Repertoires Of Action Research Articles

The Loving Embrace: Women’s Legal Mobilization in favor of a Feminist Constitution in Colombia in 1991

ABSTRACT What do women contribute when constitutions are written? How can they make their voices and proposals heard? Can feminism shape constitutional law? These are the main questions in the narrative of the feminist movement’s participation in the shaping of the 1991 Colombian Constitution. The objective of the essay is to recover the role of women in lawmaking while applying a gender lens to historical methodologies, by using documental evidence from the national archives and newspapers to uncover their actions and voices, as well as conducting interviews with feminist leaders in Colombia active during the 1990s. These findings show the repertoires of action of the women’s movement taking advantage of a crucial political opportunity to write constitutional law, as well as the obstacles and trade-offs they faced to advance women’s human rights in Colombia’s new charter. The essay argues that, despite the strategic feminist mobilization to include women’s reproductive rights in the Constitution, the political alliances outside (and inside) the National Constitutional Assembly between the Liberal Party and the Catholic Church blocked some of their demands, especially with regard to voluntary motherhood. The conclusions identify the feminist heritage of the new constitutional order that emerged as a result.

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Resisting algorithmic control: Understanding the rise and variety of platform worker mobilisations

AbstractAlgorithms are seen as effective for managing workers. Literature focuses mainly on the functioning and impact of algorithmic control on workers' experiences and conditions. The ways in which platform workers have organised collectively to regain control have received far less scholarly attention. This paper addresses this gap by making sense of the mobilisation dynamics of two platform‐work categories: crowdwork (Amazon Mechanical Turk) and work on‐demand (food‐delivery couriers). These are salient mobilisation cases, as these workers have resisted algorithmic control by adopting specific organising modes, action repertoires and collective solidarities. By analysing a combination of extant literature and policy reports concerning each category of mobilisation forms at a global level over 5 years, the study elucidates why and how these workers were able to act without the involvement of traditional trade unions by showing that specific supportive communities and political activism traditions were crucial in the rise and variety of mobilisation.

Why do opt-out movements succeed (or fail) in low-stakes accountability systems? A case study of the Network of Dissident Schools in Catalonia

External and standardized assessments based on student results are a contested education policy among school actors. Movements of opposition have emerged in different countries, especially in those contexts with high-stakes accountability systems. However, this phenomenon has not been analyzed in soft accountability systems. The objective of this article is to study the opt-out movement in Catalonia, understood as an anti-standardization movement in a system of soft accountability. In order to do so, we adopt the case study approach as a methodological strategy, based on the triangulation of semi-structured interviews with activists (n = 14), key stakeholders (n = 3), and document and press analysis (n = 25). The results shed light on the emergence and nature of the movement, its opportunity structures, the discursive frames and the repertoires of collective action. Our results show how accountability instruments have a ‘life of their own’ beyond their policy design. In this sense, the opt-out movement in Catalonia identifies potential risks and adverse effects similar to those reported in high-stakes systems, developing a repertoire of collective action and discursive frames similar to other emerging anti-standardization movements in high-stakes contexts.

Creative actions in team sports are rooted in motor skills rather than in a divergent thinking ability

Creative actions are considered decisive in team sports. In most empirical studies on the topic so far, creativity has been understood as a player’s divergent thinking (DT) ability. Sport-specific DT has been assessed by the number, variety and originality of ideas a player is able to generate in response to game situations. Numerous studies indicate that DT can be improved with training. However, the fundamental assumption that enhanced DT transfers to creative on-field actions has yet to be examined. Alternatively, we argue that players’ potential to perform creative actions is foremost rooted in their motor-skill repertoire rather than in DT. In a field-based experiment, predictions deduced from both explanations were put to test. Elite youth football players participated in training interventions to enhance either football-specific DT (DT group) or their motor-skill repertoire (functional skills; FS group). Before and after the interventions, we assessed players’ football-specific DT as well as the functionality and creativity of actions performed on-field using expert ratings. As expected, in DT, the DT group improved more than the FS group. On the field, however, improvements in DT did not manifest in more creative actions. Rather, the FS group showed more pronounced improvements not only in the functionality but also in the creativity of on-field actions. This pattern of results challenges the so far predominant theoretical framework for creativity in sports. For sports practice, our findings suggest that on-field creativity is better fostered by enhancing players’ motor skills—and thus expanding their own action repertoire—than by improving DT.

