Practices Of Social Movements Research Articles

For an Anarchist Decolonial Agenda: New Perspectives on Anarchism, Marronage, and Indigeneity from Brazil/Pindorama

AbstractThis paper proposes new perspectives on anarchism, indigeneity, and Afro‐descendent struggles, by discussing the case of Brazilian anarchists’ commitment to luta afroindígena. They mean by this term the intersection of indigenous and Afro‐descendant resistances for the recognition of land, against the violence of states, agribusiness, and extractivism. I argue that this case offers key insights to radical geographies, and to the broader field of decolonial scholarship, to challenge cultural and racial essentialisms by connecting different militant traditions. I also argue that, taking inspiration from indigenous thought and socio‐territorial practices of broader Latin American social movements, these cases enhance decolonial bids for “decolonising methodologies” by showing the importance of starting from practices before theory. My arguments are based on documentary work on past and present relations between anarchism and decoloniality in Latin America/Abya Yala, on personal militant work in Brazil/Pindorama, and on a sample of qualitative interviews with activists.

Occupation of vacant buildings in central districts by social movements as a means to deal with climate change in an inclusive way: the cases of cities São Paulo and Natal

People’s organized struggles for housing challenge Brazil’s exclusionary urbanization. Occupations of vacant buildings by social movements have been pressing municipalities to guarantee the right to the city. Climate change accentuates the risks associated with exclusionary urbanization, and responses to its impacts demand mitigation and adaptation measures that support transformations tackling inequalities and vulnerabilities. This paper highlights the dimensions of inequality, as well as the role of social movements in setting an agenda on climate justice while reducing vulnerability and creating housing alternatives in vacant central buildings of São Paulo and Natal. To this end, we conducted a review of relevant literature along with participatory action-research on insurgent practices of housing social movements in both cities.

Prefigurative Politics at Bread and Puppet Theater

Abstract Bread and Puppet (B&P) Theater is one of the oldest, most influential, and well-known puppet theaters both in the United States and abroad and has been at the forefront of puppetry, performance, and political protest for more than half a century. B&P also functions as a site of tension in prefigurative political theory, between creative world building and alternative decision-making structures. B&P fosters a powerful lived experience of prefigurative politics. The political process of envisioning alternative realities took place through performance, puppets, and the shifting sense of temporality in an isolated location. At the same time, B&P operates in a state of flux, at the center of a constant stream of apprentices, volunteers, and audience members. They rely on hierarchical decision-making to facilitate order, which challenges the prefigurative ideal of a democratic community. B&P models a mediated form of prefigurative politics in which a hierarchical governance structure and creative world building exist in tension with one another. The theater has worked within this tension to survive and even flourish. B&P complicates prefigurative politics in social movement theory and practice, as the hierarchy helps preserve some sense of order but conflicts with the more egalitarian vision of the world represented in their performances. B&P's intervention in prefigurative politics offers lessons to social movements and artistic practices in the contemporary resurgence of prefigurative politics.

The spectacle of demonstration: visual representation of political imagination during the coronavirus crisis

ABSTRACT The coronavirus crisis revealed the vulnerability of shared space especially as a space for civic actions. The media, during lockdown and social distancing, become the main channel for maintaining social connections. The present article deals with demonstrations in Israel during the spring and summer of 2020 which sought to overcome policies through visual mediation and the affordances of digital media. The first part focuses on Guy Debord theory as a means of understanding the alienation of people from their everyday life and meaningful political existence. While his forceful argument about the Spectacle was established on television, there are now evident changes as can be traced in the practices of social movements utilizing new media. Images, with enchanting power, were perceived as numbing distancing people from real life; now, they can also act as channels for the political imagination. In addition, the internet and digital culture in general may connect people to political action rather than dissociate them from it. The second part examines photographs from three different demonstrations and shows how political imagination was figured as spectacle and how visual rhetoric mediated the social movements' reasoning. The first is drawn from the Black Flags movement, established in the face of the chaotic conduct of Israel's former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the wake of corruption allegations. The demonstration's drone documentation, providing imagery taken from above, shows public gatherings grid as a representation of civil order. The second picture is from a Zoom-based demonstration in which a Zoom meeting, an event that enabled under-represented people to participate from their home. The third is from the Balfour demonstrations – a reenactment performance that was staged for the camera as an Instagram image, fashioning an ideal portrait of the protestors and of an idealistic vision of the state. The article uses these examples to demonstrate how the political agendas of the social movements are consolidated via visual technologies.

