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"Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left" is a book that explores the history of female activists in the Japanese New Left student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. The author, Chelsea Szendi Schieder, examines the ways in which young women were both given a voice and silenced within the movement. She argues that women in the New Left were often rendered invisible and faced gendered stereotypes and sexist sensationalism from the mass media. The book also highlights the gendered hierarchies within the movement and the failure of the radical student movement to disrupt the larger social structure. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the history of women's activism in postwar Japan and contributes to feminist research on left-wing political activism in the country. [Extracted from the article]

This article demonstrates how female participation in social movements and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) influences the political participation of women activists. It highlights how women from the social movement Compromiso Ciudadano successfully led progressive bottom-up programs for the democratic transformation of Medellín, Colombia. This study draws upon the first-hand experiences of women who participated in a focus group and in interviews. The findings reveal that engaging in social movements and NGO activities strengthens women's agency in political participation, individually and collectively. This kind of grassroots participation increases women's inclusion in formal politics, and it creates bridges between local governments and female grassroots leaders and movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 106 Táíwò Olúfhemi O. Reconsidering Reparations. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 25 Du Bois W. E. Burghardt. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 27 Du Bois William Edward Burghardt, Jones Mack H. 2017. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 21 Dean Lorraine T. 2018. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 26 Du Bois William Edward Burghardt, Diggs Irene. [Extracted from the article]

The run-up to the 2020 election in the United States was marked by an unprecedented health pandemic and a social movement to challenge structural racism and advance social justice. Record numbers of Americans risked their health by protesting and voting in 2020. We analyze the relationship between a desire to advance social justice and Native American political behavior and political accountability utilizing data from the 2020 American Election Eve Survey's large sample of Native American voters. We find that in 2020, both perceptions of racial discrimination and the COVID-19 health pandemic had a significant effect on Native American mobilization and political accountability. We also advance the limited research on the Native American electorate by finding that living on or very near tribal lands is a consequential factor for Native American political behavior and their pursuits for justice through political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-based norms regarding political participation are not static; they are malleable attributes affected by police–protest dynamics in the social movement context. This study used a comprehensive and authoritative sampling framework to collect the views of Hong Kong residents at the end of the anti-extradition bill movement (n  =   1,000; 53.6% female; mean age = 46.4, range 18–86) and evaluated them using the Elaborated Social Identity Model. The results revealed a full mediational pathway from police action perceived as indiscriminate that facilitated the public's identification with the militant protesters and bolstered public support for the militant protest. Our findings provide an in-depth understanding of why the public supported violent protest and criminal vandalism in the movement by adopting the interactive arena between police and protesters as the entry point and the development of shared identity as the process. Our findings highlight crowd management as a complex issue in relational dynamics rather than a purely logistical challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do online networks encourage political participation? Much research has theorized on how digital networks transmit mobilizing content, fewer studies examine the structure of online networks, and even fewer test how the structure of online networks affects participation for political behaviors with differing costs. From a structural network perspective, I highlight the puzzle: If according to recent literature, digital networks are loose with many weak ties, how can such a network configuration facilitate high-cost political behavior that requires multiple social reinforcements? I map the following relationships among 655 Twitter users who follow the Black Lives Matter Sacramento chapter and compare the structure of the digital network to three commonly observed ideal type networks. The results show that the digital network is structurally distinct from the ideal types, as it is characterized by an extremely dense cluster but also with many loosely connected components, which I describe as a "cluster-connective network." Results from computer experiments further show that paradoxically, this "cluster-connective" configuration benefits participation for high-cost behavior but hinders participation for low-cost behavior. The results illustrate how a structural network perspective helps scholars move from the question of whether digital networks facilitate participation to the conditions under which digital networks encourage participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the author's views about the political and social conditions in Italy during 1968, and it mentions student protests, the involvement of young people in social movements, and various protests involving secondary school students in Italian cities in 2017. Political participation and direct action events such as sit-ins and marches in Italy are assessed, along with graffiti slogans and a feminist movement in Italy in the 1970s.

