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This paper examines how the video-sharing platform YouTube was utilized by networks of anti-immigration activists that began emerging in Finland during the so-called refugee crisis in 2015. By combining network analysis with qualitative analysis, we identified three central strategies of video activism: movement building through documentation, discursive controversy generation, and personal branding practices. These strategies are firmly supported by the affordances of YouTube and by the way in which the platform enables the building of varying scales of media presence. Consequently, our findings highlight the increasingly common practice of microcelebrity branding in online political communication. This notion demonstrates the affinities between fragmented and contingently mobilized anti-immigration movements and the personalizing and performance-oriented logics of social media presence, in particular when explored from a post-movement perspective. In the algorithmic environment of YouTube, microcelebrity is a political and a platform-specific genre that occupies the post-movement political space by generating sustainable algorithmic visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late evening of 18 March 2014, students and activists stormed into and occupied the main chamber of Taiwan's Legislature. The event set off the Sunflower Movement, signifying a turning point in Taiwan's recent history. Researchers at Academia Sinica arranged to acquire all the supporting artifacts and documentary materials in the chamber before the protest came to a peaceful end. In this article, we discuss the issues in archiving and making available to the public a large collection of artifacts created by thousands of participants during a contemporary event. We demonstrate systems designed to encourage people to identify objects of their own in the archive. We show how an accessible catalog to the archive can help people tell their stories, hence collectively may strengthen the public's recollections about the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anne O'Donnell and Lydia Sapouna, based in Scotland and Ireland, respectively, are activists and writers who have made long-standing contributions to the debate about mental health and recovery. In this dialogue they exchange analyses of the achievements and lessons to be learned from mental health activism that has resisted dominant narratives of mental illness and that has created innovative, collaborative and critical spaces for the exchange of ideas, experiences and enthusiasms. The dialogue seeks to evoke the distinctive styles of activism adopted in each context, the successes engendered and the kinds of dilemmas and tactical choices navigated. Ann and Lydia have initiated a process of reflection and exchange, and out of this they have constructed a dialogical piece that highlights key organizational issues for mental health activists and for community based social movements more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do perceptions of the state shape social movements' strategies? Drawing on 16 months of participant observation and 70 interviews with activists in Arizona, this article illustrates how the politics of immigration plays out at the grassroots level as a struggle between expanding and restricting the state. Pro-immigrant activists in this study contended that the problem of undocumented migration resulted from the state's unchecked coercive power. Experiencing this strong-state effect, pro-immigrant activists' tactics focused on limiting the state's reach and reinforcing society's capacity to resist the state. Meanwhile, immigration restrictionist activists attributed the problem of undocumented immigration to the state's feebleness as a policing entity. In response to this weak-state effect, restrictionist tactics tried to expand the state's scope and build society's ability to aid the state. The article concludes by discussing how the strong/weak-state effect framework helps illuminate the field of social relations in which an activist group is embedded and provides an avenue for exploring the relationship between state practices and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gaining attention in the mass media is a key goal of many social movement organizations (SMOs). The dominant explanation of media attention to SMOs is that the media act like a filter, selecting some types of SMOs and events for attention, and ignoring others based on characteristics of these SMOs, events, and their political environment. In contrast to this "bias model," I argue that some media attention to SMOs is characterized by positive feedback, or rich-get-richer processes: past media attention increases the likelihood of future media attention through its effect on the SMO and on other media outlets. Like other positive feedback systems, media attention can be path dependent, is routinely punctuated by large cascades of attention to previously obscure SMOs, and can be contingent on "accidents" of history: at critical junctures, individuals, organizations, and events have the potential to radically impact the extent of media attention to their movements and organizations. Media attention to SMOs can also become decoupled from the types of events that initially sparked their media attention, becoming spokes-organizations for their movements and receiving media attention for events and stories that they themselves are not involved. In support of this theory, I first show that media attention is, similar to other positive feedback processes, power-law distributed across SMOs using two national (US) data sets. I then illustrate the process of positive feedback in media attention through a case study of the Black Panther Party's rise to prominence in media attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a roadmap for what gender scholarship offers scholars of federalism. It argues that applying a gender perspective can enrich the field by introducing new concepts, questions, hypotheses, and debates. Gender scholarship’s focus on power and change will also make theorizing about federalism more dynamic. The article shows how the “gendering democracy” project’s indices will help scholars measure federalism’s role in women’s continuing political marginalization and incorporation. It also highlights the importance a gender perspective confers on social movements, social policies, and normative issues. Finally, the article speculates that gender analysis could promote a new research theme exploring how different state architectures affect and are affected by interactions between territorial and nonterritorial interests and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the Islamic Movement in the Jewish state of Israel and how it has attempted to promote an Arab Palestinian Muslim identity. The author discusses how educational and religious institutions have attempted to teach Palestinians in Israel the history of Islam, explores political aspects of the agendas relating to Islamization, Palestinization, and Arabization, and analyzes the goals of Islamic activism, including improving education, encouraging participation in national elections, and promoting acceptance.