Ativismo político para a construção de novos mercados alimentares

This article presents a comparative institutional analysis of the peasant movements’ activism for the construction of new food markets in Brazil and Chile. Data were collected between March 2016 and December 2018 through interviews with leaders of these movements, policymakers and direct observation of different marketing initiatives. The results reveal that the Brazilian institutional trajectory opened up more space for the activism of agrarian social movements, such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), in the construction of markets that incorporate values ​​associated with the principles of agroecology and food sovereignty. On the other hand, in Chile, this type of activism proved to be less present in the peasant movements’ repertoire of action. In this country, due to the fragmentation of these movements as an effect of the strong repression of the military regime, the main initiatives are associated with specific public policies and, therefore, face problems for scaling up.

Tilting at 'Nuclearmills'? : Wind Energy, Grassroots Networks and Technologies of Protest in Spain, 1976-1984.

In 1975, the death of dictator Francisco Franco opened the door to aturbulent period known as the "Spanish Transition." In the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, national politics, political violence and social demands were interwoven with international shifts in science and technology and global debates on "energy transitions." In close dialogue with foreign environmental groups, the anti-nuclear movement in Spain deployed alarge repertoire of collective action; it ranged from pleasant activities to violent direct actions against nuclear technologies, but also included the making of technological alternatives. Counter-culture activists and counter-experts opposed nuclear energy and promoted renewable energy as two sides of the same coin.This paper explores the pioneering (and networked) initiatives of an anarchist-oriented group called Self-Managed Radical Alternative Technologies, created in 1976, and agroup of young engineers who founded the cooperative Ecotècnia, which was behind the construction of the first commercial wind turbine in Catalonia in 1984. The paper focuses on the transnational circulation of grassroots knowledge, the epistemics of resistance, and the development of wind energy technologies as "technologies of protest." Technologies of protest illuminate how the social construction of technology is intertwined with what Icall the "social destruction of technology."

Mindful Action in Tension: Responding to Errors in High Reliability Seeking Organization

We studied how actors in a high reliability seeking organization (HRO) respond to errors through mindful actions that are in tension. Scholars conceptualized mindfulness in HROs as a combination of awareness and action, however, prior research has primarily emphasized mindfulness as enriching awareness (Weick et al, 1999) with less attention to action. The element of rich awareness has produced important insights into how organizations can notice errors or prevent them from occurring. However, we know little about the role of mindfulness as action. By adopting a paradox lens and using the repertory grid technique, we elicited simultaneous opposites that actors navigate in their responses. In exploring individual actors’ responses to two types of errors – near-miss and accidents – allowed us to elaborate how individuals configure their action repertoire. When enacting their responses, actors locate their actions in between multiple opposite poles that create tensions. Actors’ sense of tension changes when errors are deemed near-miss or accidents thereby locating their actions between the simultaneous opposites differently. Finally, actors’ repertoire of actions reflects their awareness of not only errors, as the extant literature suggested, but also their awareness of the social context and their place in this context.

Incite then Control: Organizational Responses to Managers’ Appropriations of Diversity Practices (WITHDRAWN)

The diversity management literature offers few accounts of organizations that manage to foster diversity, of how diversity policy and practices are enacted in practice, and of managers’ motivations to do so. To close these gaps, this paper reports a 4-year ethnography in a European bank which succeeded in reducing the glass ceiling by inciting managers to appropriate its gender diversity policy and practices. I examine the multiple types of appropriation (e.g., selective appropriation, extension, diversion, misappropriation) as well as managers’ underlying motivations for each of them. I then analyze the continuum of organizational responses to these appropriations, from undoing to appropriation of managers’ appropriations. This paper contributes to a) providing a better conceptualization of appropriation by extending previous typologies and highlighting the organizational repertoire of action to react to managers’ appropriations; b) shedding a new light on the so called ‘resistance to change’; and c) providing insights into the advantages and drawbacks of appropriation as a new model of practice implementation. It thus contributes to advancing and renewing both the diversity and change management literatures.

Digital media, diasporic groups, and the transnational dimension of anti-regime movements: the case of Hirak in Algeria

ABSTRACT Drawing on the case of the Hirak movement born in Algeria in 2019, this article casts light on the mechanisms of transformation of the anti-regime movement when it comes to the transnational dimension. Based on a qualitative case-study research design, the article first unpacks the transformative dynamics of the movement when it bypasses the context of origins regarding the framing, organizational, and protesting dimensions. Then, the article looks at the effects of such changes against a background characterized by high political conflict and harsh repression. Findings show that digital media supporting transnational activism have three main effects that are deeply intertwined: they mix up the sociopolitical cleavages of the country of origin by facilitating the hybridization of actors’ registers and repertoires of action at a global level; they contribute to politicizing specific issues by escalating the levels of contention; and they allow new measures of a regime’s transnational repression.

