The politics of 'the politics of display': a nuclear-energy gallery, a science museum in the 1980s and a debate about patronage.

Walking up Exhibition Road, London, in March 2005, I trace the path of many of the millions of visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851. I walk past the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and, eventually, the Royal Geographical Society. Leaving the museum complexes of South Kensington behind me, I reach the corner of Kensington Gore and cross into Hyde Park. Making my way past the site of the Great Exhibition I walk towards the Serpentine Gallery. Once inside the gallery, I visit each of the four rooms of Tomoko Takahashi's installation in turn: Garden, Kitchen/HQ, Office and Reception (Figures 1,2, and 3 ). Architectural in scale, the artist's walk-in spaces have been constructed from a collection of over 7000 objects. Takahashi sourced many of these things from the museums and parks of the immediate area, others were sourced from skips, sheds, and second-hand shops across London. Entering these spaces, situated within this historically freighted exhibitionary terrain, I am suddenly very aware of myself being amidst objects. The books, cards, games, toys, and implements normally lived with, are collected here, laid out to view. I do not so much gaze on Takahashi's work as an empirical object as I actively experience the collection, moment by moment as a series of materialities and spaces. There is a density of objects and of experiences that eludes description. The state of mind it fosters is inconclusive, precise impressions slip away, and a sharper but somehow more effervescent consciousness emerges.1 1This extract and the remainder of the ethnographic extracts in this article are written by the author from accounts and field notes made during the author's visits to the installation in March and April 2005.

Fetishizing the Foot: Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

Reviewed by: Toxic Shock: A Social History by Sharra L. Vostral Donna J. Drucker (bio) Toxic Shock: A Social History By Sharra L. Vostral. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Pp. 227. Sharra L. Vostral begins Toxic Shock: A Social History with a vivid description of her experience learning about this syndrome as an American teenager in 1982. The public health concerns about contracting a sudden illness from (and possibly dying from) tampon use were broadcast extensively on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on product labels. As a teenager in California in the early 1990s, this reviewer also remembers these widespread but vague warnings about sudden death due to toxic [End Page 1261] shock syndrome (TSS) from overlong tampon use. From so few documented cases nationwide, how did TSS rise to such prominence in the United States' public health and safety discourse? Vostral addresses that and many other questions in the first book-length history of the syndrome. Vostral's central argument is that "TSS was a paradigm shift in the way that illness manifests because the supposedly inert tampon interacted with a common bacterium (Staphylococcus aureus) to cause sickness in otherwise healthy women" (p. 2). She explores this argument from five perspectives that comprise the book's five roughly chronological central chapters: the material, technological history of tampons and S. aureus; medicine and epidemiology; communication and journalism; law and lawsuits; and policy and politics. The narrative begins with a history of tampons as material technologies. It focuses on how synthetic superabsorbent materials (like those in Rely, the Procter & Gamble tampon that became the focus of TSS investigations) provide an environment where they and the bacteria act together to produce conditions where TSS can occur. The next chapter describes how scientists, physicians, and policymakers identified, traced, and publicized TSS from the late 1970s onward (chapter 2). The book also traces media attention to TSS, Procter & Gamble's withdrawal of Rely tampons from the market, and U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) efforts to require warning inserts in tampon boxes under a Ronald Reagan administration hostile to federal regulation. Chapter four centers on a lawsuit brought against Procter & Gamble by the family of a woman who died from TSS after using Rely tampons. Vostral then examines the efforts of an uneasily aligned task force made up of consumer advocates, feminist health activists from the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, Procter & Gamble representatives, and FDA Bureau of Medical Devices staff members. In early 1982, they were charged with developing standard guidelines for tampon absorbency, but they ultimately produced nothing. By 1990, the FDA Federal Register published standard absorbency ranges for different tampon sizes, though there is still no federal requirement to list tampon ingredients on the box or guidelines on how long tampons should be worn. The book's primary theoretical contribution is in the first chapter, where Vostral introduces the concept of biocatalytic technology. Biocatalytic technologies "are not primarily dangerous to humans but have the potential to catalyze microbial activity that may result in harm because of their use" (p. 38). Intriguing and potentially useful as this analytic is, it largely disappears from the rest of the book until the conclusion, when the narrative turns to the policy-oriented, legal, and activist elements of TSS's history. There is consequently a disconnect between the first chapter of the book, which develops this analytic and its potential for identifying bacteria as "a nonhuman unintended user . . . able to exploit the technology," and the remaining four chapters (p. 22). The tampon users, activists, lawyers, [End Page 1262] litigants, scientists, and policymakers in the final four chapters focus on the tampons themselves and pay little attention to S. aureus as an actor. Toxic Shock joins a wider literature of social and technological histories of menstruation and menstrual products. These include Vostral's own Under Wraps (Lexington Books, 2009); Lara Freidenfelds's The Modern Period (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth's The Curse (University of Illinois Press, 1976/ 1988); and Sara Read's Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Vostral proves the argument that TSS changed scientific understandings of...