The article presents an examination of the transnational homophile movement and the history of the International Committee for Sexual Equality (ICSE). It discusses the history of transnational activism and explores how the ICSE was able to connect homophile movements and groups around the world to form a cohesive group and promote the civil rights of homosexual minorities across the globe. It explores the inter-war period activism of the World League for Sexual Reform, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, it examines the 195 International Congress for Sexual Equality and discusses the passage of resolution endorsing gay rights by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011.

Political protests have visibly increased in frequency and intensity in South Africa in recent years, and they seem to indicate a more adversarial relationship between the post-apartheid state and civil society. This article uses the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the protests which accompanied it, to illuminate these broader trends. It analyses the legacy of the Summit as a ‘mega-event’, and highlights the importance of the ‘mega-protests’ in 2002. The most important effects are shown to be the disruption of South African extraversion; the marginalization and repression of particular social movements; and the exacerbation of broader trends toward a more polarized political landscape in South Africa. Importantly, however, the article concludes that such developments are not evidence of growing distance between the state and civil society, but rather between those considered legitimate and responsible partners, and those who are excluded from ‘normal’ politics. Thus the Johannesburg Summit illuminates broader trends toward the governmentalization and transnationalization of politics in South Africa, and destabilizes conventional understandings of what and where ‘South African politics’ actually is, as well as raising important questions regarding the impacts of such mega-events in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an examination of abolitionist Dinah Nevil and the founding of the world's first anti-slavery organization. It examines the political and moral decisions involved in the American nation building process as well as in the transatlantic antislavery movement. It addresses the history of antislavery activism, discusses the idea that the American Revolutionary War was a necessary precondition for the abolition of slavery and examines how Nevil's case suggests that the war interrupted an ongoing effort to abolish slavery.

The article discusses changes over time in the level of political activism of members of the Irish republican organization Provisional Sinn Féin, from the mid-1980s to the late 2000s. Based on interviews, members are found to have undergone a variety of shifts in identity: some remained members of Provisional Sinn Féin; some helped form rival organizations such as Republican Sinn Féin and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement; and some left activism. Those who shed the activist identity were found to have done so because of life changes that created new relationships and new identities, while those who remained active made choices based on political considerations. The approach of the article draws on structural identity theory.

This paper is based on recent research conducted in Brazil on young people's understanding and practices of public action. The research examines some of the initiatives in which young people today participate: community organizations, cultural groups and social movements, and asks what this engagement means in their day-to-day lives. The paper also examines the historical processes that have come to shape this present field of public action and identifies the emergence of new forms of political engagement through cultural forms which provide a key entry point for young people's participation. The paper provides an analysis of the ways in which young people often come to be engaged in forms of public action through cultural forms, such as music, dance, cinema, theatre, photography, which are used by a number of groups as tools for critical reflection, or conscientização, and as a means for personal and community development. The paper explores these processes and goes on to identify a genealogy in the non-governmental sector of an alternative pedagogy that was much influenced by Paulo Freire but which gains new forms through the use of various elements of contemporary popular culture and different types of information and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study proposes a theoretical framework to understand how nations deal with collective memories of perpetration of severe human rights violations, which do not fit comfortably in any national master narrative but have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Building on studies of collective memory, the framework explicates how initial historical conditions of the nation, domestic social movements, and the degree of international pressures move the national discourse along two key dimensions - (1. acceptance of guilt and (2. international orientation of the discourse - which map out seven possible responses to collective trauma of perpetration. Through examination of the history of post-war Japan and content analyses of newspaper editorials and prime ministers' speeches from 1945 through 2004, the empirical analysis applies the framework to the Japanese case. The analysis reveals that arguments for apologies to Asian victims have gained ground due to the intensification of domestic social movements, international pressures from neighboring countries, and global human rights influence. It also shows that arguments that evade the ugly past have persisted because of the initial conditions immediately after 1945, overwhelming emphasis on Japanese victims in the ensuing decades, and recent appropriation of human rights language by proponents of the defensive arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an in-depth exploration into the social conditions and politics of Japan in 1968, noting the shifts in public perception and reaction to violence performed by the government. Several activist and dissident movements among students and citizens are described as case examples of a larger international social phenomena of the 1960s regarding political participation and cultural identification. Analysis is also given to the depiction and portrayal of political demonstrations and conflict between state actors and dissidents within the media of the nation.

