Collective Political Action Research Articles

The Influence of Political Culture on Youth Officials’ Leadership Styles and Civic Engagement

Recognizing the underlying cultural factors that influence political attitudes can aid in resolving conflicts and promoting social cohesion. This study explored the influence political culture on Youth Officials’ leadership styles and civic engagement. The study was conducted in one of the universities in Ozamiz City, Misamis Occidental. The descriptive-correlational design was used in the study. There were 135 students who served as the respondents selected through a purposive sampling technique. The researcher-made Youth Officials Political Culture, Youth Officials’ Leadership Styles, and Youth Officials’ Civic Engagement Questionnaires were used as research instruments. Weighted Mean and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient were used as statistical tools to analyze the data gathered. Results revealed that the youth officials perceived political culture in their respective barangays was very highly participant. The youth officials’ leadership style was democratic, while their civic engagement was to a very great extent. The perceived political culture generally influenced the respondents’ leadership styles and civic engagement. Political culture holds a major factor on how the youth officials lead their constituents and engage themselves in civic activities. It is recommended that youth officials sustain their democratic practices in governance to encourage citizens to participate freely in collective political action and influence decision-making processes.

Forging the Resistive Republic: Social Capital, Institutional Stability, and Civic Virtue in Pluralist Democracies

Republicans too often take for granted features not easy to bring about in the absence of social capital. Lovett and Pettit (2009) consider that it is through collective political actions that citizens shed light on acts of domination. For Pettit (2012), civic vigilance is the only guarantee that “the government will be forced to remain responsive to popular inputs”. As Kimpell (2023) mentions, one of the weak points of republican theories remains the lack of an account of norm generation. I aim to show how this could occur in a way that does not constitute itself an arbitrary interference of the government in the people’s lives. The kind of generalized reciprocity which is of utmost importance for republicanism often depends on the presence of ties that connect different socio-economic groups within communities and, “where such interactions do not naturally occur, forums for interaction can be intentionally created and designed to encourage development of social capital” (Warner 2001). More specifically, I argue that such forums for interaction could be represented by polycentric systems. Furthermore, I argue that embracing polycentricity constitutes a non-dominating way in which we could promote the “resistive community” (Pettit 2012) required by republicanism. I consider that the empirical results extensively documented in the Institutional Analysis and Development framework are an appropriate starting point for designing novel republican policies and institutions that can function alongside sufficient levels of trust.

The philosophy of liberation for/with children: in search of liberation and the creation of an ageless pueblo

From its origins, the philosophy of liberation has had both a critical and a creative aspect. The first seeks to critically examine domination, dependency, and the permanent effects of colonization. The second aims to create and re-create the liberation of peoples, developing and reconstituting ways of existing, imagining, thinking, and philosophizing that surpass colonial ways of existing, imagining, thinking, and philosophizing. Thus, for the philosophy of liberation, the liberation of peoples is distinguished from the notions of emancipation and freedom that hide reality under processes of ideologization. An example of the latter is modernity’s notion of emancipation. In this paper, I propose to approach the critical and creative function of the philosophy of liberation from a childist lens in which not only the voices of children are considered, but also the adultist and modern vision of emancipation is overcome. This will be particularly important to continue the legacy of the philosophy of liberation, and its mission to criticize and create from the political and philosophical participation of the victims in the processes of ideologization. From this legacy the children are participants, who, by engaging in pedagogical practices of liberation, act as un pueblo, a collective political actor without age. of the latter is modernity’s notion of emancipation. In this paper, I propose to approach the critical and creative function of the philosophy of liberation from a childist lens in which not only the voices of children are considered, but also the adultist and modern vision of emancipation is overcome. This will be particularly important to continue the legacy of the philosophy of liberation, and its mission to criticize and create from the political and philosophical participation of the victims of the processes of ideologization. Of this legacy, the children are participants, who, by engaging in pedagogical practices of liberation, act as un pueblo, a collective political actor without age.

Activismos digitales. Nuevas formas de lucha mediadas por plataformas en la era del capitalismo de la vigilancia

The academic concern for the role that activisms assume in the face of social problems in a troubled world maintains a pre-eminent relevance. Revolutionary waves are being registered as phenomena that express social demands. Understanding transmedia activism implies observing the reality beyond the struggles and polarizations of hashtags. In this context, what is understood by digital activism? How does the power dispute unfold in the digital territory? What is understood by performances? How is digital activism projected in the era of heightened Surveillance Capitalism? This paper aims to analyze academic productions that conceptualize, problematize and study digital activism. In addition, to characterize and understand their main features and identify trends and challenges that they present in the framework of Surveillance Capitalism. The methodological strategy was elaborated on the state of the art regarding digital activism. In order to analyze the current state of digital activism and its future evolution, search, selection, and bibliographic organization were included. Among the main findings, are the identification of studies that analyze the digital territory as a field of power dispute and the characterization of digital activism from social movements and collective political action and other forms of online participation, such as slacktivism.

