Social Movement Challenges Research Articles

#BlackatCMO: Challenging charter schools through youth Instagram counterstories

As protests flared in 2020, Black students took to Instagram to voice their experiences at ‘no-excuses’ Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Such schools have presented a discourse of high achievement and social justice. Yet, in the span of a few weeks, hundreds of posts on Instagram offered rarely heard counter-narratives of the experience of being a student of Color at such schools. This paper analyzes how social media posts combine online discourse and youth culture to provide insight into the racialized experience of schooling. We show how these posts created distinct visual signatures, co-opted the well-crafted narratives of CMOs, and took advantage of features like comments and hashtags to foster solidarity and authenticity. We argue this social movement challenges the legitimacy of CMOs and their authority to teach children of Color.

Addressing platform capitalism: The legacy of Indymedia and online participatory democracy

The rise of platform capitalism has meant great challenges for activists and social movements. The very idea of the internet as a tool for democratization, as embodied by the radical participatory network Indymedia, is being brought into question. As we adjust to the changing social and technological realities amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there are increasingly concerns over the influence and power of the tech oligopolies of platform capitalism. This article reviews literature on and around platform capitalism, and examines emerging issues in relation to the author’s experience as an Indymedia activist. Critically reflecting on these experiences and interviews in 2020 with other Indymedia activists, this article describes the rise and decline of this radical, participatory media network in Australia. In doing so the article examines the legacy of Indymedia and what lessons may be learnt for present and future activists seeking radical change.

Pro-migrant protest in times of COVID-19: intersectional boundary spanning and hybrid protest practices

ABSTRACT Public policies implemented to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections created unprecedented challenges for social movements. Most striking was the de facto temporary suspension of the right to assembly. Using the case of pro-migrant mobilizations in Germany as an example, we analyse how social movements are affected by and respond to this exceptional context. Instead of a breakdown, we find evidence for a proliferation of mobilization. This is surprising since COVID-19 related restraints were particularly accentuated for pro-migrant mobilizations. We argue that this puzzle can be explained by looking at the particular framing strategies and the hybrid online and offline protest practices used by activists. Integrating empirical insights of social movements in times of crisis, theoretical approaches to boundary spanning, intersectional frame bridging, and hybrid combinations of online and offline protest, our article provides an analysis of pro-migrant mobilizations in times of pandemic. It also sketches-out avenues for future research on plural alliance formation in diverse societies.

Practising solidarity: challenges for community development and social movements in the 21st century

Practising solidarity: challenges for community development and social movements in the 21st century

Into the Dark: Shifts in Corporate Political Activity after Social Movement Challenges

Using a unique database on social movement boycotts of corporations, we examine how firms alter their political activities in the wake of a reputational threat. We show that boycotts lead to significant reductions in the amount of targets’ political action committee campaign contributions and simultaneous increases in targets’ CEOs’ personal campaign contributions, as well as targets’ lobbying expenditures. We argue that these patterns represent a shift toward more covert forms of political engagement that present new problems for activists and shareholders seeking to monitor corporate political activity.

Social movements and political outcomes: why both ends fail to meet

The relationships between social movement challenges and political outcomes remain strongly underresearched in the field of social movements. Here, we use the labels “social” and “political” in a broad sense to comprise many types of challenges and many types of outcomes, such as economic and social outcomes for specific movements as well as general policy outcomes. Four theories are crucial for understanding successful mobilization of social movements: relative deprivation, resource mobilization, framing , and the theoretical figure of the opening political opportunity structure . Political outcomes, at least in democratic political systems, are usually the result of a parallelogram of different claims and means of influencing outcomes, in short, of compromises. Here, we list various forms of outcomes, from successful acceptance of movement demands to part-time successes or entire failures, and also the various strategies incumbents have in dealing with social movement challenges. Researchers usually have focused on the individual and structural conditions of the emergence of social movements but less so on the conditions of processing social movement demands and the outcomes for movements themselves, for the electorate and for policy changes. Consequently, there is little research available that would meet the requirements of an adequate research design in view of the numerous factors spelled out here as a theoretical control list. The idea of a response hierarchy of incumbents is suggested as a sort of a dispositional concept for further, more consolidated, research in this area. Also the notion of cycles of various sorts has to be kept in mind in order to avoid misjudging of both, the persistence of social movements over time, and their eventual successes and failures.