A Cruel Theatre of Self-Immolations: Contemporary Suicide Protests by Fire and their Resonances in Culture [Okrutny teatr samospaleń: Protesty samobójcze w ogniu i ich echa w kulturze współczesnej

<i>A Cruel Theatre of Self-Immolations: Contemporary Suicide Protests by Fire and their Resonances in Culture</i> [Okrutny teatr samospaleń: Protesty samobójcze w ogniu i ich echa w kulturze współczesnej

Tweets and Doorknocks. Differentiation and Cooperation between Black Lives Matter and Community Organizing

Because of its genealogy and a shared commitment to racial justice, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement might be expected to have strong cooperative links with community organizing groups. Close, localized study of the interactions between these two approaches to social change reveals, however, something quite different. Far from being harmonious, the relations between BLM and community organizing prove to be marked by distrust, sometimes competition, and, more sporadically, cooperation. This article, based on ethnographic surveys in Los Angeles and Chicago, investigates how the BLM movement deployed and took root at the local level and how it interacted with community organizing groups in both cities. Emphasizing the importance of blending a meso-sociological level of analysis with a micro-sociological approach, we argue that the relations of competition and distinction, embodied in distinct group styles, repertoires of action, and organizational forms, can be explained by taking into account the actors’ resources, social properties, socializations, and trajectories. The article’s comparative perspective also shows that forms of cooperation may exist despite competition, and that cooperation is made possible in particular by younger people playing a bridging role.

The Ring Never Relieves – Response rules for metro circle lines

Regarding the disposition of metro lines in order to recover from delays, in the literature there can be found two branches of contributions: descriptions of response rules such as expressing (aka skip stop), holding and short-turning together with case studies of their application. And there are fully-automated optimization models that optimize some specified objective function, e.g. minimizing the total train delays.We are not aware of any study that puts its focus specifically on ring lines (aka circle or loop lines). In the absence in particular of essentially immediate time buffers in turnaround activities in the endpoints, the operation of a circle line is particularly challenging, when comparing it with the common bi-directional lines.In this spirit, we are collecting response rules that are applicable especially for circle lines. We sketch their impacts on the passengers’ travel experience and on the resource schedules for the rolling stock and staff, and we provide illustrative drawings.Moreover, we conducted interviews with experts of eleven metro networks that are operating circle lines. We report their answers, which response rules are applied most often. Despite the limited possibilities along circle lines there is a broad repertoire of response action that is taken regularly – somehow surprisingly, one standard general response rule that is often discussed in the literature and in principle applicable to circle lines, too (expressing), is almost never applied in practice.

Exit or Voice? Behavioral Implications of Electoral-Integrity Beliefs in Germany

Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of representative democracy. In recent years, however, elections in many advanced democracies have increasingly come under attack by populist actors and rhetoric questioning the integrity of the electoral process. While scholarly attention has so far largely focused on expert surveys measuring and documenting the objective integrity of different elections, a thorough understanding of citizens’ electoral-integrity beliefs and their implications for political behavior is still lacking. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of electoral-integrity beliefs on citizens’ political behavior in Germany. Specifically, the study aims to assess the influence of electoral-integrity perceptions on turnout, vote choice, and nonelectoral (institutionalized and noninstitutionalized) political participation in the offline and online spheres. The study’s preregistered empirical analysis based on the preelection survey of the 2021 German Longitudinal Election Study shows that electoral-integrity beliefs entail clear implications for citizens’ turnout and vote choice, while their influence on nonelectoral behavior is contingent upon the specific type and sphere of political participation. These findings provide novel insights on the behavioral implications of electoral-integrity beliefs and extend the (scarce) findings of previous research to (1) a broader political action repertoire as well as (2) the German context. The empirical evidence generated comes with far-reaching implications for the general viability of modern democracies, suggesting that the nexus between electoral-integrity beliefs and political behavior can be a “triple penalty” or a “double corrective” for representative democracy.

Symbolic Interaction, Power, and War: Narratives of Unaccompanied Young Refugees with War Experiences in Institutional Care in Sweden

This study concerns young people who have experienced war, taken shelter in Sweden, and been placed in institutions. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze power relations that contribute to the shaping of young people’s identities and repertoires of action via stigmatizations and social comparisons with different reference groups. The study’s empirical material includes qualitatively oriented interviews with six young people from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan who have experienced war, followed by placement in institutional care in Sweden. Analytical findings with the following themes are presented: (1) concrete—physical exercise of power, (2) blackmail as an exercise of power, and (3) anonymous—bureaucratized exercise of power. The study demonstrates that narratives about war, escaping war, and postwar life in Sweden, constructing and reconstructing an image of a series of interactive rituals that are both influenced by and influence the power dynamic between the actors. This relationship, in turn, creates and recreates an interplay among the stigmatizing experiences of the youths, their social comparisons, and definitions of inequality.

