Activism Research Articles

The Emergence of a Sephardi Intelligentsia in Haifa During the Late Ottoman Period

Abstract This article discusses the emergence of a circle of Sephardi intellectuals in Haifa in the final years of the Ottoman era and examines their characteristics as Arabic-speaking Jews, who engaged in both educational and political activities. Among other aspects, the article will consider the background to the emergence of this circle among families of Arabic-speaking migrants from the Maghreb. The members of the Sephardi intelligentsia also grew up in a shared Jewish–Arab space and were educated at the school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which in itself served as a shared framework for Jews and Arabs. The members of the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa continued their training at the Alliance’s Teachers’ Seminary in Paris and engaged in educational work alongside public and political activities as representatives of the Sephardi public. The connection between their Jewish–Arab cultural identity and their educational and political activities was particularly apparent during the transition to the British Mandate. The spotlight on the Sephardi intelligentsia of Haifa thus offers a new perspective on the place of Arabic-speaking Jews in the history of Haifa and on the development of intercommunal relations in this city.

Climbing up, letting down, or putting the ladder away? Regional ministers’ movements in multilevel systems

Abstract Regional cabinet members (RCMs) are key political actors in subnational politics, especially in federal systems or in countries that have undergone a process of regionalization or devolution, even though they are still less studied than federal or national ministers. Italy and its regionalization process represent an interesting case study to understand how and under what conditions members of regional cabinets can exit from politics or move upwards, or downwards the different tiers of government. By using an original dataset of 721 RCMs in ordinary statute regions we tested through multinomial regression analysis whether political and institutional or personal factors influence their movements (both legislative or executive) upward, that is, toward national and/or European positions, backward toward local (both provincial or municipal) positions or their exit from politics. Our results show that both political–institutional and individual factors matter. In particular, displaying a previous national career favors upward movements while being a technician or independent favors the exit from politics.

Spirit, Spoken Word, and the Search for Common Ground: Amanda Gorman as Contemplative Preacher

Amid profound political fragmentation, the poet and activist Amanda Gorman demonstrates the power of the spoken word to build bridges toward greater justice and wholeness for all people. Drawing on select theologies of the Spirit and especially Howard Thurman’s notion of common ground, this article considers Gorman’s inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” as an act of pneumatological or Spirit-inspired contemplative proclamation that fosters community in a time of division. Specific attention is given to how preachers and other communicators might learn from Amanda Gorman’s example to contribute toward social and spiritual healing in our beautiful yet broken world today.

Further Evidence for the Dark-Ego-Vehicle Principle: Higher Pathological Narcissistic Grandiosity and Virtue Signaling Are Related to Greater Involvement in LGBQ and Gender Identity Activism

AbstractThe dark-ego-vehicle principle (DEVP) suggests that individuals with so-called dark personalities (e.g., high narcissistic traits) are attracted to political and social activism that they can repurpose to satisfy their specific ego-focused needs (e.g., signaling moral superiority and manipulating others) instead of achieving prosocial goals. Currently, research on the DEVP is still rare. With two pre-registered studies, we sought further evidence for the DEVP by examining the associations of pathological narcissistic grandiosity with involvement in LGBQ activism (Study 1) and gender identity activism (Study 2). Socioeconomically diverse samples from the USA (Study 1; N = 446) and the UK (Study 2; N = 837) were recruited online via the research-oriented crowdsourcing platform Prolific. Individuals completed the Pathological Narcissism Inventory as well as measures of involvement in activism. Moreover, we assessed different covariates (e.g., altruism), and potential correlates within the narcissism–activism relationship (i.e., virtue signaling, dominance, and aggression). In addition, we examined potential relationships between other dark personality variables (e.g., psychopathy) and activism. In both samples, higher pathological narcissistic grandiosity was related to greater involvement in activism. As expected, virtue signaling was consistently involved in the relationship between pathological narcissistic grandiosity and activism. However, neither dominance nor aggression was related to individuals’ involvement in activism. The results did also not consistently support a relationship between higher psychopathy and greater involvement in activism. Overall, the findings help to further specify the DEVP.

