Social Movements Research Articles

Authoethnographie du printemps érable

Over a decade ago, Québec witnessed the Printemps érable, a general student strike that emerged in early 2012 and transformed into a social movement with broad mobilization throughout the summer. This paper is based on 2 narratives written by the authors about our experience in what is known today as the biggest student strike in Canada. Using autoethnography, we return to our 2012 writings (I am Going to Meet Audrey; and L’accident démocratique) to reflect on our past and present learning. We ask ourselves: what comes to mind, looking back at these texts ten years later? We discuss the interconnection between the personal and the political and how friendship developed our understanding of learning about solidarity. Overall, this autoethnographic practice brought us to significant realizations through critical engagement with our past perceptions.

Stepping Forward, Stepping Back, and into the Unknown

My social position emerges from years of activism and a rural, working-class history. For decades, I have worked in adult/lifelong learning and development—inside communities and post-secondary institutions—always with the goal of achieving a more just and equitable world. While I aspire to these ideals, I have also had to learn that acts of solidarity involve learning when to step forward, when to step back, and a willingness to step into the unknown. In this autoethnography I choose a few examples from life experience that illustrate solidarity in action and what might be termed revolutionary praxis. Using examples from my work in global/international development, settler-Indigenous relations, feminism, and public transportation, I explore activism and solidarity. Finally, I offer insights into how solidarity functions in spaces of adult learning, including attention to paradoxes or attempting to “do good” while reinforcing inequalities embedded in neoliberal funding, social histories, and authority structures. Positions of solidarity require deep levels of consciousness raising. In my experience, no transformation is without challenges, risk, and acts of courage.

Collective Agency in Reparation Politics: A Contentious Politics Perspective on Victim Mobilisation in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This article contributes to a better understanding of the collective agency of survivor organisations in Transitional Justice (TJ) processes by studying their claims for reparations as contentious politics. Examining two different survivor groups in Northern Ireland, we argue that applying concepts from social movement theory to understand victim groups in TJ is valuable in four ways: Firstly, it facilitates an analytical assessment of how and why survivors organise, and allows to systematically unravel the factors impacting mobilisation. Secondly, approaching survivor groups as strategic political actors engaged in contentious politics shifts the focus back to their agency as drivers of TJ. Thirdly, it helps to understand survivor groups “from within” and reveals the diversity and complexity of survivors’ identities, strategies and demands in transitional settings. Lastly, focusing on survivors’ collective agency helps to move beyond a liberal human-rights based approach to victim organisations and to consider groups acting within different moral frameworks.

The Moral Potential of Eco-Guilt and Eco-Shame: Emotions that Hinder or Facilitate Pro-Environmental Change?

The emotions of guilt and shame have an effect on how individuals feel and behave in relation to environmental crises, yet studies of the moral potential of these emotions remain limited. From a philosophical perspective, some scholars have defended using eco-guilt and eco-shame as morally constructive emotions due to their ability to evoke more pro-environmental behaviour. Meanwhile, others have posited that there are pitfalls to these emotions, claiming that they perpetuate a problematic individualised focus, which diverts attention from the collective and structural conditions considered necessary for pro-environmental change. This paper critically examines these two differing perspectives on eco-guilt and eco-shame, applying insights from moral and political philosophy and the sociology of emotions. Through this exploration, we try to nuance the discussion concerning the moral potential of eco-guilt and eco-shame. We argue that if individuals are able to break their introspective, consumption-based loops of eco-guilt and eco-shame alleviation, the emotions may enforce an individual ethical demand to be more sustainable and foster an ethical and political pro-environmental drive. Furthermore, experiences of eco-guilt and eco-shame have the potential to spread socially and help catalyse emotional shifts within society, sparking a greater political and social pro-environmental movement. Therefore, eco-guilt and eco-shame may indeed transcend the purported introspective and individual-level focus and have the potential to influence broader collective and structural conditions and thus foster environmental change.

