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Sustainable entrepreneurs operating in protected areas face distinctive barriers that place additional emphasis on the need to build legitimacy. To date, how they do this has not been entirely explored. This paper addresses this need through an exploratory study of sustainable entrepreneurs in a transnational protected area. The results indicate that sustainable entrepreneurs in protected areas face barriers that can be broadly classified as cognition spanning, locale and sector‐related barriers. The findings highlight that a key way sustainable entrepreneurs overcome these distinctive barriers is by building legitimacy through activism. Activism became instrumental in building legitimacy with varied stakeholders and actors. This is all geared towards overcoming barriers during the sustainable entrepreneurship process. The findings add to existing literature on the role of legitimacy building in sustainable entrepreneurship by detailing the different forms of legitimacy and how they are built through activism. The paper concludes with propositions about the conditions necessary for sustainable entrepreneurs to build legitimacy in fragile socioecological contexts through activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether and how mutual fund activism affects corporate innovation. Using a patent‐based innovation dataset from 2006 to 2017, our finding, which is inconsistent with the managerial myopia hypothesis, reveals that mutual fund intervention is associated with corporate innovation. We propose that mutual fund intervention promotes corporate innovation, proxied by invention patents. In addition, the effect of mutual fund intervention on corporate innovation is more pronounced for non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs) than for state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), and that mutual fund intervention is likely to increase firms' portfolio R&D expenditures. Finally, we offer robustness checks and address possible endogeneity concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the long‐term effect of hedge fund activism on distressed firms by tracing the post‐emergence performance of firms that successfully resolved distress. We find that the firms restructured with hedge funds' intervention, compared to their counterparts that emerged without such intervention, are more likely to lose their public status, enjoy higher financial stability, and invest more. Notably, the gap in financial strength lasts at least 3 years after emergence. These findings suggest that the efficiency gains brought by hedge fund activism during the restructuring process tend to positively impact the restructured firms' financial soundness in the post‐intervention period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary and continuous outcomes. Variation in parameters can produce either positive or negative relations between market liquidity and economic efficiency, depending on the activism technology and model parameters. Two results that contrast with the previous literature are that (a) the relationship between market liquidity and economic efficiency is independent of the activist's initial stake for a broad set of activism technologies, and (b) an increase in noise trading can reduce market liquidity because it increases uncertainty about the activist's trades (the activist trades in the opposite direction of noise traders) and thereby increases information asymmetry about the activist's intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Activism and bioethics have enjoyed a somewhat strained relationship. In this paper, I consider activism specifically from the perspective of junior academics. I will argue that although there may be a prima facie duty for bioethicists to be activists, countervailing considerations for junior academics may mean that they, in particular, should refrain from undertaking activist activities. I will argue this on the basis of two key claims. First, I argue that activism may come at a potential cost to the academics who undertake it, and that these costs are potentially of greatest detriment to junior academics undertaking activism. Second, I argue that junior academics are likely to be less effective activists than established academics. Moreover, undertaking activism as a junior academic may prevent one from becoming an effective activist later. Finally, I will discuss the implications of this argument for activist commitments later in one's career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a framework for evaluating and accounting for the outcomes of 'greenfield' union organizing campaigns. It argues that previous studies have tended to focus too much on the establishment of collective bargaining and negotiation of first contract as a campaign outcome. Instead, the effectiveness and representativeness of new union structures are emphasized, and the sustainability of those structures is emphasized as the most important outcome. A key finding from the empirical data is that campaigns that build both workplace activism and are co-ordinated by officers create more sustainable outcomes than campaigns that focus on one or the other. The evidence shows how and why these outcomes emerge, and the paper concludes with a consideration of the theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene calls for systemic change which requires much more than good ideas, stakeholder activism and self-organization. Successful change is managed in the form of a project. However, project management itself needs to learn to cope with the systemic complexity of the real world, especially with social complexity. Hence, this paper explores the paradox of reintroducing complexity within a discipline that has professionalized the reduction of complexity. Acknowledging the inevitability of the social aspects in human activity systems, this paper suggests decomposing social complexity along a political and a cultural perspective. This has methodological implications and practical consequences. First, the political stakeholder analysis is enriched with a systemic and ecological view. Second, cultures are interpreted along the lines of meaning-creation and sensemaking, exploring the stories which are the world to us. Thus, navigating systemic change finally embarks on the concept of next practice, promoting a path forward, step by step. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioethics is a practically oriented discipline that developed to address pressing ethical issues arising from developments in the life sciences. Given this inherent practical bent, some form of advocacy or activism seems inherent to the nature of bioethics. However, there are potential tensions between being a bioethics activist, and academic ideals. In academic bioethics, scholarship involves reflection, rigour and the embrace of complexity and uncertainty. These values of scholarship seem to be in tension with being an activist, which requires pragmatism, simplicity, certainty and, above all, action. In this paper I explore this apparent dichotomy, using the case example of my own involvement in international efforts to end forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. I conclude that these tensions can be managed and that academic bioethics requires a willingness to be activist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines how geography affects the different types of networks underlying social movements. The principal argument of the paper is that networks forged in particular places and at great distances play distinctive yet complementary functions in broad-based social movements. Not only does the articulation of these different types of networks result in complementary roles, but it also introduces key relational dynamics affecting the stability of the entire social movement. The purpose of the paper is therefore threefold: to provide a conceptual framework for interpreting the complex geographies of contemporary social movement networks, to stress the contributions of place-based relations in social movements and to assess how activist places connect to form ‘social movement space’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographies of activism draw on many traditions but few have charted social movements over time. This paper suggests that the consideration of action over time not only enhances our understanding of the degree of social change that occurs, but also the way activists’ interests are acknowledged, or contained, by those they seek to influence. The paper reviews existing literature and proposes the adoption of a particular conceptualization of time–space geometries. The case is made for attending to kairological and topological notions of time–space while recognizing these involve complex geometries of power relations, meanings, resources and social actions. The variability of these patterns in different time–spaces can stimulate multi-dimensional studies and the example of women's agricultural activism in Australia is employed to explore the usefulness of these ideas for geographies of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a game between a fiscal authority, an independent central bank and non-atomistic wage setters. The effects of fiscal activism and inflation targeting on labour market outcomes are analysed. The results suggest that inflation targeting provides incentive for wage restraint. Moreover, real wages are increasing in the degree of fiscal activism as wage setters exploit the response of a fiscal authority seeking to promote employment. Numerical results suggest that the benefits of targeting inflation are larger when the government pursues an activist policy and therefore that there is some substitutability between fiscal and monetary rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper links the work of Sebastião Salgado, recipient of the 2010 American Sociological Association (ASA) Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues , with the discipline of sociology. I reflect on Salgado's biography, method, and concerns in order to demonstrate how his work contributes to the awareness and understanding of social issues. Toward this end, I summarize sociology's record of involvement with visual documentation. Prior to 1915, the American Journal of Sociology regularly included photographs that provided visual documentation of environments under study. However, as sociology moved away from social reform activities and toward scientific investigation, the regular publication of photographs ceased. During the 1930s and 1940s, photographic projects in disciplines and social movements beyond sociology developed a variety of methods that would prove useful to sociology. During the 1970s, sociologists once again began to use visual methods in their teaching, research, and publication, putting sociology in the position to both contribute to and benefit from insights and social commitments that have distinguished Sebastião Salgado as a globally significant photographer and social activist during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While not a monolithic movement, ecofeminists are united in their conviction that there are important connections between the exploitation of both women and nature. They are internally divided, however, on the propriety of applying their theoretical claims and activist strategies across social contexts. This paper explores three debates within ecofeminism that largely turn on this universalist versus particularist tension: whether ecofeminist theorizing can adequately account for cultural variation; whether its common usage of essentialist rhetoric is productive or troubling; and whether resources for social activism could legitimately be culled from an assembly of