Radical Transparency in Geopolitical Economy: WikiLeaks, Secret Diplomacy and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

This paper addresses the emergence of various social movement challenges to concentrated state power that have taken place in the last 10 years, notably that posed by what might be loosely termed the radical transparency movement. This is best reflected by the work of WikiLeaks, a publishing outfit that emphasises scientific journalism and a form of radical transparency by publishing sensitive documents obtained through whistle-blowers. It seeks to examine the role played by WikiLeaks in lifting the lid on clandestine discussions on such negotiated instruments as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the Trade in Services Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), with the main focus on the TPP.

Radical Repertoires: The Incidence and Impact of Corporate-Sponsored Social Activism

This article explores when and why firms participate in overt corporate-sponsored social activism. To shed light on this question, I empirically explore the emergence and implications of a new strategic phenomenon in nonmarket strategy—the corporate-sponsored boycott—in which firms voluntarily cooperate with contentious social movement organizations to sponsor boycotts that protest the contested social practices of other companies or entities at higher orders of market organization, such as industries, transnational regulators, or states. Using a longitudinal database that tracks the social movement challenges faced by 300 large companies between 1993 and 2007, I provide evidence that overt corporate-sponsored activism is used by companies that are chronically targeted and losing ground to activists, especially when those companies are facing a reputational deficit. Furthermore, I find that participation in overt corporate-sponsored activism is associated with significant decreases in the number of activist challenges targeting a firm in the future, suggesting that the tactic may effectively defend a firm from contentious threat by allowing firms to co-opt allies within the activist population. I discuss implications of these findings for social movement research, nonmarket strategy, and the study of corporate social responsibility.

Counter-hegemonic networks and the transformation of global climate politics: rethinking movement-state relations

Global financial and ecological crises have fueled the diffusion of ideas and discourses that challenge US hegemony and global capitalism and support the expansion of counterhegemonic alliances between states and social movements. Social movements are calling for rights for Mother Earth and for the development of new measures of well-being, putting forward increasingly credible alternatives to the state-led, market-based approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper traces the social movement processes that have advanced ecological and social justice critiques of capitalist development. It explores how regional and global networks of states and movements have contributed to the growing political salience of new claims and discourses that respond to the ecological threats posed by global warming. These observations reveal how social movement challenges contribute to an expanding realm of global politics that transgresses the traditional boundaries of the inter-state arena, calling for adaptations to our theoretical frameworks for understanding global social change.

Allies, Targets, and the Effectiveness of Coalition Protest: A Comparative Analysis of Labor Unrest In the U. S. South

Social movement scholars suggest that coalitions comprise a significant and growing portion of all protest mobilizations. Such organizational collaboration is of great practical importance to the labor movement in particular, as unions struggle to succeed on their own in a difficult economic and political environment. Yet surprisingly little is known about the factors underlying the development and success of coalitions. In this article we advance literature on labor and social movement coalitions, bringing a comparative historical approach to bear on the problem and examining two influential and far-reaching labor campaigns that occurred in the U. S. South. Our argument and findings demonstrate the importance of the relative fit among coalition members, the vulnerabilities of collective action targets, and their interplay for coalition outcomes. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for labor and social movement challenges more generally.

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them: Corporate Sponsorship of Social Movement Boycotts

This article explores when and why firms participate in overt corporate-sponsored social activism. To shed light on this question, I empirically explore the emergence and implications of a new strategic phenomenon in non-market strategy – the corporate-sponsored boycott – in which firms voluntarily cooperate with contentious social movement organizations to sponsor boycotts that protest the contested social practices of other companies or entities at higher orders of market organization, such as industries, transnational regulators, or states. Using a longitudinal database that tracks the social movement challenges faced by 300 large companies between 1993 and 2007, I provide evidence that overt corporate-sponsored activism is used by companies that are chronically targeted and losing ground to activists, especially when those companies are facing a reputational deficit. Further, I find that participation in overt corporate-sponsored activism is associated with significant decreases in the number of activist challenges targeting a firm in the future, suggesting that the tactic may effectively defend a firm from contentious threat by allowing firms to co-opt allies within the activist population. I discuss implications of these findings for social movement research, non-market strategy, and the study of corporate social responsibility.

