Civic Action Research Articles

“Because I feel like I want to be heard, you know?:” Carceral citizenship and collateral consequences

AbstractJoining a critical literature on carceral citizenship in the United States, this article represents one of the first academic efforts to ascertain the ideas of people with criminal records about “collateral consequences,” which are the civil restrictions often facing people with records. In 32 extended interviews with people visiting a reentry organization in New York City, a majority argued that people with conviction backgrounds should be eligible to vote and serve on juries, and most said they would like to be able to participate themselves. Interviewees did express intensely skeptical ideas, particularly about the police and employers, but this was a limited or bounded cynicism. Distrust and antagonism toward specific institutions existed alongside a strongly‐stated desire to engage in civic activity.

Concepts, Design and Implementation of Service-Learning at the College of Education: A Single Case Study

In the teacher-education program of higher education institutions (HEIs), service learning has become an integral part of the curriculum. This is brought by the strong emphasis on the civic mission of HEIs which is aimed towards development within faculty members an awareness of, sensitivity toward, and engagement in civic issues and activities through participation in the society. This single case study explored the service-learning culture of the College of Education of Bataan Peninsula State University-Balanga Campus by looking at the cases in which the college engaged with the communities it adopted over the years of its existence. Twelve faculty members who participated in the service-learning activities in several adopted communities in the city of Balanga and the town of Bagac and Morong, Bataan were selected as participants using the purposive sampling method and the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis were used in gathering data. Researchers used pattern matching as a preferred strategy in the data analysis that provided categories of information that helped in establishing emergent themes. Results showed that service learning is conceptualized and approached in the college as a pedagogy, social responsibility, and commitment to lifelong learning. Capabilities enhancement and promotion of human development are incorporated in service learning through curriculum design, project design based on needs assessment, and research-based community extension projects. As such, the service-learning conceptualization and development in the college is curricular, project, and research-based. Recommendations on how to improve the service-learning of the college were put forward. Keywords: service learning, curriculum design, project-design based, lifelong learning

Hate prompts participation: Examining the dynamic relationship between affective polarization and political participation

Political participation has long been considered a cornerstone of democracy. While most studies on political participation have been grounded on a normative approach, which assumes that political participation is driven by positive civic actions, recent studies suggest that political participation is also driven by negative forces such as overconfidence in knowledge and partisan communication flows. This article builds on the latter line of research by exploring the role of affective polarization on political participation. While this line of research is not new, it suffers from a lack of clear causal order. This study relies on three-wave panel data collected during the 2022 Korean presidential election. To ensure methodological rigor, we utilized both cross-lagged and fixed-effects panel analyses. Our findings show that affective polarization stimulates political participation rather than the reverse path. In addition, we did not observe a reciprocal relationship. Implications for democracy are discussed.

Modeling of the Creative and Constructive Modus of Youth Civic Activity

Modeling of the Creative and Constructive Modus of Youth Civic Activity

Background Conditions for Revitalisation Processes in the Case of Unused Public Buildings in Italy: An Ostromian Perspective

In Italy, the number of buildings that have fallen into disuse is huge. Moreover, the normative and regulative framework promoting the public portfolio’s re-use and revitalisation is still unclear and ambiguous. Nevertheless, over the past decade, these buildings have become fertile ground for innovation and creative experiences led by civic actors. The rise of this new category of civic actors plays an important role, both in terms of the institutional dynamics and the kind of initiatives and practices they undertake. Although they act in different manners, they share similar patterns of behaviour validated through an in-depth analysis. This research pinpointed that, regardless of the diverse operating contexts, institutional performances can be successful only if certain kinds of conditions are considered. This paper has a twofold aim: (i) to establish an analytical framework for analysing the emerging streamlined phenomenon of revitalisation processes in unused public buildings, (ii) and to critically discuss these processes, providing key insights into behaviour and institutional civic actors’ performances, as well as the necessary conditions for successful revitalisation. By doing so, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of civic actors and their role in revitalisation processes, contributing to discussing and identifying crucial factors for achieving a successful outcome.

Exploring the Complexities of Social Engagement Among Young Adults

This study aims to enhance understanding of young adults’ social outcome. The existence of large multinational Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data provides the opportunity to explore the relationship between young adults' propensity to volunteer and various background data in several countries. The focus of this study was on investigating the relationship between young adults volunteering and their educational attainment, social trust, gender, participation in lifelong learning, and cognitive skills in numeracy. The findings suggest that while significant characteristic differences exist among millennials who engage in volunteering activities, only a few of these characteristics such as their numeracy skills, participation in lifelong learning, and social trust influenced their propensity to engage in civic activities. These findings contribute to our understanding of the factors that influence millennials' participation in civic activities.

