Practice Of Social Change Research Articles

Drawing as collective self-care: Leeds animation workshop’s collaborative practices during the pandemic

Studies and debates about the impact of the Covid-19 (Covid-19 is the term widely used to denote the SARS-CoV-2 virus and adopted by the World Health Organization when communicating with the public) pandemic on the film and moving image industry have emphasized the economic and cultural consequences of lockdowns and social restrictions on cinematic productions and theatrical and festival circuits, leading to the rise of streaming platforms and services. Within this discussion, little attention has been drawn to the independent sector of non-profit cooperatives or collectives, grassroots distribution companies and community archives involved in feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual+ activism. This essay examines this area of post-pandemic cinema through the example of Leeds Animation Workshop, a women-run, feminist collective. Since its establishment in the eponymous West-Yorkshire city in 1978, the collective has been producing and distributing gender-focused animation films about social and educational issues worldwide. My argument is that Leeds Animation Workshop’s online media activities during the pandemic signal less an adjustment to a new media environment in response to social restrictions than a repurposing of their gendered and participatory media practices for social change and critical intervention.

Influence of Globalization on the Bodo Traditional Community of Assam: A Study on Social Change Practices

Influence of Globalization on the Bodo Traditional Community of Assam: A Study on Social Change Practices

The Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as a non‐profit organization: An empirical study on the use of visual branding practices for social change

AbstractIn this article, we draw our attention to the growth of a new social movement, as a non‐profit organization which aims to effectively communicate its collective identity and messages to larger audiences. Initially, we provide a critical discussion on the interrelationships between marketing theory/practice and protest groups' promotional tactics. Afterwards, we focus on the interface between visual branding practices and new social movement's strategies to create a visual branding identity around their protest symbols and aims. In order to do so, we adopted a moderate participant observation approach to explore how the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement employed forms of visual branding to engage local and global audiences and induce social change. Drawing on a close examination of field notes and a visual analysis of digital archives and images from the protest sites, we identify and discuss the presence of several visual branding techniques for the imaginative promotion of the movement's demands and causes. Our findings suggest that the 2014 Umbrella Movement protesters coordinated and acted as non‐profit organization which employed innovative and creative visual branding methods to enhance the movement's unity and trigger emotional responses from diverse audiences. We conclude the article with suggestions for future research around the interrelationships between social movements' protest symbols, transnational visual branding practices and non‐profit organizational practices.

Urban Civic Network as practice of social change and innovation. A case‐study analysis

AbstractSocial innovation represents a social practice that aims to meet social needs by involving communities in dialogues through participatory and collaborative approaches. One new and particular solution of social innovation is represented by Urban Civic Networks. However, considering the novelty of this topic, neither the benefits nor the role of public entities in implementing such practice of social innovation, nor the strengths of the implementation process are known, yet. This study aims to fill this gap through the analysis of a single‐case study, based upon theories of social innovation and social change, referring to the City of Bari. Results show that implementation of Urban Civic Networks generates both tangible and intangible benefits and demonstrate that local government plays a pivotal and leading role in the implementation process. Finally, they show that the strengths of this practice are connected to bottom‐up approaches enabling efficient knowledge management and collaboration.

“My Ideal Is Where It Is Just Jane the Cricketer, Rather Than Jane the Gay Cricketer”: An Institutional Perspective of Lesbian Inclusion in Australian Cricket

The aim of this article was to develop a theoretical framework to aid the current understanding of social change practice. Drawing on concepts from institutional theory, the authors proposed and applied a theoretical framework to investigate social change at the intersection of gender and sexuality inclusion in Australian cricket. Qualitative techniques (interviews and document analyses) were utilized to investigate the trajectory of lesbian inclusion in Australian cricket over time. Starting from the perspective that institutional arrangements can be exclusionary (or biased) toward certain groups in society, this research investigated how the actions of institutional entrepreneurs can create more inclusive institutional arrangements. Theoretical and practical implications for future research are discussed.

