Radical Social Movements Research Articles

Political Activism in the 2010s - The Case for Gender - A Case Study of Mamabake

For decades, feminists have sought to broaden the definition of what counts as 'political', with the premise being that the definition of political participation, as well as where it should take place, are gendered. Whilst this research has shown that there are observable gender differences within the participatory framework, with women's activism often being more network-oriented, issue based, and taking place outside the formal public forums, the role of gender is largely absent from the political participation literature outside the feminist framework. Such omission, while not necessarily intentional, has left significant gaps in the theories about the purported decline in political participation, and also the studies of new forms of political participation which have challenged the mainstream assumptions by developing alternative participation frameworks. This paper uses, MamaBake, an Australian social movement group, as a case study to examine the role that gender plays in new participatory communities and argues that in theorising modern activism, the notion of gender must be explicitly included in order to further our understanding of current political activity.

Subterranean Currents: Research and the Radical Imagination in the Age of Austerity

Against a backdrop of austerity, securitization, and the rampant enclosure of public spaces and democratic processes including the university and scholarship, this article critically explores what prefigurative engaged research – research capable of not simply documenting what is but contributing to struggles for social justice and social change – might look like, what it can contribute, and what its limitations are. Beyond familiar calls for a “public” or “applied” social science and drawing on a two-year-long project focused on radical social movements and the radical imagination in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, this article explores what politically-engaged social science research might offer to social justice struggles aiming to construct a more just, democratic, dignified, liberated, and peaceful world.

Towards a libertarian turn? Notes on the past and future of radical urban research and praxis

Marxists have always tried to present the history of the workers' movement as if it were the history of Marxist organising efforts, and the history of critical ideas as if it were the history of Marxist thought; consequently, the crisis of Marxism has been presented as a crisis of radical thought as such. However, new radical social movements and thinkers have appeared during the last two decades - and a libertarian flavour is a common feature of many of these movements and thinkers. It would be wrong to exaggerate the contemporary role of libertarian thought and praxis, as some of them still present Marxist discursive or even practical elements; that is to say, some of them are more or less ‘hybrid.’ But it would be equally wrong to deny the relevance of a clear, present-day resurgence of libertarian ideas and ideals. The scenario of a widespread ‘libertarian turn’ similar to the ‘radical [≈ Marxist] turn’ of the 1970s is for several reasons unlikely. Nonetheless, considering some current trends, the hypothesis of a ‘mid-ranged’ or ‘partial’ libertarian turn is totally plausible. In fact, my hypothesis is that such a ‘libertarian turn’ is already ongoing. How can socio-spatial research in general, and urban studies in particular, help us understand (and perhaps inspire or at least support) the (re)new(ed) forms of insurgent praxis and thinking we have witnessed in the last two decades? And to what extent will the libertarians (activists, academics and scholars-activists) be able to explore and use the currently existing room for manoeuvre?

Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Émile Zola by Eduardo A. Febles (review)

