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Social media and digital platforms have become essential tools for the new generation of youth activists. However, these tools subject youth to both new (and old) forms of surveillance and control. Drawing on in-depth interviews and social media walkthroughs with 61 youth activists, I examine hybrid tactics that these youth employ to resist surveillance and other forms of digitally mediated control as they participate in politics and social movements. I show that even in democracies like the United States and Canada, for individuals along intersecting axes of marginalization (e.g. race, gender), public political acts do not capture the full range of young people's political repertoires. Young people, especially those from marginalized groups, adopt hidden, under-the-radar tactics in response to pressures of social, state, and corporate surveillance. I develop the concept of "digital infrapolitics" referring to the ways in which digital politics and activism go below the radar under surveillance and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea for this special issue on disabled children's activism, resistance, and presence in social justice movements came from a deep commitment to spotlighting disabled young people's justice-seeking action in the northern part of Turtle Island colonially known as Canada. Currently, Canada is buzzing with cross-movement activism that features young people's crip wisdom. To name only a few actions unfolding as we release this special issue: high school students in New Brunswick are protesting a review of policy that allows students to use their choice of personal pronouns without schools notifying their parents (Sweet, 2023); teen water protector Autumn Peltier continues making global headlines as she pushes for policies to preserve clean water across the country (Slack, 2023); and a group of 15 youth climate activists has mobilized a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that they are disproportionately affected by climate change (David Suzuki Foundation, 2023). We feel resonances between this cross-movement activism and multiple theoretical frameworks that attend to disabled children and youth, including disabled children's childhood studies. Amid this crosshatching of activism and intellectual work, we issued a call for papers in 2021 inviting scholars, activists, and artists to share how and where young disabled folks are making waves. Now, we offer this special issue as a partial snapshot of disabled children's childhoods in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longitudinal study involving 455 Black young adults living in Canada investigated whether gender and autonomous motivation influenced the relationship between perceived racism threat and Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism, and whether BLM activism influenced life satisfaction over time. A moderated mediation analysis using PROCESS Macro Model 58 tested the indirect effect of autonomous motivation on the relationship between perceived racism threat and BLM activism varying by gender. Multiple linear regression assessed how well BLM activism predicted life satisfaction. Black women perceived greater racism threat than Black men related to increases in BLM activism via the influence of autonomous motivation. BLM activism had a positive influence on life satisfaction over time, regardless of gender. This research suggests Black young women are playing pivotal roles in the BLM movement and helps us understand how motivation may be influencing involvement and well‐being in social justice issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ) is the property of Routledge 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.)

Social movements are at the forefront of fighting for another world as conceptualised through Arundhati Roy's portal. COVID-19 and state measures imposed to contend with it have severely impacted not only the activism of movements, but also their capacity to learn. Translocal social movement learning offers one way in which such learning can continue. This article shares reflections from participants involved in a translocal learning engagement between movement members and activist-scholars from Ghana, South Africa and Canada. It provides an important example of the kind of non-hierarchal social movement learning that can happen at a distance, when movements share, learn and support one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channeling theory posits that external funding for social movements, rather than coopting activism, channels activism into more structured and less militants forms. Studies on channeling, however, focus on private funding. The following article examines whether public funding has a comparable effect on social movements. Using the human rights movement in Canada as a case study, it examines several issues relating to channeling: why funders support activism; funding as social control or altruism; how funding is related to consolidating movement gains; and the impact of funding on mobilization, activism, and internal movement dynamics. To address these questions, this article draws on an innovative new data set that includes lists of grants extracted from more than 30 years of government budgets in Canada. It also draws on several years of archival research on a network of 19 organizations in every region of Canada, as well as interviews with former members of these organizations. In addition to demonstrating that public funding has a comparable channeling effect as private funding, this article provides the first comprehensive survey of the extent of state funding for the human rights movement in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The book Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action After the WTO Protests in Seattle argues that the process of diffusion is dependent on social processes in the receiving context. The most important in social movements is an egalitarian and reflexive deliberation among diverse actors. The book traces the direct action tactics associated with the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and how these spread to activists in Toronto and New York City. It shows how the structure of the political field, racial and class inequalities, identity boundaries, and organizational and conversational dynamics limited deliberation among activists, and thus limited the diffusion of the Seattle tactics. By constraining the spread of the Seattle