Forms Of Activism Research Articles

La Fe en Acción: Faith-Based Activism, Immigration Reform, and Structural Vulnerability

Abstract Religious conviction has played a prominent role in many activist movements throughout the United States. In this article, I detail one social justice organization’s enactment of activism called la fe en acción (faith in action). This approach was nuanced from being simply “activism” but one that, according to participants, was more strategic and longer lasting. La fe en acción served as the central strategy utilized by this organization in order to garner public and political support for comprehensive immigration reform. A crucial component within this approach included the sharing of testimonios (testimonials) of participants. While this form of activism was intended to garner the participation of all people—including undocumented immigrants—for some, structural vulnerability hindered their ability to participate. Overall, I explore the positive and negative aspects of this approach as elaborated from data gathered during attempts to garner support for comprehensive immigration reform in 2013.

"People Show Up In Different Ways": DACA Recipients' Everyday Activism in a Time of Heightened Immigration-Related Insecurity.

Undocumented young adults have emerged as a coherent political group, forging a large-scale social movement and helping push forward 19 state-level tuition equity laws and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012. Yet DACA recipients' status became endangered when President Trump rescinded DACA in September 2017, necessitating even more innovative strategies for contesting their exclusion. Drawing from research conducted in Maryland since 2016, I chronicle DACA recipients' trajectories of political engagement. Though some have participated consistently in public forms of collective action, many never have or have declined in participation due to political apathy, the intense need to protect their identities, and very-real fears about being exposed or deported. Yet these young adults have cultivated complementary forms of everyday activism, operating outside traditional modalities and spaces of political engagement through acts of resistance carried out in everyday life. I contend that against the backdrop of the repressive state in the Trump era, the everyday activism of DACA recipients complements more normative and overt forms of collective action. Everyday activism raises interesting questions about the nature of activism itself, including the extent to which it must be collective, organized, and public, and its place in social justice movements more broadly.

‘The real power must be in the base’ – Decentralised collective intellectual leadership in the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City

The ongoing commodification of housing and urban space in Europe has led to the formation of a burgeoning housing movement, consisting of large anti-eviction networks in Southern Europe, as well as tenants’ unions and right-to-the-city networks in Central and Northern Europe. These different forms of housing activism have become increasingly connected at the transnational level, primarily due to the work of the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’. Consisting of activist groups from over 20 different countries, this coalition facilitates mutual exchange, organises collective campaigns and has begun engaging in institutional advocacy at the European Union level. It steadily expands in size and tactical repertoire, aiming to develop a more unified transnational strategy for attaining affordable and self-determined living space across Europe. Drawing on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, this article makes the case that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ increasingly performs the function of a ‘collective intellectual’ that organises a transnational struggle against neoliberal hegemony. Based on qualitative analyses of documents, interviews and field notes, it demonstrates that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ exhibits a counter-hegemonic perspective that opposes neoliberal capitalism as a whole and manages to facilitate mutual solidarity across different activist communities explicitly on the basis of class struggle. At the same time, instead of organising a democratic centralist political project the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ pursues a more decentralised approach to collective intellectual leadership that prioritises domestic struggles, yet also lacks a cohesive long-term strategy.

An anarchist criminology for uncertain times

Anarchist practices of direct action, decentralization, leaderless resistance, and mutual aid animate many forms of progressive activism that today percolate around the globe. For a new generation of activists, such practices are part of a more general anti-authoritarian reorientation to social life and social change. Here I suggest that this reorientation is worth exploring on its own terms, given that misunderstanding is all but assured if we try to make sense of it in the context of more conventional approaches. I argue in turn that street-level anarchist practices can productively reengage contemporary criminology with an increasingly uncertain world; attune criminology to the contested political dynamics of the present day; and help confront the precarious status of criminology and its practitioners.

Grassroots resistance and activism to one-size-fits-all and separate-but-equal policies by 90:10 dual language schools en comunidades latinas

ABSTRACT Bilingual education—chiefly the subcategory of dual language bilingual education—has been undergoing a pattern where the interests of language-minoritized communities have in several contexts been pushed out of the way. One aspect of this gentrification process has been the fiftyfication of dual language bilingual education policy, where privilege is placed on a 50:50 balance of language allocation between English and the partner language. Using thematic narrative analysis, we looked at the only two dual language bilingual education schools in the U.S. state of Utah with a 90:10 language allocation. Findings show that (a) the two charter schools were pressured in multiple ways to conform to the state’s fiftyfication policy, and (b) the schools and their Latina/o communities resisted the policy and associated pressures on behalf of their students through forms of grassroots language activism and bottom-up resistance. Although these actions ultimately resulted in the official revision of the state’s DLBE policy to be inclusive of multiple language allocation models, the schools had to continue their activism to benefit from the policy change as the state then moved to a separate-but-equal policy approach that continued the privileging of the 50:50 model. Implications for scholars and policymakers are discussed.