Whose Right to the City? Social Movement Challenges to Consociational Logics in Divided Cities

Consociational power sharing, which recognizes and accommodates the putatively particularistic identities of contending ethnic groups, has become the default mode of conflict management in violently divided societies. Accordingly, political institutions, public services and rights are duplicated and subject to fierce distributive conflicts. Intercommunal reconciliation is only weakly supported and a situation of an uneasy frozen conflict exists, even after a peace agreement. Yet the perceived wisdom that violently divided cities are characterized by permanent cleavages is challenged by the number of its citizens who refuse to be circumscribed by ethnic identities. These actors often mobilize in social movements that promote non-sectarian politics and identities, and include the protests of housing tenants, environmentalists, trade union parades and the carnivalesque rituals of gay groupings. In this paper, I explore such social movement activity primarily in the divided city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The purpose is not to uncritically celebrate these movements; it is to analyse their impact in transforming politics in divided societies in three main ways: creating intersecting circles and the rhizomatic networks; fostering a public sphere of debate; and challenging the programmed uses of segregated space.

‘Unity in Diversity’: Non‐sectarian Social Movement Challenges to the Politics of Ethnic Antagonism in Violently Divided Cities

AbstractDivided cities are defined by a violent conflict of ethnonationalism and characterized by semi‐permanent ethnic cleavages, high levels of endogamy and social segregation. Yet the perception that divided cities are wholly framed by the politics of ethnic homogeneity is challenged by a number of its citizens who refuse to be interminably circumscribed by ethnic politics. These ‘actors’ mobilize in social movements that promote non‐sectarian politics and identities. They also include the protests of environmentalists, trade unionists and the celebrations of gay groupings. This article critically explores how such urban social movements may help ameliorate or contest the politics of ethnic antagonism in divided cities. It explores this issue in the context of debates regarding peacebuilding projects in divided cities, especially those that promote accommodative solutions to ethnic conflict, and shows how social movement mobilization may augment political power sharing. Focusing on non‐sectarian social movement mobilization in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the article critically analyses movements in three ways: creating intercommunal networks; fostering a public sphere of debate; and challenging the programmed uses of segregated space.RésuméDéfinies par un conflit violent de nature ethnonationaliste, les villes divisées se caractérisent par des clivages ethniques semi‐permanents, ainsi que par des niveaux élevés d’endogamie et de ségrégation sociale. L’idée que ces villes sont entièrement régies selon des critères d’homogénéité ethnique est pourtant remise en cause par certains habitants qui refusent d’être contraints indéfiniment par une politique ethnique. Ces ‘acteurs’ se mobilisent dans des mouvements sociaux aux buts politiques ou identitaires non sectaires, qui englobent aussi des manifestations écologistes ou syndicalistes et des regroupements homosexuels. Une analyse critique étudie comment ces mouvements sociaux urbains peuvent améliorer ou contester la politique d’antagonisme ethnique des villes divisées. Pour ce faire, elle se place dans le cadre des débats sur les actions de consolidation de la paix dans ces villes, en particulier s’ils encouragent la résolution des conflits par la conciliation; elle montre en outre comment la mobilisation de mouvements sociaux peut accentuer le partage du pouvoir politique. La mobilisation de mouvements sociaux non sectaires à Belfast, en Irlande du Nord, est examinée plus particulièrement et sous trois angles: créer des réseaux intercommunautaires, favoriser une sphère de débat publique et s’opposer aux usages programmés des espaces ségrégués.

Transition pathways for a UK low carbon electricity future

Achieving long-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, such as the UK's legally-binding target of reducing its emissions by 80% by 2050, will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands, involving radical substitution to low-carbon supply technologies and improvements in end-use energy efficiency. This paper describes the development and high-level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a UK low carbon electricity system, explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach. The pathways use an ‘action space’ concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors, which are influenced by the competing governance ‘framings’ or ‘logics’ that different actors pursue. The paper sets out three core transition pathways – Market Rules, Central Co-ordination and Thousand Flowers, in which market, government and civil society logics respectively dominate. It summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways, and the roles of actors in bringing these about. This leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways, and of the challenges for individuals, businesses, social movements and policy-makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them.

