eroded checks and balances in order to enlarge their room of manoeuvre while practicing a self-styled illiberal, pro-sovereignty policy. The paper revisits the earlier development phases of the Hungarian transformation, trying to identify antecedents to the later Hungarian backsliding in market competition and liberal democratic order. Aspects of state capacity, size and composition of the state sector, and key policy directions are investigated in order to make sense of the differing transformation paths in Europe's eastern periphery with a focus on Hungary, a onetime space setter in the transition process. Populism seems to be a misnomer for Orbanism which might be better understood as "cronyism with a cause": government budgetary measures are self-serving but they also attempt at rebuilding the state. The paper concludes with an overview of possibly outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically explores how women anti-mining activists conceptualize development, in the context of living with and resisting large-scale resource extraction in Cajamarca, Peru. I contend that participatory photography provides an opportunity to contest hegemonic development narratives and the notions of 'lack', 'poverty' and 'progress' that are bound up with such narratives, enabling participants to simultaneously evoke both hoped-for alternative futures and nostalgic renditions of a threatened present. Moving beyond an explicit and immediate focus on the socially and environmentally destructive nature of large-scale mining, I explore how the women instead document productive Andean livelihoods and everyday ways of life, capturing the ways in which hoped-for futures are enacted in the present. The women activists articulate their resistance through photography, identifying and celebrating practices of hope in their everyday lives and communities and providing an emotive counter-narrative to extractive-led neoliberal development discourses. The paper reveals that participatory photography approaches generate critical insight into the emotion-suffused ways in which development is understood by grassroots activists in contexts of extractivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terms such as "woke," "social justice," "cancel culture," "identity politics," "politically correct," "critical race theory," and "DEI" have been increasingly misused by political parties in recent years. This paper will identify and explain how the Hebrew Bible addresses social justice, compassion, inclusion, the indigent, and many other terms, currently fueling divisiveness. The authors assert that the ancient prophets - the true social justice warriors - would be alarmed by such discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligence scholars routinely portray intelligence oversight as a means of restraining intelligence activities, particularly covert operations. The consensus overlooks situations where oversight can instead channel popular passions. This paper documents how Reagan era activists recruited legislators to the Afghan resistance cause. Their legislative-civic alliance demanded the CIA launch more aggressive operations in Afghanistan, sidelining established oversight committees. The resulting covert action campaign risked Soviet escalation, eliminated plausible deniability, and gave advanced U.S. technology to potential terrorists. This episode highlights how well-organized lobbyists may affect the intelligence agenda and challenges assumptions that wider engagement in oversight will always restrain intelligence agencies' overreach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two different occasions in the twentieth century John Dewey and Maxine Greene stressed the point that educators should attend to 'what the known demands of us'. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of young people in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense, we begin with a widely acknowledged diagnosis of the five major global risks – interconnected and interdependent – that endanger the sustainable future of humanity and nature: environmental, political, social, health, and cultural. We then move to suggest a constructive solution, proposing three conceptual pillars for repairing the world and laying foundation for a thriving sustainable future: (a) Ecohumanism as the paradigm for values education – merging the humanist concern for human dignity, social justice and democracy with the ecological concern for climate stability, biodiversity and environmental sustainability; (b) education of democratic personality and for democratic culture that is holistic and transformative; and (c) a threefold notion of activist pedagogy that addresses the element of cultivating personal agency, empowering political literacy and agency, and engaging students in experiential, holistic, and active teaching-learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of Barents Pride, an event organized collaboratively by Russian and Norwegian LGBT+ activists located close to the Norwegian–Russian border. The idea of the Pride is to bring LGBT+ people and activists from Russia, where state pressure limits possibilities of organizing prides, to Norway and to express solidarity across borders. We use this case to investigate pitfalls and promises of queer transnational solidarities, to contest notions of center/periphery, the North/South–East/West division and to analyze how sexuality simultaneously enforces and destabilizes these dichotomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the collaborative process of creating covers for Feminist Review issues through collaging. It explores how this process embodies feminist values and promotes collective engagement. It also draws inspiration from the works of artists, activists, and zinesters like Ana Luísa Flores, Camila Mudrek, and Carla Duarte.