Anti- and pro-environmental disinformation. Fact-checking Spanish political parties’ discourse

Climate disinformation’s studies focus mainly on denialism or false discourses justifying inaction. However, pro-environmental disinformation is also possible, exaggerating climate change consequences or green policies benefits. Anti- and pro-environmental disinformation can negatively influence citizens’ political decision-making. The aim of this research is to analyze the disinformation coming from Spanish political actors, to check what issues they focus on and if there is an ideological bias in the dissemination of false information related to climate change and the environment. The investigation is based on verifications carried out by fact-checkers Newtral and Maldita on statements made by Spanish politicians. From a quantitative perspective, all fact-checks performed from October 2018 to March 2023 are analyzed (N = 1,415). The study covers a time frame of almost five years, which includes elections at European and national level. We classified each disinformation according to date, source, and topic, and we make a taxonomic proposal of environmental disinformation, be it anti- or pro-environmental action. We aim to find out what kind of environmental disinformation is used in Spain to cover the lack of studies in this field. Also to check the differences in the disinformation strategy of the parties, especially in the radical right. Results reveal for the first time the presence of pro-environmental disinformation. However, disinformation is mostly anti-environmental and occupies a low level within the disinformation strategy of the parties, which reflects the low interest in this issue. Findings show that denialism is on the decline. Instead, anti-environmentalism has become more pragmatic and prevails through inactivism. Conservative parties lead in environmental disinformation, although it is more frequent in the more moderate ones. There is also an increase in this type of disinformation before the European election, which suggests an instrumental use at the political level where the environment is perceived to be more relevant.

DIÁLOGOS ENTRE ANTONIO GRAMSCI E FRANTZ FANON:VIOLÊNCIA POLÍTICA E LUTAS SUBALTERNAS

We propose a dialogue between Antonio Gramsci’s revolutionary Marxism and the theoretical-political perspectives present in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. In this regard, we analyze the formulation of political violence presented in the Martinican author's last work, which is also fundamental from a Gramscian perspective, which enables a dialogue based on the critique of imperialism como la etapa más alta del capitalism, as the highest stage of capitalism, developed throughout his intellectual and militant trajectories. In theory, the similarity is fundamentally related to the emphasis given by the authors to direct political action, in the dispute for hegemony, and to the organization and intellectual direction of revolutionary subjects and the revolution.

Fragmentation, counter-power and symbiosis: The Life After Coal campaign

South Africa's environmental movement has been described as "fractured, disparate and diverse" (Death, 2014: 1232). This article considers the Life After Coal campaign's work in eMalahleni, Mpumalanga to examine the challenges faced by environmental campaigns. The article examines the relationship between the campaign and community members and activists through the lens of Jacklyn Cock's ideas of "building counter power" and Marlies Glasius and Armine Ishkanian's ideas of "surreptitious symbiosis'" The article draws on a series of interviews and discussions with Life After Coal leaders and community members and activists affected by coal mining in eMalahleni. It finds that the Life After Coal campaign's work in eMalahleni reflects the challenges of building a unified popular environmental movement. Despite its critical work in 'building counter power' through community mobilisations and the campaign's catalysing effects it has yet to fully integrate the substantive aspects of an unrealised democracy in the form of genuine socioeconomic rights into its environmental frames. Further to this, there are various levels of discord which hinder solidarity between formal civil society organisations and the organic community movement.

The Chartist Press and the Emergence of a Plebeian Public Sphere: Doubleday's The Political Pilgrim's Progress and O'Brien's The Rise, Progress and Phases of Human Slavery

abstract: The early nineteenth-century radical press sparked an era of print culture that challenged the political economy of liberalism and created a counter-cultural, plebeian public sphere. The post-Napoleonic Wars economic crisis, the anti-New Poor Law movement, and the War of the Unstamped shaped an alternative anti-capitalist political economy and literature defined by working-class political identity and activism. This study examines working-class political economy popularized in the radical press, how it created a counter public sphere antithetical to liberalism, and how it conceptualized a society based on social, economic, and political equality. Featured texts include Thomas Doubleday's The Political Pilgrim's Progress in relation to the political-economy theories popularized by James Bronterre O'Brien in The Rise, Progress, and Phases of Human Slavery .

Intimidation against advocates and researchers in the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces: a review.

Unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) engage in corporate political activity, using diverse practices, including intimidatory tactics, to thwart, delay and dilute regulations that threaten their businesses. While examples of such intimidation exist across multiple sectors, no attempt has been made to synthesize these. Furthermore, much of the literature focuses on intimidation of policy-makers. Less is known about the types of intimidation experienced by advocates and researchers and their responses to this intimidation. This scoping review explores the literature across the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces for instances of intimidation and categorizes them inductively and deductively based on a framework of intimidation types. Similarly, responses to intimidation were mapped onto a pre-existing framework. We found intimidatory tactics towards advocates and researchers in every sector. Public discreditation, followed by legal threats and action, complaints and freedom of information requests were most frequently mentioned and often attributed to UCIs or their third parties. Surveillance, threats of violence, violence, burglary and bribery were less prevalent in the literature and their perpetrators were unknown. Those intimidated reported carrying on as normal, defensive action (changing/adapting work, taking security precautions) or, as was most reported, offensive action (exposing intimidation, correcting misinformation, taking legal action). The similarity of intimidation across sectors suggests that UCIs engage in similar intimidatory tactics regardless of sector. Understanding more about the scale of intimidation and how it impacts the work and wellbeing of those affected is essential, as is learning more about the ways researchers and advocates can effectively pre-empt and respond.

