Progressive Social Movements Research Articles

European unions and the repoliticization of transnational capital: labor's stance regarding the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

This article argues that labor and social movements should repoliticize the transnationalization of capital in production and finance. The neoliberal era has demonstrated the power asymmetry between global capital and national labor. It seems that academics, trade unions, and progressive politicians have accepted this upscaling of capital to the global level as an irreversible fact that cannot be challenged. This article claims that progressive labor and social movements should, first, repoliticize the power of global capital and, second, try to scale down capital. The article studies three cases from the European Union to examine whether trade unions are trying to repoliticize, and succeeding in repoliticizing, global capital's power. It is concluded that repoliticizing and challenging the power of transnational capital is not impossible, but not easy either, and that trade unions need to focus more on these struggles.

Pan-Europe's Cosmopolitan Outsiders

The Habsburg monarchy has often been held up as a model of European multiethnic coexistence. Such nostalgia is lent a certain credibility by the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the monarchy's collapse, a Habsburg aristocrat, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, created the Pan-European Union, the most successful pre-1945 movement for European integration. Founded in 1923, the Union still exists today and its honorary president until his death in 2011 was Otto von Habsburg. This seems quite an illustrious pedigree, but the Pan-European Union actually had rather humble origins. The circles in which Coudenhove moved early in his career and those who inspired and supported his movement at its inception hailed from Viennese pacifist and progressive social reform movements. The significance of this formative environment has not been sufficiently explored. What, if anything, was Coudenhove's debt to his Viennese colleagues and predecessors?

Power Elitess Interests and Biased Social Science: 64 Years of Telling Kibbutz Half Truths

Critics find that major social scientists comply with domination by power elites. However, kibbutz research is a unique case: initial compliance was benign, aimed at helping a progressive social movement in crisis while missing/ignoring leaders’ pernicious self-perpetuation and their suppression of well-intended critical research. Uncritical functionalism became hegemonic and helped leaders’ autocratic self-perpetuation by a fake image of democracy and egalitarianism, evading members’ interest in exposing reality. In return, power elites helped functionalists’ academic success. The findings support above critics, pointing to the need for measures that will minimize self-serving selectiveness of survey researchers and chances of co-optation, as well as measures that will maximize chances for exposing such scientific failures.

The Little State That Couldn't Could? The Politics of "Single-Payer" Health Coverage in Vermont.

In May 2011, a year after the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Vermont became the first state to lay the groundwork for a single-payer health care system, known as Green Mountain Care. What can other states learn from the Vermont experience? This article summarizes the findings from interviews with nearly 120 stakeholders as part of a study to inform the design of the health reform legislation. Comparing Vermont's failed effort to adopt single-payer legislation in 1994 to present efforts, we find that Vermont faced similar challenges but greater opportunities in 2010 that enabled reform. A closely contested gubernatorial election and a progressive social movement opened a window of opportunity to advance legislation to design three comprehensive health reform options for legislative consideration. With a unified Democratic government under the leadership of a single-payer proponent, a high-profile policy proposal, and relatively weak opposition, a framework for a single-payer system was adopted by the legislature - though with many details and political battles to be fought in the future. Other states looking to reform their health systems more comprehensively than national reform can learn from Vermont's design and political strategy.

Public Sociology and the Rights of Citizenship in Brazil: Critical Assessment and Historical Perspectives

Public sociology is at the origin of the formation of the modern Brazilian sociological field. Between 1960 and 1970, at least two important institutions of sociological research (the Center for Labor and Industrial Sociology at the University of São Paulo, CESIT, and the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning, CEBRAP) developed the praxis characteristic of public sociology building up links with extra-academic audiences, in particular, radical trade unions and progressive social movements. The purpose of this presentation will be to reconstruct the theoretical and political links between theseexperiences in public sociology and the current engagement of the Center for the Study of Citizenship Rights (Cenedic), public sociology institute founded at the University of São Paulo in the 1990s by sociologist Francisco de Oliveira. Thus, we intend to debate some tensions between the academic research and social movements fighting for the rights of citizenship which resurfaced with unprecedented strength in Brazil in June 2013.

