Collective Action For Social Change Research Articles

Awareness-Based Systems Change

This editorial of JASC explores the notion of awareness-based approach to collective action for social change as embodying a "Third Option". Such an approach is characterized by transcending binary thinking and advocating for new ontological and epistemological paradigms that challenge conventional dualities, promoting relationality, interdependence, and inclusivity. This editorial advocates for approaches that honor the relational essence of existence, fostering genuine connections that acknowledge and transcend differences. Emphasizing the importance of ethical engagement and the integration of Indigenous wisdom, this issue calls for a holistic reimagining of our systems, grounded in humility and relational accountability. The editorial concludes by affirming the potential of collective action, inspired by place and purpose, to create just, sustainable, and life-affirming futures.

“It is the Voice of the Environment that Speaks”, Digital Activism as an Emergent Form of Environmental Communication

ABSTRACT This paper examines environmental communication among activists on social media, specifically on Instagram. Drawing from an ethnographic study, it highlights a new type of activism that focuses on daily actions, departing from traditional public protests, based on the belief that collective small-scale actions can drive significant changes. It is performed mainly by individuals, often with large followers, who adopt the influencers’ narrative to promote sustainability. We contend that this social media activism relies on personal and visual narratives, and proactive actions to engage the public in sustainability and affordable solutions to the environmental crisis. Through interviews and analysis of their narratives, we explore activists’ motivations, hybrid identities, and communication practices around their communities, which can be characterized as a networked collective action for social change.

Developing the Civically Engaged Student Through Interprofessional Education and Community-Placed Service Learning: Three Years at Cardinal Wellness

While studies have examined the outcomes of interprofessional service-learning activities, the use of interprofessional, community-based health programming as an opportunity for fostering civic engagement in today’s public health students is less studied. This article examines the benefits of a student-run exercise and nutrition program as an interprofessional education and service experience for undergraduate students participating in a service-learning course, degree-required practicum, capstone project, volunteer experience, or internship. An online survey with items from the Volunteer Functions Inventory, Civic Attitudes Scale, and Social Responsibility subscale of the Prosocial Behavior Battery was administered to 233 students from a diverse variety of majors. A significant increase in positive civic attitudes, volunteerism, and social responsibility scores was observed for students participating as part of one of two course-based service-learning projects, and scores on all three measures persisted at moderate-to-high levels for all students across six-semester cohorts and 3 years of program implementation. These results suggest that interprofessional service experiences are essential to the development of civic engagement competencies in today’s students, largely through the focus on collective action for social change.

Revealing the manifestations of neoliberalism in academia: Academic collective action in Turkey

Academic Collective Action (ACA) stands as a small-scale collective action for social change toward liberation, independence and equity in academia. Academic collectives in Turkey, as an example of ACA, prefigure building academia outside the university by emphasizing the extent to which neoliberal academia has already prepared the groundwork for more recent waves of oppression. In this research, we aim to reveal the manifestations of neoliberalism in ACA as captured with prominent social/political psychological concepts of collective action. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 dismissed academics to understand the social and political psychological processes in academic collectives. The narrations of ACA were accompanied by manifestations of neoliberalism as experienced by dismissed academics. We found that, as follows from the existing conceptual tools of collective action, neoliberalism serves as an embedded contextual factor in the process of ACA. This becomes mostly visible for grievances but also for collective identifications, politicization, motivations, finding/allocating resources and sustaining academic collectives. We provide a preliminary basis to understand the role of neoliberalism in organization, mobilization and empowerment dynamics of collective action.

Revealing the Manifestations of Neoliberalism in Academia: Academic Collective Action in Turkey

Academic Collective Action (ACA) stands as a small-scale collective action for social change toward liberation, independence and equity in academia. Academic collectives in Turkey, as an example of ACA, prefigure building academia outside the university by emphasizing the extent to which neoliberal academia has already prepared the groundwork for more recent waves of oppression. In this research, we aim to reveal the manifestations of neoliberalism in ACA as captured with prominent social/political psychological concepts of collective action. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 dismissed academics to understand the social and political psychological processes in academic collectives. The narrations of ACA were accompanied by manifestations of neoliberalism as experienced by dismissed academics. We found that, as follows from the existing conceptual tools of collective action, neoliberalism serves as an embedded contextual factor in the process of ACA. This becomes mostly visible for grievances but also for collective identifications, politicization, motivations, finding/allocating resources and sustaining academic collectives. We provide a preliminary basis to understand the role of neoliberalism in organization, mobilization and empowerment dynamics of collective action.

