Collective Political Action Research Articles

Domestic Affairs

Abstract How do protests and security regimes engage each other on the question of difference? This question frames this essay's ethnographic portrayal of the expression of dissent and political claims in a borderland site of national security and the Indian security state's management of such dissent to reinforce its legitimacy as a liberal democracy. Border residents in eastern India, predominantly Muslim or depressed caste, are minority citizens. By closely reading the terms through which they articulate their claims and humiliations and how they are rendered suspect, subordinated, and othered from fulsome democratic rights and citizenship, this essay offers a portrait of the slow violence of affective rule in a place of “no conflict.” Turning away from spectacular instances of militarism and state violence, this essay illuminates the affective force of militarization whose goal is to disable critique and segment minority citizens into subordinated inclusion. It asks how collective political action might be heard and endure in such constrained conditions. This specific locus is instructive for the logic of contradistinction as a mode of security rule more widely. It demonstrates that the intersection of gender and religious identity is not a “dimension” of contemporary national security regimes but must be seen as foundational to their constitution and legitimacy.

Do disasters trigger protests? A conceptual view of the connection between disasters, injustice, and protests—The case of COVID-19

People around the globe are affected by disasters far beyond the disaster properties. Given that certain social groups are affected disproportionately, disasters need to be considered as political events which may cause political actions. Therefore, we aim to discuss, from a social psychological perspective, how and why protests might occur during or after a disaster. We argue for an elaborated model of collective action participation suggesting that disasters enhance the predictors of protest mobilization and participation though emerged or enhanced social injustice. We also suggest that disaster properties can be used to delegitimise protests and social movements, limiting the mobilization and collective resilience during and after a disaster. Finally, we discuss the gaps in current research and emphasize the need for more attention to the disaster-protest link as we can expect more disasters due to climate crisis, likely to lead to more protests and political collective action.

Narrating Crisis and Continuity in Migration Debates in the Visegrád States

Narrating Crisis and Continuity in Migration Debates in the Visegrád States

Kai Zen: The Politics and the Poetics of Writing

Abstract Beginning with the group's involvement with Wu Ming's Ti chiamerò Russell: Romanzo totale 2002, this article examines the writing collective Kai Zen's open- and closed-participation writing projects, focusing on the similarities and differences between the two collectives’ approaches. The article argues that Kai Zen's greater adherence to popular literary genres, such as science fiction, the western and the romanzo rosa, gives priority to the outcome of the collective writing enterprise, that is, the writing itself, rather than to the collective authors. The article concludes by drawing connections between collective writing as a prelude to collective political action.

Defying national homogeneity: Hidden acts ofZainichiKorean resistance in Japan

This article draws attention to the shifting dialectical relationship that exists between everyday acts of resistance and the forms of domination they seek to subvert. Using ethnographic data collected in Osaka’s Koreatown, we analyze some of the ways in which young Zainichi Koreans, the descendants of colonial subjects who migrated to Japan, use daily acts of self-preservation to chip away at hegemonic notions of Japanese national homogeneity. Seemingly trivial choices to dissimulate one’s identity, transmit cultural practices, and maintain historical memory constitute neglected forms of opposition that illustrate the contextual nature of Zainichi Korean resistance against marginalization and forced assimilation. These strategies offer a reservoir of resources that can be tapped into for collective political action, keeping the embers of resistance alive in between periods of open protest.

Political Budget Cycles in Autocracies: The Role of Religious Seasons and Political Collective Action

AbstractFor autocrats ruling over religious populations as in many Muslim majority countries, threats of mass collective action and religious mobilization are risky to ignore, being potentially detrimental to authoritarian survival. Religious seasons, such as Ramadan, could raise the seriousness of such threats. Accordingly, incumbents might adopt expansionary fiscal policies to avoid the escalation of political discontent at these times. Focusing on Egypt's fiscal policy between 2006 and 2019, I find that although the religious season of Ramadan is associated with modest increases in government expenditure and welfare spending, this relationship is dependent on the level of political threats facing the regime. Government spending is higher in Ramadan's season when it is preceded by more episodes of anti-regime collective action. This evidence suggests that the interaction between the religious and political contexts could generate political budget cycles outside electoral seasons.

