Abstract Creative efforts to make feminicide visible are a vital part of challenging this ubiquitous global phenomenon. From an abolition feminist perspective, this article explores how such creative efforts can mitigate the related risks of racist instrumentalization and reinforcing vulnerability to this violence. After outlining the problems with seeking protection from the criminal legal system and the state, and the underlying perceptions of vulnerability to feminicide as natural and inevitable, the presentations of this vulnerability in five creative efforts are analyzed: The REDress Project by Jaime Black, Zapatos Rojos by Elina Chauvet, Un Violador en tu Camino by Las Tesis, Lote Bravo by Teresa Margolles, and an installation by Colectiva SJF. The result is a toolkit of questions that can be considered when developing creative efforts.

Abstract About ninety years ago, John Dewey argued that democracy should be creative, emphasizing the daily, inventive efforts of individuals to resist authoritarianism. After a decade of global contention, it is evident that creativity is central to politics, yet it remains an ambiguous concept often conflated with artistic practices. This special issue aims to (1) develop a sociological conceptualization of creativity in contention (e.g., resistance, protests, social movements) and (2) present empirical studies on its use in contesting gender-based violence, colonial legacies, neoliberal pressures, and the undervaluing of care work. Creativity in contention is defined as the collective, intentional reconfiguration of cultural and material elements in unexpected ways. It spans tactical, affective, spatial, performative, ideological, linguistic, and embodied dimensions, and it is shaped by context, power, perception, and time.

Abstract To what degree do violent tactics in otherwise nonviolent campaigns reduce the likelihood of a participation surge after repression? While repression can suppress or stimulate participation, research rarely examines how specific violent tactics shape this dynamic. I argue that violence disrupts the backfire mechanism, shifting public support toward the state. When repression targets violent protesters, it appears more legitimate and proportionate, reducing public outrage and participation. More destructive tactics intensify this effect. By distinguishing between unarmed, semiarmed, and armed actions, I propose that increasing violence progressively weakens backfire and further reduces participation surges. Evidence from major African nonviolent campaigns (1990–2006) supports these hypotheses, drawing on descriptive statistics and within-case comparisons of event sequences.

Abstract What are the organizational consequences of moral shocks? Moral shocks are events or critical junctures that spark “visceral reactions against a reprehensible reality” (Pearlman 2013). They help individuals overcome fear, enabling them to engage in political mobilization despite heightened risks. This phenomenon has often been used to explain how political protests arise, but the mechanisms linking moments of moral shock to their outcomes remain less theorized. This article examines a transnational movement community, the Palestinian national liberation movement during and after the Unity Intifada of 2021, to delineate the organizational consequences of moral shocks, particularly considering the processes of outbidding.

Abstract This article examines nonviolent resistance and backfire dynamics in 1980s northern Somalia through an event-centric lens, exploring why repression sometimes escalates dissent rather than suppressing it. Drawing on over one hundred interviews, it unpacks the interplay between two transformative events driven by distinct actors, emphasizing small-scale strategic interactions and contingencies. The study underscores three underexplored dimensions: moral-cultural factors, informal networks, and global power dynamics. It calls for future research to adopt more multilayered and dynamic perspectives on repression, resistance, and transformative events.

Abstract Drawing upon the example of the violent protests against the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg, this article analyzes how protest events may impact policy debates if these events allow for multiple, potentially conflicting interpretations. Designed as within-case analysis, this study examines the evolution of framings and discursive strategies deployed in debates about police identification requirements. Although the proponents of policy change seized the protests as an opportunity to rationalize policy change, the opponents discursively constrained the debates by deploying a framing strategy that resulted in a shift in “discursive opportunity structure” and “feeling rules,” thus hindering the backfiring of police violence. The results indicate that in cases in which the attribution of violence is contested, transformative events may both open and preclude opportunities for change.

Abstract Research on transformative events shows that blatant acts of violence are often followed by moral shocks that raise such a sense of public outrage that formerly contention-averse audiences take to the streets. Yet, despite abundant research on moral shocks, backlash, and critical junctures, their interconnection remains unexplored. Studies of transformative events overwhelmingly concentrate on the properties of repression to explain backfire dynamics, while the affective and discursive features of events that alter the course of history are largely understudied. This special issue addresses this gap through a range of contributions that shift the focus of attention from the structural features of violent events to the competition over their meaning, their cultural and temporal situatedness, and the subjective and objective conditions of backlash protest.

I am grateful to my four critics for taking kindly to my intrusion into the social science of race and human brutality in history and for responding to my sketch of “The Checkerboard of Ethnoracial Violence” (Wacquant 2023a) with earnest and productive comments. In the spirit of their articles, I will rejoin to their propositions and then enroll them to suggest further pathways to a better understanding of the specificity and historicity of racialized violence, individual and collective.

Abstract This article offers three recommendations for researchers who study comparative race and human brutality, doing so in dialogue with Loïc Wacquant's recent “A Checkerboard of Ethnoracial Violence.” The first pertains to the importance in research on ethnoracial violence of distinguishing between categorization, classification, and valuation processes. The second pertains to the importance of testing how biologized and essentialized classification schemes influence violence, in comparison to those that are more fluid and malleable. The third pertains to the process of selecting cases for comparative analyses on race and violence. Each recommendation is intended to extend Wacquant's “checkerboard” by further exploring how macro-level dynamics of racialization and violence influence micro-level cognitive, relational, and situational dynamics on the ground. Each is therefore interconnected with the other two, with the second building on the first, and third building on the first and second.

Abstract Loïc Wacquant's “A Checkerboard of Ethnoracial Violence” offers a sharp analysis of racial violence, highlighting its varying forms, functions, and scales. We aim to enrich Wacquant's framework by unpacking the idea of cumulative radicalization. Originally developed in Holocaust studies, this concept allows one to specify connections between different forms and functions of violence by interrogating the interplay between different levels of analysis. It also sheds light on why the scale of violence sometimes shifts in destructive ways and provides mechanisms for why racialized boundaries lend themselves to mass murder. Deeper engagement with cumulative radicalization transforms checkers into simultaneous chess, as it helps us formulate a multilevel theory of violent escalation.