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My paper is concerned with issues of representation, production and circulation of (alternative) media texts (pictures, video clips, reports, pamphlets, videogames and graffiti), which are used in offline and online protests, and appear on YouTube, newspapers and in the advocacy websites and blogs related to the tragedy. The advocacy movement around the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (BGT) has worked in recent years to align the movement with other related discourses and movements of feminism and environmentalism, organizing protests, and managing information campaigns in innovative ways by transgressing national boundaries and other institutional constraints. The paper aims to study how the rhetoric of the advocacy protests around the BGT as it gets organized and represented by alternative mediations, connects with the larger goals of the movement. Through a textual analysis of alternative media texts and interviews with BGT activists in Bhopal (India), United States and Britain, I argue in this paper that the alternative media texts produced as part of the BGT movement 'are shaped by' and 'shape' the organizational dynamics and movement goals of transnational activists who are participant actors in it. More specifically, undertaking a semiological analysis (Barthes, 2000) of various protest related media texts, I comprehend how BGT activists engage in acts of semiotic contamination (read 'subvertising') of Dow's own advertising campaigns (Human Element) and logo designs to demystify the "myth" of Dow Chemicals as a socially responsible organization. Symbolic performances by women survivors have included brandishing of broomsticks as part of the Jhadoo Maro (Beat Dow with the Broomstick) campaign and selection of monuments/buildings from Dow corporation offices to Gandhi Statues at the Indian Embassy as sites of resistance. These performances, I contend, demonstrate an attempt on their part to move beyond unjust established social boundaries in imaginative ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study found that most of the theoretical work concerning social movements in communication studies has been constructed using American and European exemplars. Many of the concepts posited by these theories have proved inadequate for analyzing and explicating movements beyond these cultural contexts. This theoretical essay conducts a critical analysis of the current theoretical work on social movements in communication studies and utilizes a rhetorical analysis of the Burmese protests of 2007 to calibrate theoretical understandings. The essay first describes the relevant Burmese historical and cultural context, identifies and critiques the relevant literature and its underlying assumptions, and analyzes the chanting of the Mettā Sutta ("Discourse on Loving-Kindness") as political expression using traditional notions and invitational notions (Foss & Griffin, 1995) of rhetoric. The study found that theory has assumed movements operate using oppositional rhetorical forms, develop according to modernist conceptions of time, are leader-driven, possess a unified membership, and must build a credible image and acquire power. Based on the rhetorical forms in the Burmese protests, these assumptions have proved insufficient. The study recommends eschewing these assumptions and enriching theory further by studying movements in Asia and elsewhere in the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores, in a preliminary fashion, the nature, origins, and cultural-political significance of the phenomenon of deferred agency through the prism of the theoretical work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas' work offers one of the most fertile, multidimensional, but relatively untapped sources of theoretical understanding and insight into the dynamics of this phenomenon. At the same time, the unprecedented, world-historical significance of the dangers these global developments pose to human survival affords social theorists, political activists, and ordinary citizens a unique opportunity to rethink the foundations of our ostensibly democratic political culture, and the role and responsibilities of informed citizenship in an increasingly global world society. I believe that Habermas' work provides the most fertile, comprehensive theoretical framework available for just such a rethinking. In addition, I argue that Habermas' communicative account of action and rationality, as the conceptual core of his work, provides a basis for connecting two formerly unrelated aspects of that work and, in so doing, lays the groundwork for the application of his overall theoretical framework to an understanding of deferred agency. I take for granted here that any attempt to understand the multiple sources of individual political behavior, particularly in concrete, empirical cases, is exceedingly complicated, because one is faced with analyzing and interpreting a dynamic, multifaceted configuration of contingent, interlocking factors - psychological, social structural, political, cultural, historical, etc. - which influence such behavior. For the purposes of this research, I simply wish to place the problem of deferred agency in the context of the work of Habermas and the original Frankfurt theorists, as well as sociology more generally, in order to shed some light, in a preliminary fashion, on certain key dimensions of this problem. ..PAT... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing data from the woman suffrage movement, we explore what factors influence four distinctly different movement processes and outcomes: 1) the establishment and legitimation of the social movement itself as indicated by a) the existence of a state suffrage organization with a hierarchical leadership structure and b) established ties with other women's organizations within the state, 2) the implementation of generalist strategies (defined as the use of both insider and outsider tactics), and 3) elite mobilization and support as indicated by a referendum on woman suffrage. Utilizing an institutionalist account of movement mobilization and support, we examine the effect of state characteristics (age and legislative size), rules and procedures, and political climate (bill introduction and referenda held), 2) democratization, party choice, party support, and alliances with men's groups that supported suffrage for women, and 3) changing institutional logics (women's economic rights, school suffrage, and women's labor force participation) as well as trans-state forces of diffusion, isomorphism, and national suffrage mobilization. Findings lend support to critics of political opportunity structure who argue against formulations that suggest a window of opportunity or an opening in political and institutional space. Instead the findings suggest that institutional forces influence movement outcomes at various points—including movement mobilization, strategies, and elite support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the women's movements in the transitioning countries of Ghana and El Salvador. The process of democratization eliminates the formal barriers to political participation and allows women to participate at national level. El Salvador and Ghana share a history of colonization and repressive authoritarian rule, as well as a struggle with poverty and economic underdevelopment. Ghanaian women did not generate much international support as they gained access to new political space under democratization. In contrast, Salvadoran women were militant participants in a 12-year-war leading to a democratic transition, and were well supported by the international community. Both countries saw a transformation in the intensity and form of women's mobilizations which provided them capability to influence the legislation. However the women's organizations appear to flourish with democratization but their influence does not.

This article presents a study which seeks to understand how social movements change over time. It explores how social movements institutionalize to further their goals in forming organizations or interest groups by means of illustrating a case study of the Christian Right. It then discusses why social movement theory is a necessary component for understanding the institutionalization of the Christian Right and the behavior of Christian Right organizations.

During democratic transitions, rapid shifts in mass political attitudes and behaviors often propel change, but attitudes and behaviors do not simply change on their own. Events catalyze change. Events transmit messages and the sense that something must be done, thus affecting public opinion. This article focuses on how events with distinct messages sponsored by the elites of two different social movements in Estonia between 1987 and 1993, one reformist and the other in favor of restoring the independent Estonian Republic of the years between the two World Wars, competed for public opinion and control of the political agenda. The logic of the competition between these social movements is formalized in a model of opinion change. Event data coded from the Estonian and Russian language press (1988-1991) are used to demonstrate the existence of these two social movements and their associated cultural frames. These data are also used to show that the restorationist frame was more powerful and successful than the reform frame. As a result, the restorationist movement pushed Estonia towards independence and helped to undermine the Soviet State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to advance a discussion of the strategic challenges inherent in different coalitional choices that social movements make. Not only do grievances and resources influence alliance patterns, but movements that survive over the long-term do so in part because they successfully manage the dilemmas associated with different coalitional positions. In the first section, I discuss the risks and trade-offs that accompany particular types of alliances, and introduce a typology of different alliance patterns that social movements might form. Then, I illustrate this argument using the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) as a case study, tracing the specific alliance patterns that have emerged throughout the movement?s history in Brazil. Finally, relying on interviews with MST activists within the leadership structure as well as at the grassroots level, I discuss how recent changes within the movement?s membership base might affect their future strategic choices and attendant alliance patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the integration of the modern working class into the capitalist system, and hence in light of its unfulfilled revolutionary potential, in the 1950’s Herbert Marcuse called upon leftist intellectuals to act as the catalyst of historical change. Organized locally and nationally, the bearers of critical consciousness against ?the affluent society? could perform a preparatory function towards qualitative change. Today, many American intellectuals have renounced this critical role. As Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio observe in The Jobless Future, if quite a number of professors have become willing and complacent technicians, experts, entrepreneurs and consultants to contemporary private and public power structures and institutions, many more?under siege from excessive teaching loads and administrative and clerical responsibilities?can only work as scholars--that is, they "neither challenge the dominant paradigm nor work outside it." More troublesome than this, is the undeniable fact that contemporary academia has become the site of modern American society that most perfectly approaches and presages the dualistic stratification of social activity towards which philosopher Andre Gorz predicts the entire labor market is moving in advanced capitalist societies, if for different reasons. In American academia, as a consequence of the growing numbers of adjuncts assuming increasingly heavier teaching loads for below the poverty line remuneration and without the benefits of any job security and health insurance, the stratification amongst professors at each university has come to resemble that of an ancient Greek democracy where the challenging and yet denigrated sweat equity of women and slaves (adjuncts) allows