Language activism and the power of language in Ukraine during the war (2022–23)

ABSTRACT The article addresses how language is fuelled by political actions and accrues sociopolitical meaning in the context of war. The focus is on public discourse on languages in Ukraine in response to the full-scale Russian war. Texts that appeared on two publicly available platforms, Facebook and TikTok, since 24 February 2022, were collected. These are predominantly verbal texts that contain explicit references to languages and include arguments about languages and language matters during the war. The texts are analyzed qualitatively within the framework of language ideologies. Viewing language ideologies as “the beliefs and attitudes that shape speakers’ relationships to their own and others’ languages” (in the words of Jillian Cavanaugh), the study focuses on the power of images or how languages are portrayed, the power of signs or what distinguishes one’s “own” language from that of the “other,” and the power of language practices. All of these relationships, it is argued, contribute to language activism as a reaction to the war. The discussion places the results within the broader context of the multiple language ideologies that are being constructed, promoted, and enacted in Ukraine, dismantling the colonial relationships of languages, thereby empowering the Ukrainian language.

Colleges as anchors of their communities: emergence and agglomeration

ABSTRACT This paper argues that colleges anchor their communities by developing knowledge and skills within their region; establishing links and exchanges outside the region; contributing to civic, political, cultural, and social activities and networks in their region; developing facilities and amenities used by the community; and, contributing to their region’s economic activity. Particularly important are colleges’ development of shared, collective or communal capacities, since these develop communities as communities, rather than individuals and organisations as discrete members of communities. We use Durkheimian sociology and critical realism to re-interpret the concept of agglomeration which we borrow from economics to trace the evolution of the concept of anchor institutions. Agglomeration is a particular type of emergence of phenomena from the interaction of components, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We argue that colleges benefit their communities through the agglomeration of activities and organisations, from which emerge distinctive characteristics of their communities. This leads to the economic, social, and cultural benefits of agglomeration or clustering of activities within a geographic area. The accumulation of knowledge and knowledgeable people in communities increases the sharing of knowledge between people and organisations, and facilitates the generation and diffusion of knowledge.

Institutional resilience of club sport in an extreme context: collective dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic from an institutional work lens

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous challenge for individuals, organisations, and institutions as a collective of actors that constitute a field, such as club sport. In our paper, we define institutional resilience as a field’s capacity of collectively and successfully responding to the challenges of an extreme context. Following a qualitative empirical approach (content analysis of 19 interviews) and an institutional work lens, we aim at analysing of how club sport uses institutional work to enable institutional resilience for responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, we show, which actors of club sport (who?) use which institutional work activities (how?) for enabling institutional resilience in the face of the pandemic’s challenges (why?). Results indicate that institutional resilience of club sport in the COVID-19 pandemic had an emergent and dynamic nature with an iterative passing through the phases of resilience. Sport clubs were the lead agents, but also unions and associations as non-profit-organisations applied manifold cultural, technical, and political work activities. Beyond the refinement of institutional work activities for club sport, we identified COVID-19 pandemic specific activities. These are visioning as a new cultural activity and reinterpreting (transforming) core operations for the digital space and legal networking as new technical institutional work activities. Hence, the novelty of the paper consists in advancing the conceptualisation of institutional resilience by illustrating the nature of institutional resilience (its characteristics) and by depicting institutional resilience as an outcome of institutional work.

How Educational Opportunity Structures Shape the Presence, Forms, and Outcomes of Campus Activism

ABSTRACT How do characteristics of colleges and universities shape campus activism? In this review article, we provide an overview of the growing body of sociological research on educational opportunity structures at U.S. colleges and universities. Specifically, we synthesize research that discusses how various characteristics of U.S. colleges and universities—including their public or private status, their secular or religious identity, their wealth, their prestige, their residential character, their bureaucratic rules, and their administrators’ openness to campus activism—influence whether student activist groups emerge, adopt different forms, and achieve their goals. We conclude by discussing remaining gaps in our knowledge and highlighting several potential lines for future research.