The way forward: Adult educators combating mis/disinformation via formal and informal education

AbstractIn this article, I discuss the academic field of adult education as it relates to critical media literacy, critical public pedagogy, social and civic activism, and higher education in this era many have labeled “post‐truth.” I ask readers to reconsider the traditional university tenure process and the academic publishing industry as outdated systems that indirectly support disinformation and misinformation by ignoring the impact of media on adult learning and participatory democracy. After discussing alternative methods for disseminating research and expertise, I close with thoughts on Paulo Freire's view of education as humanization in this time of technological domination.

‘Land back to the people or not?’ The variable pathways of civic mobilisation against land grabs in rural Sierra Leone

AbstractDrawing on empirical research from Pujehun and Port Loko districts in Sierra Leone, this article explains the variable pathways of civic activism mobilised by environmental advocacy, and legal empowerment organisations, in response to two prominent land grabs. By grounding the analysis within the ontology of place, this study examines the dynamic interplay between national politics, global corporate interests, transnational advocacy, and civic agency in each place. The article finds that although the balance of power between these actors matters, the nature of corporate interests involved can be significant in determining the exact trajectory of civic mobilisation, and ultimately its success.

Polish Rural Non-Governmental Organizations During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract This article describes the extent and nature of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the activities of communitybased organisations in rural Poland. The analytical foundation of the study is the research carried out in 2021 on a sample of three hundred and thirty-three rural NGOs. The negative and positive impact of the pandemic on the activities of these organisations were noted. Negative phenomena include a significant slowing down of existing tasks, abandonment of the completion of projects, an exodus of volunteers and active members. The bottom-up organised activity of the rural third sector during the pandemic also brought about noticeable positive phenomena: a widening of the activity field of organisations by new dimensions, an expansion of the cooperation network of rural organisations, and a significant increase in the appreciation of civic activity as a result of the speed and flexibility of self-help activities.

English

This study examined how the use of social media among youth influences their offline civic participation outside the election period in Tanzania. Unlike previous studies, this study used multidimensional aspects of civic participation.  Civic participation was studied using the concurrent qualitative dominant mixed-methods approach. The study conducted four focus group discussions (FGD) with the aid of an FGD guide and surveyed 372 young people with the help of a questionnaire. Narrative responses were analyzed thematically with the aid of NVivo-12, whereas statistical data were analyzed with the aid of SPSS 26 software. The participants in this study agreed that they comment and share messages, photos, voice messages and videos related to civic activities using social media, and that they actively participate in their own community offline. The research findings confirmed the connection between the social media interactivity of youth and their active offline civic participation. This study lays the foundation for further research and theory development.   Key words: Social media, engagement, civic participation, youth, Tanzania.

Entangled chains of global value and wealth

In recent decades multinational enterprises have developed ways to reorganize production and trade through Global Value Chains (GVCs), and to manage assets and liabilities through Global Wealth Chains (GWCs). This co-evolution has permitted the hyper-extraction of labor and natural resources through financial and legal technologies, entangling value creation and wealth accumulation. While scholars have separately acknowledged the role that GVCs and GWCs play in generating distributional outcomes, entanglements of production, trade, finance, and law are now so extensive that we need a sharper analytical lens to understand their interrelations. In pursuit of such a lens, we propose a research agenda focused on chain entanglements. We argue that GVCs and GWCs are not governed by firms as separate or even sequenced processes, but rather that value creation and wealth accumulation strategies are imbricated in ways that merit careful study. We develop a framework for analyzing entangled chains based on two dimensions: 1) the relative importance of intangible versus tangible assets; and 2) the orientation of firm strategy towards value creation or wealth accumulation activities. Drawing on sector-level examples, we see a general trend in GVC-GWC entanglements towards activities that leverage intangible value and assets for wealth accumulation. We also note how labor and civic activism can highlight the failures of extant regulatory and fiscal systems and intervene on distributional struggles along entangled chains.

Youth and civic participation in Côte d’Ivoire

This article analyses civic participation in general and particularly that of young people in Côte d’Ivoire using data from the Governance, Peace and Security survey, conducted within the framework of the Integrated Regional Survey on Employment and the Informal Sector of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in 2017 The findings confirm the low level of involvement of the population in general, and of young people in particular, in civic activities, both political and social. This can pose serious threats to the peace, democratisation and development process, as the involvement of citizens in political and social activities is the hallmark of a democratic society and ensures social cohesion and development. Institutional variables (presence of corruption, growing insecurity and mistrust) reduce civic participation, including in political and social life. Young people’s involvement in public activities increases in a controlled, less corrupt environment of public safety in which they have greater trust in the state. The living environment (urban and other rural), professional situation (unemployed, inactive) and standard of living of young people (middle class and wealthy) increase their involvement in public activities. Political and social participation influence one another and civic participation is more marked by political participation.

