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One of the most successful and influential contributions to examining the intersection between society and its effect on public action is Jurgen Habermas's landmark The structural transformation of the public space (1962). But as subsequent scholars pointed out, the Habermasian definition of "public sphere" needed to be expanded beyond its original historical context. This article contributes to that ongoing expansion by arguing that a social movement in the United States, social justice feminism, created an alternative public space in the United States by 1907 to the mainstream discourse championed by patriarchal political and social leaders about the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution. The alternative social justice feminist public space differed from Habermas's original conception in three important ways: it involved a more ideological viewpoint; it encompassed a myriad of cross-class and cross-gender coalitions; and the movement embraced direct political action, promoting and passing women's labor legislation as an "entering wedge" for the eventual inclusion of all workers under state protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary Religious Left (RL) in the United States has proven to be somewhat of an enigma, both for academics and for the activists and voters who desire such a movement to thrive. In this paper, I look at one piece of the puzzle: is the RL able to mobilize supporters to political activity? Combining data from both the individual and movement level, this paper tests whether activity at the movement level of the RL can translate into individual supporters' political activity. Using existing data for 2008 and newly collected data on the RL in the 2016 election cycle, I find that the movement was successful in mobilizing constituents in 2008, but not in 2016. This can be linked to the Democrats' effort to engage religious voters in 2008, and its inability to do so in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements pushing for social change are often met with reactionary counter‐movements that defend the status quo. The present research examined this interplay by focusing on the role of racial majority group members claiming collective psychological ownership. We examined collective ownership that stems from being native to the land and from being founders of the nation. Study 1 found that in Malaysia, the Malay majority group endorsed more native ownership than Chinese and Indian minorities, which in turn predicted greater threat in response to protests demanding electoral reforms and subsequently greater support for a reactionary pro‐government movement. Situated in the United States, Study 2 found that the more that White Americans endorsed founder ownership beliefs, the more they reported negative attitudes towards the Black Lives Matter protests, which in turn predicted more support for White nationalistic counter‐protests. This effect was stronger among White people compared to people of colour. Study 3 examined both founder and native ownership in Australia. Founder (but not native) ownership beliefs predicted more negative attitudes towards Invasion Day protests, which subsequently predicted more support for counter‐protests defending Australia Day celebrations. Implications of culture‐specific beliefs about collective ownership for social movement research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, marriage equality in the United States was a big win for the gay and lesbian movement. Marriage equality as a primary focus of the movement, however, was not without its critiques, particularly as an issue affecting mostly white, gay, economically secure individuals. Given the history of the movement, it is essential to ask what is next. Young queer and trans people represent the next generation of potential activists and advocates for queer and trans liberation, yet little empirical attention has been paid to their goals for the movement and motivations to be actively involved, particularly among young adults in rural, conservative states. Therefore, this study sought to understand the social, economic, and environmental issues deemed important by queer and trans young adults (aged 18–29), as well as their motivations to get involved in activism efforts. Data came from a mixed-methods program evaluation, which presents a picture of the issues and motivations that led study participants (n = 65) toward activism in one conservative, highly rural, Southwestern state in the United States. The findings of this study are discussed in light of theoretical and empirical literature and then implications for the queer and trans movement, activists, and organizers are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between sexual orientations and the protest actions of adults in the United States. Drawing from General Social Survey data from 1996 to 2004, we found that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals were more than twice as likely to protest as heterosexuals. To account for this sexuality gap, we used Patrick Egan's (2008) political distinctiveness theories to identify possible underlying causes of these protesting differences. After running several regressions, we found that sexuality and protesting relationships were moderated by issues of educational attainment, marital statuses, metropolitan residencies, political partisanships, governmental grievances, and gender role expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine efforts of feminist institutional activists in the 1960s and 1970s as they worked to gain U.S. federal policy to combat workplace pregnancy discrimination. The success of these activists in winning policy change provides a case that allows us to develop a theoretical understanding of how feminist institutional activists can succeed in winning policy change. We find that when institutional activists strategically shifted governmental arenas and adapted their mobilization and discursive strategies to these arenas, they were able to dismantle policy‐specific barriers that impeded their goals. In taking these steps, feminist institutional activists were successful in opening up both contingent and structural opportunities, which ultimately allowed them to gain the policy change they sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While early internet research often explored social media’s potential for increasing political participation, scholars are now problematising the manifestations of state and corporate control over political activism in these spaces. Yet despite an increased academic focus on the shape and implications of online power relations, there is a noticeable lack of critical theory that considers how strategies of male dominance on social media platforms influence feminist activism. This article conceptualises individual men as monitorial actors invested in surveilling feminist speech online, and brings together literature from within feminist, social movement, and critical internet studies to address this research gap. Situating contemporary feminist activist tactics in relation to second-wave priorities, this article extends current conceptualisations of the dangers of social media surveillance practices for political action. It draws on recent examples of online feminist organising to elucidate the ways in which social media platforms provide men with increased opportunities to surveil feminist activity. The article