Social work has engaged with and led the revolutionary social movements of the past century. Yet today, as activism by and for racial others unfolds across the United States and Canada, our discipline remains largely silent. This article considers new ways for social workers to conceptualize social work activism, challenge the existing erasures within the profession, and construct innovative strategies to locate social work within the critical social movements of our time. Recognizing the continuity of histories of colonialism, slavery, and genocide, the author argues that social workers must engage with racialized communities' resistance through their legacy of exclusion and displacement. The author demonstrates the significance of an evolving politics of race and social justice for social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how indigenous movements in Latin America promote the political inclusion of historically marginalized indigenous groups. I argue that the social pressure produced by a strong movement promotes the inclusion of indigenous representatives in formal leadership positions. However, this effect depends on both the movement's internal unity and the general responsiveness of the political system. I examine my claims using a mixed-methods design. I draw on a new group-level data set on ethnic parties and ethnic civil society organizations in Latin America between 1946 and 2009. My statistical analysis finds that indigenous groups with well-organized movements are more likely to achieve inclusion in executive positions of state power. The level of democratic freedom in a country greatly conditions this effect, while movement-internal factionalism undermines the political effectiveness of indigenous mobilization. I illuminate the causal mechanisms underlying these results in a case study of the rise and decline of indigenous mobilization in Ecuador. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the causes of movement and countermovement mobilization, focusing specifically on the effect that the national movements have on each other by responding directly to mobilization and indirectly through their policy successes. We discuss the mechanisms by which national movements respond to each other, and we examine the influence of political parties and social, political, and economic changes for women. We analyze these relationships using a Poisson Autoregressive (PAR(ρ)) estimator, which is uniquely designed to model both the time dependence and the count distributions, on quarterly time series of feminist, anti-feminist, pro-choice, and anti-abortion events. Results show that movements and countermovements respond to each other and that anti-feminist movements mobilize in response to national policy change and societal change. The results suggest that many quantitative analyses of women's movements may be misspecified and that feminist mobilization does not always abate during conservative backlash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ontological security has received increased attention in the security studies literature over the past ten years. This article develops a critical perspective toward ontological security and its mobilization by IR scholars, arguing that substantive ethical and political resources are produced by resisting the terms of ontological security/insecurity. It argues that the aspiration to ontological security, to contiguous and stable narratives of selfhood, can (violently) obscure the ways in which such narratives are themselves implicated in power relations. Furthermore, it argues that attempts to order political life into an ontological/security episteme disciplines or marginalizes modes of subjectivity which resist the closure of ontological security-seeking strategies. The article engages queer figurations of subjectivity as mobilized by Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and Jack Halberstam, as well as examples from anti-militarist social movements, to demonstrate traditions which refuse and resist the framework of ontological security. It does this both in order to highlight particular practices and strategies that are written out by an epistemology oriented around ontological security/insecurity, and to show how a resistance to such ordering can enliven political action in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements interact in a wide range of ways, yet we have only a few concepts for thinking about these interactions: coalition, spillover, and opposition. Many social movements interact with each other as neither coalition partners nor opposing movements. In this article, I argue that we need to think more broadly and precisely about the relationships between movements and suggest a framework for conceptualizing noncoalitional interaction between movements. Although social movements scholars have not theorized such interactions, "strange bedfellows" are not uncommon. They differ from coalitions in form, dynamics, relationship to larger movements, and consequences. I first distinguish types of relationships between movements based on extent of interaction and ideological congruence and describe the relationship between collaborating, ideologically opposed movements, which I call "collaborative adversarial relationships." Second, I differentiate among the dimensions along which social movements may interact and outline the range of forms that collaborative adversarial relationships may take. Third, I theorize factors that influence collaborative adversarial relationships' development over time, the effects on participants, and consequences for larger movements, in contrast to coalitions. I draw on the case of the relationship between anti-pornography feminists and conservatives during the 1980s, charting the dynamics of their interaction across arenas and over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement coalitions present unique opportunities and challenges for collective action as they bring together organizations, movements, and individuals who hold diverse interests and social positions. The literature suggests that collective identity and shared ideology both offer opportunities for bridging these differences, but few have addressed their relative utility. Drawing on a case study of a university-based coalition of undocumented and citizen students working to build support for the federal DREAM Act, I find that a social justice ideology was used to facilitate fast-paced recruitment, create simplified participation guidelines based on legal status, and allow for the strategic renegotiation of participation. I argue that building a cross-status coalition through a shared ideology has two key advantages: (1) it allows for fast-paced coalition formation and (2) it promotes the mobilization and commitment of organizations and individuals who occupy different identities and social locations. Additionally, I suggest that conflict among members can be best negotiated through the development of discursive and interactive spaces that allow individuals to engage across their different social locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007 Australian Parliamentary Elections brought a new dynamic to Australia's foreign policy: the Kevin Rudd factor. The Prime Minister sought to develop a more proactive and multi-faceted foreign policy around ‘Creative Middle Power Diplomacy’. This study aims to cast light on the dynamism in Australia's Foreign Policy with Kevin Rudd within the framework of middle power activism. The research firstly focuses on the difficulties of defining and classifying middle powers through which it will put forward specific ‘commonalities’ for successful middle power foreign policy outcomes. The study of the EU–Australia Partnership Framework and the Asia-Pacific Community proposals – both of which were priorities for Kevin Rudd – reveal the potential and limits of middle power activism. This study argues that in today's world, middle powers have growing potential to pursue specific foreign policy goals but their ability to achieve these goals is constrained by Great Powers' interests and consent, and also by the nature or ‘commonalities’ of middle power diplomatic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the gay rights movement in Argentina, particularly the impact of international pressure and domestic activism in establishing such rights. The article examines the history of the homosexual subculture in Argentina that began during the 1880s, the 1967 establishment of the gay rights organization known as Nuestro Mundo, and the group the Frente de Liberación Homosexual (FLH). It also discusses the dissolution of the FLH, the Argentine military regime's campaign against dissenters between 1976 and 1983, and the exposure exiled Argentine homosexuals had to the international gay rights movement. The article also discusses the significance of the gay rights group the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA), discrimination against gays by the Argentine government, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic.