Testing the person-positivity bias in a political context: Voters’ affective responses to (non-)personalized individual political actors versus collective political actors

The person-positivity bias states that evaluations of real-life individuals are more positive compared to evaluations of collectivities or impersonal objects. This paper aims to test the prevalence of a person-positivity bias in a political context in two respects: (1) we examine whether voters develop stronger negative affective reactions towards other-minded collective actors (i.e. political parties) compared to individual actors (i.e. politicians), and (2) we investigate whether the provision of personalized individuating information tempers the development of negative feelings towards politicians. A survey experiment conducted among a representative sample of the Flemish population (N = 1200) reveals patterns of vertical affective polarization. However, our study did not find significant evidence that voters dislike other-minded collective actors more than other-minded individual politicians. Also the extent to which individual MPs are personalized has little effect on voters' affective evaluations. Taken together, this study highlights that ideological (dis)agreement is primarily steering voters’ evaluation of political actors.

Religion, Perceived Unfairness, and Political Protest: Empirical Evidence From East Asian Countries

Religion is considered to have different aspects of influences on political protest, and some have argued that religious participation often mobilizes collective political actions by enhancing individuals’ civic skills and political efficacy. By contrast, religious values and beliefs that emphasize the importance of traditional norms and conformity tend to reduce individuals’ propensities to participate in political protest. The influences of religion on individuals’ attitudes toward coping with injustice and unfairness can be critical for explaining their propensities to participate in political protest. Using data from the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, this study investigates the role of perceived unfairness in shaping the link between religion and political protest in 13 East Asian countries. In accordance with the arguments of mobilizing and conforming effects, we find that religious attendance increases individuals’ propensities to engage in political protest, while religiosity has a negative effect on political protest. In particular, the results show that the perceived unfairness of income distribution mediates the indirect effects of religion on political protest. They also present that religious affiliations mitigate perceived unfairness and indirectly reduce individuals’ propensities to participate in political protest. Nevertheless, the direct effects of religious attendance on mobilizing political protest are stronger.

University Student Perspectives on Collective Action through Social-Media Activity on Campus Democracy

Campus democracy is useful for creating a condition that allows all groups within the university (students, rectors, teaching staff, employees, and workers) to have equal rights in formulating policies, and the orientation of the implementation of education in tertiary institutions. However, implementing democracy in educational contexts, particularly in Indonesia, is still hindered by obstacles visible through the presence of some issues with democratic principles being violated. The purpose of this study was to examine and provide an overview of university student perspectives on collective action through social-media activity on campus democracy. This study utilizes qualitative research methods by deploying questionnaires, and uses documentation as data collection techniques. It studies the students of one university in Lampung as the subject of the research. The data collection was performed at different time intervals since depth comprehension through questionnaires is required in this study. The results indicated the importance of social media for students in campus democracy, one of which is to cultivate the student’s critical awareness of events that occur on campus. This refers to not only political collective action but also social collective action as well. Given the limitations of this study which only used students from one department on one campus, the researchers hope that further research with a similar topic in the future can expand this type of research to not only include students, but also intra-community interactions, and not only on a scale of one room.
 Keywords: Campus’ Democracy, Collective Action, Students’ Perspectives, Social Media

Wet market biosecurity reform: Three social narratives influence stakeholder responses in Vietnam, Kenya, and the Philippines.

In 2020, Covid-19 led to global policy statements promoting bans and reforms to wet markets in Asia and Africa to prevent future pandemics. We conducted a comparative, exploratory qualitative study in 2021 in three countries (Kenya, Vietnam and the Philippines) to understand the social and political dimensions to biosecurity reform at wet markets. This included 60 key informant interviews and rapid ethnographic research in 15 markets, as well as a review of policy documents and online media articles. We found no evidence that the rhetoric of pandemic spillover that emerged in 2020 had any influence on policy or reform efforts apart from those related to Covid-19 infection control. Rather, we identified three main narratives that frame the problem of biosecurity and preferences for reform. The first, a human health narrative, questioned global framings about pandemic risk, viewed markets as sources for food security rather than disease, emphasized the need to strengthen the control of endemic diseases, and conceptualized health through the lens of 'freshness' rather than biomedical categories. A second modernization narrative approached biosecurity as part of a broader process of socio-economic development that emphasized infrastructural gaps, spatial arrangements, cleanliness and a conflict between reform and economic interests. A third narrative centered on local livelihoods and the tension between local market stakeholders and biosecurity and modernization efforts. This final narrative called into question the appropriateness of certain regulations and policies, including bans and closures, emphasized the importance of preserving cultural heritage and highlighted the need for collective political action to resist certain veterinary policies. In conclusion, wet market biosecurity strategies occur in the context of three contrasting narratives that emphasize different aspects of health and risk, and reflect different worldviews and interests. Within this context, there is a need for local government to strengthen market management and biosecurity in ways that enhance the agency of market stakeholders and strengthen local livelihoods and food security as part of a pluralistic and democratic politics.