Reviewed by: Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Émile Zola by Eduardo A. Febles Daryl Lee Eduardo A. Febles. Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Émile Zola. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, coll. “Faux titre”, 2010. 198 pp. Terrorism is a byword these days. It is helpful, then, to put the concept into perspective both historically and in terms of cultural production. Eduardo Febles does this skillfully in Explosive Narratives, by analyzing the “literary function” of the forgotten terrorist figure of the Belle Époque anarchist in three of Zola’s novels, Germinal (1885), Paris (1898) and Travail (1901). Febles selected these novels as representative anchor pieces from each of Zola’s long-term, multi-volume series—Les Rougon-Macquart, Les Trois Villes, and Les Quatre Evangiles. They therefore form a “coherent trilogy” for tracking the naturalist’s “evolving views” (21) on anarchism. The conceptual premises of Explosive Narratives are that “the discourse on terror functions symbolically within a given social structure” (11)—in this case, Third Republic France; that naturalism’s inclinations are “entropic,” a framework opened up by David Baguley’s work on that particular “vision” of naturalism; and that anarchy, by definition an unwilling participant in realist representation, challenges naturalist aesthetics. Methodologically, Febles pursues meticulous readings of the novels as they are interwoven with dialogue and indirect discourse that embed Zola’s changing views on anarchism; there is [End Page 212] also a hint of genetic criticism where Febles introduces to good effect elements from Zola’s correspondence, preparatory notes and drafts in order to further disclose the novelist’s changing views on anarchism as he composed these novels. Febles argues that Zola, in three different ways, calls upon and then purges anarchism of its radical thrust. Explosive Narratives will thus be of interest to specialists of Emile Zola and Belle Époque France, to be sure, but will also appeal to those interested in radical social and political movements, as well as to those drawn by the relationship between politics and aesthetics, particularly as they apply to anarchy in art and literature. Carefully following more than two decades of Zola scholarship, Febles traces the fault lines that trouble Zola’s treatment of anarchism. If Zola cannot be held responsible for his wariness regarding what he perceives to be anarchy’s violent means, Febles demonstrates how Zola is nevertheless liable for misrepresenting, diluting and ultimately erasing anarchism as a political phenomenon of Third Republic France, after having exploited and then absorbed its allure into an alternative anti-bourgeois stance in his novels. Chapter 1, “Souvarine’s Vanishing Act,” traces the figure of this anarchist character in Germinal, the first instance of Zola’s “effacement of anarchy” in his novels (36). It becomes clear that the novel suffers from its anachronistic depiction of anarchy, as well as from watered-down, popularizing and stereotyped versions of anarchism and socialism. Zola’s ambivalence about both the utility and violence of anarchism leads not simply to the dismissal of the social movement, but to a strange smothering of it, as if he could have it both ways—playing up the radicalism of anarchism in parallel to his critique of bourgeois existence and social inequities, without adopting its most extreme tenets. Significantly, Febles attends to formal concerns, exploring for example how a naturalist mode of description positions itself complicitly in a stable, controlling point of view akin to the very bourgeois order Zola pretends to unmask (44). In addition, the moral authority of Souvarine, the anarchist anti-hero and “misanthrope” (49), is “undermined”; but so too, Febles argues, is an entropic depiction of the Voreux mine’s destruction, a depiction in which elements of the fantastic stretch the limits of narrative stability and undermine realism (58–61). Ultimately, several literary strategies in Germinal spin out of control and erode any of the author’s ideological sympathy for anarchism’s cri de coeur. In Chapter 2, “Anarchy as Narrative Capital,” Febles’s sustained reading of Paris, the climax to Les Trois Villes, provides a healthy update and sets a new standard for readings of this novel. Paris is the intermediate step toward the utopian register of Travail, yet as...

Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification

Research on racial/ethnic categorization provides insight on how broad processes, such as migration trends or political shifts, precede the establishment of new categories, but does not detail the struggles and compromises that emerge between state and non-state actors. As a result, we know little about why new census categories are defined in certain ways or how they become legitimated. This article addresses this gap by using an organizational lens to reconstruct how the Hispanic category emerged in the United States. I demonstrate that categories can become institutionalized through a two-stage process as state actors and ethnic entrepreneurs (1) negotiate a classification’s definition and (2) work together to popularize the category. I argue that cross-field effects undergird these stages—movements toward developing a new category within state agencies are reinforced by similar classification efforts occurring among social movement groups and media firms, and vice versa. I identify three organizational mechanisms that sustained these effects in the Hispanic case: the development of boundary-spanning networks between state and non-state actors, the transposition of resources across fields, and the use of analogy and ambiguity as cognitive tools to describe and legitimate the new category. I discuss the theoretical merits of incorporating organizational analysis, especially the concept of cross-field effects, into the study of racial/ethnic classification.