The article examines civil society and the public sphere in Japanese-occupied Korea. Particular focus is given to the role of Korean and Japanese members of city assemblies in the citizens' movement for public electricity during the 1920s and 1930s. According to the author, reforms to local systems of self-government increased elite political participation and opened up a discursive space of public debate in which Japanese and Korean community leaders could engage in joint political action. Topics discussed include authoritarianism, public opinion, and the utility corporation Keijō Electric.

The article dicusses the context of philosopher-theorist Alain Badiou on art, stating that it is one of the fours fields including love, politics, and science. According to Badiou, art is the actual compossibility of all four types of truth procedures at a specific historical moment that philosophy can operate. The implications of the Paris Commune for political activism in the modern times is also tackled.

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 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]

The article reports on research conducted to determine whether social capital or trust and association involvement predict political consumerism, particularly with the use of boycotting and buycotting. Researchers used data from the 2002/2003 European Social Survey and conducted a multilevel logit analysis of 24,854 individuals in 228 within-country regions in Europe. They wanted to evaluate whether social capital and political consumerism are positively related at both the individual and regional level. They found that individuals with greater personal social capital and those who live in regions with higher average levels of social capital are more likely to be political consumers.

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]

Research regarding the impact of repression on social movements has yielded conflicting findings; some argue that repression decreases the total quantity of protest events while others argue that it motivates protest. To move beyond this impasse, various scholars have suggested exploring how repression influences the quality of social movements. This study assesses the impact repression had on the information of alliances between different social groups participating in South Korea's democracy movement. Results from negative binomial regression analyses show that repression facilitated the formation of alliances between movement actors at a time when the overall number of protest events decreased. This study contributes to the literature on coercion and mobilization by pointing to the possibility of movement development during low levels of a protest cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has its origins in legal analysis but increasingly has been used by educational researchers to analyse the continued salience of institutional racism in educational settings. After providing a brief overview of the history of CRT and the educational issues addressed by critical race theorists, I review two books that explicitly engage critical race theory (CRT). Delgado and Stefancic's (2001) primer on the CRT literature provides an important backdrop for situating Guinier and Torres' (2002) ambitious argument for building grassroots social movements around the concept of political race. [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 discusses the significance of beating the challenges on pop culture images of the sixties for the effectiveness of the development of innovative instructional activities in the U.S. American teachers describe popular culture as the great influence on the imagination and fascination of Americans towards social upheaval and groundswell in students activism during 1960s. Likewise, historians expounded the interpretation of meaning on counterculture history. Suggest inquiry activity was created to discover evidences that proved useful in discovering the magnitude, influence and meaning of 1960s counterculture. Moreover, to overcome the complexity with the past, educators should recognize analogies, connections that will help the student to learn.

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.