those initiated and bearing the full rights of citizenship (tenure track professors) to engage in leisure (in the old sense of the word?that is, think critically and actively engage in the public life [of the academic community]), while monopolizing more than one post at different institutions and receiving salaries for teaching that they do not do. In fact, ?Despite reports, such as that of the Carnegie Foundation, that stress the importance of teaching and urge universities to change their reward structure so that excellence in teaching may be elevated to the level of research and publication, few major schools have followed this advice.? Hence, the current status of academia seems to already be a prelude to the larger phenomenon?identified by Gorz?of "a society based on mass unemployment [that] is coming into being before our eyes. It consists of a growing mass of the permanently unemployed on one hand, an aristocracy of tenured workers on the other, and between them, a proletariat of temporary workers [made up of adjuncts, in this case] carrying out [what is perceived but are not] the least skilled and most unpleasant types of work." The above described changes have been taking place within academia for a while now and are not accidental or temporary but structural and systemic. They are the result of a process that is driven by the capitalist market?s own dynamics, and that has given rise to the vocational- and customer- centered approaches to higher education that are currently predominant administration?s choices and policies within most universities,--a phenomenon that has spelled out not just the end of a critical but also that of a classical education. If, in fact, in earlier times, culture was, for the most part, unavailable outside of academia, as DiFazio writes, the current elimination of humanities, foreign languages and social science courses, departments and requirements, in favor of applied sciences, public policy and empirical research--as a response to the penetration within all universities of the market?s divine ?criteria of ?relevance? and ?productivity? and its demand for ?products?useful to the state and industry"-- has now led to culture becoming more and more irrelevant even within academia. This atmosphere so hostile to critical thinking, teaching and writing, currently reigning in most places of higher learning around the country, has been further aggravated by the suffocating (self)-censorship regime imposed by the noxiously freedom limiting side-effects of the yet extremely justified consciousness raising intentions and goals of politically correct identity and sensitivity politics which--unintentionally--have further strengthened right wing and religious fundamentalist claims about the ?appropriateness? and ?immorality? of certain opinions. To these factors, last but not least, one must also add today?s oppressively intolerant and unreflectively patriotic climate in the following of the abominable attack of September 11, 2001. Jumping on the band wagon of political correctness, while perverting its progressive aims, conservative groups and the religious right,--in a modern version of the red hunt of the McCarthy era,--have begun to monitor ?anti-American? remarks made by faculty members. For example, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, ?a conservative nonprofit group devoted to curing liberal tendencies in academia? continuously compiles and updates lists of perpetrators. In light of all these variables, this paper will argue that for leftist intellectuals interested in generating the conditions within which there may spring new wo/men whose needs and wants go beyond the ones satisfied by the affluent society, academia, as Marcuse had argued a long time ago, may no longer be the most ideal space where women and men may be nurtured who will eventually claim their rights to the satisfaction of what he calls their ?aesthetic needs,? needs that imply the fullest development of their human sensitivity and sensibility. What Reich observed in The Mass Psychology of Fascism of the Marxist movements of his times is ever truer today: The revolutionary movement [also] failed to appreciate the importance of the seemingly irrelevant habits, indeed, very often turned them to bad account. The lower middle class bedroom suite, which the ?rabble? buys as soon as he has the means, even if he is otherwise revolutionary minded; the consequent suppression of the wife, even if he is a Communist; the ?decent? suit of clothes for Sunday: ?proper? dance steps and a thousand other ?banalities,? have an incomparably greater reactionary influence when repeated day after day than thousands of revolutionary rallies and leaflets can ever hope to counterbalance. Narrow conservative life exercises a continuous influence, penetrates every facet of everyday life; whereas factory work and revolutionary leaflets have only a brief effect? We must pay more, much more, attention to these details of everyday life. It is around these details that social progress or its opposite assume concrete forms, not around political slogans that arouse temporary enthusiasm only (The Psyhcology of Fascism, p. 69) Only by stressing all possibilities of a work-democratic way of life, by taking a militant stance toward reactionary thinking and militantly developing the seed of a living culture of masses of people, can lasting peace be assured. (The Psychology of Fascism, p. 70.) It is for these reasons that this paper will argue the extreme relevance to leftist causes of contemporary social movements (the anti-globalization movement, amongst them) in offering tentative answers to the New Left in regards to what type of daily practices or discourses, what type of praxis?in the Gramscian sense of the word?could give rise to the ?creative imagination? and critical consciousness necessary amongst modern citizens for generating the desire for radical changes in capitalist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the participatory effectiveness of the Brazilian landless movement. Dynamics of the impact of the social movement on public policy; Impetus for agrarian reform in the country; Background of the passage of agrarian law.