calls for further research into the ways in which male surveillance practices on social media platforms are shaping women’s ability to organise for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining ethnographic and statistical methods, this study identifies interlocking mechanisms that help explain how disadvantaged neighborhoods influence their residents’ political capacity. Support systems that arise in low-income neighborhoods promote social interaction that helps people make ends meet, but these systems also expose residents to heavy doses of adversity, which dampens perceptions of collective political capacity. For the poorest residents of these neighborhoods in particular, the expected positive effect of informal social support is suppressed by the negative effect of perceived trauma. These findings present a micro-level account of poverty, social interaction, and political capacity, one that holds implications for scholarship and public policy on participatory inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research extends existing scholarship on the environmental movement by examining different groups of participants, building on the distinctions between public and private modes of engagement. The article uses data from the 2010 United States General Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme to first conduct a latent class analysis to explore the existence of different classes of participants, and then presents a multinomial logit model to examine factors that affect class membership. The study finds there are four classes in the analysis of the environmental movement: a group of non-participators, a group that engages primarily in more organizationally-based environmental movement activities, a group that engages in green lifestyle activities, and a group that engages in both types of activities, but only at a high-intensity level. The study also finds that there are distinct differences in the composition of each group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge for social movement and political campaign studies is generating large, representative samples of political activists. This paper outlines a strategy of surveying those who participate in a common, baseline form of political action: signing petitions. Similar to protest surveys, signing a petition constitutes a more baseline low cost/low risk form of political activism. In 26 states in the U.S. petition lists are public record and, with modest effort, can be used to study a wide variety of issues, groups and campaigns. We outline the steps and costs involved in such a petition survey and how to improve response rate. To assess response bias, we compare demographic and political affiliation measures acquired from a marketing analytics company (Experian) for respondents and non-respondents to our survey of petition signers for two state-level initiative elections, finding only modest and interpretable response bias. The methods presented here have broader implications for survey research in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do advocacy organizations make tactical choices? This paper contributes to theory building in advocacy studies by examining how the decision‐making processes of advocacy organizations are affected by the choices of their peers. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners in two contexts—the European Union and the United States—I document that organizations face pressures toward cohesion and differentiation with the tactical choices of other organizations. Other important processes—such as rational evaluation of political opportunities, resource dependence, and ideological constraint—are also reported to be influential, although these processes are sometimes influenced by relational dynamics. These findings suggest new variables and relationships of interest for future quantitative research and provide insight into the growing complexity of climate politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are arguably the most marginalized-the undocumented-and ask: what underwrites recent cases where the undocumented have been politically engaged in meaningful and substantive ways? Additionally, how does this compare with the existing literature on the practice of citizenship for those with formal rights? And what are the implications for our understanding of political participation in the contemporary USA? We seek to address these questions by examining cases where undocumented immigrants act like citizens even though they lack formal political rights. Our cases deviate from previous literature which argues that more marginalized people participate less and that those without formal rights engage in contentious politics in lieu of 'normal,' institutional politics. Our analysis of the DREAMers and of immigrant worker centers helps us rethink this traditional distinction between 'normal' and contentious politics. Moving beyond a focus on the specific actions that fall into each category, we instead emphasize how the context for these actions is crucial to understanding the foundations of political participation. In particular, we argue that the same 'normal' political actions taken by citizens versus noncitizens reveals different foundations underneath; for those without formal rights, what underwrites participation in 'normal' and contentious politics alike is what we call grassroots citizenship. We examine how the political participation of undocumented workers and DREAMers takes place within immigrant organizations and how it relies on three pillars: solidarity, critical analysis, and collective action. While previous literature has emphasized the urban and local nature of active, alternative citizenships, our cases operate at multiple scales, demonstrating how grassroot citizenship can be leveraged and 'scaled up' to state and national levels. Additionally, through an analysis of grassroots citizenship, we get some purchase on the question of why politicians sometimes listen to people who cannot vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past fifty years, disease advocacy organizations have multiplied and gained political influence, but they have often been reluctant to ask the government to intervene in health care provision. This article asks why. Using original quantitative and qualitative data on the goals and political claims of over one thousand organizations from 1960 through 2014, I find that many early disease advocacy organizations prioritized health care access. But unfavorable political climates discouraged new organizations from focusing on access to treatment. When health care became particularly controversial, even organizations with health care-related missions refrained from pursuing this goal politically. Eventually, politically active organizations began to drop treatment provision from their missions. Over the decades, the troubled politics of health care reshaped the field of disease advocacy, diminishing its focus on medical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the social movement history in the U.S., focusing on the African American student protests at Northwestern University in 1968 and at the University of Missouri in 2015. It examines the formation of the African American student union For Member Only at Northwestern University and its artistic brand Black Folks's Theatre and how it relates to the Black Arts Movement. It also examines the challenges faced by these student activists at University of Missouri.