Visionary Hope

Visionary Hope

Campaign Entrepreneurs in Online Collective Action: GetUp! in Australia

In recent years, multi-issue, online campaigning organisations have emerged and mobilised citizens on, mostly, progressive issues. For example, MoveOn in the United States is a renowned leader in the field, and similar organisations now exist in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and at the transnational level. In Australia, GetUp!, with over 600,000 members, has become part of mainstream political debate, while also bringing a disruptive social movement approach to online citizen mobilisation. The role of leadership is underexplored in understanding how these organisations discursively construct their actions and successes. This paper argues that online campaigning organisations are increasingly blurring the line between social change, activist politics and the market, and that leaders play a key role in this process. It uses three points of empirical analysis to substantiate this argument. First, the active diffusion of hybrid political repertoires between online campaigning organisations in the USA and Australia consolidates GetUp! within a transnational ‘network forum’. It also demonstrates that that there is a distinct Australian political context based on the history of social democracy shaping progressive social movements and organisational relationships. Second, the career pathways of 23 GetUp! activist campaigners demonstrates the diffusion of personnel between these online campaigning organisations. Further, it highlights the shift some have made from progressive civil society to the creation of new entrepreneurial, market-facing, organisations. Third, qualitatively analysing how three high-profile GetUp! leaders have used both mainstream and social media to successfully promote their ‘story of self’ assists in the development of the concept of ‘campaign entrepreneurs’.

The Gülen Movement, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama: Progressive Islamic Thought, Religious Philanthropy and Civil Society in Turkey and Indonesia

This article looks at three Islamic movements, two (Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah) almost exclusively contained within Indonesia and the third (the Gülen movement, known amongst those associated with it as the hizmet or “service”) originating in Turkey but now global in its extent. These movements are Islamically inspired and generally described as Islamic social movements, but much of their activity is concerned with the provision of social services, particularly education, and all three run extensive school systems. It is often insufficiently understood that these school systems are committed to teaching modern curricula in a secular fashion. Although these movements are very concerned with the development of character and the promotion of morality, and may be described as socially conservative, they are essentially progressive social movements, looking to the future with confidence and at plural society around them with an optimism that their understanding of Islam can thrive in modern society. The hizmet and NU share a similar traditional Sunni approach, strongly imbued with a Sufi sensibility, whereas Muhammadiyah is inspired by Islamic modernism. The hizmet, seen from an Indonesian perspective, combines the modern organizational competency of Muhammadiyah and the spirituality of the NU. All three movements share similarities with Western philanthropic religious movements committed to providing high-quality education.

Islam, Sexuality, and the “War on Terror”

This paper explores the reasons why, in the aftermath of 9/11, the interests of Muslim women and Muslim gays have become the civilizing mission in the “war on terror.” In critically examining how pervasive American and European notions of patriotism, liberalism, secularism, and freedom have been couched within the discourseof sexual rights, I explain why this new politics of belonging is inseparable from the new politics of exclusion. This shift has had consequences for progressive social movements. Whereas in social and cultural analysis nationalism has long been associated with male dominance, sexual control, and heteronormativity, certain articulations of feminism and lesbian/gay liberation are now intimately linked with the reinforcement of ethno-cultural boundaries within the western framework. A required allegiance to sexual liberties and rights has been employed as a technology of control and exclusion – what Joan Scott calls a “politics of sexclusion.” This paper elucidates how Muslim gays are joining Muslim women, whose “liberation,” as postcolonial feminists have long argued, has traditionally been used to justify imperialism. I conclude by discussing bodies as a site for the materialization of power and resistance, as related to Luce Irigaray’s notion of an “ethics of sexual difference,” in an attempt to provide the phenomenological conditions of an “alternative space” in which the Muslim as “other” can be heard. The critical role of such a methodology is not to restore a lost historical and obliterated native, but to let her emerge in her difference. This ontology studies the varying ontic meanings of a localized phenomenon, their constitution as different realities and objectivities (i.e., as entities, occurrences, processes, events, (and facts), to shift our focus from identifying the Muslim other to asking “How do we experience the Muslim other as ‘other’?”

Islam, Sexuality, and the “War on Terror”

This paper explores the reasons why, in the aftermath of 9/11, the interests of Muslim women and Muslim gays have become the civilizing mission in the “war on terror.” In critically examining how pervasive American and European notions of patriotism, liberalism, secularism, and freedom have been couched within the discourseof sexual rights, I explain why this new politics of belonging is inseparable from the new politics of exclusion. This shift has had consequences for progressive social movements. Whereas in social and cultural analysis nationalism has long been associated with male dominance, sexual control, and heteronormativity, certain articulations of feminism and lesbian/gay liberation are now intimately linked with the reinforcement of ethno-cultural boundaries within the western framework. A required allegiance to sexual liberties and rights has been employed as a technology of control and exclusion – what Joan Scott calls a “politics of sexclusion.” This paper elucidates how Muslim gays are joining Muslim women, whose “liberation,” as postcolonial feminists have long argued, has traditionally been used to justify imperialism. I conclude by discussing bodies as a site for the materialization of power and resistance, as related to Luce Irigaray’s notion of an “ethics of sexual difference,” in an attempt to provide the phenomenological conditions of an “alternative space” in which the Muslim as “other” can be heard. The critical role of such a methodology is not to restore a lost historical and obliterated native, but to let her emerge in her difference. This ontology studies the varying ontic meanings of a localized phenomenon, their constitution as different realities and objectivities (i.e., as entities, occurrences, processes, events, (and facts), to shift our focus from identifying the Muslim other to asking “How do we experience the Muslim other as ‘other’?”