Ceterum censemus Carthaginem Nouam esse legendam: Roman Poetry as Cultural History

This paper updates the carmina Latina epigraphica corpus of Carthago Nova (Hispania Citerior). The beginning of the arrival of families of Italic origin around the middle of the first century B.C. seems to be of crucial importance, as it definitely influenced the development of both trade and mining in the region and verse epigraphy. The study of the onomastics of these texts allows us to trace their origins and social positions, as well as to provide key elements of the social and cultural history of Carthago Nova.

Nurturing consciousness for mobilization: Dynamics of land rights movements in Nepal

Conscious participant(s) is crucial in the organization and mobilization of social movements. It mediates the entire process of movement practices. Despite its importance, it is regarded merely as an autonomous internal dynamic, overlooking the role external factors play in building consciousness among marginalized communities. In-depth conversations with movement participants and activists in Nepal’s land rights movements, evident that nurturing consciousness is a process predominantly shaped by external factors, particularly the individual and organizations. To transform marginalized communities’ everyday experiences into collective realizations, external actors and organizations facilitate marginalized people to become conscious with the use of prevalent approaches and replicated strategies. Nepal’s land rights movements provide insights: movement organization’s internal efforts are necessary but not sufficient. For influential organizations of movements, marginalized communities adopt external national and international influences to convert their experiences into conscious and influential mobilization.

Max Weber’s Outer World/Inner World and the Principle of Rationality

Max Weber (1864-1920) revealed his major Sociological observation, of the “Principle of Rationality”. The Principle of Rationality consisted of two social movements, Substantive (traditional culture/inner world) and Formal Rationality (modern society, Money Economy (Outer world).

Women, gender and the ancient economy: towards a feminist economic history of the ancient Greek world

Abstract This article asks why women are ignored in debates about ancient economies and suggests a way forward. It argues that women performed a wide variety of diverse economic activities, though this is not particularly discernible from the scholarly literature, which mostly casts them as patrons or prostitutes and, despite the household being a basic economic unit to which women contributed, generally considers economic actors as male by default. However, by drawing on feminist economics, social history and gender studies, it is possible to reframe women’s varied activities in ways that acknowledge their labour, spotlight female agency, challenge the (gendered) categories of analysis and discourses that are predominantly used within ancient history, and recentre questions relating to the structures of inequality created by ancient economies. Three case studies explore some of the problems and raise new questions: Z3, a building in the Kerameikos the function of which is debated, the contribution of tax-farmers to sacrifices on Kos and the water supply in Athens. That is, this article argues that examining how ancient economies were gendered is a profitable way to think about both economic history and gender history.

Progressivism and Religious Disaffiliation in Chile: Responses to Social Movements

Progressivism and Religious Disaffiliation in Chile: Responses to Social Movements

Revolutions: an introduction to the #AoIR2023 special issue

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the ‘Revolutions’ themed special issue which includes research presented at the 24th annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2023). The conference theme centered on revolutions, highlighting the connections between digital transformations and social movements across time and space. Focusing on the affordances of digital technologies for mobilization, resistance and achieving social justice, but also their limitations in enabling lasting social change, the conference theme asked participants to reflect on the tradeoffs between empowerment and subordination, and the relationship of digital ‘revolutions’ to racial justice, anticolonial movements, and the rising tide of white supremacist and fascist mobilization. This special issue includes six papers that offer new angles on critically assessing the groundbreaking early ideas underpinning online networked spaces and questioning the revolutionary potential of the internet today. The range of papers includes contexts related to platform power and user agency, online political subcultures and memeification, the balance between visibility and power for content creators revolutionizing live streaming and influencer cultural industries, and perceptions of AI’s revolutionary impact on romantic relationships. The studies in this issue also offer a global view, with geographies stretching from the MENA region and China to subcultures and marginalized groups in Western contexts such as the US and Canada.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ РАЗОЧАРОВАНИЯ: РУССКАЯ РЕВОЛЮЦИЯ 1917 Г. ГЛАЗАМИ ДВУХ ЭМИГРАНТОК

The memoirs of two Russian émigrés, anarchist Emma Goldman and socialist Angeliсa Balabanoff, recently published in Russia, provide a perspective on the formation of Bolshevik power after the October coup that differs from the Soviet version of events, revealing little-known aspects of the 1917 revolution. Goldman, deported from the United States, highlighted the role of anarchists in revolutionary Russia, portraying them not as a chaotic force but as a socialist movement advocating an alternative to the dictatorship of the proletariat—namely, the development of self-government as called for by Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Like other opponents of the Bolsheviks, the anarchists were ultimately suppressed. Balabanoff, a member of the Italian Socialist Party and the RСP(b), and secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, discussed the methods of party building, particularly the Bolsheviks' influence on the split within the international socialist movement. Having arrived in Russia after the 1917 revolution to support the birth of a workers' and peasants' republic, both women were soon forced to leave, disillusioned by the policies of the Soviet state.