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]

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]

Social movement researchers argue that tactical innovation occurs as a response to changes external to movements, such as police repression and shifts in political authority, or is due to internal movement processes, such as the characteristics of movement organizations and actors. In this study, we locate the roots of tactical innovation in the multiplicity of movement claims articulated at protest events. With data on more than 23,000 protest events that took place in the United States between 1960 and 1995, we develop novel measures of two forms of tactical innovation and the relationships between protest event claims. Our results show that multi-issue protest events are more likely to use novel recombinations of tactics, and protest events with more peripheral movement claims tend to introduce new protest tactics. Our approach brings together work on social movement dynamics, innovation, and field theoretic approaches to theorize about the relationship between the tools and content of activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we use comparative historical analysis to explain agenda-setting and the timing of policy outcomes on same-sex marriage in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Unlike the United States and Canada, Australia does not have a bill of rights, making litigation to obtain rights not enumerated in existing legislation unavailable to activists. Extending the literatures on the development of public policy and on political and historical institutionalism, we argue that in the absence of domestic opportunities for legal change, international law becomes more important to activists in wealthy democracies, but it is contingent on states’ specific institutional and cultural features. Even when international law is “domesticated” into national political structures, it is still secondary to internal conditions in countries with extensive rights-based polities. International law may set a political agenda, but once introduced, policies move according to internal conditions related to party discipline, the centralization of courts, and policy legacies within those countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do police treat religious-based protest events differently than secular ones? Drawing on data from more than 15,000 protest events in the United States (1960 to 1995) and using quantitative methods, we find that law enforcement agents were less likely to show up at protests when general religious actors, actions, or organizations were present. Rather than reflecting privileged legitimacy, we find that this protective effect is explained by religious protesters’ use of less threatening tactics at events. When religion is disaggregated into different traditions, only mainline and black Protestant groups have lower rates of policing than secular groups. As with the general religion finding, the buffering effect these traditions have on policing is mediated by protester tactics. Moreover, we find that fundamentalist Christians are more likely to be policed than are secular activists when threatening tactics are included. Finally, when actors associated with non-Christian religions engage in extremely confrontational tactics, they are more likely to provoke a police response than are similarly behaving secular groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship highlights the importance of public discourse for the mobilization and impact of social movements, but it neglects how cultural products may shift discourse and thereby influence mobilization and political outcomes. This study investigates how activism against hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) utilized cultural artifacts to influence public perceptions and effect change. A systematic analysis of Internet search data, social media postings, and newspaper articles allows us to identify how the documentary Gasland reshaped public discourse. We find that Gasland contributed not only to greater online searching about fracking, but also to increased social media chatter and heightened mass media coverage. Local screenings of Gasland contributed to anti-fracking mobilizations, which, in turn, affected the passage of local fracking moratoria in the Marcellus Shale states. These results have implications not only for understanding movement outcomes, but also for theory and research on media, the environment, and energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the role that Chicano photography played in the Chicano movement's efforts to achieve political and social justice during the 1960s and 1970s. An overview of the role that Chicano photography played as a cultural production, including in regard to its impact on the Chicano social movement, is provided.