PERILAKU GENERASI Z TERHADAP PENGGUNAAN MEDIA SOSIAL TIKTOK: TikTok Sebagai Media Edukasi dan Aktivisme

Social media is widely a common thing for everyday lives now, Even some people cannot live without it. One of the most downloaded applications in 2020 now is TikTok and they change the game in social media with its 15-60 duration videos. No wonder the impact it has on multiple sectors in the world. But can TikTok operate in the education sector? In this article, the writer will analyze Generation Z's behavior towards TikTok used as educational media and activism. The intervention methods used in this article are with literature review. Results found that TikTok can be used as a form of informal education and digital activism. Informal education, it is found that a model of learning and policy is needed to have its effect on activities. To conclude, social media usage in educational sectors is indeed beneficial, but it needs more further research and models for its applications in its activities.

Medical Disturbances as a Form of Patient Activism in China?

In China, patients, their relatives, or organised groups sometimes resort to ‘medical disturbances’ (医闹, yi nao) as a way of expressing grievances. Drawing on existing scholarly accounts and our recent research, this essay provides reflections on this phenomenon through the lens of patient activism.

For a Fair(er) Global History

This article is authored by a group of PhD researchers at the European University Institute (EUI) and two teachers as part of the PhD seminar in Global History held in the Fall of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider three topics: ‘The politics of global history’ thinking about global history as a form of activism; ‘Whose global history?’ considering issues of property and sharing; and ‘An open global history’ proposing a utopian future (for a troubled present). We believe that in order for global history to thrive, its practitioners need to be more inclusive and acknowledge imbalances of power across world areas, across genders, and across career stages.
 Image Caption: Sekisui Nagakubo after Matteo Ricci, Sankai Yochi Zenzu (山海輿地全圖) (Naniwa, 1785). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C.

Sappers of Fortress Europe: exploring the micropolitics of borders through the occupational culture of asylum caseworkers in Greece

ABSTRACT This paper considers borders as ubiquitous and pervasive social relations and as sites of struggles, which are shaped through and transformed by social antagonisms and contestations. While much discussion of border struggles focuses on migrants’ resistance and various forms of activism, this paper provides insights on the micro-resistance of those who, instead of overtly opposing and contesting the biopolitical power of border regimes, are integral to their operation: asylum caseworkers who filter and select border-crossers. The paper presents data from interviews with self-identified leftist asylum caseworkers in Greece who, through their work, seek to create cracks in the so-called ‘Fortress Europe’. By exploring the somewhat unexplored occupational culture of leftist asylum caseworkers, we show how, while trying to resist bordering regimes, leftist asylum caseworkers both critique and reproduce the power relations they seek to subvert. Essentially, we provide valuable insights on the limits of resistance due to the workings of powerful technologies of government – informed by neoliberal managerialism – that are operational in day-to-day life of the asylum process. The paper thus provides a novel exploration of the complex and entangled relation between technologies of power and micro-resistances within border regimes in the significant context of Greece.

Walking the popular education spiral - an account and analysis of participatory action research with teacher activists

ABSTRACT This article features an account and analysis of a participatory action research (PAR) project that involved the author and five teacher activist co-researchers. This piece has two principal aims. The first is to contribute to practitioners’ knowledge and practice by offering an account of a PAR project, grounded in popular education, that provided a beneficial space for K-12 teacher activists. The second aim is to contribute to the teacher-activist literature by providing an analysis of the perceived benefits of popular education and PAR for participating teacher activists. Benefits included stronger relationships, developed knowledge and skills, emotional benefits, and the novel understanding that teacher activism includes forms of cultural activism. Implications include the notion that PAR may be useful for other teacher activists, and the conventional definition of teacher activism is likely too narrow.

From streets to courthouses: digital and post-digital forms of image activism in the post-occupy Turkey

ABSTRACT Despite the steady growth of authoritarianism, image activism is persistent and vibrant in Turkey. This paper examines how activists/artists used the production and circulation of political images to combat the institutional exclusion of oppositional voices following the Gezi protests (2013) and the attempted coup (2016). Using visual rhetorical analysis of images and in-depth interviews with courtroom painters, the paper focuses on ‘political’ drawings produced in enclaves of courtrooms and the strategies of image activists in visually narrating the political prisoners and/or detainees for wider networks, forming intersectional communities and creating spatial and digital visibility. In the context of the image activism in the post-Occupy Turkey, the passage from the digital to post-digital is based on, first, the top-down restrictive regulations in public and semi-public spaces and increasing police presence in places where activists previously met, and second, rising surveillance of the digital platforms, including the troll armies of the AKP government.