Sport for Social Change With Aotearoa New Zealand Youth: Navigating the Theory–Practice Nexus Through Indigenous Principles

Indigenous worldviews and scholarship are underrepresented and underdeveloped in sport for development and wider sport management spaces. Given many sport for social change initiatives target Indigenous populations, this is concerning. By adopting a Kaupapa Māori approach, a strengths-based stance, and working together with two plus-sport and sport-plus cases from provincial and national New Zealand rugby settings: the Taranaki Rugby Football Union’s and Feats’ Pae Tawhiti (seek distant horizons) Māori and Pasifika Rugby Academy and the E Tū Toa (stand strong), hei tū he rangatira (become a leader) Māori Rugby Development camps, the authors provide an illustration of Indigenous theory–practice. They argue sport for social change practices that focus on Indigenous peoples would be greatly improved if underpinned by the principles of perspective, privilege, politics, protection, and people. Thus, any sport for social change praxis seeking to partner with Indigenous communities ought to be informed by Indigenous philosophical viewpoints.

Participatory design for sustainable social change

Tendencies in contemporary participatory design suggest a move away from engagement of limited stakeholders in preconfigured design processes and predefined technology outcomes, towards more complex and long-term engagement with heterogeneous communities and larger ecologies of social and technological transformation. Building on core values of participatory design, we introduce three dimensions of engagement of scoping, developing and scaling that we argue can be essential in developing a holistic approach to participatory design as a sustainable practice of social change. The dimensions foreground central aspects of participatory design research that are discussed in relation to a long-term project exploring design and digital fabrication technologies in Danish primary and secondary education.

Counter‐mapping data science

Counter‐mapping is a combination of critical ideas and practices for social change that offers a productive and promising approach for grassroots data science initiatives. Current information technologies collect, store, and analyze data with new degrees of size, speed, heterogeneity, and detail. While much work utilizing data science technologies is dedicated to generating profit or to national security, some data science projects explicitly attempt to facilitate new social relations, though with inconsistent results and consequences. This paper reviews counter‐mapping's particular combination of theory and practice as a potential point of reference for such initiatives. Counter‐mapping takes the tools of institutional map‐making at government agencies and corporations and applies them in situated, bottom‐up ways. Moreover, counter‐mapping's multiple theoretical approaches and polyglot practices offer a variety of inspirations and avenues for future work in identifying and realizing alternative, ideally better, possibilities. This paper defines counter‐mapping; outlines its multiple theorizations; briefly describes three relevant case studies, The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute, Mapping Police Violence, and the Counter‐Cartographies Collective; and concludes with a few hard‐learned considerations from counter‐mapping that are directly pertinent for data‐oriented projects focused on change.

Critical Scholarship and Responsible Practice of International Law. How Can the Two be Reconciled?

AbstractHow can I as an international lawyer, conscious that international law is deeply implicated in today's global injustices and that the course of history will not be changed by any grand legal design, practice law responsibly? Taking as a point of departure my own desire not to seek comfort in the formulation of a critique of law, but to aspire to a responsible practice, I consult two quite different bodies of work: first, critical theory of law and second, recent scholarship on international law that argues a practice guided by ethics may enhance the legitimacy of international law. I turn then to my own practice of international economic law focusing on my occasional role as legal expert on the so-called megaregionals the EU aims to conclude with Canada and the United States. I propose that the debate on international economic law lacks an investigation into the role of law in shaping political economy; that this lack can be explained by the compartmentalization of expertise which leads to justification gaps with respect to projects such as the megaregionals. One way lawyers can assume responsibility is to work on closing these gaps even if it means leaving the ‘inside’ of the legal discipline. Finally, I suggest that a responsible legal practice of social change might follow Roberto Unger's call for institutional imagination. Maybe I can satisfy my wish for a transformative practice by joining forces with friends in experimenting with institutions, hoping to build an alternative political economy.

Service Learning For Social Change: Raising Social Consciousness Among Sport Management Students

Recently, scholars of sport management have called for more research aimed at understanding how sport can be leveraged for social change. This interest has contributed to a burgeoning paradigm of sport management research and practice developed around using sport as a catalyst for broader human and community development. In order for sport practitioners to successfully develop, implement, and sustain these programs, integration of development-based theory and concepts are needed in sport management curricula. Service learning is one pedagogical approach for achieving this objective, and is well suited for promoting social change practices among students. This study assesses how participation in a sport-for-development (SFD) service learning project impacted the social consciousness and critical perspectives of sport management students. Results suggest the experience raised student’s awareness of community issues, developed a more holistic perspective on the role of service, and influenced their future careers.