At a time when the US federal government failed to act on climate change, California's success as a subnational climate policy leader has been widely celebrated. However, California's landmark climate law drove a wedge between two segments of the state's environmental community. On one side was a coalition of “market-oriented” environmental social movement organizations (SMOs), who allied with private corporations to advance market-friendly climate policy. On the other side was a coalition of “justice-oriented” environmental SMOs, who viewed capitalist markets as the problem and sought climate policy that would mitigate the uneven distribution of environmental harms within the state. The social movement literature is not well equipped to understand this case, in which coalitional politics helped one environmental social movement succeed in its policy objectives at the expense of another. In this chapter, we draw on legislative and regulatory texts, archival material, and interviews with relevant political actors to compare the policymaking influence of each of these coalitions, and we argue that the composition of the two coalitions is the key to understanding why one was more successful than the other. At the same time, we point out the justice-oriented coalition's growing power, as market-oriented SMOs seek to preserve their legitimacy.

13 Ab Imperio, 3/2002 From the EDITORS RUSSIAN SOCIETY: STRUCTURES AND CULTURES In this issue Ab Imperio continues the exploration of the umbrella theme of this year of paradoxes of modernization in the Russian empire and Soviet Union, turning to social and cultural dimensions of history of empire and nation. It is well known what a complex task it is to study the evolution of social structures if approached from the longue duree and societal perspective and to what extent illusory can be the self-manifested changes in culture if taken at face value. The relationship between these two modes of scholars’ encounter with the socio-cultural world stands at the core of the general historical epistemology: on the one hand historians have to deal with the self-description of social structures (institutes, groups and actors) couched in the language of the epoch, on the other hand, there is an ever present temptation to narrate the object of historical investigation (including the process of historical change) in terms of contemporary culture. The problem of reciprocal mental projections and substitutions in the encounter of scholars with the voiceless or outspoken social and cultural phenomena is a point of intersection for all the materials of the current issue. 14 From the Editors Despite the inherent contradiction between the social (structural) and cultural (introspect) perspectives, the symbiosis of social and cultural approach have endured and proved fruitful in the past decade or so, in part due to the blurring of disciplinary boundaries as a result of which cultural and social histories have occupied areas that had long been the domain of political, diplomatic or intellectual history. The explicit dynamism of culture and “representativeness” of social structures allowed to narrate the profound changes in society (in particular, the process of modernization), charting the stages of cultural transformations in relation to the corresponding changes in constellations of social actors and factors. The advance of both social and cultural histories and the fusion thereof influenced the theories of nationalism, which came to address the modern nation formation in the framework of historically emergent linguistic and cultural homogeneity of Western European nations. However, the challenge comes when the optics of social and cultural analysis is applied to history of Central and Eastern Europe. This application invites a reflection on theoretical assumptions of 20th century paradigms of social and cultural history, for it brings about the question of relationship of Central-Eastern European history to Western Europe-tied definition of modernity and the suitability of nation-centered narratives for capturing the history of interaction and encounters in what was the multinational society of a continental empire. Indeed, the very notion of imperial society pleads for critical reflection. It is to be discussed if this category is legitimate given that the boundaries of this social formation are determined by the political frontiers. These frontiers create an ostensibly unitary space, which though includes the significant variation of the nature of social collectivities and relationship as well as different national-cultural areas. Alternatively, one may turn the critical scrutiny to the analytical categories of “society” and “culture” and pose a question to what extent the social and cultural reality behind those categories can be exhausted by the analysis of solidarity, groupness, and homogeneity. The current issue of Ab Imperio is an attempt to take stock of certain new methodological approaches, which evolved in studies of social and cultural history of the Russian empire and Soviet and post-Soviet space, and to map possible directions of modification of conventional analytical concepts necessitated, respectively, by the specific contexts of multinational Russian empire and the Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Theory and Methodology section of this issue features the sequential 15 Ab Imperio, 3/2002 attempts at reflection of relationship between the categories of social sciences and the polyvalent social and cultural reality of social collectivities and cultural solidarity. The section opens by the first publication in Russian of the seminal text by Max Weber, which laid foundations for the modern debate about the formation of social groups and ethnic communities and stressed both cognitive and structural aspects of this process. The most recent attempt to amend the essentialist implications of social and...

