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The Idle No More (INM) movement emerged in reaction to Bill C-45, the Canadian Jobs and Growth Act, in November 2012, inspiring a new wave of activism. Central to the movement’s grievances are Indigenous resistance and environmental justice (EJ), positioning INM’s activities against neo-colonialism, exploitation, and environmental degradation. We build upon existing EJ movements, Indigenous Peoples/Indigenous Environmental Justice (IEJ) movements, and social movement spillover, grievance, and claims making literatures to understand the role of shared movement narratives in encouraging mobilization. INM relies on social media to educate members and construct and communicate movement goals and actions. Analyzing 6 months of Facebook comments, reflecting the INM movement’s emergence period, we argue that INM activists employ structural grievances embedded in previous EJ and Indigenous resistance movements, combined with emerging (incidental) grievances to articulate shared claims that address inequality and justice, appealing to a range of potential supporters. We offer an analysis of the emergent INM movement to consider the active intersection of EJ, Indigenous Peoples, and IEJ movements to mobilize and sustain movement activities in spite of Bill C-45’s passage.

Nuclear technology is often associated with risk, a connotation amplified by major nuclear disasters including Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi power plant catastrophe. Assessments of risk associated...

Employing the example of France’s civil nuclear program, we connect political opportunity structures (POSs) to mechanisms of knowledge production, identifying how opposing stakeholders generate knowledge about a controversial technology. A history of nuclear dependence in France creates a context that praises, normalizes, and rationalizes nuclear energy while stigmatizing attempts to question or contest the nuclear industry’s dominant position. Integrating Bond’s knowledge-shaping process with Coy and colleagues’ concept of oppositional knowledge, we consider how the broader social, political, and economic context influences opposing stakeholder assessments of nuclear energy. Employing qualitative semi-structured interviews, we offer unique insight into the French nuclear debate, discussing the role of POS in shaping knowledge production.

A laboratory experiment for the determination of the cross-linking density of silicone elastomers is described on the basis of swelling experiments and mechanical tests. In the experiment, the macroscopic swelling and mechanical behaviors of the elastomers were discussed as a function of the cross-linking density, which can be easily controlled by varying the base-to-curing-agent ratio during elastomer synthesis. The cross-linking density and the average molecular weight between cross-links were calculated from the swelling degree at equilibrium through the Flory–Rehner theory and from a simple mechanical model. The results have shown a good convergence of the average molecular weight between cross-links calculated from the two methods, respectively. On a more general note, the suggested experiments and the associated results offered numerous opportunities for discussions on macromolecular architectures, interactions between polymers and solvents, and mechanical properties of elastomeric materials.

International audience; Radical step-growth photopolymerization of dithiol−diene monomer miniemulsion is shown to be a highly efficient, robust, and versatile route to generate film-forming linear poly(thioether) latexes. At extremely fast rates, the process results in high-molecular-weight polysulfide products, exhibiting both semicrystalline and oxidation-responsive properties. Four key issues are addressed as regards the practical implementation of this novel UV-driven waterborne technology: the preparation of a photolatent and colloidally stable thiol−ene monomer miniemulsion, the identification of key experimental parameters controlling reaction kinetics and polymer microstructure, the characterization of film semicrystallinity, and the application of poly(thioether ester) latexes as dual-stimuli-responsive nanocarriers sensitive to both oxidation and hydrolysis.