Exhibition Review: Tania Bruguera: 10,145,915

Tania Bruguera: 10,145,915: Tate Modern , by Yoli Terziyska. London, UK: October 2, 2018–February 24, 2019. When this sentence was written, the title of Tania Bruguera’s recent exhibition at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall was 10,145,915 . For the duration of the installation, the title changed to reflect the sum of two changing figures: the number of recorded migrants globally plus the number of migrant deaths since the beginning of 2018. The steady increase of that figure was communicated with a stamp pressed on each visitor’s hand when they entered a small gallery off the Turbine Hall—the title did not appear in an exhibit’s typical places, such as on posters and brochures. It was unclear how frequently the stamp was changed, as the numeric title was dependent on information supplied by the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The project tracks incidents involving migrants who have died, or have gone missing, in the process of migration toward an international destination. The numbers revealed are publicly available on IOM’s online platform. Apart from the title, the exhibition was formed by three apparent elements: a heat-sensitive floor covering the Turbine Hall, a small “crying room” adjacent to the hall, and a sub-bass noise projected into the two spaces. The museum labels suggested that each element highlighted the necessity for collective action for social change to take place. This sentiment was contradicted by each element’s futility—the heat-sensitive floor was meant to reveal an image of a Syrian refugee on the floor when a large enough number of visitors simultaneously interacted with the installation. The intended result was nearly impossible to coordinate because it would take a considerable quantity of bodies to simultaneously touch the floor—a number that Bruguera guessed to be one hundred fifty to two hundred.1 The “crying room” contained an organic chemical substance that elicited collective crying without an emotional impetus. The eerie …

Dual identity and immigrants’ protest against discrimination: The moderating role of diversity ideologies

Discrimination of immigrant groups is an important social problem in many societies around the world. This study examines the moderating role of cultural diversity beliefs on the relation between dual identity and the intention to protest against immigrants’ discrimination. An experimental study was conducted among national samples of the three main immigrant-origin groups in the Netherlands. It was found that dual identity predicted the intention to protest against discrimination more strongly within a context of multicultural recognition compared to a context of assimilation or interculturalism. This demonstrates that multicultural recognition is a facilitating condition for dual identifiers to get involved in collective action for social change.

The Collective Value of “Me” (and its Limitations): Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of Individual and Collective Coping with Prejudice

Within the social identity tradition, individual and collective responses to social disadvantage are typically seen as mutually exclusive. This study (N = 120) provides a more nuanced understanding of individual and collective responses to social disadvantage by examining the ways in which women anticipate responding to “daily sexism.” We test how responses are independently related to ingroup identification, disidentification, and perceived ingroup homogeneity. Results show that women favor confronting sexism over inaction, even if that involves disparaging the ingroup. Specifically, women expect to engage in both individual and collective strategies in response to a sexist statement. Identification with women was positively associated with both collective and individual (nongroup disparaging) responses, but only collective responses related to broader intentions to engage in collective action for social change. Finally, perceived group homogeneity uniquely increased agreement with the sexist statement, endorsement of inaction, and group‐disparaging responses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Social capital and collective identity in the local food movement

Social movement actors are seeking alternatives to the highly industrialized, global food system through alternative agri-food initiatives to counter the conventional practices of the industrial food system. Many of these initiatives have proven successful. Social movement researchers have documented the importance of the roles and services social movement organizations provide for movement constituents to realize their success, emphasizing human and financial capital as key components for mobilizing collective action. Researchers have also documented the value of interorganizational networks, and the benefits of collaboration to expand the share of resources, and perhaps more importantly design social movement frames to direct collective action for social change. However, what local food movement research has yet to address are some of the potential barriers that minimize collaboration among organizational leaders as it relates to social capital and collective identity. This paper takes a cross-sectional network analysis of social movement organizations working to increase the sustainability of various areas within the local food system in Marin County, California, a historically agricultural region serving a number of urban communities. Findings from the mixed-methods research reveal evidence of collective identity and social capital as enhancing collaboration among particular types of organizations while reducing potential collaboration among and between other social movement organizations. By analysing the collective identity and dichotomous nature of social capital among social movement organizations, this research contributes a clearer understanding of the existing gaps for increasing the sustainability of a local food system.