Populism, as both ideology and social movement, is nearly a universal, albeit sporadic, feature of all modern democratic political systems. Populism is also arguably the only example of an indigenous radical mass movement in America and after the discredited state of socialism, the only continuing source of democratic protest. Yet populism does not enjoy a central place in democratic theory. In fact, many writers contend that when populism arises, it has a destabilizing effect on democratic regimes. Even when others attempt to credit populism, they acknowledge the existence of significant negative features. This essay reviews the contested status of populism and suggests a greater appreciation of its positive contribution to democratic theory can be reached through an analysis of Philip Roth?s ?American Trilogy.? Like Roth, students of populism place their assessments in the context of historical narratives. Thus Roth?s fictional recreations of post-war America can be compared to the analyses of ?populist moments? in America analyzed by both populist critics and defenders. Unlike most democratic theorists, however, Roth is willing to explore the nature and source of populist anger and related expressions and thus expose its poignant dimensions. By appending Roth?s insights, it is possible to ameliorate populism?s contested status in democratic theory by acknowledging the positive role of emotion, properly understood, in political protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a conservative Muslim population come to endorse the establishment of a secular state? This is one of the most intriguing and pertinent questions raised by the emergence of the Muslim nation-state in the twentieth century. If Islamic law has traditionally informed the politics of the Muslim world, we should expect Muslims of various cultures to be particularly resistant to the classically secular notion of the nation-state. Empirical reality, however, does not support this theoretical expectation: the twentieth century witnessed the articulation of a distinctively Muslim nationalism in the Middle East and South Asia. To explore this irony, I apply the concepts of political opportunity and framing from social movement theory to the cases of Turkey and Pakistan. The two countries have individually received significant attention for two very different brands of Muslim nationalism. In 1923, Mustafa Kemal established the explicitly secular republic of Turkey for the dominant community of collapsed Islamic empire. A quarter of a century later, Muhammad Ali Jinnah argued for a distinctively Muslim national identity in order to carve out a secular state for Indian Muslims. Where Kemal had constrained Islam, the Pakistan movement championed it. If an analysis of the political circumstances and choices of these individuals yields significant similarities in the dynamic of state formation, however, we have a richer account of secular politics can thrive on religious grounds. I set as our primary questions in each case: a) how did the contender gain access to power, and b) how did he successfully advance a secular agenda? In answering these questions, I argue that a specific configuration of changing institutional structures and political relationships opened a new window of opportunity to the contender, and that he then propped open this window by reframing a secular political vision in terms that resonated with his religious constituents. I then explore broad commonalities between the two cases (i.e., the West as both model and anti-model, political options discussed in the national discourse, opportunism, and legitimacy) in order to suggest a broader typology for Muslim nation-state formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the Zapatista movement since the emergence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994 has occurred in highly complex circumstances. While the movement has enjoyed popular support, the political context has always been closed to their demands. Nevertheless, the Zapatistas have been able to maintain a constant level of protest activity over time within and outside their region of influence. This study investigates the local factors that have allowed the Zapatistas to maintain the level of protest activity by looking at the three main theoretical streams in the study of social movements, namely the structure of political opportunities, the availability of mobilizing networks, and the type of demands? framing. I analyze the mobilizing capacity of the EZLN over an eight-year period (1994-2001). Using event history models, I analyze the ebb and flow of Zapatista initiated events across the 111 localities (municipios) of Chiapas. To complete these analyses, I coded protest events from national and local newspapers and collected data on socioeconomic and electoral information to create a comprehensive dataset on the Zapatista movement. The results of this study show that Zapatista protest events are more likely to occur in municipios ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), with low electoral fractionalization; where the Zapatistas could build upon pre-existing mobilizing organizations; where counter Zapatista organizations are also active; and where protests have been framed using political claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 19 months of field research and more than 150 in-depth interviews across 9 Chinese cities, this paper argues that local goverments, as the primary targets and interlocutors of Chinese laid-off workers’ contention respond to protesting workers in ways that are largely shaped by their fiscal situation and contraints. Understanding state responses to collection action is also an importnat step toward more fully explaining outcomes and long-term trajectories of contentious collective action and social movements in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which focused on polarization and political party development in sub-Saharan Africa during its democratization. Role of state strategies of rule in building mobilizing structures that can be appropriated by opposition movements; Formation of social movements during periods of major political change; Interactions between incumbent and opposition parties.