The Politics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research in South Korea: Contesting National Sociotechnical Imaginaries

To many commentators outside South Korea, the Hwang Woo Suk scandal involving human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research was just another spectacular case of misconduct in the life sciences. As such, it is generally assumed to have revealed the drawbacks of research in scientifically and ethically less-developed societies. Such thinking ignores the history, sophistication, and distinctive features of the public debate over hESC research in South Korea. Disputes over the social and ethical implications of hESC research had taken place for some time before the scandal erupted. Moreover, unlike in some other countries, where resistance to hESC research was prompted by religious conservatives, the most serious critique of the country's rapid move into the field came from progressive social movement activists—including feminists and environmentalists. These activists were, in fact, part of the non-governmental organization coalition to impose stricter social controls on biotechnology. This campaign was motivated by broader political and social concerns beyond specific biosafety or bioethical issues. The activists involved in the coalition feared that the capitalist–developmentalist drive toward biotechnology would threaten the public interest and democracy, and ultimately block South Korea's road to becoming a democratic nation founded on the values of social justice, equality, participation, and sustainability. In contesting South Korea's prevailing approaches to hESC research, they challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, the dominant ‘national sociotechnical imaginary’ that articulates the role of science and technology in relation to the future survival and well-being of the nation primarily in terms of its industrial competitiveness.

The Historical Importance of Social Justice in the Founding of the National Career Development Association

The authors discuss the role of social justice in the founding of the National Career Development Association (NCDA). They discuss the historic context of the founding, the social justice work of the pioneers of vocational guidance, and the social justice influences that permeate the fabric of NCDA even today.

Local Solutions to Inequality: Steps Toward Fostering a Progressive Social Movement

AbstractOver the past four decades, inequality of income, wealth, and power have become increasingly extreme in the United States. The triumph of a neoliberal agenda to reduce taxes, deregulate the economy, and promote international trade has undermined the economic status of the middle class, increased poverty, and led to a concentration of wealth. This nation has gone through such periods before, followed by progressive movements that have realigned economic and political forces. I argue that we may be at a point where a new progressive social movement is about to emerge and I point out several areas where rural sociologists are working, such as local food systems, that reflect a reorientation of social values supporting such a movement. Promoting local food systems and similar locality‐based enterprises can foster economic relationships embedded in multistranded social relationships and contribute to progressive change through reducing the central role of large corporations in our daily lives. Building on Busch's (1999) concept of Leviathan, I identify the roles of researchers and community activists in which rural sociologists can work to democratize social, economic, and political relationships in society.

The Parody of the Commons

This essay builds on the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive social movements. We use theory and examples to claim that peer-to-peer economic relations can be undermined in the long run, distorted by the extra-economic means of a political context designed to maintain profit-driven relations of production into power. This subversion can arguably become a state policy, and the subsequent outcome is the full absorption of the Commons as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer relations into the dominant mode of production. To tackle this threat, we argue in favour of a certain working agenda for Commons-based communities. Such an agenda should aim the enforcement of the circulation of the Commons. Therefore, any useful social transformation will be meaningful if the people themselves decide and apply policies for their own benefit, optimally with the support of a sovereign partner state. If peer production is to become dominant, it has to control capital accumulation with the aim to marginalise and eventually transcend capitalism.

The Parody of the Commons

This essay builds on the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive social movements. We use theory and examples to claim that peer-to-peer economic relations can be undermined in the long run, distorted by the extra-economic means of a political context designed to maintain profit-driven relations of production into power. This subversion can arguably become a state policy, and the subsequent outcome is the full absorption of the Commons as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer relations into the dominant mode of production. To tackle this threat, we argue in favour of a certain working agenda for Commons-based communities. Such an agenda should aim the enforcement of the circulation of the Commons. Therefore, any useful social transformation will be meaningful if the people themselves decide and apply policies for their own benefit, optimally with the support of a sovereign partner state. If peer production is to become dominant, it has to control capital accumulation with the aim to marginalise and eventually transcend capitalism.