Recent climate activism has played a key role in denouncing the unsustainability of representative democracy. Previous research has investigated the attitudes of climate activists towards representative institutions along the conceptual distinction between 'environmental' and 'ecological' democracy. Yet, little attention has been paid to climate activists' critique of capitalism and how it relates to demands for democratic reform. Our paper addresses this gap by conducting a mixed-method analysis of protest survey data collected in Belgium in 2019. Our findings show that activists display low levels of trust towards representative institutions, but still abide by the ideals of environmental democracy within the boundaries of existing institutions. At the same time, we observe a widespread critique of capitalism, signaling attraction towards the ideals of ecological democracy. Overall, our findings challenge the binary distinction between environmental versus ecological democracy, and raises normative questions about the role of environmental social movements in economic and democratic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how working-class activists challenged and overcame political fear narratives during the anti-water charges campaign in Ireland (2014–2016), with specific focus on the ‘sinister’ narrative, an attempt by the government and its supporters to frame working-class protestors as violent, irrational and extremist. Rather than subscribing to the position that political fear is ubiquitous or the reflection of a general societal malaise, this paper follows Jeffries’ argument that political fear is mediated, contested and contradicted. While political fear operates most effectively when targeting expectations for normal living, it is these same expectations that offer fertile ground for opposing fear threats. Drawing on interviews from activists, this paper shows how the ‘normal living’ becomes a key context in which ‘deviance framing’ around class and gender can be reappropriated/reframed by activists, particularly through the deployment of counter spectacles and through the reframing of what constitutes legitimate emotional responses to government-initiated fear threats. Finally, while political fear can have an individualising effect, this paper demonstrates how subjective and individual acts of transgression are mediated through a collective and community lens as the crucial element in overcoming political fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief essay, I offer reflection on Norman Denzin's role as an academic activist in qualitative inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While contentious politics literature links protest and voting as connected forms of claim making, in Lebanon, scholars, activists, and citizens generally have treated them as distinct phenomena, resulting in cycles of anti-system protests and elections characterized by wins by the status quo and low turnout. This unusual situation reflects how confessionalism has become deeply intertwined with neoliberalism, closing off necessary opportunity structures for change. Neoliberal policies, even while causing general harm to the average Lebanese citizen, generated high rents which sectarian parties could then distribute to supporters. To keep this system going, the collusive sectarian elite consciously and largely successfully removed economic policy as an electoral issue. By starting from how the ruling sectarian parties dominate the economy, it is possible to explain the cycles of protest and voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As #MeToo activists took their testimonies of sexual harm outside the legal arena to seek justice, the #MeToo movement has commonly been framed as pitting informal justice-seeking against formal law. This article draws on interviews with Swedish #MeToo activists and focuses on their experiences of justice seeking. It asks the key question: what does justice look like for #MeToo participants? I demonstrate how a binary framework, with formal law on one side and informal community justice practices on the other, does not offer an understanding of the justice interests of activists. The interviews convey how acts of justice seeking are plural, spanning both legal and extra-legal terrains, as well as temporally long-lasting and contextually shifting. The justice-seeking emerges as pragmatic because the #MeToo moment is bound up with the promise that, at this rhetorical moment, the act of speaking out will finally be heard on a societal scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

NSO Group is an Israeli cyber surveillance firm notorious for Pegasus – an intrusive malware capable of covertly taking control of smartphones and remotely extracting their contents. In 2019, after a series of unflattering reports on governments' use of Pegasus to infiltrate the phones of activists and journalists, NSO embarked on an uncharacteristically public legitimation campaign. This article focuses on this campaign and explores how this otherwise secretive spyware company publicly legitimizes its surveillance. Based on an empirical analysis of hundreds of public documents across various media, we explore NSO's legitimacy management practices and identify the audiences and contexts of this legitimation. Our analysis identified four legitimation practices: securitization, Zionist patriotism, ethics washing, and normalization. We argue that these legitimation strategies operate across two interrelated axes of legitimation: a local axis that echoes a particularly Israeli 'security-driven populism'; and a universal axis that follows Silicon Valley's ethics washing. We show that these legitimation axes are designed to simultaneously ensure the company's survivability and to sustain surveillance realism – the perception of surveillance as the only viable option This article