Poverty, not the poor.

This review explains how and why the United States has systemically high poverty. Descriptive evidence shows that U.S. poverty is (i) a huge share of the population, (ii) a perennial outlier among rich democracies, (iii) staggeringly high for certain groups, (iv) unexpectedly high for those who "play by the rules," and (v) pervasive across various groups and places. This review then discusses and critiques three prevailing approaches focused on the individual poor rather than the systemically high poverty: (i) behavioral explanations "fixing the poor," (ii) emotive compassion "dramatizing the poor," and (iii) cultural explanations both dramatizing and fixing the poor. The essay then reviews political explanations that emphasize the essential role of social policy generosity, political choices to penalize risks, power resources of collective political actors, and institutions. This review demonstrates a long emerging but ascending and warranted shift away from individualistic explanations of the poor toward political explanations of poverty.

#My(white)BodyMyChoice

This article explores the circulation of #MyBodyMyChoice in a series of deeply divisive political debates – abortion rights and mask wearing during COVID-19. We trace the appropriation of this slogan for differing ideological purposes, and its shifts from collective political action concerning pro-choice to the rights of individuals to refuse to comply with mask mandates. Underpinning the values of each is a white liberal racism that operates to uphold dominant gender, class and economic structures.

Feelings and Facts: Agency in Northern Irish Cinema

Northern Irish cinema has long had an ambivalent relationship to the representation of history, sometimes implicitly rejecting ‘rational’ or ‘objective’ approaches in favour of emphasising the untidy and subjective emotions of its historical narratives. More recently, the films made in and about Northern Ireland have reflected a loss of agency, in particular, the sense of efficacy, locus of control and prospection which creates a belief in our ability to change our environment. Meanwhile, neoliberalism, placing the responsibility for recovery on the individual while removing systems of economic, social and cultural support, creates the conditions under which this loss of agency becomes crisis. The promotion of individual interest obstructs collective political action and progressive change. This article considers the representation of agency in two recent films about the Troubles, Belfast (2022) and I Am Belfast (2015), suggesting that film can – but does not necessarily – offer a space for emotional reflection and restoration of agency.

The Strength of the Strengthless: Women, Aged, and Disabled People as a Subversive Force in the Belarusian Protest Movement 2020

ABSTRACT This article examines the Belarusian protests of 2020, triggered by the rigged presidential election results and the illegal disproportionate use of force by the authorities. Given that most protesters were apolitical before 2020, the article seeks to clarify how it happened that passive vulnerable individuals were unprecedentedly mobilized for sustained collective political action. The author focuses on protest actions organized by particularly vulnerable social groups (women, pensioners, the disabled) and reveals their importance for the democratic protest against the patriarchal-authoritarian order. The article traces three stages in the protest development: the moment of traumatic shaking, the caesura of the political sublime, and the rapid scale of the peaceful protest movement characteristically represented by the social groups in question. It is argued that their protest actions had a subversive effect with respect to the autocratic rule and re-actualized an alternative normative and axiological horizon in a given life-world.

The American action film and the Arendt–Pitkin ‘tyranny of “the Social”’

Hanna Pitkin explains that Arendt’s defense of collective political action tends to reify and mystify an opposing concept Arendt calls ‘the Social’. Was Arendt actually right about the rise of ‘the Social’? Does the deep-set global mass entertainment culture tend to sap action even when it purportedly celebrates it? And what can viewing publics and counter-publics tell us about the meaning and reception of ‘the Social’, especially in this massively online era? This article surveys different ways of thinking about the basic problem presented by American popular action cinema, and especially big-budget Hollywood action films, through an Arendtian lens. In presenting this overview, the article looks to reorient traditional philosophical concerns about screen violence and its censorship, and to offer a holistic reappraisal of ‘the Social’ and ‘action’ by placing democratic theory in closer dialogue with film studies.

Racial Justice and Resistance to Integration

AbstractD. C. Matthew makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate between integrationists and their critics. While Matthew's conclusion that blacks have a duty not to integrate is too strong, his account provides additional reasons why they may not want to integrate. Further reasons to resist integration may be provided by considering the contexts of integration, particularly with respect to the degree of coerciveness that they involve. I argue that resistance to integration should take the form of not only refusing to participate in it but also of engaging in collective political action in the pursuit of racial justice.

Marine citizenship: The right to participate in the transformation of the human-ocean relationship for sustainability.