Decolonising the ‘safe space’ as an African innovation: the Nhanga as quiet activism to improve women’s health and wellbeing

ABSTRACT Contemporary power and decolonisation discourses reflect how Eurocentric and Western analysis has shaped our understandings of the world. Decolonisation efforts within Global Health and feminist studies (including what counts as valid forms of women’s organising) also require a reclaiming of praxis developed within historically oppressed countries lost through erasures of knowledge-production. Our work contributes to these efforts through an analysis of a form of collective activism for women’s health and development in Zimbabwe: the Nhanga. This traditional cultural practice is anchored to intergenerational women only ‘safe spaces’, a praxis pre-dating second-wave feminist theorising on such ideas. Currently, Nhangas are used by the Rozaria Memorial Trust across community, national and global advocacy spaces to promote women’s health. Using collaborative autoethnography, each author’s personal accounts of engagement in the Nhanga interrogate the processes that promote change in women’s lives. Our analysis suggests that the Nhanga fractures systemic, institutional and relational power through leveraging culture, emotions and narrative, in spaces where such dynamics are often overlooked. We conclude that the method offers a valuable form of collective organising: fully engaging with the complex relational, political, social, and cultural environments that impact on health, through a quiet activism anchored to emotion, connection, and re-imagining of culture to promote change at individual, community, and global levels.

Citizens of photography: visual activism, social media and rhetoric of collective action in Cambodia

ABSTRACT We are living in the age of photography. Photography and visual social media flood our communication channels and become embodied in our daily activities. People who can afford the medium of photography – people who are described here as ‘citizens of photography’ – use these channels to articulate and represent their grievances. These exemplify a form of visual activism and articulation that have long been discussed in social movement studies, yet the links between photography and social movements could benefit from further examination. Drawing on a socio-environmental movement case in Cambodia, this article interrogates how photographic and visual representations and social media shape the outcomes of collective action by discontented citizens. I argue that the ubiquity of visual devices and digital access to visual social media facilitates underprivileged citizens in grassroots movements to aesthetically exert influence on their targets in order to leverage their demands effectively. Beyond considering images as messengers and mediatization, the power of visual images inspires and provokes action: participation in the protest, and re-production and re-circulation of the images on social media. The power of visual images – produced by ordinary citizens – is the performative force that brings about change in the era of social media.

#Renziscappa: The Transmedia Story of a Hashtag between Online and Offline Activism

This paper analyzes how the hashtag #Renziscappa was used to create a link between online and offline forms of political activism. Launched in November 2014 by the Italian collective Wu Ming, #Renziscappa aimed to encourage the reporting online of any form of offline protest against the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The implementation of #Renziscappa by Wu Ming and their followers sought to counter mainstream representations of Renzi’s purported consensus, and to catalyze and organize the offline protests. Conversely, offline participation linked the hashtag to impact-making political actions. However, the uncontrolled proliferation of #Renziscappa and its appropriation by the Movimento 5 Stelle made the online campaign increasingly lose its connection with the offline protests. By contrast, the concerted transmedia diffusion of #Renziscappa through Wu Ming’s blog Giap and interactive maps preserved this connection. In particular, the maps contextualized #Renziscappa in the genealogical evolution, geo-temporal settings, and socio-political composition of the offline movement. The network of these transmedia extensions constituted a narrative alternative to the mainstream that made users perceive the collective dimension of the movement in a national perspective and fostered the formation of a political subjectivity.

A network of yarns, a network of networks: exploring the evolution of the urban knitting movement

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on a specific form of activism – urban knitting – and analyses “Mettiamoci una pezza” (“Let’s patch it”), an initiative organized by a group of women activists from L’Aquila, Italy, for the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, not only to draw public attention to the state of the city but also to other social and political issues. To analyze the organizational infrastructure of this movement, a qualitative content analysis of the videos produced by the craftivists was conducted, to which was added an analysis of the initiative’s website. The findings show the main characteristics of this collective action, as well as the creation of a particular organizational infrastructure consisting of a network of networks, made possible thanks to digital media. This infrastructure enabled the achievements of outcomes that the organizations could not achieve independently, recomposing a widespread but fragmented activism, based not on a geographical proximity, but on common goals.

Arab Cyberactivism: from papers to social networks

SActivism in the Arab world have been represented in hiding. One of the most important forms has been political cartoons which have been an important tool that has been consolidated over time be-cause cartoonists were able to become activists thanks to the use of symbols. However, the devel-opment of cyberspace translated cartoons into the network, by making them even more important as they transmitted ideas in a more direct way and developed a form of virtual activism. Therefore, the aim of this research is to study and analyze the history of the Arab political cartoons to see how it has consolidated in a form of revolutionary activism. Additionally, the attempt to this research is to reflect how a virtual community has been generated around that figure. As a result, a qualitative methodology has been used to carry out this research. A historical method has been used to collect information about the history of cartoons in the Arab world. Then, an ethnographic visual method has been developed to study the use of cartoons used. The results and discussion are to demonstrate that the cartoon is a form of revolution and activism which has strengthened itself with the use of the internet.