All that Matters are Forests and Seas? Practising Relevance in Interdisciplinary Environment-Focused Social Science Fields

AbstractPolicy increasingly requires societally relevant and interdisciplinary science, which prompts questions about science’s orientation to diverse academic and non-academic actors. This paper examines how relevance is practised and negotiated in two evolving interdisciplinary social science fields: marine social sciences and forest policy research. Both fields investigate human relations with specific environments: how people use, manage and govern, live with and value seas and forests. Diverse social and political actors have stakes in the knowledge these fields generate. To whose matters and stakes do researchers respond and orient their research? Are such orientations reflexively discussed and contested? To operationalise relevance, we employ the notion of ‘epistemic commitments’ while adopting a Bourdieusian perspective on scientific fields. Our analysis draws on conference observation, interviews and document analysis. We find diverse epistemic commitments in both fields, but see noticeable differences in their prevalence, reflexivity and contestation. Examining the fields’ socio-historical trajectories, we theorise that these differences are due to field-specific properties: their relative autonomy to negotiate relevance independently from other disciplines and external forces; and the field-specific habitus that impacts the degree to which relevance is a reflexive commitment, or an unconscious practice. The comparative analysis suggests that interdisciplinary scientific fields’ specific institutional histories and relations with societal and policy actors shape relevance practices and the extent to which these are internally contested.

The "White Devil" And Black Supremacy Myth in Islamic Teaching and Communication in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States

During the 1950s and 1960s in America, there emerged out of the steelworks of race relations several black activist groups of steel fighting for civil rights through direct vigorous actions. Among these groups the Nation of Islam (NOI) stood out because of its new religious, economic and political philosophy. The NOI was born in 1930 to teach and spread Islam across the United States of America (USA). With Elijah Muhammad at its head, the NOI taught its newly converted black Muslims to love themselves, to accept with pride their identity as Blacks, to respect themselves and to uplift themselves by avoiding all illicit and immoral things forbidden by Islam. When the NOI attempted to convert the wrongs overwhelming the African American community into right, the news media started harassing it, propagandizing against it and misrepresenting it. The NOI got bogged down in a doctrine it kept fostering through the passionate and incendiary speeches of Malcolm X, one of its most charismatic leaders. This study investigates the trajectory that led to that doctrine and debunks the two myths about “white devils” and black supremacy that had surrounded it.

Strategic collective action and the proportionality of reasons to expected benefits

ABSTRACT We argue that, in order to explain the relative strengths of our reasons to contribute to different collective endeavours, approaches to the ethics of collective action must understand the strengths of our reasons to make a given contribution as proportional to its expected benefits, or its chances of bringing about benefits in proportion to their magnitudes. The view that most clearly meets this proportionality requirement is the expected consequences approach, which identifies our reasons to perform an act with its expected benefits. We contend that views other than the expected consequences approach must similarly proportion the expected degrees of what they take to be reason-giving features of a contribution – such as its virtuousness, appropriate expression, support by considerations of fairness, or helping without making a difference – to the contribution’s expected benefits. The proportionality requirement explains why we should spend more time participating in strategic social, political, and labour movement activities, while avoiding unproductive conflicts and merely performative activities. We conclude that the proportionality requirement, and the ability of views other than the expected consequences approach to meet it, are important for thinking and communicating about the ethics of collective action in ways that are simultaneously most compelling and most strategic.

Enhancing the Public-Private-Community Partnerships in the Banana Value Chain in Mutasa District, Zimbabwe

The paradigm shift from the New Public Administration to the New Public Governance underlines the significance of multi-stakeholder collaborations in attending to complex societal challenges. In this vein, Public-Private-Community Partnerships are a feasible mechanism for enhancing the banana value chain in Mutasa District of Zimbabwe. Bananas are extensively eaten fruits in the world with smallholder farmers playing a vital role in production, particularly in developing nations like Zimbabwe. Yet smallholder farmers’ economic returns in the banana value chain are a cause of concern. Thus, this study focuses on enhancing Public-Private-Community Partnerships in the smallholder banana value chain. A concurrent mixed methods research design allowed for both objectivity and detailed analysis. The target population comprised public, private, and community stakeholders in the banana value chain. The multiplicity of stakeholders motivated a mixture of quota, purposive, and snowball sampling techniques to ensure representation. Questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions were the data collection methods. There was descriptive analysis of quantitative data, while qualitative data were analyzed thematically, and related findings were grouped together. Public-Private-Community Partnerships are attractive because they reduce information asymmetry, enhance transparency, ensure fairness in pricing, facilitate risk sharing, increase productivity, and enhance value addition. Public-Private-Community Partnerships are not “magic bullets”, necessitating attention to their potential deficits, which include power imbalances, conflicts of interest among partners, and challenges associated with ensuring active participation by diverse stakeholder groups. Pathways for strengthening Public-Private-Community Partnerships include consensus building, clear definition of partners’ roles, fair sharing of risks and benefits, monitoring and evaluation, selection of competent actors, and farmer capacity building. Effective Public-Private-Community Partnerships facilitate active participation among the public, private, and community actors along the entire value chain.