#Stand with women in Afghanistan: Civic participation, symbolism, and morality in political activism on Twitter

At the time of writing, it had become common to find trending social media hashtags where users were expressing their feelings about current social and political issues through a range of symbolic gestures, such as striking a pose, wearing a garment, or changing their personal icon. Scholars had begun to consider such gestures in regard to whether they constitute a meaningful form of civic participation or activism. In the present paper, we seek to contribute to this literature by using multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the contents of one Twitter hashtag where users participate in this form of activism: #StandWithWomenlnAfghanistan. Aligning with emerging scholarship on the nature of online affective publics, the analysis shows that those tweeting do not align with clear and specific issues, causalities, or solutions based on contextual understanding. On the one hand, symbolic gestures can be thought of as vernaculars that support a heterogeneous, fuzzy, and incoherent set of meanings. Yet on the other hand, across the posts using this hashtag, we find a discourse where injustice and solutions are based on notions of individual identity and freedom of expression rooted in the liberal democratic traditions of the European Enlightenment, here brought to bear on the hugely diverse and specific lives of women in Afghanistan. For many scholars, it is such ethnocentrism that underpins the very imperialist imagining of Afghanistan that led to, and legitimized, the invasion and occupation in the first place.

The social state as a condition for the emergence and development of charity

The article is devoted to the study of the welfare state as a condition for the emergence and development of charity in Ukraine, because charity and charitable activity in the conditions of transformational challenges have become an important part of social and legal life. During the research, theoretical analysis, synthesis, systematization of current legal documents and the method of theoretical-structural refinement of the conceptual apparatus were applied. Social functioning is a tool for maintaining stability within the state, where there is a difference in income between the strata of the population. The fulfillment of the social duty by the state reduces the tension and dissatisfaction of population groups with insufficient income. Stability is a primary condition for ensuring economic growth, internal and external security. A social state should understood as a certain type of state, which differs from others by the priority of fulfilling a social function in the implementation of state policy. The main tasks of the state are: creation of a legally approved system of mechanisms and tools for the implementation of social functions; protection of the rights and observance of the interests of all citizens of the country on equal terms; implementation of the social component in all spheres of society. The strategic direction of the formation of civil society is the expansion of the scope of charity. Its nature consists in fulfilling a social function and uniting society. Modern charity is an objectively necessary typical practice of social interaction, supported by the system of institutions of social assistance, manifested in the forms of civic initiatives aimed at the integrative development of a harmonious social environment. Charitable activity is a necessary factor in the formation of civil society. Participation in it serves the social mobilization of society and forms the subject’s civic activity based on the principles of social solidarity. The social content of charity is a set of areas of socially significant activity that constitute voluntary selfless assistance to citizens and legal entities. The development of the institution of charity will allow consolidating the nation and humanizing the existing social relations.

Diffusion of global climate policy: National depoliticization, local repoliticization in Turkey

Although climate policy diffusion is widely studied, we know comparatively little about how these global policies and the norms that surround them are used by various political actors seeking to advance their own agendas. In this article, we focus on how global climate norms are diffused differently at national and local scales and used to repoliticize or depoliticize climate change. We focus on the case of Turkey, which carries the stark contrast of showing willingness to achieve global climate goals in the international arena but less so in domestic politics and actions. The article employs a novel methodological approach, using topic modeling and network analyses on a range of climate change–related policy documents, and interviews with high-level officers, conducted at the three jurisdictional levels in Turkey. The findings reveal that although global climate policy is diffused to both national and local governments, it is used in different ways at these levels. The national government uses climate policy diffusion to depoliticize climate change by creating ad hoc climate coalitions and limiting local climate actions to seeking external climate-related funds. Meanwhile, the metropolitan municipalities replicate nationally adopted climate goals, whereas the district municipalities domesticate ambitious climate norms and repoliticize climate change via local climate entrepreneurs and civic action. The paper contributes to understanding how climate policy diffusion and norm domestication can have different political outcomes in achieving global climate goals and argues for increased policy attention to the strategic use of climate policy diffusion for the depoliticization of climate change.