This paper debates the traditional notions of political transnationalism used in the United States by showing the formation and the activist process followed by the #YoSoy132 movement in New York City. The conclusion drawn is that immigrants organizations in the US have diversified their acting repertories, political perspective and their demands. Therefore, it is necessary to broaden the concept of political transnationalism to a social-political perspective. The latter will allow having a wider theoretical notion to analyze a larger number of immigrants organizations in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can protest bring about social change? Although scholarship on the consequences of social movements has grown dramatically, our understanding of protest influence is limited; several recent studies have failed to detect any positive effect. We investigate sit-in protest by black college students in the U.S. South in 1960, which targeted segregated lunch counters. An original dataset of 334 cities enables us to assess the effect of protest while considering the factors that generate protest itself—including local movement infrastructure, supportive political environments, and favorable economic conditions. We find that sit-in protest greatly increased the probability of desegregation, as did protest in nearby cities. Over time, desegregation in one city raised the probability of desegregation nearby. In addition, desegregation tended to occur where opposition was weak, political conditions were favorable, and the movement’s constituency had economic leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political opportunity theory predicts that increased access to the political system benefits social movements by disadvantaged groups. To test this prediction, this paper evaluates the impact of two elected Hmong American officials on social movement campaigns in their community during their time in office. Content analysis of newspaper reports is used to (i) create a sample of nine local, national, and transnational social movement campaigns in the community; and (ii) determine in which of four possible ways the elected officials supported the campaigns: favorable media interviews, speeches at events, event organization, and legislation initiation. Only the two transnational campaigns which mobilized the entire community received all four types of support. The paper concludes that elected officials, even former activists from an ethnic minority community, carefully select the causes they will fully support. After electoral victory, social movements must still actively engage sympathetic politicians in order to turn an opening in the political system into actual access to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do protests sway public opinion? If so, why and how? To address these questions, we examine the impact of the 2006 immigration protests on immigration policy preferences. We use the 2006 Latino National Survey coupled with protest data to examine whether temporal and spatial exposure to the protests are associated with policy preferences. Our findings lend evidence that protest activity influences Latinos' immigration policy preferences. However, the findings suggest the effect of protest on immigration policy preferences is not uniform across the population, but rather contingent on generational status and the intensity of protest activity at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the case New York City to examine why certain immigrant groups participated in the 2006 protest wave more than others and why the city mobilized less compared with other major immigrant metropolises. The findings indicate that certain immigrant groups participated more than others because of how the issue of “illegal immigration” was racialized and framed by the media, and because of the disproportionate impact the proposed legislation would have had on them. The data presented illustrate how the city’s heterogeneous population served to diminish its capacity to produce the magnitude of mobilization found in other large immigrant cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United States is one of the most religious countries in the Western world. Yet a notable feature of the past decade has been the growth of a self-conscious, politically active atheist movement. Academic analysis of this topic, however, remains limited. This article addresses thislacunaby examining the political dimension of the US atheist movement across a number of themes, including its organisational structure and composition, as well as its goals, strategies, and direction. Deploying insights drawn from Social Movement Theory, it shows that the development of the movement has been shaped by a number of factors which have facilitated growth, but which have also led to a series of internal tensions and schisms that could threaten its ability to exert political influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BL) social organization as of 2016, and it mentions how the group is comprised of various medical students who support the Black Lives Matter social movement and are concerned about issues such as anti-Black racism in America. According to the article, WC4BL was founded in 2015 in an effort to eliminate racial bias in the practice of medicine. The history of the Black Panther Party is also examined.

Corporate political activity is both a long-standing preoccupation and an area of innovation for sociologists. We examine the limitations of investigating business unity without focusing directly on processes and outcomes and then review studies of five types of business political action that offer lenses into corporate power in the United States: engagement in electoral politics, direct corporate lobbying, collective action through associations and coalitions, business campaigns in civil society, and political aspects of corporate responsibility. Through these avenues, we highlight four shifts since the 1970s: ( a) increasing fragmentation of capitalist interests, ( b) closer attention to links between business lobbying and firms' social embeddedness, ( c) a turn away from the assumption that money buys political victories, and ( d) new avenues of covert corporate influence. This body of research has reinvigorated the classic elitist/pluralist debate while also raising novel questions about how business actors are adapting to (and generating changes within) their sociopolitical environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We interpret three strands of social movement theory (social threat, opportunity structure, and resource mobilization) to understand religious congregations' political activity related to same-sex marriage. Using a unique, national data set from the 2008 presidential election, we show the importance of the anti-same-sex marriage discursive opportunity structure ( DOS) for facilitating, and occasionally constraining, congregational political activity. Other theoretical factors influence congregations under limited, although important, conditions. Our research develops a nuanced understanding of congregations' roles in social movements that prioritize institutionalized political activity and expands DOS theory in relation to local religious organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social workers advocate against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and restrictive reproductive practices, there have been virtually no studies on the reasons behind their feminist activism. To address this oversight, this study documented the extent of feminist activism among American undergraduate social work students (n = 159). When moving to explanatory analysis, our data suggest that feminist activism was related to greater educational attainment, knowing activist peers, recognizing heterosexism, and internalizing a commitment to social justice. Moreover, electoral activism was tied to the rejection of traditional gender norms in the family and perceptions of social movement tactics were crucial to protesting for women's rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Asian American blogosphere has developed to encompass a variety of voices regularly providing readers with news items, opinions, and personal narratives of life in Asian America. In this article I investigate the relationship between emotion and activism in order to better understand the potential for using blogs as part of a sustainable social movement, as well as to theorize the kind of labor that activism can entail. This study is based on interviews with 15 bloggers who have created or written for blogs that focus specifically on Asian American issues. Through an analysis of the bloggers’ interviews and their blogging archive, I argue that emotion can play a foundational role in generating activist interventions and building the necessary community required for contributing to social change, but can also have a deleterious impact on the individuals involved. It is only through recognizing the ambivalent role of emotion within the affective labor of activism online that we can work toward more sustainable participation and impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]