Trans is both an umbrella term for heterogeneous identities and a discrete collective identity type unto itself. It now encompasses a wide range of binary and nonbinary identifications like transsexual and transgender. Social movements arising that take up trans issues do so with certain caveats. Many make the important distinction that “trans” describes human practices and social identities preceding the construction of its modern name and meaning. Furthermore, social movements and activism advance the argument that trans embodiments are not confined to Western or medical imaginaries. Indeed, what is expressed within trans identity narratives have gone by other cultural names, with diverse histories all their own. The rise and ongoing role of American trans activism within social and political domains are careful to consider the narrative histories being summoned. Trans social movements are generally aware of the risks that analytic terms like movement or protest might imply. For better or worse, scholars often associate the rise of social and political protest movements of the 20th century in broadly fantastic terms. The emergence of trans communities, however, unfolded over the course of a century. The episodic ruptures that mark historical events (Compton’s Cafeteria or the Stonewall riots) tend to spur organizational consolidation. Indeed, many of the most recent trends in trans activism then consolidated into organized interests. On that many scholars can agree. But the historical process that led to this point of trans politics is not clear-cut. Often eclipsed by the twin narrative of queer liberation, trans social movements linger among a number of narrative histories. Three periodizations help identify how trans narratives of identity and social justice are deployed, by whom, and for what purpose. The nominal period marks the rise of transsexual identities as they emerged within the space of medical currents in the early 20th century. Trans people in mid-century America may have participated in the power of medical discourse in their own lives. For example, autobiographical texts describe psychic pain, depression, and suicidal ideation that were alleviated only through transition. Naming provides intelligibility to an otherwise opaque set of phenomena. The symbolic period moves away from privileging the medical archive to highlight the connections made between radical identity groups and the growth of organized resources by and for trans activists. Narratives here are socially symbolic and detail how terms like transsexual and transgender(ist) entered a complex cultural milieu. Many activists would permanently shape the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, and agender (LGBTIA) communities for decades. The symbolic emphasizes a politics of narrative origins. Identifying the events and voices that shaped the mainstream conception of trans issues is critical to contemporary movements for social justice. The pluralist period reflects upon the various institutional interventions that shaped popular discourse around sex and gender in everyday life for trans people. It typically recasts the last three decades of the 20th century as a crucial epoch in trans activism (for both social and political forces). Between 1980 and 1990, new energy emerged that ran on the heels of a new posttranssexual politics. What emerged in the early 2000s was a rapid growth of organized advocacy and interest-group formation. Many of the organizations are still active and continue to shape national, state, and local policies. They represent one form of a blend of movement-related strategies for participating in the construction and durability of trans politics.