tactics, this slowed the global justice movement's wave of protest. In this paper, I explore the application of and implications of this model of protest tactic diffusion to the recent Idle No More mobilizations. Le livre Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action After the WTO Protests in Seattle fait valoir que le processus de diffusion dépend de processus sociaux dans le contexte de réception. Le plus important pour les movements sociaux est une délibération égalitaire et réflexive entre divers acteurs. Le livre retrace les tactiques d'action directe associés aux manifestations de Seattle contre l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce en 1999 et comment ils se propagent à des militants de Toronto et de New York. Il montre comment la délibération de la structure des inégalités le domaine politique, raciales et de classe, les limites de l'identité et de la dynamique de l'organisation et de la conversation limitée parmi les militants, et donc limiter la diffusion de la tactique de Seattle. En limitant la propagation de la tactique de Seattle, ce ralentissement de la vague de protestation du mouvement altermondialiste. Dans cet article, j'explore l'application et implications de ce modèle de diffusion protestation de tactique pour les dernières Idle No More mobilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the debate over Barker and Cox's (2011) use of Gramsci's distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals to contrast academic and activist modes of theorizing about social movements. Often misread as an attack on personal choices in career and writing, the distinction aimed to highlight the different purposes, audiences, and social relationships entailed by these different forms of theorizing. Discourses which take 'scholarship' as their starting point position 'activist' as a personal choice within an institutional field, and substitute this moral commitment for a political assessment of its effects. By contrast, few academics have undergone the political learning curve represented by social movements. This may explain the widespread persistence -- beyond any intellectual or empirical credibility -- of a faith in 'critical scholarship' isolated from agency, an orientation to policy makers and mainstream media as primary audiences or an unquestioned commitment to existing institutional frameworks as pathways to substantial social change. Drawing on over three decades of movement participation and two of academic work, this article explores two processes of activist training within the academy. It also explores the politics of different experiences of theoretical publishing for social movements audiences. This discussion focuses on the control of the "means of mental production" (Marx, 1965), and the politics of distribution. The conclusion explores the broader implications of these experiences for the relationship between movements and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the implications of the social acceleration of time for the capacity of activist-scholars to engage in collective action. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on time and temporality, the article argues that the neoliberal university is driven by the same speed imperative that underpins the capitalist mode of production, and that the resulting and growing time pressures inhibit academics' (and others') involvement in social movements in profound and deleterious ways. To explore this argument empirically, I draw on insights gleaned from semi-structured interviews with Canadian activist-scholars. Despite the manifest diversity of temporal experiences and challenges faced by scholar-activists in contemporary high-speed society, it is clear that academics today face severe time pressures that apply across individual differences and across disciplines. These pressures, which can only be properly explicated with reference to the ruling politicaleconomic paradigm, militate against the capacity to engage in reflexive thought (for both scholarly and activist purposes) and also against a higher level of involvement of 'public intellectuals' in social movements. The article's conclusion offers a few tentative thoughts about tempering the speed imperative for the purpose of self-care and by extension, for the common good in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hundred and fifty-seven representatives from 63 advocacy organizations operating in Canada were surveyed to evaluate the extent to which these groups are adopting social media, and perceive that these technologies offer affordances that contribute to the advancement of activism objectives. Quantitative results of social media adoption reveal that groups are engaging with a limited selection of social media technologies (mainly Facebook and Twitter) a few times a week or more, while avoiding other options like Google + and Tumblr. Qualitative results addressing perceived social media affordances suggest that while groups are enthusiastic about social media's potential to strengthen outreach efforts, enable engaging feedback loops, and increase the speed of communication, they remain cautious of unproven techniques that may divert resources from strategies known to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the fall of 1974, the threatened deportation of several hundred Haitians catalysed a major crisis in Quebec society. Rather than quietly accepting their fate, resisting individually by going underground, or heading to another jurisdiction, Haitian migrants brought their story to the larger public through protests and interventions in the mainstream media. In so doing, they mobilized a movement opposing the deportations, precipitating a crisis in Quebec political life during which church groups, trade unions, voluntary associations, civil rights organizations, and artists and intellectuals denounced the strict enforcement of immigration regulations. Partly because of their appeals to the conscience of the population, and partly because of their ability to position themselves as ideal francophone immigrants for modern Quebec, Haitian migrants created a space for themselves in the public sphere in which their voices and perspectives could be heard. Throughout the crisis, they used this space to shift the discussion beyond debates about federal-provincial relations, to introduce new arguments about the interconnected histories of Canada, Quebec, and Haiti. The arguments that they brought forward had an important influence on social movements