The paper is framed by two related theoretical concerns, both associated with developments within contemporary social movements. The first is that whilst Castells (1997) provides a useful typology of identities, he does not examine how his ?resistance identity? can develop into ?project identity?. My premise is that this requires ?leadership?, but, secondly, this is a concept rarely explored in activist and academic literature on the movement. The paper is sympathetic to Barker, Johnson and Lavellete?s (2002) essentially Marxist criticism of Weber for not conceiving of a ?democratic? leadership type. It is argued, however, that they do not take account of some Southern experience that highlights the importance of charisma and especially courage as factors in leadership. This experience is drawn from the empirical data presented in the paper. Case study material is drawn from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), arguably the most successful of South Africa?s new movements, and specifically its internationally know leader, Trevor Ngwane. SECC is something of a hybrid, straddling resistance concerns and the development of a pro-working class project identity. Whilst it is argued that leadership is context specific, this novelty and the quality of Ngwane?s leadership might provide food for thought by Northern scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literatures from the legal mobilization approach and the collective behavior/social movement field of sociology have typically developed without one fully incorporating and understanding what the other has to offer. While some scholars have touched upon these themes, the majority of scholarship has generally remained shallow. This presentation will address this imbalance by offering a model for social movement jurisprudence. First, the model will be outlined according to different relationships found between social movements and their organizations and the judicial-legislative system of the socio-cultural environment. As an approach that seeks to understand the direct and indirect, constitutive relationships between social movements and the socio-legal environment, social movement jurisprudence has the potential to enrich social movement analyses and the understanding of a movement?s lifespan while also developing a framework that may be used by movement activists and activist attorneys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the factors and processes that contribute to the transnationalization of environmental movements from their origins in the global North to their increasing prevalence in the countries of the global South. It also considers the obstacles that confront transnationalization and their consequences. Its empirical starting point is a critical examination of the development of transantional environmentalism in the European Union, based upon surveys of organizations, interviews with activists, and scrutiny of newspaper reports. Developments in several key British environmental organizations are considered more closely as exemplars of processes and influences that are of wider significance. The character of transnational movement networks is considered, as is their relationship with environmental campaigns in both post-communist and newly industrializing countries in Europe and south-east Asia. Among the factors contributing to the transnationalizatin of environmental movements are changing patterns of opportunity associated with the development of international and transnational political institutions, and social changes of which the expansion of higher education and mass media, and increased ease of communication, are the most important. Nevertheless, the chief drivers to transnationalization of environmentalism, and to the expansion of its agenda to embrace global social justice, are developments substantially endogenous to the knowledge, belief and value systems of environmental movement organizations themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Campus events in the 1960s dramatically impressed observers with the thought that there were important underlying cultural connections between universities and participation in social movements. Was there something culturally unique about the institution of higher education in the U.S. that encouraged or suggested involvement in public matters? This essay approaches the question via a study three historical texts on American higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride was an activist campaign, conceived and dominated by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union leaders, who sought coalition-building across organizations to lobby for immigration reform. I ask whether durable coalitions formed during the ride. Instead of investigating organizations or leaders, I look to whether ?riders? from diverse backgrounds act out/experience ?being in coalition? (i.e., ?solidarity?) during the ride. I review strategic and labor studies on union-grassroots collaboration, and look to literature on solidarity in organizations to specify an understanding of solidarity as an emergent quality of inter-action. ?Solidarity? on the micro level of activist interactions links to ?coalitions? on the macro level, since in the context of social movement unionism, campaigns can be understood analytically (not just normatively) as having both ?top-down? and ?bottom-up? components. Furthermore, solidarity is important because individuals? experiences and connections can prefigure future mobilization. Using 17 interviews and participant observation data, I focus on three practices of IWFR staff: one where they consistently undermined riders? forging solidarity (interaction with mass media), one where their attempts at solidarity-building evidently had no effect (constructing a narrative of shared high risk) and one where they were effective (facilitating participants? sharing their biographies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest event analysis has been concerned more with