The study of popular uprisings, mobilizations, and social movements is central to the scholarship on contemporary Iran, given the impact of events like the 1979 revolution and successive cycles of mobilizations. Scholars have approached contentious politics in Iran through diverse disciplinary vantage points and by adopting different frameworks of analysis, creating a rich body of knowledge. The scholarship has morphed under the influence of the transformation of Iranian politics and society, such as the cultural and generational change after the end of the Iran–Iraq war and the limited political liberalization and authoritarian retrenchment between the early 2000s and the 2010s. The scholarship reflected these changes in the frameworks utilized to examine contentious politics and the themes discussed. Mobilizations have been examined through the analytical frameworks of dispersed acts of everyday resistance and social movements studies, and by adopting structural approaches that have emphasized distinct aspects of the uprisings, social movements, and non-movements in Iran. Themes have also changed, and scholars have taken interest in specific actors such as the clergy right after the revolution and, since the 1990s, in the youth, the women’s movement, and students’ organizations. The 1979 revolution features prominently in the scholarship as a theme, along with thematic (and teleological) interpretations of Iranian history as an unfinished struggle for democracy led by liberal and anti-authoritarian social movements. This body of knowledge about mobilizations, uprisings, and social movements in Iran would benefit from foregrounding intersectional analysis and how it structures alliance-building and the internal division of labor and roles, and from paying attention to the connection between imperial aspirations, war, and opportunities for mobilizations.

Part 1 Introduction: the challenge of new movements, Russell Dalton et al. Part 2 The origins of new movements: cyclical aspects of new social movements, Karl-Werner Brand cultural change and new movements, Ronald Inglehart neo-corporatism and the rise of new social movements, Frank Wilson social movements and political innovation, Max Kaase. Part 3 Networks of action: the West European peace movement and the theory of new social movements, Thomas Rochon linking the Old and movement networks in the Netherlands, P.Bert feminism and political action, Joyce Gelb the strategies and action repertoires of new movements, Dieter Rucht. Part 4 New movements and political parties: new social movements and the decline of party organizations, Herbert Kitscheld new political movements and new politics parties in Western europe, Ferdinand Muller-Rommel reflections on the institutional self-transformation of movement politics, Claus Offe the phantom at the opera, Sidney Tarrow. Part 5 New social movements in perspective: new social movements and the political order, Manfred Kuechler.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: ‘Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2011 Terrorist attacks’

Democracy represents a fundamental right for citizens. Democracy and citizen par- ticipation are developing and they complement each other, given that there is no demo- cracy without the active and conscious participation of citizens in the political process. This democratic participation occurs through tools that enable the practice of citizenship, and, among them, the social movements stand out. There is a direct relationship between the social movements and democracy: whilst the social movements exist only in demo- cratic systems, democracy requires the participation of civil society with the state. The social movements consist on a structured organization that has the purpose of uniting people to defend and promote rights, containing social identity and a particular way of thinking and acting collectively to achieve the common good and a new sort of life. The particularities of the social movements let one glimpse that the major expression of civic participation contributes to a cultural change in society, given that, with common goals, the differences are overcome, encouraging a relatedness which looks for ethics, sharing and fraternity. The understanding of fraternity in its various forms – historical, political, legal and ethical – contributes to a development in respect among people, acceptance of socio-economic and cultural differences, emphasizing the feeling of a group belonging. This way, this article aims to analyse social movements and its cooperation in building a new relational culture, more Humane, Fair And Fraternal.