Marine citizenship is a relatively new field of enquiry and research to date has focused on individual pro-environmental behaviour change as an expression of responsibility towards the ocean. The field is underpinned by knowledge-deficit and technocratic approaches to behaviour change such as awareness raising, ocean literacy, and environmental attitudes research. In this paper we develop an interdisciplinary and inclusive conceptualisation of marine citizenship. We use mixed methods to study the views and experiences of active marine citizens in the United Kingdom to broaden understandings of marine citizens' characterisation of marine citizenship, and their perceptions of its importance in policy- and decision-making. Our study shows that marine citizenship entails more than individual pro-environmental behaviours, and includes public-facing and socially collective political actions. We contextualise the role of knowledge, finding more complexity than normative knowledge-deficit approaches permit. We illustrate the importance of a rights-based framing of marine citizenship which incorporates political and civic rights to participate in the transformation of the human-ocean relationship for sustainability. Recognising this more inclusive approach to marine citizenship, we propose an expanded definition to support further exploration of the multiple dimensions and complexities of marine citizenship and to enhance its benefits for marine policy and management.

Generations in contemporary US politics: statistical aggregations or collective political actors?

ABSTRACT The cultural salience of generational categories is on the rise: the large and powerful Baby-Boom generation continues to dominate electoral politics while younger Millennials’ and Gen Zers’ fluency in digital communication technology lets them voice their frustrations. We demonstrate that these three generational groups show many signs of being—or becoming—collective political actors. Majorities identify with their generation, they find these identities salient in their everyday lives, and younger generations especially demonstrate high levels of generational linked fate. Generations have distinct political agendas, and many express a willingness to support candidates who prioritize the interests of their generation. These findings force us to reconsider the treatment of generations as only ascriptive groups and instead see them as composed of self-conscious members, capable of acting as collective actors on the political stage. If the patterns we show sharpen further, generations may become defining points of cultural and political cleavage.

Polish Political Theorists on the Position and Role of the Individual in Politics

This article aims to survey the principal viewpoints of Polish political theorists regarding the position and role of the individual in politics. The discussion involves a thorough analysis of the categories of individual and collective political actors, their distinctive features, and the concept of agency and its new interpretations within the Polish political science. These new interpretations signal evolution in the traditional categorical framework in response to contemporary challenges. The study applies a method of analysis and synthesis incorporating aspects of the dialectical method. The outcome presents a juxtaposition of viewpoints within political science spanning the past several decades, identifying areas of convergence and significant divergences.

The “Because Science” meme as virtual commonplace

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship in virtual rhetorics has demonstrated that we must abandon static notions of place if we wish to account for the rhetorical effects of internet memes and other forms of virtual argumentation. However, displacing virtual rhetorics entirely effaces grounds for collective political action, particularly political resistance organized in virtual environments such as internet forums. We can restore this crucial grounding, without sacrificing an orientation to circulation, by treating memes as commonplaces in a topological framework. A commonplace approach to virtual rhetorics further revivifies for us the essential virtuality of Aristotle’s original topical doctrine. This interanimation of current and classical rhetorics is dramatized via a case study of the ironic reversal of political polarity in the “Because Science” meme.

Decolonising community social work: contributions of front-line professional resistances from a Mapuche perspective

Since the return to democracy in the 1990s, community programmes in Chile have been pervaded by the neoliberal and neo-colonial approaches of social policies promoted by the state and supranational organisations, such as the World Bank. In this article, we examine the possibilities of front-line community social workers dismantling such a hegemonic rationale. Drawing upon the contributions of Latin American decolonial thought, we argue that social workers are able to exert resistance on the individual, competitive and instrumental approaches underlying their community interventions by decolonising their understandings and professional practices, and by being involved in collective political action. An exploration of Mapuche philosophy is offered as a means to illustrate some key dimensions in order to scrutinise community interventions and challenge the traditional mainstream Western and Eurocentric notions of community, knowledge and professional bonds and encounters. These proposals apply when working not only with culturally different populations, but also with all those subaltern groups oppressed by the neoliberal and neo-colonial rationale, in the interest of contributing to cognitive justice – another dimension of social justice.

The Ethical Dimension of Creative and Collective Insubordination: A Philosophical incursion in Mathematics Education

The present article seeks to develop theoretically the concept of creative insubordination as an ethical act, establishing the importance of the collective actions of the insubordination to the maintenance of their creations in defense of the oppressed and exploited. In this direction, we analyze three examples of creative and collective insubordinations seeking to show how they are characterized as ethical acts and the learning that we can get from them for our actions of insubordination. Thus, we analyze an experience of teachers who teach mathematics in a popular education project where these characteristics are present in collective planning, collective political action and resistance to social exclusion practices. Finally, we conclude that insubordination is only creative, and creations are insubordinate only if they are ethical acts: that is, collective.