the relation between mobilization and shifting political opportunities than with the substance of claims. While there is plenty of event analyses of claim making, few of them have done serious analysis of claim making. This paper intends to fill this hole in the literature and presents the analysis of ?claim networks?. Using a database of over three thousand events of popular protests in Mexico between 1964 and 2000, I reexamine an important finding from Sergio Tamayo?s political discourse analysis, namely, transformation of social protests demanding social and economic rights into political protests demanding civil and political rights. By examining how popular groups make claims of different citizenship rights (civil, political, social, etc.), this study discovers that political rights ?crucial for democratization?became predominant claims in the neoliberal period not necessarily in term of frequencies these claims were asserted. Rather, the real importance of political rights lies in that popular groups needed to address political issues even when they were trying to satisfy other issues like social rights, civil rights, or economic and material demands. Mexico?s democratic movements became durable and powerful because these were closely tied to everyday economic and material issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The desire to achieve local status may motivate participation in a wide range of groups. This study uses expectations derived from a general model of status achievement to evaluate data from a diverse range of avocations: mushroom collecting, high school debate, blood donation, boxing, basket weaving, and social movement participation. The analysis seeks to explain variation in investment in group activities, and in particular looks for evidence that competition for local status can explain the generation of zeal, or the apparent irrational willingness of some participants to sacrifice and risk in performance of groups related activities. More broadly this analysis seeks to reveal the scope and limits of the theory of status achievement, and to draw comparisons between avocations across different institutional settings. If conditions that facilitate status competition predict zeal across institutional settings, then this suggests that this general social process is a more likely explanation of zeal than the particular content of the activity. Implications for the explanation of altruism and deviance are discussed, with special attention to micro-level models of social movement participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates literatures on social movements and globalization to present a theory on global dimensions of contemporary social movements and examines a case to understand how much global factors impact local social movements. We use the case of social movements by Korean residents in Japan to investigate how international instruments, networks and ideas on ethnic minority rights have combined with local political mobilization to produce political changes in the form of new legislation and court decisions. We study four different fields of rights, social/economic, civil, political and cultural rights, to explore whether some rights are easier to obtain than others, how the strength of international norms on certain types of rights might affect the political outcomes, and how local political climate and tradition circumscribe policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This examination of the use of irony by ACT UP highlights three main points. First, when social movements use irony, symbolic boundaries are reinforced between the ironist and oppositional audiences. Second, positions of political power are often reversed when irony is used effectively. Third, the use of irony draws on the culture of the ironists, often establishing or reproducing collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic field work over a four-year period provides the data for reconceptualizing social movements as networks. Several network sequences are identified in the trajectories of project/teams in local social movement organizing. Some of these network sequences extend across movements, underscoring the importance of revitalizing the Chicago School’s emphasis on social context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the common assumption of a co-evolution of formal democracy and civic life by arguing that this relationship is the product of concrete historical arguments marked by cycles of reinforcing engagement and conflictual disengagement. It develops the argument by drawing on the case of the civics movement in South Africa. The consolidation of representative democracy in South Africa has had a decidedly mixed impact on civil society, and particularly civic associations. On the one hand, the African National Congress? hegemonic politics has significantly reduced the capacity of subaltern civil society to engage the state. As a social movement that scaled up in order to shape policy and hold government accountable, the civic movement has had little impact and has even become an instrument of top-down control. On the other hand, in response to the political domination of the ANC and the liberalization of economic policy, many local civics have become critical sites for resisting commodification and reclaiming democratic spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the past three decades American Indian tribes have gone from being extremely marginal social groups largely dominated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to wielding advantageous ? and distinctively governmental ? rights and powers. They are now legitimate and functional members of the American intergovernmental structure, and enjoy unique access to federal actors and decision-making processes. These striking outcomes present a puzzle to students of social movements, racial politics, and political institutions, as well as to those studying American political development and federalism in particular. In this paper I explain these distinctive outcomes and offer an innovative account by extending the synthesis of cultural institutional and social movement theory. I focus on tribal institutional entrepreneurship. To gain acceptance as legitimate governments rather than as minority groups or wards of the state, tribes newly adopted conventional territorial organizational forms and functions. These actions were accompanied by discursive advocacy providing justifying accounts for this status. Entrepreneurs opportunistically exploited contradictions and ambiguities in federal policy statements to promote this shift in the accepted status of tribes. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the contingent and iterative process through which this institutionalization of tribal status occurred, as well as analytically accounting for the pivotal events and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, health social movements have been an important force for social change in the United States, specifically around issues of health access and quality of care. Previous research has focused on individual cases of health social movements; we consider them as a collective group that when taken together are an important force for social change. Scholars have written about individual social movements dealing with health, including such areas as occupational safety and health, the women’s health movement, AIDS activism, and environmental justice organizing. Other scholars, who do not focus on health social movements, point to the significance of these movements in medical history and health policy. Despite this significant body of research, scholars have not examined the forces that gave rise to the wide array of health social movements, nor carried out comparative analysis of these movements? different strategic, tactical, and political approaches. Generally, scholars have not examined the collective development and impact that myriad health social movements have had on public health, medical research and health care delivery. We believe that there is an analytical benefit to consider the origins and impacts of HSMs collectively, and this work is part of a larger project to integrate and synthesize this material. In this paper we focus specifically on a new type of health social movement, known as ?embodied health movements? (EHMs) whose strategies and characteristics have not previously been central to the study of health movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do social movements create a united front while remaining accountable for and celebrating internal diversity? I study this paradox in the context of organizing a national lesbian and gay march on Washington. Challenging groups in the American pluralist political system have often used these demonstrations as a vehicle to step into national spotlight and flex their political and cultural muscles. Although these marches are events used to generate feelings of shared community and unity, it is striking the extent to which a movement?s internal diversity also fuels political and cultural infighting. If increasing diversity blurs identification with others, how then can challenging groups successfully unite and mobilize? How can the spirit of solidarity be cultivated across lines of difference? Given the pervasiveness of infighting for movements, it is surprising how little theoretical attention it has received. In addition, a march on Washington is seldom isolated for empirical study despite its importance and widespread use since the historic 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Forging an interdisciplinary dialogue across social movement theory and the sociology of culture, I embark on a study of the content and form of infighting in the gay liberation movement as it has erupted over the organizing of its four Washington marches in 1979, 1987, 1993, and 2000 respectively. I use archival research and do formal content analysis of local and national, gay and straight newspaper coverage of the Washington marches (N=1352 newspapers) and also engage in qualitative analyses of interview transcripts of national organizers from each of the 4 demonstrations (N=30) and key local activists (N=13). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a preliminary analysis from a study of a local population of voluntary associations in the environmental arena. Using a detailed survey of currently active environmental groups in North Carolina, we provide a descriptive overview of the population. Though our empirical objectives are modest, we see important value in the type of analysis presented here. Detailed data on organizational populations can raise fresh theoretical insights and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions especially in areas where case studies predominate. Assumptions about the frequency and dispersion of core organizational characteristics ? such as ideology, strategic orientation, issue focus, administrative practices, and resource flows ? can become widely held among practitioners, scholars, and the broader public in the absence of more fine-grained studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most theoretical approaches to New Social Movements examine the correlation between the overall social atmosphere and the internal atmosphere of the movement. The intersection of ?identity-based? and ?issue-based? social movements is the approaching frontier for NSM theory. Arising from this cited connection are questions concerning the methods employed by ?issue-based? movements to build a collective identity, as well as the short and long-term effects of the collective identity on ?issue-based? movements. To examine social movement theory I interned at the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a non-profit coalition engaged in the Anti-Prison movement. I spent 4 months as an intern in my field site conducting participant observation. Through my observations it became clear that CCWP functions as both an ?issued-based? and ?identity-based? organization. This intersection results in a dual social movement structure as both an internally and externally oriented organization, comprised of dual framing, structure, temporality, and even goals. This paper will examine the ways in which the collective identity of CCWP is internally created, and how it is negotiated within the external stage of the Anti-Prison Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the social meaning of risk and strategies to reduce the sense of uncertainty in a fluid, globalized world. First the paper attempts to sort out the bundle of meanings assumed by risk, then shows that risk has been an accompanying feature of modernity. It moves on to make the claim that there is still something specific about the increased sense of uncertainty and the proliferation of risk talk under the process we refer to as globalization. Antiglobalizationist social movements react precisely to this predicament and use localization as a risk-reducing strategy. Yet their localization strategies differ left and right. This the paper shows through the analysis of a movement that erupted around food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political elites use deeply engrained beliefs regarding soldiers and citizenship to mobilize support for war and limit dissent. To analyze how the US peace movement has responded to this hegemony, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyze statements from up to 15 US peace movement organizations over three wars (the Gulf War, 9/11 and the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War). We find that PMOs altered their constructions of soldiering and citizenship in response to social history, elite counter-framing, shifts in the political and cultural climates, and to their organizational identities. Battling the mythology of being anti-soldier during the Vietnam era, PMOs have increasingly expressed support for soldiers while developing a discourse portraying pro-war elites as betraying soldiers. Mobilization late in a protest cycle, opening political opportunities and the public?s weariness of nationalism encouraged PMOs to challenge American identity during the Gulf War. In contrast, mobilization early in a protest cycle, rapid political closure and a hyper-patriotic, security conscious climate all encouraged PMOs to harness nationalism in the aftermath of 9/11. Promoting peace became the duty of American citizens. Splits within the UN and extensive transnational mobilization encouraged PMOs to strengthen international hegemony during the Iraq War. Our study highlights how the lessons of past contention combine with structural and culture changes to shape movement framing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the internet as a new social space allowing decentralized and de-centered, ?peer-to-peer? exchange has enabled diverse social movements and threatened the monopolistic control of media information in both the United States, and transnationally. In the wake of 9-11, monopolistic media interests thus improvised a ?moral panic? with other corporatist groups in an attempt to halt erosion of their more centralized control of media information. This presentation briefly summarizes these developments in relation to two distinct internet networks, the radical IndyMedia group, and the more ?mainstream? Howard Dean campaign, as ways of assessing these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the socio-cognitive strategies employed by social movements engaged in conflict over the meaning and legacy of past events such as child sex abuse, the Vietnam War, and American slavery. Individuals - including survivors, their descendants, and/or various communities of supporters - adhere to collective cultures of ?survivorhood? organized around a particular mnemonic structure for the purpose of attributing meaning and consequences to past events in order to contest traditional relations of power. These survivor movements engage in socio-political disputes over the meaning of particular past experiences, the continuity between past and present, the social nature of survivor symptomatology, the attribution of ?victim? and ?perpetrator? identities, and the future implications of past events. Survivor movements are ?cognitive subcultures? (Zerubavel 1997: 12) that subvert traditional asymmetries of cognitive authority and work to expand traditionally constrained cognitive options in order to impact the larger moral and political climate. They structure time, history, and memory to contest the meaning of particular past experiences in order to contest the legitimacy of those experiences in general. The promulgation of survivor movements has lead to a proliferation of their cognitive orientations to the past and to new social definitions of trauma and atrocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical sociologists have long studied the sociological importance of critical junctures in people?s lives, specifically with respect to the onset and diagnosis of chronic illness. The work of Mike Bury (1982: 1991) and others on ?biographical disruption? can be extended to explore the personal and phenomenological turbulence recounted by local, anti-toxics activists. Biographical disruption suggests that certain events have the potential to unseat taken-for-granted assumptions, breach explanatory mechanisms used to understand the world, and finally demand new routines as a result of changed resources and physical circumstances. By drawing from this rich literature and applying it to retrospective interview data of local anti-toxics activism, this project looks at the complex effects on self, family and community that activism and social organization in response to toxics can have. This paper contributes to the growing body of work on the subjective experience of collective action especially around toxics, as well as emerging work on the role of emotions and narrative in social movement scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]