Despite great interest in the role of social networks as channels of political mobilization, few studies have examined which types of social networks work more effectively in recruiting political activists. Using the Citizen Participation Study data, this study shows that contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature, there is little evidence that strong ties are more effective than weak ties in recruiting activists. Ties formed in civic associations, however, are more effective than other ties in recruiting protest participants. Neighborhood ties are more effective in recruiting community activists, but not in other types of activity. I conclude that the contents of relationships and the identities shared by two people, rather than tie strength, form the basis of interpersonal influence in political activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses co-optation and corporate reform and the mechanisms behind them. The article mentions political opportunity structure theory, social movement organization (SMO) campaigns, political and state processes, neoliberal policies, democratic ethos, event structure analysis, the organization Greenpeace, and its attempt to change the refrigeration practices of Coca-Cola. The article also mentions framing, institutional and non-institutional tactics, neoliberalism, and corporate targets.

The authors integrate social movement outcomes research and the world society approach to build a theoretical model to examine the impact of global and local factors on movement outcomes. Challenging the current research on policy change, which rarely examines the effects of global norms and local activism in one analysis, they argue (1) that global regimes empower and embolden local social movements and increase pressure on target governments from below, and (2) that local activists appeal to international forums with help from international activists to pressure the governments from above. When the pressures from the top and the bottom converge, social movements are more likely to succeed. Furthermore, these pressures are stronger in countries integrated into global society and on issues with strong global norms. The empirical analysis of social movements by resident Koreans in Japan advocating for four types of human rights-civil, political, social/economic, and cultural-demonstrates that the movements produced more successes as Japan's involvement in the international human rights regime expanded since the late 1970s, and that activism on issues with strong global norms achieved greater successes. The analysis also shows that lack of cohesive domestic activism can undercut the chances of social movements' success even with strong global norms on the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political opportunities and threats are important to tactical choices. Yet, scholars have not examined how the political environment affects the tactical choices of social movement organizations in the media arena. In this article, I analyze how political threats and opportunities affect the media strategies and tactics of two reasonably successful and long-lived social movement organizations on opposite sides of the abortion debate, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), from 1980 to 2000. In particular, I examine how political shifts affect the tactics these groups use in response to their allies over time. I find that different social movement organizations respond to political opportunities and threats similarly. In times of political opportunity, groups remain silent on their allies' activities because silence distances their organizations from rancorous public debates and buttresses their political legitimacy. During political threats, groups cooperate with their allies in the media arena but they use public coalition work to advance their own political and media goals. Conceptually, this research broadens how we think about media tactics, which vary far more than scholars currently recognize, and deepens our understanding of coalition work and movement dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Black Freedom Movement which resulted from the decolonization of the African colonies and the granting of independence of the African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. It pictured a composite and vital portrait of U.S. liberalism and a multilevel outline of the African American policy. Furthermore, it consists of assessments which is directed to evaluate its internal tensions, study the conflicts of gender, ideology and strategies as views of the bigger tensity between civil rights leaders and activists.

The article provides information on the events which took place in the 1960s which aimed to change the American society and were deemed as an important research guide for students. The 1960s period was marred by chaotic events including letting loose of police dogs to drive away the African American children demonstrators, women making protests against the Miss America beauty contest and racial activists putting their lives on the line. To add, others went as far as risking their future were disowned by families and friends. A lot of people challenged the society and searched for change in all aspects especially in their way of life.

The article focuses on the political uses of the Internet, which have been used by ordinary citizens, political activists, organized interests, governments and others to achieve political goals, particularly from among the terrorists groups. It was pointed out that online activities have substantially improve the ability of such terrorist groups to raise funds, lure new faithful and reach a mass audience.