contributes to the emerging literature on cyber surveillance firms and to the burgeoning research on the legitimation of surveillance by shedding light on the discursive infrastructures behind contemporary cyber espionage. Moreover, while surveillance is often understood as a global phenomenon, this article highlights the need to focus on the local contexts from which surveillance originates to understand its sustainability, expansion, and vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Discussions of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing tend to be complex and vague at the same time, in an attempt to serve the potentially conflicting interests of activists, investment managers and consultants, stakeholders and asset owners. Impact ("doing good") is difficult to achieve with most investment choices, therefore complicating the most common rationale for ESG. Investment service providers, activists, and groups like the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment know this but usually don't say it loudly. Asset owners need to be realistic about what they can achieve and line that up with what, if anything, they want to achieve with ESG, such as the following. Alignment of portfolios with values, without expecting impact, is achievable for those who want it. Active investment managers should be expected to use (integrate) ESG data in their investment processes—with a risk–return goal, separate from impact or values-based investing. Large investors, or like-minded groups, may be able to influence others with their investment choices (like divestment), especially by using them to stigmatize what they view as bad actors. Asset owners can vote proxies in line with their interests and values. Investors can leverage their consumer power, such as by working with more emerging/diverse managers—which some argue have an alpha advantage. Direct impact can be achieved, largely with targeted private market investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have seen the development of a new line of research around the relationship between digital platforms and activism. The influence of the internet and social media on the civic and political engagement of young people in particular has become clear. Digital platforms perform in this regard a set of functions crucial to activism in terms of communication, mobilization, and logistics. These are indispensable tools, especially to young people belonging to informal structures. Digital platforms have also been shown to facilitate emotional and solidarity networks thus fostering a sense of community and a strengthening of collective identities. In this article we aim at examining this aspect based on in-depth interviews with young activists conducted in Portugal during a three-year project (2020–2022). We have concluded that, especially in certain activism contexts involving social groups of neglected or non-normative identities, digital platforms function as a crucial empowerment tool. These are linked to the emotional support for and recognition of the identities of these young people, incentivizing the creation of fields of political and social intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many protesters under authoritarian rule are "narrow in scope, involving only one or a few neighborhoods, villages, or groups of laid-off workers" and focus on demands that "have to do only with material interests and local grievances" (Lorentzen, 2013, p. 131). These protests typically blame local authorities and express loyalty to the political system. However, in the internet age, pro-democracy advocates often endorse and co-opt these local policy protests for their own ends. Does being endorsed by pro-democracy activists undermine support for these local policy protesters? Building on research suggesting that non-activists often perceive activists as extreme, I theorize that associating with pro-democratic frames can undermine support for local policy protesters by making the protesters seem more extreme and their protests less legal. Using an internet survey experiment in Vietnam, I find support for my argument. These findings highlight a challenge to building pro-democracy coalitions under authoritarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the protest against the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature to Peter Handke as an example of transnational memory activism. It analyzes from a transnational mobilization perspective how activists achieved a globally visible protest in Stockholm and what role memory played in the protest mobilization and framing. Genocide survivors and former refugees, human rights activists, journalists, and academics formed a transnational protest coalition. In this way, they drew international attention to their outrage at the honoring of an author who is criticized for denying the Bosnian genocide. The analysis shows that memories of the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and genocide united the diverse protesters as a "memory community" and shaped their framing. The protesters warned of the potential repercussions of the Nobel Prize to Handke for the internationalization and normalization of genocide denial. They argued that locally, Serb nationalist politicians can find legitimation in it for divisive politics. Moreover, they put the prize in a larger context of globally rising right extremism and islamophobia that find inspiration in the very Serb nationalist ideology and its propagators of the 1990s conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1965, impoverished Clevelanders and their allies brought dead rats to City Hall to demonstrate that they alone had the required expertise to write antipoverty policy. They used the rats to educate their representatives about poverty conditions after their unsucessful struggle to gain control over the local War on Poverty. Scholarship