How mutual aid proliferation developed solidarity and sense of collective responsibility in the early months of COVID-19.

Although mutual aid organizing is a social movement practice long sustained by queer/trans people, immigrants, people of color, and disability communities, among other communities pushed to the margins of society, with the emergence of the COVID-19pandemic, and subsequent government failures in addressing unmet needs, mutual aid proliferated into new (and more socially privileged) communities in the United States and across the world. Amidst this landscape of extraordinary and unique crises, our study sought to understand the benefits experienced by those engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID-19pandemic in the state of Colorado, United States. Our team conducted semistructured individual interviews with 25 individuals participating in mutual aid through groups organized on social media or through intentional communities. We found that participants, who engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID-19pandemic, built empathy, a sense of nonjudgement, and critical consciousness as they created common ground as humans. Participants also found mutual aid engagement to provide nourishing support, to hold pain among more people, and, simply to "feel good." We discuss the potential implications of these benefits for sustaining mutual aid movements through the ongoing COVID-19pandemic in the United States and beyond.

Theorizing Social Movement Practices

Theorizing Social Movement Practices

Intercorporeal Biofeedback for Movement Learning

Technology-supported movement learning has received increased attention in HCI. Previous design research has mostly focused on individual experiences, even though the social and situated context is essential to movement learning practices. Based on the experiences from two design projects in the fitness domain featuring open-ended biofeedback artefacts, we propose Intercorporeal Biofeedback as a strong concept to support the design and use of biofeedback in such practices. We ground the concept in situated movement learning theory, phenomenology of social cognition, and HCI work on biofeedback. We articulate four key characteristics of intercorporeal biofeedback: it provides participants with a shared frame of reference , upon which they engage in fluid meaning allocation and use it to guide attention and action , becoming an interactional resource . Intercorporeal biofeedback can serve to guide future design work for situated, social movement practices.

Deriving a theory of learning from social movement practices

The field of Adult Education is rich with general theories of learning but limited in terms of theories that inform social movement learning (SML). Today, there are several conceptualizations of SML, but little learning theory development based directly on empirical studies of SML. This article aims to present findings from a systematic literature review of empirical studies on social movement learning (SML). We collected and identified 69 empirical studies focusing on adult learning and education within social movements for this literature review. We purposely focused on empirical research studies and did not include works that conceptualise or theorise social movement learning outside of actual empirical studies of SML. From our review of empirical studies, we have identified five elements we believe could serve as the foundation of a theory of learning and education in social movements.

Constitutional Generation

The potential of emancipatory social movements to generate new legal norms is a source of hope for feminist activists. Yet there are also serious doubts as to the impact that marginalized women can have on legal institutions and constitution-making. This tribute to Drucilla Cornell foregrounds her contributions to theorizing women’s movements as a source of social-cultural values that could spark constitutional transformation. While Cornell’s concept of “global apartheid,” which exposes the linkages among legalized racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and anti-immigrant politics, might seem to reinforce doubts concerning women’s capabilities, the overall legacy of her legal philosophy is hopeful. Building on social movement practices of intergenerational storytelling, ethical witnessing, historical recollection, and respect for the dignity of women brutalized by apartheid systems, Cornell envisioned a revolutionary constitutionalism powerful enough to dismantle global apartheid. Out of women’s movement spaces, she showed us, dignitarian norms emerge with momentum to transform constitutional law.

Mobilising and constraining: the dynamics of human rights discourse in two Mexican social movements

ABSTRACT Mobilising human rights discourse in pursuit of justice by local social movements is often treated as a straightforward process. However, social movement practice is rooted in domestic socio-political culture, the ability to affectively engage publics and envision ‘political horizons’. Human rights discourse is often deployed in this process, but the dynamics involved have both enabling and constraining features which movement participants exploit, negotiate and disagree over. This article explores scholarship on human rights, social movements and democracy to examine these dynamics through the reflections of participants in two recent social mobilisations in Mexico: the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity and Ayotzinapa 43. Both movements arose in response to abuses and impunity in the context of spiralling state and non-state actor violence and corruption in Mexico, but also challenged the dominant political narratives of Mexico’s democratic development. They focused on the justice demands of victims, but also involved plural groups, many hoping for wider change. Human rights discourse featured in each movement, but they were not human rights movements, raising important questions about how human rights discourse is understood, made meaningful but also kept in check as part of sustaining contentious collective action.