Peter Dwyer & Leo Zeilig African Struggles Today: Social Movements Since Independence, Haymarket Books: Chicago, 2012; 260 pp: 9781608461202, $17 (pbk) Peter Dwyer (Ruskin College) and Leo Zeilig (Institute of Commonwealth Studies) present a history and analysis of social movements in African history. They argue that most survey texts in African studies neglect the role of grassroots social movements, tending instead to portray Africa from the perspective of political and economic elites, whether imperialist or anti-imperialist. The result is that politics is reduced to issues of 'governance', and social movements are conflated with 'civil society' (p. 4). Therefore, Dwyer and Zeilig contend that 'social movements--popular movements of the working class, the poor, and other oppressed and marginalised sections of African society--have played a central role in shaping Africa's contemporary history' (p. 1). The authors define social movements as less institutional than 'civil society' or 'interest groups', which tend to address conflicts within existing political frameworks. They argue that social movements can take an institutionalised shape, but that they are often amorphous so to coalesce briefly around a particular issue or initiative before dissolving into wider society' (p. 23). Dwyer and Zeilig therefore make sharp distinctions between subaltern, 'grassroots' movements and predominately urban and donor-dependent NGOs. The latter are often entrenched in the political mainstream and therefore unable to enact meaningful social and economic change. This is not to say that Dwyer and Zeilig discount any usefulness of mainstream NGOs; they merely argue that 'independently minded civil society activists [must] break free of donor dependency and adopt a more critical attitude to the governments they had (in part) helped bring to power (p. 130). This means engagement with grassroots organisations and trade unions. Based on this framework, they present a post-1940s history of Africa divided into three cycles of protest'. First, the post-Second World War movements for independence leading up to the mid-1960s, when most African states achieved political independence. Second, the responses to the first wave of structural adjustment programmes in the late 1970s. Third, the merging of economic grievances with demands for democratic reform in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dwyer and Zeilig acknowledge some of the limitations of 1950s and 1960s African nationalism, noting the role of the educated elite in solidifying state control and 'suffocating' independent working-class politics (p. …

The Power of the Wave: Activism Rainbow Region-Style

Double-BoundPutting the Power Back into Participatory Research Virginia Eubanks (bio) Oceans of ink have been spilled in recent years on the promise and perils of public participation in scientific and technological policymaking. H. M. Collins and Robert Evans recently argued that studies of experience and expertise, aimed at supporting Science and Technology Studies scholars to better perform boundary work between experts and the public, should constitute the “Third Wave” of science studies.1 Michael Lynch and Simon Cole explain, “repeated calls have been made for research that intervenes in public controversies about science and technology . . . Such proposals have become so prevalent, and so central to programmatic objectives in STS, that is fair to say the field has undergone a normative turn.”2 Of course, all of this recent normative technoscientific boundary work is informed by the (often unacknowledged) contributions of feminist sociologists of knowledge who have vociferously insisted, since the early 1980s, on developing better (that is, both more just and more true) accounts of the world created by science and technology. But as committed to extending technological decision-making as many of us are in theory, sharing control of our own research agendas and our institutional resources with nonacademic members of social movements and local communities still seems to befuddle us, to make us defensive and wary. All the fuss and confusion produced by recent debates about participation make perfect sense when you consider the political-economic context of the shift to participatory practices. Participatory methodologies have become hot topics because these practices currently serve to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of the state under globalized neoliberal regimes. For example, community development block grants, a key strategy in government devolution since the 1980s, were justified by arguing that program funding is more effective and efficient when decision-making is shifted to more local levels (a key premise in grassroots participatory organizing). The Personal Responsibility [End Page 107] and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA—otherwise known as welfare reform) reframed social welfare in terms of individual empowerment and personal responsibilities in order to justify state withdrawal from providing for the social welfare of its citizens, rejecting the call of new social movements for recognition of group rights and entitlements. And more recently, George W. Bush has argued that the traditional responsibility of government to care for its most vulnerable citizens should be transferred to faith-based organizations, because these programs are more attuned to local nuance and cultural specificity than the federal policy-makers. We should be deeply suspicious of participatory practices that displace macrosocial analysis, neglect the extra-local, eviscerate the state’s commitment to social welfare, or heighten emphasis on personal or individual responsibility under the guise of “empowerment.” Though the participatory practices I discuss here, like popular education and participatory action research, arose from radical social movements the world over, in recent years, the libratory potential of participation has often been unrealized or rerouted. States and supranational organizations such as the World Bank have co-opted the strategies—or at least appropriated the rhetoric—of social justice movements themselves. An apt name for this co-optation process has been suggested by Margaret Ledwith: “hijacking the language of liberation.” The co-optation of participation dovetails with the individualization of social welfare, “transforming rights into responsibilities by transferring the collective responsibility of the welfare state to the individual, the family and community as moral responsibility.”3 And yet grassroots participation should be a feature of any genuine democracy and is vital to the democratic production of knowledge. In my own studies at the intersection of Women’s Studies and Science and Technology Studies, examples abound of how those most affected by scientific and technological innovations are least consulted about their construction and deployment. This is so much the case that a number of social movements spawned in the US in the past fifteen years—including environmental justice, community supported agriculture, fair trade, reproductive justice and independent media—have arisen with the specific goal of challenging technocratic decision-making in areas as important to human life as clean water, breathable air, safe food, human rights to communication, and ability to self-determine one’s reproductive destiny...