This article explores the ideas and power struggles that have shaped the ongoing battle to privatize the Japanese postal services. For years, a coalition of commissioned postmasters, postal workers, bureaucrats and politicians resisted postal reform in part by appealing to the ‘traditional values’ symbolized by the state-run system and playing to the fears of ordinary citizens. Against this backdrop, Koizumi struggled to win the public over to his vision of a privatized postal system and, more broadly, a political economy based on free market principles. Koizumi was ultimately successful in passing his postal privatization bills in October 2005 not because he had won the ideological battle for the hearts and minds of the general public but because he managed to marginalize his opponents by changing the political and electoral rules of the game. Now, Koizumi faces renewed pressures from his opponents to dilute the market-oriented dimensions of the new postal regime as the government prepares to implement the privatization legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On July 21, 1903, some two hundred labourers recently recruited to construct the Benguet Road linking the Americans' erstwhile summer capital of the Philippines at Baguio with the railhead to Manila refused to report for work and peremptorily marched out of camp. While the incident is barely if at all remembered, it became something of a cause "célèbre" at the time. The affair was made much of by a nationalist press owned by Manila-based literati deeply involved in non-military confrontation with the new colonial administration. The Americans were equally as anxious to prove they were different to other colonial regimes and that nothing was amiss. The workers, of course, the "obreros" simply disappear once again into the historical twilight but not before leaving behind them a glimpse at the changes that were taking place in the local labour market. While it may be premature to talk about the dawning of a distinctive worker consciousness as yet, there were significant socio-economic developments in Filipino society at this time that were just as significant as the much more contestable political ones. It is against these wider considerations that the events surrounding the recruitment of labour on the road are played out. Named after the chief recruitment agent, Pascual Poblete, the affair is one of those rare occasions when long term historical developments at work in the less visible strata of late colonial society come to the surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how structural conditions and social movement frames interact to influence mobilization and political consequences of social movements. Mobilization efforts benefit when movement framing is congruent with local structural conditions. This mobilization, in turn, produces political leverage for the movement through its capacity to deliver support of its members and adherents. Its political advantage may be offset, however, if another of its key framing activities, the construction of collective identity boundaries, alienates the broader population and stimulates a backlash. Such backlash is also intimately connected to structural conditions because its potential is a function of the characteristics of the local population -- specifically, the proportion of the population alienated by the movement's boundary construction. We apply these arguments to the case of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and show that while the Klan's diagnostic and prognostic framing may have resonated structurally and facilitated the Klan's mobilization efforts, its exclusionary boundaries frustrated its attempts to secure broader political gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the contribution of a study of public participation in two English cities to the theorization of the relationship between policy context and local action in Great Britain. Issues discussed within the particular context provided by the discourse of the New Labour government; Mobilization of collective action within social movements; Implications of the analysis on understanding the relationship between public participation and political renewal.

The objective of this study is to outline the principal forces that have served as catalysts to the politicization of the Shi'ite community in Lebanon, and to uncover the causes of Hizbu'llah's emergence. Though the chief determinants of Shi'ite politicization have been the same social, economic, and political circumstances that have propelled Third World radical and populist movements to action, Hizbu'llah's emergence was not the inevitable byproduct of these conditions. Yet despite the fact that the elements spurring Shi'ite communal mobilization are clearly distinct from those for Shi'ite religious activism, their study is necessary for tracing the roots of Hizbu'llah insofar as the of the community's mobilization along religious lines was anchored in the decades of political participation that preceded it. As such, Hizbu'llah's genesis can be attributed to a unique composite of both indirect factors (such as modernization and political marginalization) and direct ones (such as foreign intervention and external assistance). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers the thesis that petitioning by collective groups, whether occupational, regionally constituted, or simply the body of people called the commons, was an important form of political communication in the early sixteenth century which, although poorly documented and consequently overlooked by historians, allows us an entry into the world of popular politics. The article offers illustrations of the way in which petitions were employed within the city of York, by groups such as weavers or by the commons of East Anglia in 1549 and 1553. The right to petition could not be denied, but mass petitioning was viewed with apprehension by government. Nonetheless, petitioning may be seen as a conservative form of behaviour when compared to calls for insurrection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the specificities and particularities of women's constitutional mobilization in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. It not only writes women into the story of recent constitutional change in the United Kingdom, a subject seldom examined in leading constitutional texts, but it also strives to nuance generalizations about British feminism. By outlining and assessing the differences in women's representational struggles and strategic choices across the United Kingdom, the article contributes to the literature on women's mobilization and its general impact on states and state policy, particularly at the subnational level. Variations are explained through an examination of changing political and socioeconomic contexts, as well as shifting identity politics patterns. The latter prove to be particularly insightful as identity politics strategies are shown not to be inevitably destructive, as is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article proposes a strategy for the management of activist-volunteers' participation in the cycle of a community crisis. The proposal, as outlined in the paper, is based on a nominal group process of 45 activist-volunteers, employees and directors along the confrontation line with Lebanon on the northern border of Israel. Participants were all veterans of previous crises. The nominal group process examined eight participation characteristics: areas of participation, level of influence, selection of activist-volunteers, definition of the organizational-political system, level of decentralization, participation forum and its size, use of tactics and intensity of participation. These were matched to four phases of community crisis (warning, shock, organizing and change). The findings of the study show that there is a need to build a variable participation strategy, composed of a different mix of components of the selected participation characteristics.