Narrating Against Uncertainty: Newspaper Documentation in the Syrian Revolutionary Movement

This article theorizes documentation in narratives – the process by which activists gather and write evidence of facts to build a coherent mobilization narrative. Focusing on narrating (the process) rather than narrative use, it argues that documentation in newspapers reflected the goal of ‘making sense’ in a context of uncertainty. To do so, it fledges the probative value of narratives, their capacity to convey stories not only with plots, characters and emotions but also through the logic of proof. Building on a sample analysis of Syrian revolutionary newspapers published after the 2011 Uprising, it shows how documentation helped build the opposition narrative with fact-finding and individual storytelling. When the regime denied the existence of protests and repression, revolutionary newspapers helped document the social movement (with photos and testimonies of protest) and the repression (with lists and testimonies of victims). In doing so, this article shows that documenting became an act of mobilization.

The contested politics of the atmospheric commons: a case study of a mothers’ group fighting particulate matter in South Korea

ABSTRACT This study contends that the politics of the commons framework is essential for identifying inherent political dynamics within atmospheric commons. It highlights boundary work and meaning-making practices as key components of commons politics and ultimately shapes the approach to management. To support this argument, the study presents a case of a South Korean social movement led by a mothers’ group, Call for Response to Particulate Matter. By engaging in boundary work and meaning-making practices to protect children’s health, the group successfully influenced national discourse and collaborated with the government. While this resulted in changes to Korean laws and policies related to PM pollution, the study reveals limitations that prevented the group’s scope and meaning from extending to broader origins of air pollution. Beyond commons management, attention to commons politics raises important questions about who advocates for the commons, who delineates boundaries, and the meanings attributed. Commons management is shaped by these boundaries and meanings, potentially excluding elements outside established boundaries that could aid broader social change or lifestyle adjustments.

From imagination to activism: Cognitive alternatives motivate commitment to activism through identification with social movements and collective efficacy.

Having a vision and being able to imagine socially and ecologically just alternatives can motivate people for societal transformation. However, which psychological processes drive this link between the mental accessibility of societal alternatives and collective action? We hypothesized that collective efficacy beliefs and politicized identification form two pathways mediating the effects of cognitive alternatives on high-cost activist behaviour. Two studies and a pooled analysis tested these hypotheses longitudinally. Data were collected in two field settings: a climate camp and an online conference on socio-ecological visions. In line with our assumptions, and across three of the four analysed timeframes, latent change score modelling showed that changes in cognitive alternatives predicted changes in collective efficacy beliefs and social movement identification, which in turn, predicted changes in collective action intentions. We found clear evidence for our hypotheses in the short term and mixed evidence in the long term. Additional analyses including participative efficacy showed no relevant effects. We concluded that the ability to envision social change may foster a sense of agency as members of social movements. These processes linking imagination to activism are less about individual efficacy than about realizing the collective possibilities for change and identifying with the groups enacting it.

Examining Factors Contributing to the Entrenchment and Collapse of Authoritarianism Through the Lens of the Arab Spring

Abstract: This paper hopes to examine the reasons contributing to the failure of the Arab Spring to culminate in a lasting change in political reform and democratisation. The article utilises frameworks by previous authors to explain the phenomenon of the short-lived democracies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as provide additional insights of the author in obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the reason why autocratic states are so entrenched within MENA. At the end of this, the aim is to provide political substantiations regarding the failure of the Arab Spring, as opposed to the current focus surrounding violence and civil war as the driver to stunted democratic growth and autocratic resurgence. The article concludes that MENA countries are uniquely situated by their social, political and economic institutions and history that make democratic growth difficult unless as a means to achieve another priority, such as economic prosperity. This can be extrapolated towards analysing the behaviours of a variety of other states, democratic or autocratic, in their interactions with their population and foreign states.