on the War on Poverty and welfare rights movement has uncovered stories of innovative women who fought for official and unofficial access to policymaking. But our focus on movement leaders and sympathetic allies has obscured how some of these activists defined democracy. Activists in Cleveland envisioned democracy as a system where those affected by a policy had influence over its crafting. Their radical vision of urban municipal policymaking illuminates that historians have over emphasized the concessions that these women forced from their representatives, an interpretation which has inadvertently privileged access to a seat at the table over their larger goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay makes a distinction between the roles that activists and social critics can play in democratic societies and defends the separate tasks of a non-activist social critic. Drawing on Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, I argue that non-activist social critics are better situated than activists to reach certain audiences, cultivate certain democratic capacities, and preserve their audience's agency while doing so. In Emerson's case, his concerns about his activist contemporaries led him to craft new ways of critically engaging his peers. At the same time, as Emerson's life also illustrates, non-activist critics are limited by their roles and must forgo some of their distinctive advantages in order to do activist work. Clarifying the scope of the social critic's role in this way helps critics to draw on the benefits of their position and avoid overstepping its constraints, thereby allowing them to more effectively promote political reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter Green (Salford) and Charles Jenkinson (Leeds) were Anglo-Catholic parsons who devotedly worked in northern England either side of the Second World War. Are they models for today? Green prioritized 'intentional evangelism'. Jenkinson was a Christian socialist and Modernist who 'meddled in politics' as a city councillor: his priority was housing reform. Green remained a parish priest; Jenkinson moved into new town development. Despite their shortcomings, each cleric distinctively represents a relevant kind of priesthood: the parish missionary sharing the archbishops' commitment to 'mission-shaped' church (Green), and the activist intent on building the kingdom by transforming his parishioners' built environment (Jenkinson). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gypsy, Roma and Travellers (GRT) are a highly marginalised UK higher education minority with patchy targeted policy interventions. Drawing on qualitative interview data with education professionals working with GRT and with GRT young people, families and activists, the article compares attitudes, expectations, and desires around higher education. Firstly, the way in which university outreach can essentialise GRT people and the need to nuance these regulatory and normative practices is discussed. Tensions for GRT people imagining higher education and navigating complex identity transitions of ethnic invisibility are next explored alongside worries around 'coming out'. Finally, the article identifies the 'cruel optimism' in desiring education as a form of social mobility, particularly when institutions are not inclusive of GRT. From this, an urgent need is identified for contextually-sensitive GRT outreach for the academy's promises to be meaningfully inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity is considered a key factor in activist engagement. In this study, we examined the self-representations of a group of young activists through the lens of the ego-ecological approach, which emphasizes the interplay of representations, attitudes, and beliefs (including stereotypes) that circulate both within groups and in the broader sociocultural environment in identity formation. 46 young activists from a variety of fields (e.g. environmental, feminist, LGBTQ+, human rights, community-based groups) completed an abbreviated version of the Multistage Investigator of Social Identity (MISI). As expected from the ego-ecological perspective, a positive image emerged when activists were referred to as the ingroup, whereas the portrait was more nuanced when activists were referred to as the internal outgroup. The overall self-representation, with the "dynamic subject" as the prototype, was much more complex and articulated than the most common activist stereotypes; some stereotypical traits populated the internal space of identity, but served different functions and introduced conflicting elements. The findings of this qualitative study support the heuristic value of the interactional perspective in activist identity research and help bridge the gap between personal identity processes and collective/social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This set of reflections captures the experiences and insights I have gathered as a senior pastor reflecting upon a lifetime of activism in search of social justice and moral direction. It begins with my early years of family and community influences followed by the impact of a premier divinity school. It then traces my congregational journey through four communities to arrive at a set of leadership principles and practices. The final phase of the journey captures my transition from serving as an activist pastor and executive director of an interfaith nonprofit community ministry to becoming Interfaith Community Liaison in the executive branch of county government. It concludes with a set of lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Research suggests firms can reduce stakeholder contention (e.g., lawsuits, protests) by collaborating with threatening stakeholders. We propose that by tapping into stakeholder networks and identities, collaborations also produce ripple effects beyond the firm's partner to attenuate contention from a broader set of stakeholders. Using variation in firms' and stakeholders' willingness to collaborate exogenous to contention to account for selection, our examination of contentious and collaborative interactions between 136 environmental movement organizations and 600 US firms corroborates our arguments. Firms face less contention when they collaborate with a better‐connected stakeholder motivated to share affirming information about the firm, or with a more contentious and authentic stakeholder. Our findings generalize to stakeholder criticism beyond movement organizations, suggesting collaborations are powerful tools for fashioning less contentious environments. Managerial Summary: Companies can reduce conflict from hostile stakeholders like social activists by collaborating with their friends. We find social movement organizations mount fewer protests, boycotts, lawsuits, and other conflict against a company that collaborates with an organization that is either well connected in the movement or known for mobilizing movement's grassroots. This suggests that cross‐sector collaborations quell conflict through passing affirming information about a company through interorganizational networks or through the broadcast of an affirming signal to the broader stakeholder environment. We find that criticism from a wide range of stakeholders (e.g., media) also abates, suggesting that collaborations are powerful tools for fashioning less contentious environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Chinese intellectual and political activist, Kiang Kang-hu was chair of the Department of Chinese Studies at McGill University in the 1930s. In the following 1940 lecture, Kiang provides an introduction to Canada for an audience of Chinese civil servants. By this time, Kiang had returned to China's fallen capital, Nanjing, and taken office in a Japanese-backed occupation state. Although Chinese historiography has typically cast collaborators such as Kiang as traitors, Kiang's analysis of his time in Canada offers grounds for understanding why those in Nanjing despaired of the West in their struggle against the Japanese Empire. Kiang's lecture is introduced and translated by Jonathan Henshaw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eskalera Karakola (EKKA) is a feminist self-organized social center in Madrid, Spain. The project has been compiling their own archive of audiovisual materials. There are mostly two kinds of material in its shelves: first, about one hundred VHS and DVD copies of short films and feature films, and second, close to seventy miniDVs documenting meetings, demonstrations, workshops, actions, roundtables and also interviews with activists. The recordings are mostly about feminism and lesbianism themes but also about migrant activism, neighborhood movements in Lavapiés, and some international events. At this moment, some of the activists involved in the Eskalera Karakola have created a group, to decide what to do with this material. This article wants to participate in and document the debates, reflections, and discussions around this archiving process, analyzing every step of the way and all the challenges and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses two books: "Contextualizing Sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia: Identity, Competition and Conflict" edited by Satgin S. Hamrah, and "Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine" by Lisa Bhungalia. "Contextualizing Sectarianism" challenges the common focus on the Sunni-Shia binary and explores the political, social, and cultural factors contributing to sectarian conflict in the region. "Elastic Empire" examines the collaboration between the US and Israel in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting the role of American aid in shaping the conflict. Both books provide valuable insights for scholars and students studying the Middle East and international security. The first text discusses the Anti-Terrorist Certification (ATC) that aid workers and groups must sign to ensure they do not support terrorism or organizations designated as terrorist by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The author argues that the use of modern technologies and databases by ATC and OFAC links Palestine and the US, contributing to American empire. The second text challenges the assumption that evangelical Christians in America universally support Israel over Palestine. The authors conducted surveys over five years and found that younger evangelicals are driven by sociopolitical and justice rationales, leading to more critical views of Israeli policies. The third text is an autobiography by Avi Shlaim, an Arab Jew, that explores his identity and the complex historical context of the Arab Middle East. [Extracted from the article]

The politics of our post-Covid times are expressed through various registers. In Kolkata, one especially powerful artistic medium for such expressions was the revival of street theatre as young and senior theatre practitioners plunged into exploring critical issues that have been all-pervasive since the beginning of the pandemic. As people finally started to venture out, content to be amidst human congregations, street plays, being located in open-air spaces, proved both economical and safe. The issues these street performances highlighted and their modes of presentations could be described as what Tony Fisher calls 'activist theatre' – which mobilizes the people by interpellating its audience around a specific grievance or issue that possesses an emotional appeal. These performances are a form of artistic activism, or 'artivism' as termed by Chantal Mouffe: the use of aesthetic means for political activism, 'as a counter-hegemonic move against the capitalist appropriation of aesthetics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]