In this article, we develop a quadripartite classification of social movement participants based on the participants' levels of interest in a movement goal and the amount of resources that the participants contribute to the movement. We use the latent class model to determine the percentage of participants in each of the four categories in our classification system for the case of the 1999 anti-U.S. student demonstrations in Beijing in the aftermath of the Belgrade Embassy bombing. Finally, we apply the multinomial logit regression to investigate the mechanisms behind the mobilization of different types of participants during the anti-U.S. demonstrations. Our analysis and empirical findings not only show the importance of studying movement mobilization based on a classification of movement participants, but also reveal much about the nature of the 1999 anti-U.S. demonstrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Islamic activism is manifested in heterogeneous and overlapping forms. This paper aims at furthering the understanding of Islamic activism by developing a two-dimensional typology that accounts for the nature of Islamic activism discourse and the outlook of its programmatic action. Specifically, the terrain of Islamic activism is mapped out by intersecting two orientations: the approach toward understanding sharia (Islam's socio-religious teachings) and the form of activism. As for sharia approaches, three modes of thinking occupy Islamic activism: a didactic mode, a literalist mode, and an eclectic mode. On the other hand, three forms of activism divide the field of action: a local social movement of a limited scope of concerns, a global social movement of expansive social and political themes, and an individualistic type of activism. The interaction of these types of activism with the modes of sharia understanding produces the ecology of contemporary Islamic activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social movements has found that activists often deploy their identity strategically, putting forth certain images of themselves in order to best achieve their goals. However, such work has focused mostly on settings in which activists are relatively free to pursue different identity-based strategies. In contrast, less is known about the strategic use of identity in more repressive contexts, where the expression of certain identities may be curtailed. This paper addresses this issue by examining the "identity work" of Jewish resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland. While their resistance was fueled by a strong sense of collective identity, the heavy costs associated with public displays of Jewishness meant that identity also had to be kept hidden in order for the resistance to occur. Unlike the freely chosen, "harmonic" identity work that has been described by most research, these activists' work was forced and more dissonant, characterized by the simultaneous amplification and suppression of identity and emotion. The analysis points to the need for additional studies of activism in high-risk, repressive settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates the relationship between the sexual revolution of the 1960s in West Germany and the short- and long-term legacies of the Third Reich. It offers a challenge to conventional perspectives on the sexual politics of Nazism and thus also on the complicated combination of continuities and ruptures in sexual politics that marked the transition from the end of World War II into the more conservative sexual culture of the 1950s. The essay then turns to the multiple factors that triggered the sexual liberalization of the 1960s. Rejecting as too simplistic the long-held assumption that rising economic standards explain the liberalizing trends, the essay also charts how, in ways distinctively West German, the sexual liberalization that occurred in the course of the 1960s was morally legitimated. The essay examines the changing interpretations of the Third Reich that emerged in the course of the 1960s and how these were deployed in battles over sexuality. Although recognizing the dramatic transformations in young people's sexual practices and views in particular, the essay stresses as well that sexual liberalization was not only the result of New Left student activism but rather required engaged activism also from older liberals; the sexual revolution was carried by a very broad social base, involving members of all generations and a broad spectrum of political persuasions. Special attention is also paid to the important role of liberalizing processes within the Christian churches in helping to justify the loosening of popular mores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virginia Woolf is now widely accepted as a `mother' through whom twenty- first- century feminists think back, but she was ambivalent towards the suffragette movement. Feminist readings of the uneasy relation between Woolf and the women's movement have focused on her practical involvement as a short-lived suffrage campaigner or as a feminist publisher, and have tended to interpret her disapproving references to contemporary feminists as redemptive self-critique. Nevertheless the apparent contradictions remain largely unresolved. By moving away from Woolf in suffrage to suffrage in Woolf, this article argues that her work was in fact deeply rooted at the intellectual centre of the suffrage movement Through an examination of the ideas expressed in A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas and of two suffrage characters, Mary Datchet in Night and Day and Rose Pargiter in The Years, it establishes how Woolf's feminist ideas were informed by suffrage politics, and illuminates connections and allegiances as well as highlighting her passionate resistance to a certain kind of feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The racial and gendered politics of the 1996 welfare reform movement incorporated an anti-immigrant stance than fundamentally altered non-citizens' access to public benefits. This article focuses on community mobilization efforts to reframe the discourse of the "immigrant welfare problem" in order to restore benefits in the aftermath of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Drawing from two years of participatory research in community organizations. I found immigrant rights groups engaged in a variety of counter-rhetorical strategies. These strategies invoked a rhetoric of moral reasoning in order to promote the entitlement of non-citizens to remain eligible for public benefits. Utilizing social movement framing perspectives, I examine the claims-making strategies that appeal to common beliefs about aging, frailty, disability, and the obligation of the United States to its veterans. However, collective action frames comprised moral constructions of human rights for only specific immigrant groups that lost specific benefits. I consider the broader implications of such findings for immigration and welfare rights movements. This case illustrates the significance of, and the dilemmas confronting, counter-framing strategies within community mobilization efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of social movements are coalescing into transnational networks that oppose the polarizing inequalities, unaccountable corporate power, and declining soda! and environmental health of free trade. In the process of sharing grievances and resources, many movements are forging cross-border networks and shaping the beginnings of transnational civil societies. This research discusses one network and its efforts to build a transnational civil society, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), a coalition endeavoring to reform exploitative labor relations in Mexico's export processing sector. Using thirty extended interviews, movement documents, and notes from participant observation from 1996 to 2002, the research analyzes the problems and possibilities of transnational movement coalitions as they struggle for reform. Borrowing from scholarship on transnational social movements and coalition building, this research makes two contributions. First, liberal capitalism paradoxically both enables the growth and limits the power of democratic development in transnational civil societies, like national civil societies before it. Second, despite the fact that the CJM has yet to overcome internal disunity and external forces of social control, it shows how coalition building creates transnational cultures of solidarity that inspire movement networks to survive and explore new opportunities for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological literature on global environmental change emphasizes the processes by which the problem of global warming is socially constructed. However, the opposing efforts to construct the "non-problematicity" of global warming advanced by the conservative movement are largely ignored. Utilizing recent work on framing processes in the social movements literature and claims-making from the social problems literature this paper analyzes the counter-claims promoted by the conservative movement between 1990 and 1997 as it mobilized to challenge the legitimacy of global warming as a social problem. A thematic content analysis of publications arculated on the web sites of prominent conservative think tanks reveals three major counter-claims. First, the movement criticized the evidentiary basis of global warming as weak, it not entirely wrong. Second, the movement argued that global warming will have substantial benefits if it occurs. Third, the movement warned that proposed action to ameliorate global warming would do more claim than good in short, the conservative movement asserted that, while the silence of global warming appears to be growing more and more uncertain, the harmful effects of global warming policy are becoming increasingly certain in order to better understand the controversy over global warming, future research should pay attention to the influence ot the conservative movement by identifying the crucial roles of conservative foundations, conservative think tanks, and sympathetic "skeptic" scientists in undermining the growing scientific concensus over the reality of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several studies on public opinion research. These include "A Statistical Model for Multiparty Electoral Data," by Jonathan N. Katz and Gary King, "Scenes from the Political Playground: An Analysis of the Symbolic Use of Children in Presidential Campaign Advertising," by Susan A. Sherr and "Prospecting for Participants: Rational Expectations and the Recruitment of Political Activists," by Henry E. Brady, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Sidney Verba.