Research Note—Role of Social Media in Social Change: An Analysis of Collective Sense Making During the 2011 Egypt Revolution

This study explores the role of social media in social change by analyzing Twitter data collected during the 2011 Egypt Revolution. Particular attention is paid to the notion of collective sense making, which is considered a critical aspect for the emergence of collective action for social change. We suggest that collective sense making through social media can be conceptualized as human-machine collaborative information processing that involves an interplay of signs, Twitter grammar, humans, and social technologies. We focus on the occurrences of hashtags among a high volume of tweets to study the collective sense-making phenomena of milling and keynoting. A quantitative Markov switching analysis is performed to understand how the hashtag frequencies vary over time, suggesting structural changes that depict the two phenomena. We further explore different hashtags through a qualitative content analysis and find that, although many hashtags were used as symbolic anchors to funnel online users’ attention to the Egypt Revolution, other hashtags were used as part of tweet sentences to share changing situational information. We suggest that hashtags functioned as a means to collect information and maintain situational awareness during the unstable political situation of the Egypt Revolution.

Riots, Rituals, and Ceremonials: The Multifunctionality of Rhythm and Blues and Soul as Generational Music in David Henderson's Early Poetry

The poets who converged to form the Umbra group at the beginning of the 1960s in New York City’s Lower East Side combined the activist spirit of groups like On Guard for Freedom and the Organization for Young Men with the artistic preoccupations of avant-garde praxes. Tom Dent claims that investing their writing with “[their] history and . . . folk experience” to articulate an “independent artistic vision” (qtd. in Thomas, “Need” 335), Umbra writers affirmed a form of cultural nationalism that correlated with the political struggles for social equality. In many ways, black music was the encyclopedic cultural memory that contained the “history and folk experience” Umbra members sought to refashion for political and aesthetic purposes. Music has historically represented the medium through which African Americans have not only upheld their humanity in the face of constant dehumanization and demonization but also expressed and performed their history. In that sense, music performed the dual role of experiential reservoir and archive of the black struggle in a racist world. It is not surprising that in the 1960s, in the context of the reevaluation of black historical consciousness and black identity, Umbra writers sought to define a black aesthetic grounded in vernacular culture and cultural memory in a way that would reflect the “musical activism” (Porter 173) artists often heard in the music, more precisely in jazz, rhythm and blues, and soul, what Amiri Baraka called “The New Black Music.” On the one hand, Max Roach’s album We Insist! Freedom Now Suites (1960) and Charles Mingus’s works during the decade were considered “synoptic work[s] of black history” (Saul 93) that affirmed the need for blacks to reclaim their historical memory and their cultural consciousness, which, in turn, inspired “collective action for social change” (Ongiri 124). On the other hand, Umbra’s Archie Shepp released the militant Fire Music (1965), which echoed the contestation and militant spirit of black nationalists. The soul and rhythm and blues of James Brown’s “Say It Loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968) or The

Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy, Collective Action for Social Change: An Introduction to Community Organizing.

Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy, Collective Action for Social Change: An Introduction to Community Organizing.

Community Organizing for Social Justice: Grassroots Groups for Power

Social justice, community organizing, and task-oriented groups are inextricably connected. Collective action through community organizing can generate the requisite power to overcome unjust social relations and achieve changes that further human rights, participatory democracy, and distributive justice. Most community-organizing work is conducted through task-oriented groups that enable organizational activists to engage directly in collective action for social change. This article presents examples of the use of task groups by a variety of constituencies, in multiple arenas, employing citizen participation, community development, and social action community-organizing approaches and strategies.

The system-stabilizing role of identity management strategies: Social creativity can undermine collective action for social change.