heterogeneous and foreign sources. I conclude that the universalism of the women-nature connection can indeed be justified if perceived in multivalent ways, that 'earthcare' or 'ecomaternalist' discourse can be helpful in some contexts but harmful in others, and that selective retrieval of other cultures for the purposes of advocacy should not be ruled out as necessarily imperialistic or otherwise inappropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to broaden and deepen debates on the everyday practices of autonomous activists. To do this we present three main research findings from a recent research project that looked in detail at what we called ‘autonomous geographies’. First, in terms of political identity, we highlight how participants in political projects problematise and go beyond the simple idea of the militant subject, set apart from the everyday who opposes the present condition. Second, we highlight how everyday practices are used to build hoped-for futures in the present, but that this process is experimental, messy and contingent, and necessarily so. Finally, we illuminate the contested spatialities embedded within political activism that are neither locally bounded nor easily transferable to the transnational. This exploration of everyday activism has illuminated that the participants we engaged with express identities, practices and spatial forms that are simultaneously anti-, despite- and post- capitalist. We argue that it is through its everyday rhythms that meaning is given to post-capitalism and it is this reconceptualisation that makes post-capitalist practice mundane, but at the same time also accessible, exciting, feasible and powerful. This paper draws upon material collected during a 30-month empirical research project into the everyday lives of grassroots, non-party political activists in the UK between 2005 and 2008. Three case studies were explored in detail – autonomous social centres, Low Impact Developments, and tenants’ networks resisting gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualizations and re-conceptualizations of scale have been powerful tools for explaining spatial processes that transcend traditionally-bounded territories. Examining the role of individuals within a politics of scale can do even more to explain multi-scalar conflicts. This paper does so by examining struggles over airport expansion in the US, showing how an understanding of the various roles of individuals in the politics of scale – as sites of multiple scales, as actors constituting other scales, and as scales in and of themselves – better explains multi-scalar conflicts and offers more opportunities for resolving them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares six NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) movement organizations to explain why some of these social movement organizations expanded their goals while others did not. Analysis of interview and survey (N = 113) data reveals that friendship networks within the movement foster goal expansion (in part because people want to preserve the context for these friendships). External local political networks promoting their own rhetorical and resource agendas will inhibit goal expansion if they establish trusted links to the NIMBY organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the rationales of antiabortion activists, or "rescuers," in the pro-life movement in a large Midwestern city, and we attempt to explain variation in the unconventional protest activities of such people. We find no differences between rescuers with either pragmatic or purist orientations, but we find that conviction experiences help predict the number of rescuers in which an individual activist will engage. We also find that protesters who give instrumental meanings to their activism are much more likely to participate in frequent sit-ins than those who attach a primarily symbolic meaning to their protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphor, defined as the linguistic substitution of one phenomenon for another, is ubiquitous in environmental science and policy. In science, when used well, metaphors help to make complex and abstract ideas familiar and relatable, while also helping people orient ethically to the natural world. In freshwater science, metaphors structure many aspects of scientific and lay understanding.Yet, while metaphors are often used in environmental science and advocacy, there is a need to join up our currently diffuse understandings about how metaphors can help achieve social transformation for sustainability. Here, we focus on how metaphors are enshrined into institutions, giving them permanence and force as tools for social transformation.We explore three examples of metaphors in environmental science and activism that have 'gone public' to shape freshwater politics and governance in Aotearoa New Zealand (henceforth Aotearoa NZ). We focus on the origins, strategic purposes and limitations of the metaphors, the ways they have been institutionalised, and the roles that scientists in particular have played in shaping metaphorical meanings.Metaphors perform diverse political tasks, from mobilising popular support for species removal, to reorienting human obligations to rivers, through to expanding the scope of vision for river management. Scientists play key roles in shaping both regulatory institutions as well as informal norms that affect metaphor implementation. Finally, what makes a 'good' metaphor needs to be evaluated in context of who is mobilising the metaphor and what their broader sustainability values and objectives are. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an evolutionary game theory model in which polarization, antipathy, and political activism are simultaneous consequences of the evolution of individuals' ideologies and their attitudes toward other ideologies. We show that the evolutionary process is likely to result in a vicious path with individuals becoming increasingly extreme and polarized on the ideological spectrum and the society ending up with two politically engaged groups sharing no common grounds and strong hatred against each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper we argue that the consensus around normative standards for the ethics of research in clinical trials, strongly influenced by the Declaration of Helsinki, is perceived from various quarters as too conservative and potentially restrictive of research that is seen as urgent and necessary. We examine this problem from the perspective of various challengers who argue for alternative approaches to what ought or ought not to be permitted. Key themes within this analysis will examine these claims and argue they have implications for the interests of the research subject, research governance and regulation. Using our work with TREAT-NMD, the neuromuscular clinical trials network, we posit that there is a place for advancing the discourse of moral rights and moral duties in the context of research, especially from the perspective of patients and their families, and for including the politics of patient activism and empowerment. At the same time we remain vigilant to the danger that the therapeutic misconception and other serious vulnerabilities for the patient population in clinical trials, are at risk of being overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how space matters to the mobilisation, practices and trajectories of contentious politics has frequently been represented as a politics of scale. Others have focused on place and networks as key spatialities of contentious politics. Yet there are multiple spatialities – scale, place, networks, positionality and mobility – that are implicated in and shape contentious politics. No one of these should be privileged: in practice, participants in contentious politics frequently draw on several at once. It is thus important to consider all of them and the complex ways in which they are co-implicated with one another, with unexpected consequences for contentious politics. This co-implication in practice, and its impact on social movements, is illustrated with the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a social movement organization framing analysis to conflicts between gay-rights and Christian Right groups over issues of lesbian, gay, and bisexual inclusions in public education. As groups representing each side entered this new arena of debate over gay rights, they applied strategies they had used in other arenas. Both sides have pursued inflexible, polarizing strategies that target their constituencies and have relinquished the opportunity to offer new and creative understanding of their positions and to reach a potential new audience. This shows how opposing frames can become mutually reinforcing constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chief executive officers (CEOs) who engage in activism take public stands on issues that are largely unrelated to the core business of their firms. This study assesses the impact of CEO activism on shareholder value and investigates potential drivers behind the decision to advocate. We conduct an event study centred on a particular episode of CEO activism: the resignation of a group of business leaders from their roles as advisors to President Trump. We choose this setting since activism is likely to have a stronger impact when a CEO is politically connected. However, by engaging in advocacy, a CEO risks severing the very same political links that underlie the strength of the message. We find that shareholders react negatively to the decision to quit a presidential advisory council, which is consistent with a fear of weakening their firm's political influence. The decision to publicly advocate seems to be driven more by a CEO's personal political ideology than by a company's general involvement in corporate social responsibility. We also observe that managers are more likely to take a stand when they are protected by their firm's corporate governance rules. This study provides empirical evidence of the risks associated with CEO activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior evidence suggests that, in contrast to European investors, local norms related to environmental and social (E&S) beliefs do not affect the willingness of US institutional investors to push for E&S improvements in US firms. We revisit this issue except, instead of measuring E&S social norms at the country level, we allow E&S social norms to vary between states. We find that the shareholdings of non‐local US institutional investors from states with strong E&S social norms are positively related to E&S‐related shareholder activism, indicating that local E&S social norms do matter for US institutional investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is proposed that previous studies of the relationship between orthodoxy and social activism have yielded inconsistent findings because a critical mediating variable, salience or perceived importance of religion, usually has been neglected. Findings from a survey of 1,300 students at Washington State University support the hypothesised role of salience as a mediating variable. Relationship between orthodoxy and church activism emerges only for the high salience subsamples. The apparent utility of the orthodoxy-salience-activism model for bringing coherence to previously inconsistent findings seems to argue for more widespread use of salience as a control variable in studies of the concomitants and consequences of religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Bud Mehan on the trends of ethnographic activism and another about cultural therapy.