Discusses the La junta de indignacion or mass meeting of indignation, a type of social protest that a whole generation of Hispanos crafted during New Mexico's era of economic and political modernization from 1884 to 1933. Variety of issues protested by Hispanos by using la junta de indignacion; Key lesson from investigating juntas de indignacion; Why modernization sparks ethnic mobilization.

Social movements are manifestations of and facilitate human 'agency' (LaClau and Mouffe, 1987; Touraine, 1998). The past 20 years reveal a burgeoning number of service and advocacy organizations which focus on the specific needs, interests and issues of minority members of our society. In some cases these minorities represent a significant sector of the population yet continue to be regarded as minorities, as others, as less than full citizens. Full citizenship appears to be conferred differentially. Conceptually, citizenship reflects the idea that citizens act in the public sphere, they contribute to, and shape the discourses which, in turn, and in part, structure our society. All of the members of the society are, conceptually and theoretically, entitled to this participation. Practically, however, citizenship appears to be increasingly exclusively conferred. This paper explores these issues theoretically and conceptually, first examining the relationship between civil society and social movements and the public sphere; how these realms might be understood to intersect and interrelate. In short, the paper explores the question of whether the actions and agency of citizens in civil society effects the public sphere. Whether these persons and their activities contribute an alternative discourse which is a discourse of the public, or only of a marginal realm, is a question critical to understanding the relationship between community development, civil society and social change. While this paper can not claim to answer this question, it explores these ideas and our contemporary experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent studies have discussed changes within the politics of the urban poor in Latin America. One perspective finds such politics limited to local material needs petitioning by isolated groups. By contrast, I found a community organization in urban Mexico that was sponsored by another group, and brought into national political efforts and debates by that sponsor. Sponsorship, as a form of relationship between allies, is linked to the grievances felt by Mexican citizens, and these grievances are analyzed as affecting the political opportunity structure of the Mexican urban popular movement. The sponsor brought substantial benefits to the community organization, but the latter organization also suffered from the relationship. The examination of sponsorship between the urban poor and the middle-class allies reveals both benefits and pitfalls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds on the "community studies" tradition in urban sociology by examining the interconnections among political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and strategic framing in the emergence and outcome of a locally-based movement. Traditional urban analyses contend that there must be an intimate bond of community identity among individuals for them to engage in neighborhood collective action and political mobilization. This article challenges this assumption and examines "community identity" as a political strategy used by neighborhood coalitions and civil rights groups to contest public policies, neutralize counter frames and opposition, and mobilize constituents. I examine the emergence of an anti-expressway movement in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1960s and 1970s to illustrate the structural relationship between political opportunities, mobilization, and identity. Political opportunities not only create motivations for mobilization through "structural" changes (e.g., public policies, cycles of protest, and presence of external allies, etc.), but they also set in motion "ideational" shifts in political culture, expanding the cultural reservoir of strategic frames and enhancing the potency of movement framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment were not an important factor in the emergence of the "gender gap" in the 1980 presidential election. Conclusions to the contrary by news analysts, feminist political activists, and political scientists are based on a combination of the power of expectation, faulty analysis, and random bias in the most frequently used survey in political science. [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.