This study assesses the relevance of the political opportunity framework for soda! movements in non-democratic contexts by applying it to two people power movements that occurred in the Philippines and Burma during the 1980s. The movement in the Philippines culminated in the toppling of the Marcos dictatorship and a democratic transition. The movement in Burma was violently suppressed, and although multiparty elections were subsequently held as a result of the protest movement, the military regime refused to honor them and remained in power. The core dimensions of political opportunity are used to account for the mobilization of the two movements and their divergent outcomes. As expected by the political opportunity framework, influential allies and elite divisions influenced the mobilization and outcomes of the movements. The application of the political opportunity framework to non-democracies uncovers some limitations with the framework as well: the under-theorized role of the international context and the importance of press freedoms and information flows. A comparative approach uncovers limitations with the additive enumeration of political opportunities for single movements. Violent and indiscriminate repression was found to have a differential effect on mobilization depending on whether other opportunities were present or absent. More generally, a configuration approach to political opportunities is proposed that incorporates a multiple and conjunctural conception of causation. This approach assumes that political opportunities may not be independent of each other and that political opportunities may have differential effects on dissent depending on the larger configuration of opportunities in which they occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanations for the wide gap between strong public support for school prayer and lack of support in Congress have focused on the attributes of the public. Here another important explicand is investigated: the characteristics of political activists. We find that activist opinion more nearly matches congressional behavior on school prayer than does public opinion. While many of the same demographic and religious variables explain support for school prayer among activists and the public, ideology appears to be more important among activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Frame extension" is an important frame-alignment strategy for increasing social movement membership. Little research has addressed how the institutional environment of a social movement organization constrains and compels the organization to extend its frame among potential adherents. Elaborating on the bargaining perspective and the concept of multiorganizational field, we develop market and political models of the impact of social movement dependence relations with movement antagonists and political opportunity on frame extensions. Our examination of these models with a multivariate time-series regression analysis of changes in the legislative agenda of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) over its complete history suggests that the AFL extended its frame among potential adherents in response to declining employer dependence on unions for labor-supply and increasing political opportunity. We conclude with implications of the findings for future research on contemporary union decline and institutional and environmental influences on social movement frame-alignment processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the consequences of social movement participation for late 1960s and early 1970s activists, most of whom participated in the antiwar, student, and civil rights protests. After providing an explanatory framework for understanding how social movement participation might have continuing influence across a number of social realms, the article tests whether run-of-the-mill participation in the antiwar and student protests of the late 1960s had an impact. Social movement organizations recruit adherents who are, to some degree, ideologically aligned with the goals of the movement. However, the relationship between constituents' orientations and movement participation is not unidirectional. Social movements attempt to attract like-minded individuals, while trying to change the preferences of adherents and bystanders to more closely conform with those of the organization. A considerable body of literature has developed around the consequences of participation in social movements. After proposing a framework for explaining the consequences of activism, the article focus on four areas of social life that might be influenced by protest participation: politics, status attainment, religion, and family.