Tea and Sympathy: The Tea Party Movement and Republican Precommitment to Radical Conservatism in the 2011 Debt-Limit Crisis

We examine an increasingly common political tactic: the self-binding pledge whereby lawmakers assure a constituency, social movement, or interest group that they will take a particular position on an upcoming vote or policy issue. An empirical analysis of novel data on the 2011 debt-limit crisis shows that pre-commitment by legislators to the Tea Party's "Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge" was the joint product of grassroots pressure and ideological sympathy. Highly conser-vative early pledgers opposed fiscal compromise that fell short of the Tea Party's position, while a number of less conservative later signers reneged by voting for the Budget Control Act that resolved the debt-limit crisis. The case of the pledge sug-gests that social movements are well positioned to collaborate with true believing insiders to promote policy change but have difficulty persuading fence sitters to take their side.

Proliferating Cripistemologies

How might "cripistemologies" work? Without assuming in advance that we know what such ways of knowing might be, we have gathered in this roundtable a range of queer, trans, feminist, disability, and critical race theorists—namely, Lennard Davis, David Serlin, Emma Kivisild, Jennifer Nash, Jack Halberstam, Margaret Price, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Jasbir K. Puar, Susan Schweik, Jennifer James, Lisa Duggan, and Carrie Sandahl—to meditate collectively on what those ways of knowing do. How, when, where, and why do queer, feminist, and disability epistemologies converge? What does it mean, in our own moment or historically, to respond to impairment (of body, mind, even behavior) in queer, feminist, or crip ways? If radical social movements of the last four decades have (expansively, even promiscuously) put bodies in motion, in what ways has neoliberal capitalism usurped, contained, or domesticated those bodies? How might that containment or domestication be cripped? What tensions or torsions exist among various cripistemologies? Are certain forms of queer (anti)sociality, for instance, in discord with interdependency as it has been imagined and materialized by feminist disability studies? Are there crip positions, embodiments, or moments of pain or pleasure that necessarily exceed the (compulsory?) identities or identifications of rights-based movements?

Reproductive Justice

The authors examine the development of reproductive rights, a law-focused movement, and reproductive justice, a social justice–aimed movement that emphasizes intersecting social identities (e.g., gender, race, and class) and community-developed solutions to structural inequalities. In examining the intertwining histories of the reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice movements, we consider the relationship between law and social movements, including the limits of law to inform radical social movements. We highlight how the relationship between scholarship and activism on the right to not have children has expanded to include notions of the right to have children (e.g., for low-income people or with the aid of technology) and the right to parent with dignity (e.g., for incarcerated people or in nonmedicalized settings). We end the article with a discussion of best practices and future directions for research.

The Dramatization of Beliefs, Values, and Allegiances: Ideological Performances Among Social Movement Groups and Religious Organizations

The recent ‘performative turn’ in sociology has meant a renewed interest in the dramaturgical aspects of social life. This has appeared in the literature on social movements as a concern with the performance of opposition, usually within public protest events. This focus on performance as a tactic to be used in public displays of meaning by political actors misses how social performance is woven into our everyday lives. This paper presents a review of relevant literature towards the end of creating a theoretical concept, the ‘ideological performance,’ which presents a more holistic approach to understanding performativity within social movements, both publicly and privately. I suggest that this concept provides a useful lens through which to look at the formation and maintenance of collective identity at the level of interaction. To demonstrate this theoretical concept, I apply it to qualitative data collected on religious organizations that conduct social justice work as well as participant observation among Global Justice Movement activists in Chicago, IL. I conclude that members of the groups I observed use various cultural elements, including humor, boundary objects, understandings of the audience, language, and style, both consciously and unconsciously, to enact their ideological performances, situating performers and audiences within meaning systems and formulating collective identities.