Youth and Social Movements: Key Lessons for Allies

As a part of its collaboration with the Born This Way Foundation, the Berkman Center is publishing on this website a series of papers that synthesize existing peer-reviewed research or equivalent scholarship and provide research-grounded insight to the variety of stakeholders working on issues related to youth empowerment and action towards creating a kinder, braver world. This series, called the The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (danah boyd, John Palfrey, and Dena Sacco, editors), is presented by the Born This Way Foundation & the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This set of papers involves topics related to the Role of Youth Organizations and Youth Movements for Social Change.Young people are often key actors in powerful social movements that transform the course of human history. Indeed, youth have been deeply important to every progressive social movement, including the United States Civil Rights movement, the transnational LGBTQ movement, successive waves of feminism, environmentalism and environmental justice, the labor, antiwar, and immigrant rights movements, and more. In each of these cases, young people took part in many ways, including through the appropriation of the “new media” tools of their time, which they used to create, circulate, and amplify movement voices and stories. Yet today, youth are often framed in the mass media as, at best, apathetic, disengaged, and removed from civic action. At worst, youth (in the U.S., particularly youth of color) are subject to growing repression: increased surveillance, heightened policing, stop-and-frisk policies on the streets, overbroad gang injunctions, and spiraling rates of juvenile incarceration. In this short article, I argue that we have much to learn from young people who are already engaged in mobilizing their peers, families, and communities towards positive social transformation. I discuss key challenges, and provide recommendations for educators and adult allies of youth movements.

Citizen weeks or the psychologizing of citizenship.

Arland Deyett Weeks (1871-1936) was an American educator and social reformer who published The Psychology of Citizenship in 1917 with the intention of compiling the psychological, psychobiological, and psychosocial knowledge needed for governing modern democratic Western industrialized societies, as well as offering suggestions for intervention and social reform in the educational, legal, and occupational domains. His point of view can be placed within the progressive social and intellectual movement that characterized the policies of the United States in the first decade of the 20th century. His sociopolitical ideas were fed by transcendental and pragmatic sources, especially with respect to the way of dealing with tension between the individual and the collective. Modern psychological techniques (occupational, educational, legal psychology, etc.) nourished his reform program. In this article, we contextualize Weeks's book within these ideas and show its historical significance in the sociocultural and intellectual context that gave it meaning.

The World Social Forum: Another World Might Be Possible

First, I briefly examine the genesis of debate to define the World Social Forum (WSF) as a contributor to the global justice movement (GJM), since its emergence in Brazil in 2001. I then consider Geoffrey Pleyers' argument identifying a central tension within the WSF, and the GJM in general, between actors seeking to achieve non-domination by expressing anti-power subjectivity and those for whom the path to non-domination lay in strategising and designing counter-powers. Describing what transpired at WSF Dakar 2011and debates since, I question Pleyers' classificatory schema as leading to an unhelpful essentialism. That is, identifying a ‘two paths’ ideal-type and setting out to locate it in the world serves to legitimise one ‘tendency’ of progressive social movements. By contrast with Pleyers' evenly balanced approach—treating of each ‘path’ as possessing the same positive and negative qualities, rather than as qualitatively different moments in the practice of opposing domination—I find that what he calls ‘the path of subjectivity’ might rather be understood as the product of a certain lack of appreciation of the nature of the demands that opposing political tyranny places upon particpants in an organisation or movement.

"Któż tam będzie wisiał?" – Bunt chłopski w miejskiej wyobraźni

“Who’s going to dangle there?” – Peasant revolt in urban imagination. On the Gore album by R.U.T.A. and on its receptionThe author presents a review of a recent album “Gore: Songs of Rebellion and Misery from 16th to 20th Century” by a Polish punk rock / hardcore group R.U.T.A. The album, which combines traditional peasant lyrics with modern arrangements and folk instruments, has received acclaim from both fans and critics, while the band declared their commitment to struggles of contemporary progressive social movements. The author analyses the lyrics situating his reflection in sociological-historical framework to discuss realities of peasants’ lives and revolts during the second serfdom in early modern Poland. The author interprets the musical form of the songs as “punk-rock assimilation” of folklore themes. The final section contains critical reflection on the album’s marketing strategy and reception with the key dissected categories being “rebellion” and “authenticity.”

Agonizing over engagement: SEA and the “death of environmentalism” debates

Social and environmental accounting (SEA) is currently going through a period of critical self-analysis. Fundamental questions are being raised about how SEA should be defined, who should be doing the defining, and if, how and whom it should engage. We attempt to enrich these debates by drawing on the political philosophy of agonistic pluralism and a set of debates about engagement within the environmental movement – “the death of environmentalism” debates. We set forth the “Death” debates and, in doing so, contextualize and theorize the contested nature of SEA engagement using agonistic pluralism. In contrast to consensually oriented approaches to SEA, the desired outcome is not necessarily resolution of ideological differences but to imagine, develop, and support democratic processes wherein these differences can be recognized and engaged. We construe the “Death” debates as illustrative of the contestable practical and political issues facing both SEA and progressive social movements generally, demonstrating the range of deliberations necessary in contemplating effective engagement programs. The SEA community, and civil society groups, can benefit from the more overtly political perspective provided by agonistic pluralism. By surfacing and engaging with various antagonisms in this wider civic sphere, SEA can more effectively respond to, and move beyond, traditional politically conservative, managerialist discourses.