‘Moral distress’ and the beginning practitioner: preparing social work students for ethical and moral challenges in contemporary contexts

ABSTRACTTranslating the social justice ideals of social work into practice can pose significant challenges for new social work graduates in contemporary contexts that are characterised by rationalism, individualism and control. This paper contributes to the debate on the place of activism in social work education by addressing the question of how social work education prepares students to manage ‘moral distress’ [Weinberg, M. 2009. “Moral Distress: A Missing but Relevant Concept for Ethics in Social Work.” Canadian Social Work Review 26 (2): 139–151; Fine, M., and E. Teram. 2013. “Overt and Covert Ways of Responding to Moral Injustices in Social Work Practice: Heroes and Mild-Mannered Social Work Bipeds.” British Journal of Social Work 43. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs056 ] and respond to social injustices that they may encounter in their work with individuals, families and communities. Drawing on our experiences as social work educators at an Australian and an Irish university, we examine how beginning practitioners negotiate the challenges, risks and moral dilemmas of social change practices across different organisational and policy contexts. We discuss three reoccurring themes as important for students as emerging practitioners: recognising risks, acknowledging moral ‘dissonance’ in a critically reflexive manner and understanding that all social work takes place in a policy context and therefore engaging with policy is a fundamental element of practice. Our analysis concludes that ideas and expositions of activism based on nuanced, flexible and opportunistic social change practices offer significant but realistic possibilities for engaged social work practice.

Social participation at the intersection of old age and lifelong disability: Illustrations from a Photo-Novel Project

•Participatory discourses on aging may conflict with experiences of aging and disability•The photo-novel represents innovative research and a community based practice of social change•Symbolic and environmental barriers can constrain the full participation of older people with disabilities•New stories locate older people with disabilities at the centre of participation•Collective narratives about participation can make policy and practices more relevant to diverse experiences

Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular AgeJohnFletcher. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

Preaching Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism a Secular Age John Fletcher. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.Fletcher Preaching Convert demonstrates a carefully, methodical, and extensively researched approach his examination of evangelical outreach efforts. As a historian trained to identify, categorize, and interpret evidence (11), he studies performances that aim change the (2). More than providing an intriguing new perspective on evangelicals, the author sets out on his own mission include evangelicals in the activist conversation the United States (4). He argues, qua activism should be included any conversations about the aims and methods of social change practices (4). He describes evangelicals as being nature (3), stating the simple point, Evangelicals evangelize. They seek converts (3). In doing so, they bring bear every tactic employed by activists the world over (3). Like the progressive left theater for social change, evangelicals grapple with exclusivistinclusivist tensions, proclaiming a straight-and-narrow message of salvation while, at the time, making the presentation as broadly inclusive as possible (5). They wrestle with the same problems, conundrums, and frustrations that confront activist performers relative facilitating worldview shifts people (3).Organizing his work into four sections of two chapters each, Fletcher presents key definitions and an overview of activist scholarship the first chapter. Abandoning any attempt define evangelicalism exact ways, he its movements through historical, sociological, and theological perspectives his second chapter. Chapters Three and Four address personal, kerygmatic (gospel of Christ) and meta-kerygmatic proclamation, the latter becoming more aggressive, confrontational, and persuasive. The third section (Chapters Five and Six) zooms large-scale.. .'theatrical' evangelism (9). Chapter Five explores walk-through dramas known as hell houses and judgment houses. Chapter Six examines Creation Museum, a multi-milliondo liar combination of science museum and discoveryfun-center based around a strictly young-earth creationist viewpoint (9). The final section (Chapters Seven and Eight) describes how weekend worship services have been re-imagined attract new members and concludes by looking at individual conversion ministries aimed help people with same-sex attractions (11).Preaching Convert critiques a progressive left the theater for social change that allows its inclusivity imperatives clash with the exclusivity of its value claims (4). Inclusivity calls for openness, tolerance, and plural deliberations, yet, ironically, the progressive left has excluded those who disagree with its singular notions of justice, quality, and empowerment, including evangelicals traditionally thought of as representing the oppression, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness that performance activists have work against (4). …