How Do Squatters Deal with the State? Legalization and Anomalous Institutionalization in Madrid

AbstractRadical and autonomous urban movements like the European squatters' movement tend to resist integration into the institutions of the state, although particular legal and political conditions in each country or city may significantly alter this tendency. In this article, I examine the controversial issue of ‘institutionalization’ among squatters, focusing on the few cases of legalized squats (social centres) in the city of Madrid. Negotiations with the state authorities and processes of legalization are the major forms of institutionalization involving squatters. However, an anomalous kind of institutionalization also emerges once squats, whether legalized or not, become consolidated and socially accepted. For squatting to have a successful impact, then, depends on both the type of autonomy achieved by squatters and the different outcomes of the processes of institutionalization. The case of Madrid provides empirical evidence that: (1) negotiations with state authorities were very frequent among squatters, but most were defensive; (2) the few cases of legalization were due to specific conditions such as the urban centrality of the squats, single‐issue identities, social network solidarity, favourable media coverage, formal organizations working as facilitators and the squatters' leadership of the process. Furthermore, legalized squats in Madrid preserved a high degree of autonomy, self‐management and ties to other radical social movements. In conclusion, both the legalized squats and the squatters' movement in Madrid as a whole, avoided ‘terminal institutionalization’ and, instead, gave shape to a ‘flexible’ one.

Contemporary Crisis Across Europe and the Crisis of Regional Development Theories

Hadjimichalis C. and Hudson R. Contemporary crisis across Europe and the crisis of regional development theories, Regional Studies. This paper explores the prima facie puzzling issue of why so much contemporary theory in economic geography and regional planning – specifically New Economic Geography (NEG) and New Regionalism (NR) – has so little to say about the causes of the current post-2007 crisis and its geography globally and in Europe. It is argued here that this reflects its obsession with the regional ‘success stories’ of the 1970s and 1980s, its failure to appreciate the onset of crisis and the reasons for it in these regions in the 1990s, and its failure to appreciate the nature of capitalism as a crisis prone social system of combined and uneven development. Thus, the current economic crisis pushed dominant regional development theories into a homologous deep theoretical crisis. It is concluded that the time is ripe for a paradigm shift in theory and that this should involve a reconsideration of earlier theoretical approaches that fell out of fashion for a variety of intellectual and political reasons and of current radical social movements.

Pretense, Putdowns, and Missing Identities in Activists’ Class Talk

Americans are noted for not talking about social class. Does the same hold true for progressive group members? A study of 25 U.S. social movement organizations found that two class categories of progressive activists avoided explicit talk of class and, when asked about class identity, resisted the question or garbled their answers. First, lifelong working-class and poor activists (those lacking college degrees and professional/managerial jobs in both the current and the prior generation) were less likely to use conventional class terms. Second, voluntarily downwardly mobile activists (college graduates raised by professional parents who had chosen to work part-time jobs or no jobs to free up time for activism or to enact environmental or antimaterialist values) tended to equate themselves with involuntarily low-income people, misrecognizing their higher cultural capital. In the absence of clear, open class identities within activist groups, distorted class talk filled the vacuum. Falsely posing as working class sometimes conferred status. References to class and race privilege were sometimes used as insults. When the bottom half of the 99 percent do not name their class identity, and when some class-privileged activists deny their cultural capital, such missing class identities may harm the development of group cohesion in social movement groups.

From Streets and Squares to Radical Political Emancipation? Resistance Lessons from Athens during the Crisis

The current crisis with imposed austerity measures hit Greece in 2009. People in large cities such as Athens were the first victims. Resistance took various forms including mobilizations and fights in the streets and squares of Athens. Although to some extent spontaneous in the beginning, these mobilizations were not without political preparation (at least for some participants) and this partially explains both their intensity and stability and the violent police reaction. Resistance and anti-austerity mobilizations were outcomes of non-politicized people coming together with various more organized political forces, such as unions, non-unionized temporary workers, anti-racist and anti-global movements, members of the European Social Forum-Greek section, small leftist and anarchist groups, plus larger political parties of the left such as SYRIZA, which succeeded in forming a wider radical alliance. In this alliance the role of radical social movements, including urban movements, has been decisive. During the past 10 to 15 years dozens of urban grass-roots movements emerged in the Athens metropolitan region. Partly as a response to projects related to the 2004 Olympic Games, and partly in response to chronic socio-spatial inequalities and injustices in various neighborhoods, these movements were radical in nature, multi-class in social base and quite militant in terms of tactics. And since 2009, the crisis acted as catalyst, and radical social movements made the crucial link between sectoral/local struggles and those arising from wider socio-spatial contradictions and injustices aiming at political change. The paper critically evaluates these events, putting them in theoretical and comparative perspective, trying to understand the limits and the lessons-so-far from such an experience and asks whether they point to a wider radical political emancipation.