From the early 1990s when the EZLN (the Zapatistas), led by Subcommandte Marcos, first made use of the Internet to the late 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Trade and Investment and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social protest movements were emergent. These new movements seemed diffuse and unstructured, yet at the same time, they forged unlikely coalitions of labor, environmentalists, feminists, peace, and global social justice activists collectively critical of the adversities of neoliberal globalization and its associated militarism. Moreover, the rapid emergence and worldwide proliferation of these movements, organized and coordinated through the Internet, raised a number of questions that require rethinking social movement theory. Specifically, the electronic networks that made contemporary globalization possible also led to the emergence of “virtual public spheres” and, in turn, “Internetworked Social Movements.” Social movement theory has typically focused on local structures, leadership, recruitment, political opportunities, and strategies from framing issues to orchestrating protests. While this tradition still offers valuable insights, we need to examine unique aspects of globalization that prompt such mobilizations, as well as their democratic methods of participatory organization and clever use of electronic media. Moreover, their emancipatory interests become obscured by the “objective” methods of social science whose “neutrality” belies a tacit assent to the status quo. It will be argued that the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory offers a multi-level, multi-disciplinary approach that considers the role of literacy and media in fostering modernist bourgeois movements as well as anti-modernist fascist movements. This theoretical tradition offers a contemporary framework in which legitimacy crises are discussed and participants arrive at consensual truth claims; in this process, new forms of empowered, activist identities are fostered and negotiated that impel cyberactivism.

Throughout history, Islamic discourse, political Islam, and the status of Muslim women have been subjects of study. Still, few research efforts have concentrated on the changes and dynamics between Islamic discourse and feminist resistance. Particularly in Iran, attention has primarily been given to the Islamism project, often treated as separate from social movements in post-Islamism. This thesis explores how social movements have used the symbolism of the veil in their resistance, focusing specifically on the women's social movement during the Islamic Revolution. Drawing on Assef Bayat's approach of Islamism and social movements and Gender and power dynamics theory, the main argument of the thesis is that the interplay between Islamic discourse and women’s movements in the context of Iran, It posits that social movements have strategically used the symbolism of the veil as a form of resistance against the political and ideological constraints imposed by Islamic regimes. By integrating Assef Bayat's framework on Islamism and social movements with theories of gender and power dynamics, the thesis seeks to illuminate the nuance relationship between these forces. This research expands the literature on the cultural changes initiated by various Iranian regimes and how social movements have utilized these changes to resist laws, or more dramatically, to oppose the regimes themselves.