Higher Education in Post-Neoliberal Times: Building Human Capabilities in the Emergent Period of Uncertainty

This paper argues that the neoliberal consensus about education finance has broken down due to growing economic inequality. First, I use a comparative historical analysis of political alliances to examine patterns of world trade and nations’ policies for economic and educational development since World War II. The United States emphasized STEM-collegiate preparation for all students, while most countries continued the dual emphasis on technical-tertiary and higher education. Educational policy in the US and Pacific region also shifted towards a reliance on markets and student loans resulting in worsening economic inequality in access. Nations with dual technical and academic pathways in secondary and postsecondary education systems expand college enrollment rates more rapidly than the US. They also experience class conflict between the working–middle class and the new technological elite. Next, I examine how education policy shifted from national planning aligned with public funding to market-based incentives for institutional development, further exposing gaps in opportunity within nations. Finally, recognizing the variations in systemic causes of inequality, I argue that governments, education agencies, and civic activists can best promote equity by organizing to address barriers to opportunity for groups left behind in the wake of withering neoliberal education policy.

We Are Still Here: Omission and Perceived Discrimination Galvanized Civic Engagement Among Native Americans

Leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Native American organizations and tribes launched get-out-the-vote campaigns that motivated Native peoples to vote in record numbers and helped flip battleground states. We conducted four studies (total N = 11,661 Native American adults) to examine the social and cultural factors explaining this historic Native civic engagement (e.g., campaigning). Results revealed that the more participants identified as being Native, the more they reported (a) engaging in civic activities, including get-out-the-vote behaviors during the 2020 election (Study 1); (b) civic engagement more broadly across a 5-year period (pilot study, Study 2); and (c) intentions to engage in civic activities in the future (Study 3). Moreover, participants who more strongly identified as Native were more likely to recognize the omission of their group from society and perceive greater group discrimination, which both independently and serially predicted greater civic engagement. These results suggest that leveraging the link between Native identification and group injustices can motivate action.

Climate targets as more than rhetoric: Accounting for Norway's Zero Growth Objective

Climate-related targets for cities abound, but it is unclear how important they are in driving actual transformations. Scholars have often taken a skeptical view of official climate discourses, including their ambitious targets, and instead turned their attention to experimentation, innovation and civic action – colloquially termed 'real action.' In this article we try on the opposite view. Contributing to 'speculative political ecology', we argue that climate-related targets, even those without hard policies directly attached to them, can render climate change more governable and actionable. In a fragmented, polycentric and dispersed governance landscape, the immutability of a 'hard' number can create coherence, direction and measurability to policy action. We examine a particular target, and its associated governance instruments, which has arguably had a transformative effect on urban policy. Our empirical focus is Norway's Zero Growth Objective in urban transport policy. We follow the target from its first formulation as a soft goal around 2006 and until 2019, by when it had materialized as a hard target shaping funding streams and concrete policy interventions, and most likely, emission levels. Arguably, it has been a highly effective frame for policy.

Mind your actions: the place attachment - contextual factors nexus of environmental civic actions (ECA)

This paper examined the level of Environmental Civic Actions (ECA) using a modified version of the Environmental Action Scale (EAS) and Place Attachment Theory (PAT). The Environmental Action Scale measured the level of participation that would have a collective impact on environmental issues. The data was obtained via online questionnaire from 230 young and middle-aged citizens living in Nigeria. 152(66%) males and 75(33%) females indicated their gender, and most participants identified as under­graduate students (n = 179). SPSS statistical software package was used for factor analysis to ascertain if measure items were suitable for the study context using principal component analysis (extraction method) and Kaiser Normalization rotation method. Some findings revealed that the majority of participants have a high level of pro-environmental intention and low levels of actual environmental civic behav­iors. In addition, most participants never participated, organized a protest, or boycotted a company engaging in negative environ­mental behaviors. Furthermore, place attachment, and fear of punishment in form of fines, and levies influenced the intention to engage in positive environmental behavior. The study contrib­utes to the dearth of knowledge on environmental civic actions in a developing country and provides specific insights that are beneficial to policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders.

Exploring the relationship between media literacy, online interaction, and civic engagement

Internet and media use can provide accessible, diverse, and timely opportunities for civic engagement. However, to use media and the internet to interact and collaborate, citizens need to be equipped with particular skills and knowledge. This study draws on a national survey of Australian adults (N = 3,510) to examine how media abilities and online interaction activities are related to their civic engagement. The findings suggest that the more active people are online, interacting with content or other people, the more likely they are to be engaged in civic activities. The data also shows that those with a higher level of confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in more civic activities. A broader understanding of the multidimensional characteristics of media literacy is needed to consider the role online interaction activities and media literacy abilities play in contributing to civic engagement. At the same time, the research suggests that equipping citizens with media literacy as well as enabling them to use the interactive functions of digital media can increase citizens’ civic engagement.