Popular education and the ‘party line’

Popular education, by which is meant adult education within and in support of radical social movements, has become a major topic in academic adult education in recent times. This paper criticises the lack of attention paid in most of this writing to the history, theory and practice of revolutionary parties in the communist and socialist tradition. Through an exploration of the concept of the ‘party line’, it is argued that this neglect has led to a one-sided view of the relationship between education and action, a view which must be overcome for popular education to become an effective force for socialist transformation.

Feminist contributions, challenges and claims

abstract This Article highlights key contributions of second wave feminism, arguing that these are of relevance today, as we struggle to deal with questions of social justice within a context of increasing poverty and inequality. I look at feminist understandings of expanded social justice which highlighted crucial links between the economic, political and the cultural, and which stressed that the personal was political. I look at feminist strategies which stressed women's agency and the need for separate women's movements even as feminist women challenged men alongside whom they worked in trade unions, liberation movements and radical social movements. I look at how feminist struggles have fragmented over the decades alongside an increasing hegemony of economic and political neoliberalism, and the demobilisation of emancipatory movements. While women made gains within state institutions and the United Nations (UN) system in the 1990s, alongside these gains was the co-option and depoliticisation of feminist concepts forged in the throes of struggle of the earlier decades. Women's agency too came under threat and was challenged as men's movements came to be promoted as vehicles for gender equality. I argue that while men can play a vital role in struggles for gender equality it is women's movements that need to be advanced and supported as key actors in repoliticising feminism today.

Radical Islamic Parties and Movements in Uzbekistan 1990–2012

Uzbekistan, so as other Central Asian Republics, turned into turbulent times in the beginning of 1990’s. After collapsing USSR, 5 Republics gained its independence. The whole region was very well-known from its religiosity. However, besides the fact that Islamist movements and parties were banned on any political activity and had no right to act as an opposition within the system of Uzbekistan, they have emerged subsequently especiallly in this country. The modern history of Uzbekistan is full of radical Islamic political and social movements. From the very beginning of the Republic, Islam Karimov, its first and the only one till now president, rules though and solidly. He was the biggest opponent of any Islamic initiative which showed up and tried to damp it down immediately. The aim of this study is to explore all the Islamist parties and movements which have been raised in Uzbekistan between 1990 and 2012. Which of them were and still remaining crucial and have the impact on Uzbek political and social life. The Author is trying to investigate the reasons and circumstances that led Islamist movements to arise and effectively influence on Uzbekistan political arena.

Fair Trade: Social regulation in global food markets

This article analyzes the theoretical and empirical parameters of social regulation in contemporary global food markets, focusing on the rapidly expanding Fair Trade initiative. Fair Trade seeks to transform North/South relations by fostering ethical consumption, producer empowerment, and certified commodity sales. This initiative joins an array of labor and environmental standard and certification systems which are often conceptualized as “private regulations” since they depend on the voluntary participation of firms. I argue that these new institutional arrangements are better understood as “social regulations” since they operate beyond the traditional bounds of private and public (corporate and state) domains and are animated by individual and collective actors. In the case of Fair Trade, I illuminate how relational and civic values are embedded in economic practices and institutions and how new quality assessments are promoted as much by social movement groups and loosely aligned consumers and producers as they are by market forces. This initiative's recent commercial success has deepened price competition and buyer control and eroded its traditional peasant base, yet it has simultaneously created new openings for progressive politics. The study reveals the complex and contested nature of social regulation in the global food market as movement efforts move beyond critique to institution building.