in Quebec as well as on the province's political culture in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Brigette approached me to write a piece for this collection I hesitated for weeks. Despite technically being a youth, I have never identified as being a 'youth activist' and for weeks I pondered why that was. I realized that even I had internalized the association between youth and apathy. Or at best, I assumed that youth within social movements were experimenting with counter-cultural politics. I have often imagined myself or other young people around me as being particularly 'mature', when in reality it is obvious that young people, as young people, are deeply committed to struggles for liberation and freedom. We should be celebrated and honoured as integral participants in the collective movements that we desire and are inspired by. I decided it was an apt moment to reflect on more than 10 years of engaging and mobilizing in grassroots multiracial feminist communities for social change as a young person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the work of the Calgary Birth Control Association with a particular focus on their referral service to help Albertan women obtain abortions in Seattle. The fact that Canadian women were travelling to the United States for abortions highlights the shortcomings of the Canadian health-care system and the legal changes in the 1969 omnibus bill. Cross-border travel is also compelling evidence for the argument that reproductive rights are an international issue. More particularly, this study demonstrates the tensions that reproductive-rights activists faced in addressing the needs of individual women vs the long-term objective of changing the laws and improving accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the current dynamics of the Canadian women's movement in the wake of sweeping fiscal policy decisions aimed at deinstitutionalizing feminism. Following a historical overview of the movement, we employ qualitative interviews with feminist activists across the country to "take stock" of the movement. We examine how feminist organizations struggle to negotiate the pressures of diminished and inadequate funding and changing relations with the state. We document the faltering organizational infrastructure at the national level and the "trickle-down" effects of this to provincial and local organizations. We also document the strategies that activists adopt to circumvent the funding constraints and finally, the importance of the "social movement community" in supporting the infrastructure and ongoing activism of the movement (Staggenborg & Lecomte, 2009). We argue that while the erosion of the organizational infrastructure will have an impact on the ability of feminists to launch campaigns, gain attention and ultimately, protect existing gains we demonstrate that activists are reconceptualizing feminist activism in Canada, maintaining networks and developing new activist strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the political activities of independent political groups seeking the creation of a sovereign nation-state of Quebec separate from Canada. These parties included the "Jeune-Canada," "Jeunesses patriotes" and several political newspapers. Despite their attempts to create a movement that would resonate with the entirety of French-Canadian's, they encountered numerous difficulties in taking their political ideas and forming a cohesive social movement to challenge the Canadian government.

The article focuses on the youth activist cultures in urban Canada. It indicates the pressures faced by young activists which have been contributed by liberalism and neoliberalism. It explores the role of class and race in shaping contemporary youth activism, citing the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Sarah Thornton and Julie Bettie. It discusses the rituals of style as well as their relationship to consumption and identity. The author also indicates the symbolic elements of the subcultures of youth activists.

Copyright of Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition is the property of Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition 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.)

This paper looks at "Canadian feminisms in action" in the context of transnational feminist organizing, and the attendant question of power relations between women. It suggests a conceptual framework called the "pedagogy of activism" to illustrate how reflective engagement in activism helps to name and address power dynamics. A list of principles drawn is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how we are to understand democratic media activism, which has recently burgeoned in Canada, the UK and the USA. What is its political significance and potential? Is it a new social movement, a new style of politics cutting across movements, or are new concepts needed? Drawing illustratively upon interviews with media activists, notably in Vancouver, we explore insights offered by social movement theory - including resource mobilization formulations and the new social movement theories of Melucci, Habermas, Cohen and Arato, and Fraser. While all these traditions offer valuable insights, media activism reveals limitations in existing conceptualizations. It has some of the characteristics of a movement, but lacks a distinct collective identity or niche within movement ecology. It may be destined to be a boundary-transgressing nodal point for other movements, articulating a coherent project for radical democracy, rather than a movement-for-itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘emergent ties’ is often used to refer to the role of social networks in activating social movements. Yet pre-existing network ties were usually not a factor in initiating decisions of 50,000 draft-age American youth to migrate to Canada during the American Vietnam War. These youth often learned about the possibility of migrating to Canada through the news media and a widely distributed draft resistance manual. Once in Canada, they often became involved in networks that directed and sustained their movement activity. This suggests that the emergence and persistence of activism may often be distinct. This paper argues that a transformation process that leads to activism is often a life stage specific process, usually in late adolescence or early adulthood, whose explanation requires detailed attention to everyday behavioral activity; while the evolution and persistence of