Re-evaluating the changing geographies of climate activism and the state in the post-climate emergency era in the build-up to COP26

A key aim of much climate activism is to enhance climate ambition and hold local and national governments, as well as global governance forums like the United Nations (UN), to account for the ways in which they implement and monitor climate policy across society to reverse long-term climate change. In recent years new local forms of climate activism, particularly at the urban scale, have taken a more prominent role in this. Although place-based, such local forms of climate activism are at the same time multi-scalar in orientation and strategic focus. This is particularly true in the UK where climate activism has prompted a number of local councils to declare climate emergencies, providing a mechanism by which they can become locally accountable in the delivery of their climate action plans, whilst at the same time holding national government to prior and future commitments to global climate governance. Using interview data with experts working on climate emergency declarations research across the UK, we critically discuss four key themes that have underpinned and catalysed the changing geographies of civil-state relationships within the climate emergency and what this may mean for future global climate governance under the UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COP). We argue that decision-makers at COP26 need to take greater heed of the significance of this new broader urban climate activism and its role in geopolitically mobilising more equitable, democratic and inclusive forms of climate governance which give citizens and civil society more credence within global climate policy decision-making processes that have been up to now, dominated by national state discourses.

Projection art and projection activism

This article explores the use of unauthorised projection-based artworks and messages as a form of activism, and as contextual street art. The issues of authority and permission that are central to the political nature of street art are unique in the case of projection artworks as the ephemeral and temporary nature of light-based installations skirt some of the fundamental objections to most street art and graffiti such as the damage to physical surfaces. Through the changes imposed on urban forms by light projections, the city is described as an animate entity, with various forces animating the surface at different timescales. The effect of street art is to democratise the alterations of the animate urban surface, and the effect of projection-based street art is to further democratise access to protected visual spaces, and to accelerate its animate nature.

Place-Based Philosophical Activism on the US–Mexico Border

AbstractBefore the Department of Homeland Security instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019, as many as 1,000 Central American refugees passed each day through Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, where they received food, clothing, a shower, toiletries, and sandwiches for the road. Sister Norma Pimentel founded the Humanitarian Respite Center in 2014 to “restore human dignity” to refugees who had been degraded and vilified during their dangerous journeys north, not least by way of their processing by the US government. Sister Norma has inspired countless people, including me, to engage with the community as a form of place-based philosophical activism, that is, of situated and engaged teaching, scholarship, and service. In this essay I read Sister Norma as a feminist pragmatist in the historical and philosophical lineage of Jane Addams, and I aim to provide an example of how a feminist-pragmatist approach can support and encourage philosophical activism in our communities. Feminist scholars can learn from feminist pragmatism the importance of “being-with,” “sympathetic understanding,” and “a larger social impulse.” Feminist pragmatism encourages academics to become place-based philosophical activists who use their teaching, research, and service in order to press for social justice.

Social Theater in the Crisis Time in Ukraine: A Sociological Perspective (on the Basis of Data from Kharkiv)

A variety of interactive theater techniques is widely used in work with marginalized groups, in social work, social pedagogy, and psychotherapy. The crisis in Ukraine, spawned by the abuse of power that led to the Euromaidan protests, the annexation of the Crimea, and military operations in Donbas, contributed to the growing popularity of social theater as a form of social activism. Social theater is characterized by the direct connection between a creative product and real-life events, the involvement of amateur performers, creation of plays based on the testimonies of real people, encouragement of the audience participation in the performance, financial independence, and the nonprofit status. Social theater is conceptualized through the distinction with traditional theater and identified with documentary drama. Unlike political theater, which focuses on criticizing the political system, social theater focuses on social contradictions and inequalities. This also distinguishes social theater from art therapy, where an individual is the object of influence. In sociology social theater is viewed from the perspective of social transformations. To analyze such processes of social transformation at the micro level, the article uses the concepts of emancipation and empowerment. The empirical basis of the article consists of interviews with participants of the forum theater and playback theater, conducted in Kharkiv in 2018. Kharkiv’s borders with both the Russian Federation and the territories that are not controlled by the Ukrainian government make it unique compared to other Ukrainian cities where social theater groups operate. In 2014 Kharkiv managed to avoid the fate of Donetsk and Luhans’k, which were occupied by separatists. In contrast to the complex structure of the local frontier identity, Kharkiv authorities traditionally attempt to impose strict control on public space, suppressing alternative views. The data presented in this article addresses the following questions: what topics performances of social theater in Kharkiv covered during the period under study, how individual transformations of participants take place in the emancipatory space of social theater, and how the distinctive features of social theater turn it into a place of empowerment. Article in English