Review of Justo Serrano Zamora, Democratization and Struggles Against Injustice. A Pragmatist Approach to the Epistemic Practices of Social Movements

Review of Justo Serrano Zamora, Democratization and Struggles Against Injustice. A Pragmatist Approach to the Epistemic Practices of Social Movements

Recasting solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study

ABSTRACT The practices of social movements during the pandemic show how severe limitations on political and social organization have been turned into opportunities by increasing the focus on social justice and care-based initiatives, building trust and solidarity. This case study explores how the urban militants of the anti-military occupation movement A Foras (Out) maintained visibility during the pandemic. Besides calling attention to the unethical growth of military spending concurrent with the lack of investment in public health during the COVID-19 crisis, the movement engaged in mutualistic action against pandemic-related issues, such as isolation, and social exclusion. We examine ethnographically this hybridized mobilization, which is grounded on the significance of solidarity, community, and the nature of public life. By making social inequality, exclusion and isolation more visible, mutualistic practices act in the social justice arena as a ‘purposive orientation’. This case study offers an example of a grassroots social movement renewing its space of knowledge production by widening its agency and reconfiguring care as an action for political change, adding to the notion of caring democracy by giving rise to a mutualist initiative based on horizontality and potential reciprocity. The article provides an up-to-date understanding of how imaginaries and care practices activated around solidarity, security, and safety are recasting society in southern Europe in the wake of COVID-19. It contributes to the debate around caring democracy in social movements studies by rethinking the significance of caring infrastructures and, ultimately, the meaning of solidarity and trust.

Social movements’ transformative climate change communication: extinction rebellion’s artivism

ABSTRACT Scientific authorities increasingly caution that industrialised nations need to implement substantial transformations to meet environmental targets. To mobilize people for this transformation and press for policy reforms, socio-environmental movements combine strategies from art and activism. While existing studies conceptualise this phenomenon asartivism, empirical research on the design, function, and reception of social movements’ artivist practices remains scarce . Therefore, this article examines the socio-environmental movement Extinction Rebellion‘s (×R) art-actions. Through visual analysis and focus group research, it analyses five of XR’s recent art-actions in the Netherlands, their design and their reception among the activists and their target group. Drawing on Susanne C. Moser´s ten tasks for transformative climate change communication , we argue that XR’s art-actions use principles of transformative communication to serve movement-external goals, such as awareness-raising and mobilization, as well as movement-internal goals, such as the sharing of emotions and the prevention of activist exhaustion. Our analysis then shows that XR’s art-actions often succeed in reaching movement-internal goals. Regarding movement-external goals, our findings indicate that XR’s art-actions carry potential in mobilizing an ecologically aware audience for environmental action. The realisation of this potential, however, hinges on striking a careful balance between salient-image, specific call for action and positive outcome. Overall, we emphasize the relevance of considering the internal and external dimensions of artivism in social movement research and practice – and we show how reception research can serve this endeavour.

“We are Indians, Whores and Lesbians, Revolted and Twined Together.” Decolonial Feminism in Bolivia

Abstract The aim of the text is to analyse contemporary Bolivian decolonial feminism using Cusicanquiʼs model of cultural hybridity. Cusicanqui formulated the concept of chʼixi as an analytical tool for theorizing about the mixing of cultures that maintain distinct aspects but enter a mutual creative dialogue and create new qualities through it. In my analysis, I focus on two streams of Bolivian decolonial feminism, represented by Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements. First, I describe historical roots of Bolivian decolonial feminism with an emphasis on the influence of anarchist ideas both on the formation of the Bolivian workersʼ movement and on strategies and practices of social and indigenous movements at the turn of the millennium. In the following discussion I analyse the ideologies and strategies of Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements using Cusicanquiʼs model of hybridity. I conclude that both movements construct a subversive network of alternative knowledge and practices, within which seemingly contradictory experiences can coexist harmoniously and create a new, non-dichotomous qualities. According to Cusicanqui, these chʼixi spaces are the source of a new, emerging epistemology based on which a radical vision of decolonised modernity can be formulated.