Secularization is most productively understood not as declining religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority. A focus on religious authority (1) is more consistent with recent developments in social theory than is a preoccupation with religion; (2) draws on and develops what is best in the secularization literature; and (3) reclaims a neglected Weberian insight concerning the sociological analysis of religion. Several descriptive and theoretical "pay-offs" of this conceptual innovation are discussed: new hypotheses concerning the relationship between religion and social movements; the enhanced capacity to conceptually apprehend and empirically investigate secularization among societies, organizations, and individuals; and clearer theoretical connections between secularization and other sociological literatures. Ironically, these connections may indeed spell the end of secularization theory as a distinct body of theory; but in a different way than previously appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper compares political activists from four community protest organizations, formed in response to the March 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Using survey data, newsletters, and fieldwork, we document the existence of two separate paths to protest involvement. In two communities, recruitment was less likely to occur along the lines of established social networks. Instead, utilitarian alliances grounded on shared grievances were constructed. A second distinct path accounted for activism in two larger communities where many of the activists reported previous protest experience. In these communities, existing friendship networks were utilized. Two years after the accident, significant network and ideological differences between the groups persisted. We suggest that analysts work to specify the conditions for different paths to activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement theorists have argued that multiple movements emerge during cycles of protest in response to political opportunities. This article develops the concept of a "social movement community" and contends that the culture and community of a protest cycle, rather than political opportunities, attract many participants and provide organizational and tactical opportunities for new movements. I examine historical changes in the local women's movement community in Bloomington, Indiana, to explain how some movements are able to endure, and even thrive, after the decline of a protest cycle: their individual movement communities sustain activists and sometimes partially recreate the atmosphere of a protest cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on social movement recruitment emphasizes the importance of pre-existing social networks and underestimates that of cognitive cultural messages, which are sometimes transmitted across these networks, but at other times are broadcast to strangers. In the absence of networks, moral shocks may be necessary for recruiting strangers, and the most effective ones are conveyed by powerful condensing symbols. Even those researchers who have examined the "frames" necessary for recruitment have been unduly influenced by the social-network exemplar, overlooking broader cultural "themes" in society at large. Through surveys of animal rights and anti-nuclear protestors, we distinguish two mechanisms of recruitment to protest, one based primarily on appeals to new recruits, the other on activating existing networks. Fewer animal rights protestors rated family, friends, and previous activism in other causes as reasons for their animal rights participation; they were often recruited directly by moral shocks in the form of visual and verbal rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on debates in lesbian and gay periodicals and writings from and about post-structuralist "queer theory" and politics, this paper clarifies the meanings and distinctive politics of "queerness," in order to trace its implications for social movement theory and research. The challenge of queer theory and politics, I argue, is primarily in its disruption of sex and gender identity boundaries and deconstruction of identity categories. The debates (over the use of the term "queer" and over bisexual and transgender inclusion) raise questions not only about the content of sexuality-based political identities, but over their viability and usefulness. This in turn challenges social movement theory to further articulate dynamics of collective identity formation and deployment While recent social movement theory has paid attention to the creation and negotiation of collective identity, it has not paid sufficient attention to the simultaneous impulse to destabilize identities from within. That tendency, while especially visible in lesbian and gay movements, is also visible in other social movements. it calls attention to a general dilemma of identity politics: Fixed identity categories are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power. The insights of both sides of the dilemma highlighted here raise important new questions for social movement theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses's on Wangari Maathai and Kenya's Green Belt Movement (GBM). Herein the 15-year old history of the Green Belt Movement will be divided into two major phases. From 1977-1988, the movement steers clear of traditional political arenas, seeking to transform the social arena through reforestation and education. During the second phase, 1989-1994, the GBM officially maintains these non-confrontational goals, while its coordinator, Wangari Maathai, openly challenges political arenas. It is critical to note that throughout both of these stages in the organization's history, GBM has continuously sought to maintain a consensus image or frame. This case study analyses the movement's emergence , goals and objectives, organizational structure, strategies, tactics and outcomes. Finally, the author speculates on the future and draw lessons from the GBM experience for other southern self-help movements. By the term "southern self-help movements," the author seeks to make both a geographical and typological distinction to refer to a specific genre of social movement actor.

Social movements are not distinct and self-contained; rather, they grow from and give birth to other movements, work in coalition with other movements, and influence each other indirectly through their effects on the larger cultural and political environment Building on both political process and collective identity perspectives, this paper uses a case study of the women's movement's impact on U.S. peace movement activity in the 1980s to develop a theory of movement-movement influence. We argue that this influence is shown by: 1) the adoption of feminist ideological frames by the peace movement; 2) the spread of the women's movement's tactical innovations into peace protest; 3) increased presence of women in leadership positions in both the institutionally-oriented and direct action wings of the movement; and 4) the adoption of organizational structures that built on feminist processes designed to avoid hierarchy. Drawing data from both movements at local and national levels, we suggest four mechanisms of transmission between the movements: 1) organizational coalitions; 2) overlapping soda! movement communities; 3) shared personnel; and 4) broader changes in the external environment. Social movement spillover effects have implications for our understanding of both the continuity and impact of social protest movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguing for the usefulness of an analytic distinction between equity and technology movements, this paper examines two siting disputes involving modem incinerators and asks why one was eventually built and the other defeated. Relevant variables for the analysis are identified from the contemporary social movement literature and a special industry report After an initial focus on surveys of "backyard" residents and "PIMBYs" at the two proposed sites, an explanation of the different outcomes is proposed. Additional micro-, meso-, and macrolevel variables are discussed, suggesting that technology movements are especially influenced by an interaction of factors which figure less prominently in equity movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the 1960s political generation on former leaders of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and right-wing Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) in the 1980s. Investigation of whether the consequences of generational participation have been different for SDS and YAF leaders. The article makes a comparison between how male and female leaders have been affected. The purpose of this study is to gain a fuller understanding of the 1960s political generation and its perceived aftermath by attempting to fill in some of these gaps in one's knowledge. To accomplish this task, a select sample of men and women who led the two largest left- and right-wing student political activist groups in the 1960s, SDS and YAF, were interviewed 20 years later about their personal lives and about how they think the 1960s political generation influenced American politics. Although the effects of any generation may be assessed in a number of ways--both objectively and subjectively--in this investigation, the significance of the 1960s political generation is explored subjectively from the perspectives of the men and women who led that movement.

This article examines the dynamics and activities of the AIDS activist movement. The plague of AIDS has brought with it understandings and actions that are hardly "premodern," civil disobedience at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protesting the sluggish drug approval process, guerrilla theater and "die-ins," infiltrations of political events culminating in the unfurling of banners protesting government inaction, media-geared "zaps," illegal drug research and sales, pickets and rallies. AIDS has given rise to a social movement. ACT UP, which began in New York. has chapters in Chicago. Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Rochester, Madison, Nashville, San Francisco, and a number of other cities. The groups are loosely federated under the umbrella of the AIDS Coalition to Network, Organize and Win. New York is by far the largest ACT UP, with weekly meeting attendance in the hundreds and membership estimated at nearly 3,000, while the others are smaller. San Francisco, with a membership of over 700, averages 50 people at general meetings. The comparisons between ACT UP in San Francisco and chapters in New York and other cities are based on a national conference in Washington D.C., internal publications. informal discussion and interviews, and newspaper reports.