The trajectory of a transnational right to land norm

Abstract In conflicts around land usage, vulnerable groups are often threatened by dispossession of their land. Governance structures that protect both individual and collective land rights are thus necessary. To counter such risks, social movements engaged towards the establishment of a right to land norm in transnational governance. Building on literature on norm emergence, this paper exemplifies the involvement of activists in the creation process of two transnational regulations that address land: The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1989 and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in 2012. Both documents emerged in response to increasing global awareness of each specific issue. In the case of ILO 169, rising awareness of social inequality and discrimination of indigenous peoples and in the case of the VGGT the rapidly growing global land market. The paper reflects on the importance of timing, engagement, and discourse in creating norms and embedding them in global governance.

Research on political participation in contemporary Albania – an overview

ABSTRACT This article takes stock of research on political participation and civic engagement in Albania, a country generally perceived as lacking a civil society and a democratic political culture. Rather, Albanian political culture since the 1990s has been characterized by political conflict and a dysfunctional parliamentary life. On top of this comes widespread public dissatisfaction and a general lack of interest in politics. The general assumption is that a democratic political culture remains to be developed. Reviewing articles on public engagement in English-language journals and reports published in the recent decade, the overall picture is that research on Albanian political participation is poorly developed. There is a considerable amount of research and NGO reports dealing with formal political activity (electoral participation and party membership) and – in particular – studies of social movements, including protests and demonstrations. Other forms of participation are largely overlooked, like political consumption, social involvement, and civic engagement.

We need a global language rights movement: confronting the global language crisis with insights from social movement studies

Since the late 1980s, academics and activists have been drawing attention to a slow-moving global crisis: the ongoing destruction of global linguistic diversity. Despite this attention, language loss has proceeded unabated, and conservative estimates now suggest that around half the world’s languages will no longer be in use by the end of this century. In this provocation, I argue that only a global mass movement has the capacity to change the course of this crisis. I furthermore argue that a rights-based approach, centred on language rights, is our best bet for organising such a movement. Drawing on social movement studies, and my own experience as a language rights researcher and advocate, I explore three key areas where language rights provide the foundations for a mass movement in defence of linguistic diversity. First, I look at how language rights provide a discursive frame that resonates with other movements and clarifies the problem that needs to be addressed. Second, I look at how the concept of language rights can help recruit individuals and organisations into a mass movement and sustain their involvement in the cause. Third, I discuss how language rights provide a basis for effective collective action. In the conclusion I briefly discuss some of the challenges that will need to be overcome in forming a global mass movement for language rights.

Blurred Lines: Negotiating the In/Visibility of Maintenance in Feminist Art

Abstract Visibility has been a key battleground for social movements such as feminism since the 1970s. In a socioeconomic landscape where the value and purpose of visibility vary according to gender, class, and race, it becomes even more urgent to critically investigate the mechanisms that organise it. By drawing from feminist and postcolonial theories, the article examines the negotiation of visibility in the artworks of Daniela Ortiz, Mayo Pimentel, and Liryc Dela Cruz. Through their work, these artists provide valuable insights into the aesthetic and political implications of in/visibility, particularly in relation to maintenance work, identified as a domain where these contradictions are most pronounced.

Origins of Opportunity, Part 1: The Formation of CSWE’s Minority Research Fellowship Program, 1954–1978

ABSTRACT This paper marks the 50th anniversary of the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP), exploring its historical development. Leveraging archival CSWE materials, it chronicles pivotal events from 1954 leading to the MFP’s inception in 1973 and its early research fellowship cohorts through 1978. This historical analysis examines the advocacy, challenges, and milestones within the CSWE and broader social movements that promoted diversity and inclusion in social work education. The MFP specifically addressed the underrepresentation of minorities by developing culturally attuned researchers and practitioners. This reflective examination enriches the social work historical record and underscores the MFP’s transformative impact in creating a profession that effectively reflects and serves our racially and ethnically diverse society.