The study explores how online health communities produce social value by uniting individuals under a common purpose, to advance healthcare in post‐conflict states. We selected MedicineAfrica – a digital platform known for creating social value by providing medical education in regions with under‐resourced healthcare systems – and drew on multiple data collection methods. We found that it is through a unique form of digital health activism that social value is created in this context. Drawing on a sociological understanding of digital health activism, we make the following contributions: First, we identify three types of non‐economic, social value: cognitive, professional and epistemic. Second, we indicate that social value creation is enabled by three emergent forms of digital health activism (ie, philanthropic, moral and reciprocal activity). Third, we elicit three enabling mechanisms explaining how these forms of activism are technically and socially afforded through the platform's connective capacity and emerging collective practices in tandem with its members' growing commitment. Our article contributes to the growing IS literature on digital activism by offering a framework that elucidates how digital health activism relates to social value creation. The article provides practical implications as to how platforms can enable sustainable online (health) communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has found many positive benefits to person‐organization (PO) fit, for both individuals and the organization. However, PO misfit has received far less attention in the literature. In this article, we look specifically at PO misfit caused by the differing political values and beliefs of the CEO and employee. We argue that CEO activism influences employee perceptions of ideological misfit (IM), whereby differing political beliefs between employees and their activist CEO can impact workplace outcomes. We consider how peer group reactions, ethical climate, external needs fulfillment, and moral identity serve as boundary conditions for perceptions of PO misfit and related organizational outcomes. We also examine antecedents of CEO activism. Drawing on academic literature from both the micro and macro perspectives of management research, we introduce a conceptual model and discuss implications for the firm and its employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discussion of the connection between activism and academia in bioethics, highlighting the author's own trajectory, exploring the extent to which academics have an obliation to be 'judges' rather than 'barristers' (as explored by Jonathan Haidt) and asking questions about the relationship of disability to positions in bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of a bioethicist carries distinctive responsibilities. Alongside those of any worker, there are responsibilities associated with giving guidance to practitioners, policy makers and the public. In addition, bioethicists are professionally exposed to and required to identify situations of moral trouble, and as a result may find themselves choosing to work as advocates or activists, with responsibilities that are distinct from those generally acknowledged within academia. The requirement for bioethics to make normative judgements entails taking a stance, which means there cannot be a sharp line between 'academic' or 'objective' bioethics, and advocacy/activism, but a continuum of bioethicists' engagement and an associated continuum of responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sketches a taxonomy of the activities in which bioethics academics engage, including activities that may make their own research more impactful, from little or no engagement outside academia to activism or extreme activism. This taxonomy, the first of its kind, may be useful in determining what obligations bioethics academics have in relation to activism and activities that fall short of activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large hand-collected data set from 2001 to 2006, we find that activist hedge funds in the United States propose strategic, operational, and financial remedies and attain success or partial success in two-thirds of the cases. Hedge funds seldom seek control and in most cases are nonconfrontational. The abnormal return around the announcement of activism is approximately 7%, with no reversal during the subsequent year. Target firms experience increases in payout, operating performance, and higher CEO turnover after activism. Our analysis provides important new evidence on the mechanisms and effects of informed shareholder monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms use active political strategies not only to mitigate uncertainty emanating from legislative activity, but also to enhance their growth opportunities. We find that a firm's systematic risk (beta) can be hedged away by employing various political strategies involving the presence of former politicians on corporate boards of directors, contributions to political campaigns, and corporate lobbying activities. The hedging effect is greater when firms operate in more uncertain industries. In addition, active political strategies are associated with greater firm heterogeneity and make real options more value relevant as potential drivers of competitive advantages in uncertain environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines firm characteristics that lead to shareholder activism and analyzes the effects of activism on target firm governance structure, shareholder wealth, and operating performance for the 51 firms targeted by CalPERS over the 1987-93 period. Firm size and level of institutional holdings are found to be positively related to the probability of being targeted, and 72 percent of firms targeted after 1988 adopt proposed changes or make changes resulting in a settlement with CalPERS. Shareholder wealth increases for firms that adopt or settle and decreases for firms that resist. No statistically significant change in operating performance is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Iranian advances in the Arab World. History, dictate that Iran will be a major player in the affairs of the Middle East and have major influence in the region. Despite its size and the oil and the ancient glory Iran faces certain disadvantages. It is a multiethnic, predominantly Persian country is a predominantly Arab region.