Explores the role of social structure in the promotion of interest distributions, which refer to how political preferences on various issues are distributed within a given community. Relationship between party voting and voting on ballot initiatives concerning social and cultural issues in Colorado from 1980 through 1990; Concept of social liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a secondary analysis of a survey involving more than 2,500 urban working residents in China, this study tests several individual-level causes of protest behavior suggested by the research on protest in the West. The timing of the survey, just three months before the 1989 massive upheaval in China, makes the study especially valuable. Results from path analysis show that age, education, and Communist Party membership have both direct and indirect impacts on protest, in an expected way. Income has only an indirect effect, whereas the impact of gender is not significant because the direct and indirect effects counter each other. Occupation does not make a difference. In addition, discontent with economic reforms, distrust in the government, aspirations for Western democracy, and disillusionment with Communist ideology all significantly enhance protest behavior. Postmaterialist values, which contribute positively to political protest in the West, play a suppressor role in China's contest, which offers interesting implications for comparative research on public opinion and political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the limitations of definitions of feminist art as a political activity. It notes that it is necessary to understand representation as a political issue and to have an analysis of women's subordination within patriarchal forms of representation in order to develop a feminist artistic practice that works towards productive social change. It re-examines the feminist relationship of art and politics. It offers an evaluation on how femininity itself as a social construct. It offers four strategies in the typology of women's art-making, which includes the glorification of an essential female power, a form of sub-cultural resistance, potential isolationism, and situating women at a crucial place in patriarchy which enables them to play on the contradictions within it.

ABSTRACT The structures of beliefs on feminist policy preferences are compared for activists who led campaigns supporting and opposing a Massachusetts referendum on equal rights for women (ERA) in 1976. Beliefs of opposing activists demonstrate asymmetric structures. The preferences for feminist policies of ERA proponents show significantly greater constraint, consensus, and position extremity than do those of ERA opponents. These findings are explained in terms of differences in the group processes among activists within social movements that assert new claims and responsibilities compared with those that defend old rights and privileges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report on social service agencies that helps to solve social problems. Until recently the controversy over strategies that deal with such massive social problems as poverty and delinquency involved two opposing schools of thought. On one side were the social service advocates who alleged that personal problems arose from personnel defects and therefore proposed strategies to help individuals cope more successfully with their environments. On the other side were the political activists who saw personal difficulties as the consequence of malfunctioning institutions and therefore advocated structural change. A new uphill struggle has begun in which legislators and the general public must be rearoused to the severity of the nation's social problems and the important role that the federal government must play in solving them. One consequence has been that social service programs, particularly those for the poor have come under mounting criticism. The public has been convinced that tax dollars and voluntary contributions are being squandered in programs with few discernible results. Legislators and foundation executives are being pressed to justify the outlay of huge sums of public and private money for services that do not seem to remedy pressing social problems.

This paper argues that identity politics is a form of high-risk activism. We draw from collective identity approaches to social movements to describe how the Sociologists' Lesbian and Gay Caucus has used identity- based organizing, assimilationist politics, and personalized political strategies during the past two decades to challenge stigmatized representations of same-sex sexuality and promote equal treatment of gays and lesbians in sociology and the larger society. Using survey data collected in 1981 and 1992 from caucus members, supplemented by intensive interviews, we assess the extent to which an increase in reported rates of discrimination and bias during the past ten years is linked to variations in activist experience and political consciousness. We then present a qualitative analysis of five career consequences suffered by gay, lesbian, and bisexual sociologists who engage in various forms of personalized political resistance: 1) discrimination in hiring; 2) bias in tenure and promotion; 3) exclusion from social and professional networks; 4) devaluation of scholarly work on gay and lesbian topics; and 5) harassment and intimidation. We conclude by examining the implications of our findings for the social movement literature that addresses the formation, use, and impact of identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of professionalism on volunteer activism within social movement organizations (SMOs) are more complex than generally recognized. Professionalism can inhibit or erode, substitute for, or facilitate volunteer activism. Most studies identify one of these patterns as typical of SMOs or dominant in a particular case. This article argues that some combination of the three, rather than a single pattern, is probably more typical of SMOs. To identify such combinations two analytic tools are needed: a more complex concept of volunteer activism than is generally used, and, a broader understanding of the means by which professionals influence volunteer activism. This article develops these tools through a comparative case study of the umbrella organizations of three major peace campaigns - the Emergency Peace Campaign (1936-1937), the atomic test ban campaign (1957-1963), and the nuclear weapons freeze campaign (1979-1986). The umbrella organizations are then shown to incorporate different combinations of the three bask patterns of professional-volunteer relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]