This article focuses on the sociological implications of jury nullification in political trials in the U.S. Political protesters have faced criminal prosecution throughout the history of the U.S. From the tax and mercantile protests of the colonial era to the demonstrations against nuclear power and nuclear weapons of the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens have been arrested, prosecuted, and often imprisoned for dissent. This use of the courts has affected the fate of many social movements. In several periods of protest, the courts have provided effective vehicles of social control for government officials and other antagonists. Courts are some of the many third-party resources which may help achieve or obstruct the goals of social movement organizations. In this framework, political trials are especially important. Government officials may use criminal charges and prosecutions to discredit a movement and compel its members to spend time, money, and energy avoiding conviction and punishment. A social movement may in turn use the court proceedings to convince the public of the justness of its cause and the unfairness of the prosecution. The jury's verdict thus has a crucial effect on both sides.

This article presents a study of social movements. Social movements have long held a fascination for analysts of society. Because they often arrive seemingly unannounced, because they have enormous potential for violence, and because they are capable of profoundly transforming the social order, social movements, whatever their organizing principle, demand the attention of those who wish to understand the process by which social systems resolve conflicts and effect large-scale change. First, incidents of collective behavior are the universal concomitants of large-scale social movements. Rebellions and revolutions are inevitably accompanied by gatherings of insurgents, by confrontations with police and troops, and by out-bursts of destructive and creative impulses in volatile combination. Considered in isolation, each incident might usefully be examined as collective behavior, but that need not imply that the collective behavior perspective is a satisfactory framework for the explanation of whole social movements.

This article discusses the modern concept of society and how the resulting form of politics has given rise to the social problems perspective. A society is a peculiar thing. Its existence and force are made apparent by the tangled net of consequences that anyone's actions can have for others. The idea of Society was itself developing. It became clear to social thinkers and to increasing numbers of the public that the consequential matters potentially subject to mutual accountability were more varied than originally supposed. Collectively, members of the society were strongly affected by activities that had been left to private affairs. Eventually, the image of society became so complex that virtually no aspect of life was excluded from the realm of mutual accountability. The growth of sociology among the social sciences parallels the expanding idea of societal operation. Although the science of society made grandiose claims for its comprehensiveness, its typical concerns were ill-defined, non-rational soft social processes, that were left after economics and political science had pre-empted the subjects that mattered.

This article presents a discussion of the impact of social control on political protesters. In the continuing investigation of the factors which lead to the rise of protest groups, forces of social control have been seriously neglected. despite widespread acceptance of the idea that social control shapes many aspects of political protest. The political activism of the 1960s, in which organized civil disobedience was often countered by harsh official restraint, confirmed the importance of studying social control and its effects. It also revealed how inadequately the problem had been dealt with in the past. In this paper, the notion of social control will be used to develop some propositions about the interaction between control agents and protestors which might be assessed empirically. In the past, the concept "social control" has been used to indicate all action constraining movement activities, the theory being that variation in social controls will affect the movement which emerges. Such a broad definition does not help to distinguish the kinds or sources of constraint to which a movement is subject, and it is important that these be separated by confining the term "social control" to a particular interaction network. Social control agents are not ciphers but comprise an autonomous professional group, more or less isolated from other groups and adopting distinctive attitudes towards social issues.

This article presents a discussion regarding the protest movement and risk-taking in the draft resistance movement in the 1960's. The issue of how movements expand their base in society is often studied by asking who is recruited, or by examining social conditions which favor or discourage movement mobilization. Social movements have used a variety of means to make contact with outsiders: staging public meetings and demonstrations; mass media reports and advertisements; circulating movement literature; approaching people on the street, at doorsteps, or at places of work; making personal contact with relatives, friends, and associates. Draft counseling involved compiling and disseminating extensive knowledge about Selective Service rules, regulations, and informal operating procedures--information of great practical value to those "uptight with the draft," and hoping somehow to evade or resist conscription. The guiding vision of the early New England Resistance and other non-cooperation groups around the country was both simple and powerful: What if they gave a war and nobody came? If enough draft-age men refused to serve,the war and the draft would end.

This study reports on long-range consequences of student political activism. Three groups were selected: (1) former civil rights activists, (2) student government members, and (3) apolitical undergraduates. It was hypothesized that variation in political activism would be linked with differing occupations and political orientations. Former civil rights activists are heavily concentrated in the knowledge and human service occupations and are politically radical to liberal in their attitudes and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]