Three studies were conducted to examine whether, in an event of negative distinctiveness, engaging in 1 of the 3 identity management strategies of social creativity can undermine group member's intentions to engage in collective action. Study 1a (N = 55) and Study 1b (N = 58) illustrated that selecting a new (complementary) comparison dimension undermined middle-class people's and women's intention to participate in collective action. Study 1c (N = 74) and Study 1d (N = 126) revealed that a downward comparison undermined collective action intentions among unemployed people and women. Study 1e (N = 69) and Study 1f (N = 110) showed that a positive redefinition of an externally imposed negative group attribute did not diminish collective action intentions among immigrants and women. Study 2 (N = 99) illustrated that an alternative operationalization of revaluation of the attribute, namely, downplaying the status-defining attribute, undermined collective action among students. Study 2 and Study 3 (N = 95) consistently illustrated that reduced levels of group-relative deprivation mediated the negative relation between the social creativity strategies and collective action intentions. Implications for social change are discussed.

Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change.

The current research tests a model for understanding how benevolent sexism undermines, whereas hostile sexism promotes, social change. Study 1 (N = 99) and Study 2 (N = 92) demonstrate that exposing women to benevolent sexism decreases their engagement in collective action, whereas exposure to hostile sexism increases it. Both effects were mediated by gender-specific system justification and perceived advantages of being a woman. In Study 2, positive and negative affect also mediated these relationships. Results from Studies 3 and 4 (N = 68 and N = 37) support the causal chain described in the mediational models tested in Studies 1 and 2. Manipulations that increased gender-specific system justification (Study 3) and perceived advantages of being a woman (Study 4) reduced intentions to participate in collective action.

Cultural expression as political rhetoric: young Bhutanese refugees' collective action for social change

This article explores the experiences of young Bhutanese refugees growing up in long-term camps in eastern Nepal. It focuses on a period of political crisis in the camps in 2006–2007, when community members' opinions clashed over long-term solutions to the refugee situation. The article examines the use of cultural expression – song, poetry, dance, art and drama – as a form of political rhetoric employed to inspire collective action for social change. These methods are used both by international agencies engaging children in community-based advocacy for improved children's rights and by revolutionary political groups building support for armed struggle to enable the refugees' return to Bhutan. The article considers how various actors use cultural expression to transform individuals' consciousness and build collective identities, and questions to what political ends these identities are put.

Personal narratives/political lives: personal reflection as a tool for collective change

Community development is committed to a more just, equitable and sustainable world. This vision is driven by a greater urgency as we face the crises of our times. The practice of a more just society starts in the personal everyday experiences that shape people’s lives. Creating reflective learning contexts which connect deeply personal experiences with profoundly political consequences leads to the critical consciousness needed for collective action for social change. It is this dynamic, personal narratives—and in particular the role of story in the process of action for change—on which I concentrate here.

Survivors of Woman Abuse

The feminist social work and related literature on abused women has focused on women's processes of empowerment but has overlooked the question of women's movement from individual survival to collective resistance. In this feminist qualitative study, I explore the processes through which survivors of abuse by male partners become involved in collective action for social change. Using story telling as a research method, I interviewed 11 women about the processes, factors, insights, and events that prompted them to act collectively to address violence against women. I found that women's movement from individual survival to collective action entails significant changes in consciousness and subjectivity. Women's processes of conscientization are complex, contradictory and often painful because they involve political and psychic dimensions of subjectivity, protracted struggles with contradictions and conflict, and resistance to knowledge that threatens to unsettle relatively stable notions of identity. I suggest that feminist social work theory and practice must take into account three interrelated elements of women's transformative journeys: the discursive and material conditions that facilitate women's movement to collective action; the social, material and psychic costs of women's growth; and the multifaceted and difficult nature of women's journey in recognizing and naming abuse, making sense of their experiences, and acting on this knowledge to work for change. I recommend that feminist social work practice with survivors recognize that survivors can and do contribute to social change, and develop new, more inclusive liberatory models of working with survivors of abuse.

Collective action for social change—disabled women in the Western Cape

Disabled women continue to experience marginalisation in their communities. THERESA LORENZO reports on an initiative by the Disabled Women's Project in the Western Cape to improve the opportunities for disabled women's social integration and economic independence