Opening up mediation opportunities by engaging grassroots data: Adaptive and resilient feminist data activism in China

This article explores the dynamics and practices of feminist data activism that engages with grassroots data to archive cases of sexual violence in China. Drawing on Cammaert’s notion of the mediation opportunity structure, we investigate the mediation process of a feminist data campaign and activists’ communicative practices in contemporary China. By practicing data-activist research, our study shows that the data-based action repertoire opens up hybrid and contingent mediation opportunities for an anti-sexual violence campaign under the current political opportunity structure. We find the paradox of seeking visibility while refusing mainstream media coverage in activist tactics, which embodies a form of adaptive and resilient feminist data activism in the authoritarian context of China. This case study suggests that the dynamics of feminist data activism in China are configured by the tripartite interaction among the disruptive action repertoire, mediation opportunity structure, and political conditions.

Mobilizing for Recognition: Indie Unions, Migrant Workers, and Strategic Equality Act Litigation

Drawing on a broad repertoire of action, including strategic litigation, several new activist unions have appeared that seek to represent the multiracial working class of contemporary Britain. Although the court cases that have drawn the most attention are those that challenge the misclassification of employees or ‘workers’ as ‘self-employed’, another dimension of these unions’ strategic litigation has been the utilization of the Equality Act 2010 (Equality Act) to allege racial discrimination. The contention advanced in this article is that it might be possible to read unions’ increasing use of the Equality Act as instances of them pursuing a politics of recognition. For those of us interested in analysing and assessing the strategies of unions in respect of their multiracial membership, the critical question is why and how race discrimination claims may act to boost indie unions’ efforts to organize diverse workplaces. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s work that asserts a politics of recognition can contribute to a politics of redistribution, this article proposes that recognition claims may be advancing the broader goals of labour organizing by building a worker subjectivity poised for action, and a collective identity undergirded by respect, mutual understanding, and solidarity. Discrimination, Migrant Workers, Legal Mobilization, Recognition, Organizing

Mobilizing anti‐discrimination law: the litigation strategies of UK and French trade unions compared

AbstractBased on cross‐national comparative research conducted in France and the United Kingdom, this article explores to what extent and under what conditions trade unions situated in different legal systems have turned to the courts to challenge discrimination at work. It investigates the interplay between a broad range of structural factors that offer specific opportunities, and the way in which trade unionists interpret contexts to promote legal mobilization in addition to or in place of other repertoires of action. In so doing, the article contributes to the understanding of anti‐discrimination law enforcement and the role of micro‐level actors in enabling litigation strategies.

Lactoferrin as a Human Genome “Guardian”—An Overall Point of View

Structural abnormalities causing DNA modifications of the ethene and propanoadducts can lead to mutations and permanent damage to human genetic material. Such changes may cause premature aging and cell degeneration and death as well as severe impairment of tissue and organ function. This may lead to the development of various diseases, including cancer. In response to a damage, cells have developed defense mechanisms aimed at preventing disease and repairing damaged genetic material or diverting it into apoptosis. All of the mechanisms described above are part of the repertoire of action of Lactoferrin—an endogenous protein that contains iron in its structure, which gives it numerous antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anticancer properties. The aim of the article is to synthetically present the new and innovative role of lactoferrin in the protection of human genetic material against internal and external damage, described by the modulation mechanisms of the cell cycle at all its levels and the mechanisms of its repair.

LGBTQ activism in repressive contexts: the struggle for (in)visibility in Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey

ABSTRACT Drawing on social movements and gender studies, the article aims at exploring repertoires of action articulated by LGBTQ communities in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey during and after the 2011 and 2013 protests. The aim is to disentangle how LGBTQ individuals mobilized in the MENA region and which role civil society organizations and digital technologies played in the development of such mobilizations. State repression on mobilizing structures, the relevance of digital networks in mobilization strategies, involving LGBTQ activists and individuals in the three countries, will be discussed. The empirical analysis draws on 44 semi-structured interviews carried out in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2011 and 2020 focusing on repressive contexts, civil society activism, and digital networks. By doing so, the analysis aims also to shed light on the roles played by both meso-level organizations and digital technologies in triggering a range of diverse repertoires of action. If in the three countries LGBTQ communities have been disproportionally targeted by state and non-state repressive campaigns, in Egypt LGBTQ activists challenged repression thanks to the use of social networks as alternative venues for socialization, while in Tunisia and Turkey, LGBTQ activists, drawing upon more established meso-level mobilizing structures, built-up new strategies with the aim to increase their cooperation with other political challengers.