First Precepts for Democracy and Research Practices in Ethnic Studies

Recent discussions by leading scholars in interdisciplinary fields, notably cultural studies, suggest the limitations of critique for producing intelligent practices for social change and have called for thinking anew about the practices of intellectual labor. In this essay, I call attention to research methodology as a form of intellectual labor and examine the importance of explicit methodological and critical research practices in interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies. I suggest that method in ethnic studies, currently an admixture of conventions from disciplines adapted for interdisciplinary research, would be strengthened with a more holistic methodological framework. I explore the potential for a more holistic framework by drawing on the philosophical underpinnings, and not simply the technique, of participatory action research (PAR). I examine the pragmatist origins of PAR and explore the potential for drawing on three methodological precepts—iteration, collaboration, and reflections—which are highly resonant with ethnic studies scholars’ desired aims at transformative scholarship.

Reappropriating the City of Fear

Fear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Filmmakers, sociologists, artists, philosophers, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear is a way of life, the contemporary city is seen by many to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. But while fear is seen to be so politically significant, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article, I propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear. By taking social struggles as our starting point, the city of fear becomes recognizable as a platform for social action, a place for the elaboration of a theory and practice of social change, a staging ground for the reappropriation of the city.

Meaning-Making and Domestic Violence Victim Advocacy

Early domestic violence victim advocacy included survivor-defined, intersectional, and social change practices rooted in feminism. Yet, research specifically examining the ways that advocates identify with and make meaning of feminism, and the relationship of such meanings to advocates’ practices, is limited. Drawing from interviews with 26 domestic violence victim advocates, the interaction between feminist identity, ideology, and practices is examined. Findings indicated that advocates with feminist identities and ideologies held survivor-defined, social change, and intersectional approaches to advocacy. Nonfeminist advocates practiced survivor-defined advocacy, but did not maintain social change or intersectional practices. Implications for advocacy are provided.

Community Capacity Building and Sustainability: Outcomes of Community-Based Participatory Research

For communities, the value of community-based participatory research (CBPR) is often manifested in the outcomes of increased capacity and sustainable adoption of evidence-based practices for social change. Educational opportunities that promote discourse between community and academic partners can help to advance CBPR and better define these outcomes. This paper describes a community-academic conference to develop shared definitions of community capacity building and sustainability related to CBPR and to identify obstacles and facilitators to both. "Taking It to the Curbside: Engaging Communities to Create Sustainable Change for Health" was planned by five Clinical Translational Science Institutes and four community organizations. After a keynote presentation, breakout groups of community and academic members met to define community capacity building and sustainability, and to identify facilitators and barriers to achieving both. Groups were facilitated by researcher-community partner teams and conversations were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative analysis for thematic content was conducted by a subset of the planning committee. Important findings included learning that (1) the concepts of capacity and sustainability were considered interconnected; (2) partnership was perceived as both a facilitator and an outcome of CBPR; (3) sustainability was linked to "transfer of knowledge" from one generation to another within a community; and (4) capacity and sustainability were enhanced when goals were shared and health outcomes were achieved. Community capacity building and sustainability are key outcomes of CBPR for communities. Co-learning opportunities that engage and mutually educate both community members and academics can be useful strategies for identifying meaningful strategies to achieve these outcomes.