Building on social movement theory, this study assesses the influence of social media activism on the stock market performance of targeted firms. We focus on information published on Twitter by two critical stakeholders: consumer associations and trade unions. To the extent that social media represent a valid medium to mobilize stakeholders' activism, protests on Twitter may damage firm reputation, leading to capital market reactions. Using a corpus of over 1.5 million tweets referring to Spanish listed banks, we study the impact of activism by looking at targeted firms' abnormal variations in price and trading volume. Our findings suggest that the Twitter activism of key stakeholders has a significant impact on investors' decisions. Further, our empirical analyses indicate that the mechanisms affecting investors' behavior differ depending on the characteristics of the stakeholder group. Hence, this study contributes to understanding how social movements influence corporate behavior via social media. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Membership mobilization is widely regarded as critical for union revitalization. Estimates of the level of activism vary widely, and studies reveal puzzling inconsistencies between union members' beliefs and intentions. Drawing from Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour, we address both issues using a sample of faculty union members. Results show both consistency and discrepancy between summary self-reports of activism and specific participation behaviours, helping account for the widely varying estimates of activism levels found in other studies. Results also indicate an important role for perceived control, a factor rarely examined in prior research on activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical activist organizations face the complex task of managing their identity so as to draw political attention but also to appear legitimate and thus gain public support. In this article we develop a picture of the identities of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ( SSCS) members, a group mostly known for their direct action against whaling, via a thematic analysis of material from the SSCS website and interviews with SSCS members. In online commentary, founder Captain Paul Watson establishes several deliberately paradoxical notions of who the Sea Shepherds are. We relate these identity statements to interviews with core activists to examine how they manage the identity conflicts resulting from the group identity, such as being seen as 'pirates' and 'hard lined vegans.' We found that SSCS positions themselves as a diverse and unstructured organization, yet distinctively passionate and willing to take action where others will not. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the constraints and conflicts around political activist identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. In nineteenth century Britain, the first working time regulations were prompted by humanitarian concerns about women and children employed in factories. In the United States, working time laws were initially introduced in response to union activism and labour unrest. During the twentieth century, policy-makers enacted statutes that shortened hours of work in an attempt to spread available work and thereby curb unemployment. The past 20 years, with the adoption of the European Working Time Directive, have reflected a movement towards social and political integration, continuing political pressure to curb unemployment, and growing acceptance of ergonomics and work organization as components of international safety regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political transnational practices-that is, both the physical and symbolic border-crossing political practices-of two Zapatista groups. This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of literature on transnationalism and citizenship by focusing on immigrants' political transnational activities in the global South, as well as transnational activists' practices in the global North influenced by the global South. I argue that transnational ideological and political influences are bidirectional, that is, influences also flow from the global South to the global North. In addition, I argue that different transnational practices are strongly shaped by structural opportunities and constraints on activists, in this case, by citizenship status and economic class. My arguments are drawn from fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area with two Zapatista groups, which I name the Localizers and the Globalizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People tend to have similar beliefs about leaders and men but dissimilar beliefs about leaders and women. A decrease in this perceived incongruity between beliefs about women and leaders might follow from perceived changes in either or both of these stereotypes. In two experiments we investigated the dynamics of this stereotype incongruity by examining cross-temporal perceptions of change in women's roles and leadership demands. In Experiment 1, participants judged a target group (leaders, men, or women) in a specified year in the past, the present and the future with regard to gender-stereotypic traits. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated the same target groups in a future society in which the role distribution between the sexes was described as traditional, same-as-today, or equal. Altogether our findings indicate that the perceived incongruity between the leader stereotype and the female stereotype is a dynamic phenomenon. Participants' beliefs indicated erosion of the perceived incongruity between leaders and women because of a perceived change in women's roles. We discuss the implications of these beliefs for future social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precipitous decline in union density and influence around the world has spawned a growing body of scholarship on union renewal. While this literature evidences lively debates regarding the efficacy of different renewal strategies, many argue that the path to renewal is paved through increased member activism. In this article, we question that premise. We examine the importance of rank-and-file union member activism in 44 cases of organizing campaigns in the United States and in the UK. Our review of these cases reveals little support for the notion that member activism is indispensable to union renewal in general, and successful organizing campaigns in particular. Our findings provide additional insight into the debate over top-down and bottom-up strategies for renewal, and raise several questions for future research regarding when, under what conditions, and under what rules worker activism matters for labour union renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental governance regimes concerned with the management of biological life have encouraged not only new forms of expertise, but also political activism and struggle. One such regime, the international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Biosafety Protocol), a subagreement of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) , seeks to monitor the potential risks of releasing living modified organisms, such as transgenic seeds, into the environment. Drawing on market-oriented visions of environmental conservation and risk management, the Biosafety Protocol is closely tied to the development of new bioeconomies and the ascent of neoliberal principles globally. NGOs and environmentalists have played prominent roles in the Biosafety Protocol by occupying spaces designated for civil society participation, raising the question of how activists both disrupt and sustain the neoliberal logics embedded in new regimes of environmental governance. I explore this question through ethnographic research in Costa Rica among activists, biosafety officials, and private biosafety auditors, where activists have engaged biosafety as part of a campaign against transgenic seeds. Working with limited resources and a genuine concern to manage the risks of agricultural biotechnology, officials draw on strategies that position both the market and civil society as key mechanisms of biosafety monitoring. Despite opposing transgenics and the concept of biosafety, activists participate in the government biosafety commission as civil society representatives and informally monitor local fields. Officials have labeled activists “biovigilantes,” viewing them as parallel to private biosafety auditors who subsidize the lack of state capacity in biosafety. Recent research on civil society and governance suggests that discourses of participation have depoliticizing impacts, encouraging specific forms of self-conduct that reinforce a dominant order of things. Illustrating how activists occupy and negotiate civil society and biosafety expertise, I argue by contrast that their engagement with biosafety is uneven and contradictory, revealing an unsettled struggle, rather than some prevailing governmental logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I discuss different forms of working-class activism in two steel factories in Sheffield, England, where I conducted fieldwork between 1999 and 2000. Locating the ethnography in the broader context of the U.K.'s financial capitalism, I describe how the models of “community unionism” and “business unionism” were implemented on the two shop floors, affecting the work practices, political strategies, and forms of solidarities of workers. I show, first, how the current financialization of the economy challenges existing labor strategies, leading to new political solidarities and moralities of labor. Second, I use current debates on trade union activism to think anthropologically about class, labor, and the relations between society and the economy under capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines how activists in rural southern India have sought to reshape the field of political communication by encouraging lower-caste women to submit written, signed petitions to district-level government offices, and so represent themselves to the state. I argue that contradictions between democratic recognition and the will to development that inhere to the political structure of contemporary governance in rural India correspond to tensions within the semiotic structure of signature itself, between constative representation and performative creation. Governmentality and the forms of communication that it requires often rest on the notion that written self-representation constitutes an act of political agency. But the limits of a governmental communicative reason that would conflate written subject and agent become especially clear in postcolonial contexts where the construction of those citizens that would be represented is in fact a product of the very act of representation. It is the narrative of development-as-pedagogy that holds out the promise of a future alignment of communicative frameworks, technologies, and participant roles, allowing for the transparent self-representation of an already-constituted citizen. By tracking the ambivalent experience of one group of women in particular, this account focuses on how the logic of signature as self-representation has served to recontextualize the marginality of petitioners as something within the state's broader field of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]