Plastic: a passengerial marketplace icon

ABSTRACT We provide a critical reading of plastic in consumer culture highlighting its furtive omnipresence and supporting role in enabling the consumption of countless products, services, and brands, including many previously identified marketplace icons. We introduce the term “passengerial icon” to explore how the iconicity of plastic is often characterised by its unobtrusive and inconspicuous presence in consumers’ lives. Like a passenger, plastic most typically accompanies consumers on various experiential journeys rather than drives them. Drawing upon Leder’s concept of dys-appearance, we discuss the “absent presence” of passengerial icons as they tend to fade from consumers’ awareness, remaining present but unseen and unthought about until something about them appears to dysfunction. We discuss the dysfunctional appearance of plastic as catalysed most dramatically by environmental and health consequences. Though plastic’s dys-appearance affects society broadly, it is often hermeneutically and fetishistically handled by individuals through precautionary consumption adjustments rather than collective political action.

Political Budget Cycles in Autocracies: The Role of Religious Seasons and Political Collective Action

Political Budget Cycles in Autocracies: The Role of Religious Seasons and Political Collective Action

Judith N. Shklar on disobedience and obligation in a “society of strangers”

Judith N. Shklar on disobedience and obligation in a “society of strangers”

Poetry and the Camp: Epiphanic Witness and Ecstatic Cry in the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1895–98

Poetry and the Camp: Epiphanic Witness and Ecstatic Cry in the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1895–98

Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints

Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints

On Understanding Our Needy World through Science Fiction and Utopia/nism

How do dominant epistemological frames create political understanding and violence in the public sphere and through cultural texts? This article explores a theoretical answer to this question by identifying narrative categories, or frames, that create shared realities and collective political understanding and action in contemporary antiutopian US culture. Much current public information is marred by the juxtaposition of fact and fiction, logic and emotion, creating forms of knowledge and thus political action not necessarily based, then, on actuality or a communal ethic of care. Through analysis of worlds made possible in science fiction, the author builds on his previous theoretical work to develop what he calls “a method for radical utopian cognition”—one that sees cultural cognition based in logic, emotions, and a utopian frame in which destiny or resolution is not dictated by class or preordained authorial expectation but is instead open for constructive possibilities and new realities through the presentation of alternative possible worlds.

Theatre as a Platform for Ecological Critique

This article on ecotheatre with a focus on Vietnam pursues two goals. Firstly, it discusses how theatre can address ecological concerns, utilising ancient cultural sources. Secondly, it focuses on how these concerns are dramatised in the satirical comedy Gặp nhau cuối năm (Year-End Gathering), first broadcast on Vietnamese television in 2003. The main theoretical question is how and whether theatre, and specifically television theatre, can raise awareness of the climate crisis and generate a cultural shift. While addressing the crisis, theatre does not necessarily aim at breaking conventions. It can play with rhetorical strategies to convey the complexity of the interactions between humans and nature. It can stimulate internalist factors and intrinsic motivations leading to individual or collective social and political action. Gặp nhau cuối năm is a rewriting of the legend of the three Kitchen Gods who supervise every household and present their report to the Jade Emperor, the ruler of the world. Using satire and parody to convey praise and critique, the play stimulates reflection on the social and environmental crisis and occasional indifference of the Gods. Considering the impact that the TV has on public opinion in Vietnam and the popularity reached by Gặp nhau cuối năm, it becomes clear that theatre encapsulating entertainment and critique can respond to environmental concerns, stimulate ecological thought and generate change

Leveraging Political Resources: Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

AbstractAs politics becomes increasingly polarized, the value of collective political action becomes more visible and overt. Nonprofit organizations act collectively in pursuit of their policy goals in nearly all aspects of public policy. Understanding how nonprofits borne of social movements engage politically expands our insight into advocacy coalition behavior following seemingly effective social movements. The coalition’s leveraging of political resources provides us this insight. This study assesses the policy activities produced or maintained within a U.S. national domestic violence advocacy coalition over its lifetime to determine how and when resources were leveraged. A directed content analysis is conducted on historical data to capture the evolution of coalition activities over a 41-year period. The coalition’s emphasis on policy change waned over time as it achieved its policy goals. The coalition then leaned on its largest resources, mobilizable troops, and information to increasingly emphasize policy implementation and evaluation. These findings indicate thatwhenin the policy process coalitions leverage their political resources may be more important thanhowcoalitions leverage resources. Framing nonprofit political activity across the stages of the policy process can open doors to better use of scarce political resources.