Changing to Win? Threat, Resistance, and the Role of Unions in Strikes, 1984–2002

Much of what we know about strikes is grounded in the context of postwar Fordism, a unique historical moment of relatively institutionalized labor‐management relations. Yet the resurgence of corporate resistance over the past quarter century, coupled with an increasingly hostile political and economic climate, has fundamentally transformed the American industrial landscape. Drawing from this research and insights on social movements and formal organizations, we expect unions will vary considerably in their response to threats. Our analysis, based on a comprehensive data set of U.S. strikes from 1984 to 2002, reveals the importance of such intramovement cleavages for strike activity and for the prospects of organized labor in the contemporary United States. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for scholarship on threat and social movement challenges more generally.

Social movements in the face of criminal power

In the context of contemporary capitalism, emancipative social movements must resist intimidation not only through official repression by the state apparatus (through police’s brutality and sometimes through military interventions); the illegal, criminal side of capitalism also threatens emancipative struggle. Within this framework, the real and potential role of the ‘hyperprecariat’ (i.e., the workers who depend on—and often were expelled to—the informal sector in semi‐peripheral countries, and who work and live under very vulnerable conditions) is a key one. Criminal attempts to co‐opt, to silence, to neutralize the social force of emancipative social movements have been already a daily experience in several cities and countries. The main trouble for emancipative urban movements is that the ‘enemies’ they have to face inside segregated spaces, and who belong to the ‘hyperprecariat’, do not seem to be—strictly in terms of social class—‘enemies’ at all. ‘Micro‐level warlords’ such as drug traffickers operating in the sphere of retail sales recruit their ‘soldiers’ (and are themselves recruited) among poor, young people in the shanty towns. Nevertheless, these armed young people frequently intimidate and repress urban activists. Considering this problem, emancipative social movements have to learn to be a countervailing power not only regarding the state apparatus and the legal side of capitalist economy, but also in relation to ordinary criminal forces—which are usually totally adapted to capitalist values, ‘logic’ and patterns of behaviour. The aim of this paper is to discuss the ‘new’ challenges for social movements in the context of what I termed a ‘phobopolis’ – a city whose inhabitants experience a very complex situation of diffuse violence and widespread fear – and considering the role of the ‘hyperprecariat in guns’. The present paper analyses examples primarily from Brazil (Sections 1 and 2), but also from Argentina and South Africa (first part of Section 3), before elaborating the theoretical contributions (in the last part of Section 3).

Subject to Negotiation: The Mechanisms Behind Co-Optation and Corporate Reform

While political opportunity structure theory details how social movement organization (SMO) campaigns focus on the state and political processes, a shift toward neoliberal policies prompts those actors to target corporations directly in order to achieve their goals. This shift creates new challenges for social movements. Unlike the state, corporations are not guided by a democratic ethos, which limits movement organizations' access to decision makers. To achieve access, challenging groups often adopt institutionalized structures and tactics, which can also increase the risk of co-optation. Despite previous research, both the process of co-optation and the distinction between co-optation and other movement outcomes remain unclear. Here, applying event structure analysis to a specific case separates these outcomes: the international campaign the environmental organization Greenpeace waged to change Coca-Cola's refrigeration practices between 1998 and 2005. This analysis suggests that framing is an important strategy for SMOs to utilize, but may not be effective unless frames are backed by action. The combination of framing, institutional tactics, and noninstitutional tactics may be most effective in movement-firm interactions. Overall, this analysis contributes to a broader understanding of social movement tactics, outcomes, and framing in an age of increased corporate power.

Perspectives of Social Justice in the American South: The Gay and Lesbian Movement

As a gay couple, we make an interesting pair: Thirty-four and thirty-five, one the son of a Greek immigrant from rural Pennsylvania and the other a fourth generation, native Floridian from a small Panhandle town. So, when we communicate our perspectives on family, values and our ideas of progress, it is nearly impossible to keep from rooting our discussions in the context of ‘‘what’’ and ‘‘how’’ as often as ‘‘where’’ and ‘‘when.’’ Consequently, our ten years of successful activism have taught us that sensitivities to local governments, local communities, and local customs are critical to defining the evolving notions of fairness and equality. We have spent countless days traveling throughout the Sunshine State. Recently, we lobbied in Tallahassee, reveled at Gators games at the University of Florida in Gainesville, visited family in DeFuniak Springs and hosted a judicial event in Ponte Vedra—places large and small from the Panhandle in the northwest to the First Coast in the northeast and the Treasure Coast in the southeast. We have spent a considerable amount of time immersed in the social fabric of the old Florida, the authentic Florida, and the Florida of what most would classify as the traditional South. These areas embrace a classic southern conservatism found throughout the region, and consequently, pose traditional challenges for social justice movements. While our formal participation in activism and a rights movement has been restricted to our local advocacy in Palm Beach County and the southeast Florida area, parts of which are surprisingly agrarian and rural, we never visit locations without a firm analytical mind about how gays and lesbians thrive and survive in these different areas.

Questioning Heteronormativity: Lesbian and gay challenges to education practice in British Columbia, Canada

This paper explores social movement organizing within social institutions, using the cases of the Surrey book banning and the Trinity Western University, two cases of activist litigation in British Columbia, Canada. In these cases, lesbian and gay teacher activists challenged heteronormative constructions in educational practices, in one case by introducing lesbian and gay-positive reading materials in the elementary grades, in the other by challenging the right of an evangelical university to train teachers for the public education system. In the context of the existing literatures on social movements within institutions and challenges to education practices, the paper emphasizes two main conclusions: 1) challenges to educational practice may be mounted by teachers themselves, despite their professional and 'insider' status and 2) a range of different types of relationships are possible between social movement challenges within social institutions and social movements outside of institutions. In the cases presented here, the strategies, discourses and frames of 'insider' challenges to educational practices were drawn from the teacher-activists' location as part of the broader legally focused Canadian lesbian and gay movement.

Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights

Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights Neil Stammers (bio) If people are not aware of the historical and contextual nature of human rights and are not aware that human rights become realized only by the struggles of real people experiencing real instances of domination, then human rights are all too easily used as symbolic legitimizers for instruments of that very domination. 1 I. Introduction Despite some recognition in recent literature that there is some sort of link between social movements and human rights, the nature of this link and its possible implications for understanding human rights have rarely been explored in any detail. A similar argument can be made in respect of the highly ambivalent relationship between human rights and power. 2 This [End Page 980] paper argues that these lacunae arise because dominant discourses from both proponents and opponents of human rights are not analytically equipped to grasp the way in which ideas and practices in respect of human rights have been socially constructed in the context of social movement challenges to extant relations and structures of power. The contention of this article is that if we use the triadic relationship between human rights, social movements, and power as an organizing focus for analysis, we get a very different picture from those offered by the dominant discourses, not only in respect of the origins and development of human rights, but also their potentials and limits. The need to see this alternative picture is made all the more urgent by the current pace of the processes of globalization, which appear to be significantly transforming the capacities of many social and political institutions, including the nation-state. The potential importance of this last point can hardly be exaggerated given that the nation-state is almost universally regarded as the main duty-bearer in respect of all forms of human rights. Beyond this, it is also clear that human rights are part of globalization processes: an important and contested, some would even say oppressive, element of political globalization. In the rest of this introduction, I will set out my assumptions in respect of social constructionism and power. The first main section of the article will then offer some initial thoughts on the nature of social movements and the role of social movements in the socio-historical development of human rights. The section which follows looks at the limits of the dominant discourses on human rights, and the third section examines how we might go about understanding the highly ambivalent relationship between human rights and power. This leads to a final section which considers some issues relating to how human rights might be reconstructed under contemporary conditions of globalization. A. Social Constructionism and Power To say that human rights are socially constructed is to say that ideas and practices in respect of human rights are created, re-created, and instanciated by human actors in particular socio-historical settings and conditions. It is a way of understanding human rights which does not require them to have any metaphysical existence (for example, through nature or God), nor does it rely on abstract reasoning or logic to ground them. The emphasis on the potential creativity of human actors in this understanding of social constructionism also stands in contrast to forms of structuralist explanation that reduce the role of social actors to nothing other than bearers of structural determinations. Taken together, these assumptions locate my ontological [End Page 981] and epistemological positions close to those of “structurationist” and “critical realist” schools of thought, 3 sharing common features with many feminist, and some cultural relativist, critiques of human rights. 4 “Power” is the other term I want to briefly discuss at the outset, because how power is conceptualized also bears heavily on how human rights have been understood. Within the western liberal tradition, the concept of power has often been used in a very limited way: as the capacities of social actors located in the political sphere (the state, government, political parties, etc.). In other words, the sort of power that has been much described, studied, and analyzed has been restricted to political power. There have been, of course, much wider understandings of power than...