Social Movement Audiences1

Audiences are important to social movements, but the relationships between social movements and their audiences are not well understood. This article uses scholarship from performance studies, especially ideas of audiences as constructed, meaningful, and influenced/influential, to explore two issues. First, how do social movements define their audiences? Second, how are social movement actions toward their audiences shaped by these definitions? Analysis of longitudinal data on two social movement groups in Pittsburgh from 2003 to 2007 shows that social movements variously interpret the nature and role of their audiences and that these interpretations affect their strategies and goals, sometimes quite radically. The conclusion explores how attention to audiences can augment scholarship on the relational, iterative, interpretive, and reflexive aspects of social movements.

Queering Utopia: Deep Lez and the Future of Hope

Unca Trans sits on tree stump in the midst of viridescent Ontario field. Legs crossed, occasionally tugging at his beard, he narrates his return to the land and the agrarian revival of the 2020s. Cloud shadows pass in accelerated time and Unca Trans fidgets in his stop-animation puppetry as he describes the radical social movements of the early 2000s and how, following the success of First Nations' land claims in 20 15, he left the comfort of his urban genderqueer enclave to take over his family's farm and organize rural communities around issues of food justice and transgender health advocacy. 'Unca Trans' short film - just over five minutes, produced by Allyson Mitchell and Christina Zeidler - appears to present day audiences as Utopian fragment, at once remembering of better future and an insistence on the radical potential of our contemporary moment. film was produced in 2007, though the clip we are shown is identified through opening text as segment of recordings recently discovered in the collections held in the archives of the Canadian National Library, June 2077. interview with Unca Trans is said to have taken place in 2045 when a documentary film crew interviewed people involved in the major social upheavals that occurred at the beginning of the 21st century (Mitchell and Zeidler 2007). For its 2012 viewers, the film shows the discovery of ghost from time that has not yet come - an appearance that calls our attention to the possibilities comprising our present.When first introducing Unca Trans to multigenerational room at the Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 1970s conference in 2010, 1 experienced an utter collapse of such present possibility. I found myself in the wreckage of social movements, far from the interlocking feminist concerns of land rights, gender and health justice. In the two panel presentations before mine - on the erotic nature of archival historiography and rereading of Stone Butch Blues - several women had stormed out of the room, each declaring loudly that such academic language was antifeminist and that the younger generation was apolitical and once yelling, 'Nonconsensual phallus!' when an image of dildo was presented in slide.1 We were the first panel after heated plenary that had erupted into debate about the exclusion of trans women from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; we were one of few panels at the conference overtly addressing trans identities. I held my breath, waited my turn, and thought: What Would Unca Trans Do? How might he help to summon collective dialogue in this room, acknowledging the links between academic work, lived experience, and direct action? How might such an anticipatory ghost figure urge us to reexamine the necessary multigenerational relationship between feminisms and Utopian longings? I frantically searched for accessible and academically permissible words to ask, How can we begin to recognize one another as likely allies in building antiracist and trans-supportive movements?These will be my guiding questions in the exploration that follows, which I pursue in part by reading classic lesbian feminist text coauthored by one of the women who left the room that day (though perhaps not in anger) - the Radicalesbians' (1970) The Identified Woman statement - in conversation with samples of current lesbian and discourse. I draw generously from Jose Esteban Munoz s concept of queer Utopian memory, outlined as critique of the present shaped by desires for aspects of an uncertain past and longing for future (2009, 35). My analysis is also profoundly shaped by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's reparative reading, described as generous analysis of texts, which asks not what is true, but what can given interpretation do? (2003, 123). In other words, I attempt an alchemy of those seemingly irresolvable tensions between bodies and gender and generations within contemporary feminisms. …

Laughing Saints and Righteous Heroes: Emotional Rhythms in Social Movement Groups. By Erika Summers Effler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. 256. $70.00 (cloth); $23.00 (paper).

<i>Laughing Saints and Righteous Heroes: Emotional Rhythms in Social Movement Groups</i>. By Erika Summers Effler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. 256. $70.00 (cloth); $23.00 (paper).