Apparent Critique: Inferences from a Benjaminian Sketch

Apparent CritiqueInferences from a Benjaminian Sketch Paul North (bio) [End Page 70] Not the critique we’re used to, not the transcendental or practical versions; closer to “transcritique” perhaps, although not exactly coincident with it1—apparent critique declines critical philosophy’s method, the proofing of foundations, ignores the judging critique of literary criticism that celebrates and damns works, operates unlike negative dialectics with its search for contradictions, and refuses mythologizing criticism with its apotheosis of genius . . . A slight shift in Walter Benjamin’s thinking about critique, after he handed in his doctoral dissertation, leads him toward this strange mode. He draws the outlines of apparent critique in a sketch from 1919, under the title “Theory of Art Critique.”2 A few years later he sets this short text into the third section of his celebrated essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, which itself develops important distinctions between modes of critique, while practicing a very different kind of literary criticism than Goethe scholars, and indeed anyone, save perhaps Friedrich Schlegel, had practiced to that point.3 The sketch, “Theory of Art Critique,” presents the concept of apparent critique, if in a highly condensed way and without naming it expressly “apparent critique.” In the sketch, which extends over two double-sided manuscript pages, Benjamin continues the “dispute about Kant” that he inaugurated by letter with Gershom Scholem in the winter of 1917, but he drives the issue beyond the emphasis on “reflection” that marked early German romanticism’s response to Kant and Fichte.4 Benjamin seems to be more interested in a pre-Kantian idealism, namely a Platonic one. The philosophical precursor to his theory of art critique is the Symposium, which he paraphrases at a crucial moment in the sketch. As a consequence of this shift after his dissertation, it is no longer “thought” or “mind” that intensifies in and by means of critique, but philosophical problems, and one in particular, the problem of philosophy’s mode of appearance, which Benjamin will identify as Schein, the fact of being purely and only apparent, what we could call apparance.5 The new kind of critique, apparent critique, does precisely the opposite of what philosophical critique is supposed to do. Instead of identifying and banishing apparent things from philosophy, this critical activity shows how apparance is in fact philosophy’s origin, its secret, and its central problem. The reference in the sketch to Plato is, in light of this activity, understandable. Critique . . . disappears. Apparent critique does too, but it does so explicitly, with a flourish. There is an expectation, in more traditional modes of critique, that the results of the critical work will last longer than the work itself. This expectation underlies the equivalence Karl Marx drew between critique and practice. Critique was, for the younger Marx, the practice of social change. In it a new social order was not just imagined or written about; it was also realized. Afterward there was no further need for critique, just as there was no further need for revolution. Both faded away. The critique of religion or of the German ideology comes to an end, but Germany and religion are transformed forever. This is an intoxicating idea, the production of permanence through finite, even fleeting activity. The idea of critique intoxicates us in this and other ways, without our always being able to say why. An image lights up, of a divine hand ceaselessly and perfectly sifting truth from illusion, never dallying in apparance. The sifting hand continued [End Page 71] to captivate Marx, and it certainly animated Kant’s purification of reason. In Kant’s case it was the illusion of knowledge, in Marx’s the inverted image in the camera obscura of ideology that had to be culled and jettisoned. An ageless method for a timeless result—critique’s sifting hand—although from a certain angle it can be seen as quite historical. It maneuvers within history, or more to the point, it makes phenomena “historical” by subtracting them from the present, relegating a previously active, seemingly necessary phenomenon to a dormant past. Traditionally speaking, critique puts phenomena to sleep. It determines this or that piece of knowledge or this or that...

Latina Re-Visionings of Participatory Health Promotion Practice: Cultural and Ecosystemic Perspectives Linking Personal and Social Change

This article presents Latina re-visionings of ecosystemic and participatory health promotion practice linking personal and social change in gender, culture, and politics of shared development. The authors, a Cuban-American clinical psychologist and a Chicana/Italian-American PhD student, apply transnational and multiracial frameworks informing strengths-based, collaborative practice connecting women's lived experiences of struggle and striving with resources promoting wellness and equity. We describe how massive workplace raids in New Bedford, MA required re-examining sociopolitical implications of our practice, expanding collaborations with Community-Based Organizations while making connections between politics of every day life, culturally meaningful gender justice, and practice of social change.

Arts-Based Critical Inquiry in Nursing and Interdisciplinary Professional Education

In this article, transformative educators are encouraged to use an arts-based critical inquiry approach within their diversity-sensitive teaching practice. Using a Socratic dialogue, the authors describe how guided imagery, images, narratives, and poetry have been useful in developing transformative insights in relation to spiritual/ecological values, sexual orientation, and culture in the context of nursing and interdisciplinary professional education. Arts-based approaches that incorporate constructivist dimensions can potentially stimulate critical inquiry in educational settings that can spark the thoughtful dialogue and passion needed for practitioners to engage in emancipatory practices for social change. The underlying adult learning theoretical frameworks for this teaching and learning dialogue are transformative learning and unlearning. Innovative arts-based and experiential approaches to diversity-sensitive teaching nurture the dynamic engagement and individual and collective reflection that fosters interpersonal understanding and hope for meaningful community connections and social change.