A Mathematical Model for Estimating Carbon Storage Dynamics of Forest Communities

Using the JABOWA single-tree growth model, a program was designed to estimate carbon storage dynamics in the aboveground biomass of a mixed forest community. The developed model incorporates the parameters of tree species that are common to the forests of Central Russia: pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.), silver birch (Betula pendula Roth), common aspen (Populus tremula L.), small-leaved lime (Tilia cordata Mill.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.), and fir (Abies Mill.). A differential equation for tree diameter at breast height (D) was solved. The results were compared with the forest inventory data. The amount of carbon stored in the aboveground biomass of trees was calculated following the methodology suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The dynamics of tree volume were analyzed. An analytical formula was proposed to describe the dependence of tree volume and stored carbon on tree age. The differences in the rates of tree volume growth and carbon accumulation were identified among the species studied. The analytical and numerical results on stored carbon and tree age showed a good agreement for a test plot with the known species composition and tree count, which is located within the forest part of the carbon polygon of Kazan Federal University. The formula offers an accurate estimation and prediction of carbon storage dynamics in mixed forest communities with trees varying in age and, hence, is a valuable tool for managing forestry activities. However, when predicting tree biomass growth and carbon storage dynamics, one should also consider forest site quality classes reflecting the actual growth conditions of trees. Developing a mathematical model based on forest site quality classes as a key variable would help increase the reliability of biomass growth and carbon storage predictions for forest communities. Notably, the obtained model applies to actual forest communities with known species composition and fails to account for natural regeneration. To incorporate this parameter, spatial diffusion models that describe forest regeneration in non-forest areas should be utilized.

How to avoid constitutional court-packing in an era of democratic backsliding: Reflections on the appointment of constitutional judges

AbstractAny struggles in the nomination and appointment of constitutional justices and failed renewal of the composition of the constitutional court might corrupt the perception of the independence of the guardian of constitutionality. The recent wave of impropriate renewals of constitutional courts throughout Europe leads to substantial concern. There are numerous more or less serious examples, including the well-known cases of Poland and Hungary, but alongside with them Latvia, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, etc. In an era of democratic back-sliding more significant in some countries and less in others, it leads to wondering whether the influence of politics in power could be the critical factor distorting the composition of constitutional courts and whether this can be seen as a new virus infecting new democracies. After analyzing the recent failures to appoint constitutional justices, caused essentially by malfunction due to political actors participating in the process, the paper argues that in the selection, nomination, and appointment of constitutional justices, ensuring the depoliticization of this procedure is not the best choice, because the participation of democratically elected institutions in the formation of the constitutional courts enhances their legitimacy and credibility. The former, entrusted with the power to adopt erga omnes decisions, desperately need this legitimation. Different political cultures and contrasts in states' constitutional orders suggest that there is hardly one recipe that fits all. However, some universal and fundamental criteria stemming from the principle of the rule of law intended to ensure the independence of constitutional justice could bind the discretion of political actors participating in the nomination and appointment of constitutional judges and contribute to preventing constitutional crises.

“Settler Maintenance” and Migrant Domestic Worker Ecologies of Care

Oral histories of Latina domestic workers in the United States feature hybrid narratives combining accounts of illness and “toxic discourse”. We approach domestic workers’ illnesses and disabilities in a capacious, extra-medical context that registers multiple axes of precarity (economic, racial, and migratory). We are naming this context “settler maintenance”. Riffing on the specific and general valences of “maintenance” (i.e., as a synonym for cleaning work, and as a term for the practices and ideologies involved in a structure’s upkeep), this term has multiple meanings. First, it describes U.S. domestic workers’ often-compulsory use of hazardous chemical agents that promise to remove dirt speedily, yet that imperil domestic workers’ health. The use of these chemicals perpetuates two other, more abstract kinds of settler maintenance: (1) the continuation of socioeconomic hierarchies between immigrant domestic workers and settler employers, and (2) the continuation of (white) settlers’ extractive relationship to the land qua private property. To challenge this logic of settler maintenance, which is predicated on a lack of care for care workers, Latina domestic workers have developed alternative forms of care via lateral networks and political activism.