activism is often a life course persistent process that covers a longer period and involves the influence of more generically structured network ties. These patterns are demonstrated in a fuzzy set analysis (FSA) of early and longer term political activism in the lives of Americans who migrated to Toronto during the Vietnam War. We find that for both men and women, helping others was a necessary experience in transforming the resistance involved in this migration into collectively organized anti-war activism, and that a longer term tendency of the women who migrated to Canada to remain more involved than men in social movements is a product of their continuing contacts with the persons involved in their earlier activism. The results of our research underline the importance of distinguishing life stage specific and life course persistent processes in the study of social movements, and more generally that the study of social movements and the life course have much to contribute to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the use of Internet technology against the initiatives of the Free Trade Area of the America (FTAA). The Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), a transnational coalition of hundreds of western hemisphere's civil society organizations that opposed the Free Trade of the United States' accord, applied Internet to communicate, plan, instruct and pressure state authorities in an attempt to promote an alternative social-development vision. Internet made the struggle sophisticated and it has been escalating since 1997, when the HSA was conceptualized. The effect of the protest was visible in the second People's summit of the Americas which held in Quebec City, Quebec in the year 2001. The anti-FTAA mobilization that the HSA has been planning is limited largely to its North American partners in Canada, in the United States and Mexico. Internet technologies are used creatively by the HSA for the development of a discourse critical of the FTAA. Movement activists have worked hard to overcome the geographical and language barriers by planning, cooperating and crafting policy. Internet activism is changing the way of struggle against the power and challenging the initiatives.

Data from a survey of 471 leading 1960s activists in Quebec and English Canada confirm hypotheses that strongly contradict predictions about the nature of post-1960 movements derived from the New Social Movements theory. It is argued that a new approach to developing a post-Marxist theory of social movements is needed, starting from a recognition that the politics of the left wing of post-1960 movements are "new left," not "new liberal." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a particular expression of social activism by older Canadian women to consider its implications for later life learning. 'Older women', despite their heterogeneity, have tended to be pathologized as a part of the 'problem' of ageing and languishing welfare societies—i.e., stereotyped as passive recipients of welfare and healthcare services. Yet, they can also be seen as part of the 'answer' to the challenges societies like Canada face. Given the combination of a greying population and the growing tide of citizens' participatory democracy, it is timely and important to shed light on older women's social activism. Based on document analysis and fieldwork with the Raging Grannies in Canada, this qualitative case study examines the influence of activism on women's later life learning and development from an interdisciplinary perspective including adult development, critical gerontology, women's studies and psychodrama. Analysis focuses on the Grannies' motivations, the strategies they employ in their activities and the process of learning and changes they say they undergo. Themes emerging from document analysis, interviews and participant observation of 15 Grannies in Ontario are divided into three categories: (1) 'Raging Grannies' as a self-defined social role; (2) the Grannies' dual-layered mask strategies; and (3) their collective identity and sense of empowerment. These do much to explain the successes of Raging Grannies' activism as a social movement, which fosters older women's creative energy, critical awareness and self-assurance despite their physical and psychological problems in later life. Implications of the Raging Grannies' movement help us reconsider current trends in later life learning, which tend overlook the needs and abilities of women in the third age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE CONFLICT within the Ontario New Democratic Party during 1982-1984 on the question of setting party policy in support of the feminist campaign for free-standing abortion clinics is used as a case study to develop three aspects of social movement theory: alliance and conflict systems, radical flank effects, and social movement-political party relations. A previously undocumented radical flank effect is proposed. an inequality effect, arising under conditions when the distinction between radical and dominant sectors of a social movement align with a form of fundamental social inequality. The inequality effect is consequential for creating a distinction in the alliance and conflict systems of the radical and dominant sectors of the movement. It is suggested that the relation of Canadian social democracy to social movements be read as a dynamic tension between constituency representation and brokerage politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on motivational dimensions in the Quebec Independence Movement. In the social movement literature, the motivation problem is not generally ignored, though there are sharp disagreements as to its forms and impact. Traditionally, theorists of collective behavior and social movements have considered some form of objective strains or of felt deprivations, discontents or grievances as the main motivating factor inciting people to participate in such action. It will be noted that, in the ethnic conflict literature, whenever the problem of motivation is taken into account, there is a tendency to consider only strains or grievances as motivating factors. But as will be discussed in this article, one could also, or instead, be motivated by aspirations, not to mention the role of external incentives. At the mass level, support for the movement's option has been gradually declining since 1980. While, for instance, support for outright independence had reached almost 25% in 1980, it gradually dropped to 15% in 1985.