The remoteness of democratic representation

Democratic representation is increasingly remote from citizens. Many institutions exacerbate this remoteness, but the shrinking ratio of legislative representatives to citizens is perhaps the most obvious. Around the world, the number of representatives has not kept pace with growing populations. To what extent does this distance, between citizens and their elected politicians, explain our current democratic malaise? Relying on both quantitative and historical evidence, this article maps the remoteness of democratic representation and considers its causes, consequences, and potential remedies. Strongly associated with economic inequality and rural elites, the remoteness of representation has far-flung implications, ranging from deficits of diversity and accountability in political representation to the weakened capacity of citizens to engage in political collective action.

Structural Injustice and Labour Migration – From Individual Responsibility to Collective Action

AbstractThis paper argues that the vast inequalities in access to migration opportunities and treatment of migrants constitute a structural injustice, and that although states are clearly the most powerful agents in migration injustices, individuals also bear a personal responsibility to ameliorate these injustices. The argument builds on Young's theory of structural injustice and critically applies it to labour migration. The paper argues that wealthy migrants and citizens who benefit from migrant labour have a responsibility to contribute towards ameliorating migration injustice on account of their position of privilege, whereas disadvantaged migrants have a responsibility due to their interest in changing their situation. It then considers how people might discharge such an obligation through collective political action, pointing in particular to non‐governmental organizations, labour unions, and local government. Finally, the paper addresses the objections that positing personal responsibility for labour migration is overly demanding and that the current labour migration regime is meritocratic and fair. The article concludes by showing how this sort of stance can be seen as interest‐driven by privileged groups and argues for the role of disruptive politics in overcoming it.

The Revolutionary Potential of Food Sovereignty: Applying Lenin’s Insights on Dialectics, the State, and Political Action

This essay elaborates a conception of sovereignty that highlights its revolutionary potential. Its argument addresses the nature of different movement strategies in the ongoing struggle for food sovereignty and how movements ought to confront the state while simultaneously using it to create a transformative, potentially anticapitalist form of governance. This claim is built from critiques of the state and sovereignty in studies of radical democracy. The essay then presents how Lenin connects sovereignty to proletarian governance. A revolutionary conception of sovereignty, developed by placing discussions of Lenin’s work in dialogue with practices of food sovereignty, is found in collective political action that suspends state power and challenges private property to create alternative economic and noneconomic forms of organization. This dialectical rendering of sovereignty entails constructing a new order by simultaneously conflicting with and acting through the existing one.

Partisans use emotions as social pressure: Feeling anger and gratitude at exiters and recruits in political groups

Political collective action requires assembling and motivating supporters. Many theories view emotions as functional tools for managing relationships, including within groups. We study what leads citizens to use the emotions anger and gratitude as social pressure. Specifically, we test what determines the use of these emotions to prevent potential exiters from leaving a political group and to encourage potential recruits to join. Because parties are enduring social affiliations (compared to transient or issue-focused groups), we predicted that partisans would express stronger emotions. We tested this proposition in two separate studies—one an observational study featuring a representative sample of US adults and one an experimental study conducted in Denmark. As predicted, people with a partisan mindset, whether naturally occurring or experimentally manipulated, felt more anger and gratitude at potential exiters and recruits. Citizens strive to fortify and expand their ingroups and sometimes use emotions as social pressure to do so.

Streaming the Battlefield: A Theory of the Internet's Effect on Negotiation Onset

This article explores the effects of social media penetration and internet connectivity on the likelihood that parties within a conventional intra-state conflict will enter negotiations. The proliferation of advanced information communications technologies, coupled with violent political collective action, calls for further examination of how these variables intertwine to affect conflict patterns. Beginning with a discussion on communications technology and the bargaining model of war, the author presents a theoretical model that seeks to create a foundation that can be used for future empirical testing.

Disrupting institutional reproduction? How Olympic athletes challenge the stability of the Olympic Movement

Summary The recent years have seen a surge in elite athlete activism. This article examines how Olympic athletes are currently challenging the stability of central institutions of the Olympic Movement as collective political actors. The study builds on explanations of stability and change stemming from punctuated equilibrium theory and path dependency. Applying a multiple mini case study design, it is first illustrated how these mechanisms have been in play in the reproduction and disruption of historic Olympic institutions. The main analysis then shows how Olympic athletes, through their different organizational forms, challenge institutions that are detrimental to their interest. The findings illustrate that Olympic athletes have increased their power resources and apply strategies to defy institutions, which are reproduced on the basis of path-dependent explanations. In doing so, athletes have the potential to severely destabilize the system if their interests remain unaccounted for by those governing the Olympic Movement.