Teaching and Learning Paulo Freire: South Africa’s Communities of Struggle

This article highlights both the internal educative practices of social movements and how these practices can effectively link to building Freirean pedagogies within higher education institutions. At the heart of this possibility lies the democratic transformation of relations between students and teachers on the one hand and researchers and activists on the other. I draw from two case studies of my own research on community-based organisations and workers’ movements in post-apartheid South Africa, which point to the possibilities and challenges of developing Freirean approaches within the neoliberal higher education context. The article suggests that if the goal of education is to challenge systems of oppression, then social justice and the democratisation of the knowledge project must be the guiding principles we employ to navigate our everyday teaching and learning practices both inside and outside the academy.

O ATO DISCURSIVO BLACK BLOC E A GRAMÁTICA DE RESISTÊNCIA

This work is outlined as a link in a chain of academic and political acts developed by teachers, social subjects and students as resistance against reactionary acts. We use the concept of grammar of pain / resistance (ALENCAR, 2014) to glimpse transformative particularities of the Concrete Stament (BAKHTIN, 2011) associated with the discursive practices of new social movements and their subjects (GOHN, 2008; HOUTART, 2007), which emerge from the living contradiction with contemporary social phenomena. Methodologically, from the tense stabilization of typical forms of speech interaction sensitive to marginalized social voices in specific discursive structures, we relate the notions of grammar of resistance, new social movements and grammatical “errors” (according to conservative normative perspectives), to discuss the statement "Black Bloc, a matter of choice”, published on the Facebook page Black Bloc - RJ on 12/06/2013. We consider that this discourse is willing to ethically listen to the cry of the marginalized and seeks to legitimize discursive forms that are outlined as indistinguishable between verb, life and social struggle.

Luchas feministas en Guadalajara: apuestas y tensiones

This article aims to outline a series of discussions on the strengthening of the feminist movement in Guadalajara based on recent organizational experiences and mobilizations. We are interested in organizing and analyzing women’s experiences in the fight for equality and life, as well as understanding their contributions to the practice and theories of social movements. This work is a first effort, part of a broader research project that seeks to study (from different perspectives) the recent history of the feminist movement in Guadalajara. It also aims to open up the debate about the keys of its articulation, its political stakes and its tensions.

Movement pedagogies in pandemic times: Extinction Rebellion Netherlands and (un)learning from the margins

ABSTRACT This article is based on activist research conducted alongside Extinction Rebellion Netherlands. By taking a pedagogical approach to social movements, it posits that Extinction Rebellion Netherlands is simultaneously bound up in the reproduction of and resistance to dominant ways of knowing and being. It discusses how ‘pedagogies of urgency’ reproduce the learning of hegemonic forms of life associated with modernity/coloniality. Treating the movement's margins as a privileged space of epistemological possibility, it examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted who is ‘heard, seen and rendered knowing’ [Motta & Esteves. (2014). Reinventing emancipation in the 21st century: The pedagogical practices of social movements. Interface, 6(1), 1–24, p. 5)]. This has facilitated the unlearning of pedagogies of urgency, and the learning of new relationships, subjectivities and knowledges that centre justice, prefiguration, and building relations across difference. Nevertheless, the pandemic also underscores some of the impossibilities for learning and dialogue inherent in the exclusions and violence at the heart of modern/colonial power relations.

A collective alternative to the Inward Turn in environmental sustainability research

It has become quite common in environmental sustainability research to promote the influencing of so-called inner dimensions of individuals as means to address pressing environmental problems such as climate change, what we refer to as the Inward Turn. We argue that the conceptual foundations of the Inward Turn, an extreme form of methodological individualism, limit it significantly as a strategy for addressing climate change and other socially relevant environmental problems. After briefly reviewing major shortcomings with the way the Inward Turn conceptualizes the relationship between individuals and social change, including its neglect of causal structures and propensity to abstract its analysis away from problems that are specific to place and time, we sketch the basic tenets of an alternative methodological approach capable of overcoming these limitations. Our approach, however, does not go to the other extreme and neglect the role of individuals; rather, our recognition of the structural drivers of particular environmental problems points to the necessity of specific collective actions by individuals, for example, in the practice of social movements. This recognition demands a rethinking of the role of individual factors, like emotion and empathy, in addressing environmental sustainability problems, namely as they relate to collective action/social movement emergence, development, and outcomes.

Feminist collective memory and nostalgia in gynaecological self-help in contemporary Europe

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics.