Social Movement Studies Research Articles

Challenging the meaning of the past from below: A typology for comparative research on memory activists

Memory activists have recently received more scholarly and public attention, but the concept lacks conceptual clarity. In this article, we articulate an analytical framework for studying memory activists, proposing a relatively narrow definition: “Memory activists” strategically commemorate the past to challenge (or protect) dominant views on the past and the institutions that represent them. Their goal is mnemonic change or to resist change. We locate scholarship on memory activists at the intersection of memory studies and social movement studies. We introduce a typology for comparative analysis of memory activism according to activist roles, temporality, and modes of interaction with other actors in memory politics, and illustrate this with a diverse set of empirical examples. We contend that the analytical utility of the concept of the “memory activist” is premised on its value-neutrality, and in particular, its application to both pro and anti-democratic cases of activism.

Single mothers and resistance to welfare-to-work: A Bourdieusian account

This research applied Bourdieusian field theory to explain the forms of resistance exercised by single mothers exposed to the cultural and economic domination of Australian welfare-to-work policy. The mothers were affected by policy changes that reduced their social security benefit income and brought them into the field of activation policies. Unlike other studies focusing on well-being effects, this study focused on understanding resistance, that is, how welfare subjects like single mothers exercise resistance in dominating contexts. Bourdieusian field theory was applied to explain these resistances as a reaction to a social policy reclassification and to identity the enabling resources for it. This article observes the conditions that enabled single mothers to convert individual forms of resistance into collective action. In this respect, Husu’s adaptation of Bourdieusian field theory to social movement studies provided insight into how dominating fields like those of activation policy, generate resistances and social movements.

Does transnational contention lead to transnational memory? The online visual memory of the February 2003 anti-Iraq War protests

ABSTRACT In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational nature of the February 2003 anti-war protests resulted in an equally widely shared and transnational form of memory. Following research that describes the crucial role of visual communication for social movements and memory, it approaches this question by studying the size and shape of the online visual memory of the 2003 anti-war protests. Applying the Google Cloud Vision API to retrieve and analyse 1746 online circulations of twenty-five photographs of the 2003 anti-war protests in the period 2003–2019, we find that, compared to other famous images of protest, the online circulation of images of the protests remains limited. This suggests that the massive protests of 2003 did not result in a widely shared and transnational form of memory. Rather than focusing on individual images, this article argues that studying patterns in their online circulation can explain why some movements remain in the public eye, while others quickly disappear from it.

The October 2019 Protest Movement in Iraq. An Analysis of the 'Early Moments' of the Mobilisation

On 1 October 2019, a wide-ranging anti-government protest took to the streets in Baghdad. Grievances included unemployment, a lack of basic services, the absence of social justice, and endemic corruption in political and economic institutions. Despite swift and severe state repression, the protest snowballed into a countrywide mobilisation encompassing the central-southern governorates to become the largest protest movement to challenge Iraq's post-2003 political order. By granting analytical weight to the role of early riser activists, this paper focuses on the factors that shaped activists' decisions and lead to different forms of spontaneous participation involving both sympathisers and bystanders. In so doing, it draws attention to the non-hierarchical structure of the movement and its diffused communication strategy, the repression as a moral shock and the rhetoric of protest slogans. At the crossroads between social movement studies and Iraqi studies, this article contributes to both bodies of scholarship with empirical research. On one hand, it enriches social movement literature by shedding light on strategies and actions adopted by activists operating in non-liberal contexts. On the other hand, it enriches Iraqi political studies by demonstrating that the country hosts a vibrant sphere of contentious politics, a sphere that deserves ample scrutiny.

Analýza sociálních sítí ve studiu sociálních hnutí

For several decades, a relational perspective in collective action research has gained firm ground, introducing new concepts and theories. Also, Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become one of the most dynamic areas of analytical tools development in social studies, with the rapid expansion of both quantitative and qualitative applications and concepts. This combination has led to the innovation of research in collective action studies. This article aims to introduce SNA for the study of collective action, reviews various modes of its application, and provides a brief sketch of research problems SNA may help articulate and analyze. First, the article reviews theoretical developments in the study of collective action and the rise of a relational perspective. Second, it explains some of the basics and logic of SNA in the context of a relational perspective in collective action research. Third, it reviews the recent application of SNA in social movement studies at the individual level, the symbolic level (collective identity), and the organizational level.

The influence of social movements on policy change: delayed success in banning dog slaughter in Germany

ABSTRACT The Animal Welfare Movement, among other things, aims to change animal welfare policies. Why certain animal welfare campaigns have been more successful than others remains unclear. This article examines the course of such policy changes in animal welfare based on the 1986 ban on dog slaughter in Germany. It answers the research question: ‘How can we explain the influence of the animal welfare movement on policy change regarding the ban on dog slaughter?’ This article analyses the case of a long-delayed policy change, although the demand had received broad public and political support. Drawing on social movement studies, this article proposes that the delay is due to framing errors on the part of the animal welfare movement and argues that policy change could only take place through the help of allies in the field of politics. Using the process-tracing method, over 1,000 pages of policy documents and other relevant documents were analysed. The results show that the dog slaughter ban was delayed because policy makers feared that a morally motivated ban could be extended to other animal species. Only frame bridging with public health discourse by actors from the field of politics was able to overcome this barrier. This article contributes to social movement studies by analysing a case of frame bridging triggered by movement allies, thereby deepening our understanding of the relevance of the wider cultural environment of a contested policy and of interactions between movements and allies in policy change.

Conceptual and Theoretical Debates on Social Movement Studies

This paper is a review based synthesis on the conceptual and theoretical debates on social movements (SMs). It aims to analyse the debate from different theoretical lens which are popularly used in the studies of SMs. The paper then explores prominent research issues that could be grounded at the local contexts of the movements. The main argument of the paper is that the discourse of SM is not linear and monolithic. Rather, it is a poly centric notion and thus essentially contested in terms of theorization and research.

Institutional actors’ participation in social movement: examining the roles of perceived damage to work reputation, collective efficacy, and communication patterns

ABSTRACT Social movement studies often focus on how the general public is mobilized to join collective contentious actions rather than on state-movement relations. Yet, institutional actors who occupy positions within the administration can employ institutional means to support a social movement. We examine how social-psychological factors and communication patterns influence institutional actors’ participation, based on a survey of civil servants during the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in Hong Kong (N = 277). The results show that both the perceived damage to reputation and collective efficacy relate positively to participation intent. Through structural equation modeling, we elaborate how news consumption on different media platforms and interpersonal discussions influence civil servants’ political participation indirectly through affecting the perception of their reputation and collective efficacy. These findings suggest institutional actors are motivated to act when a social movement threatens institutional legitimacy and engenders collective efficacy through mass/interpersonal communications.

Political advances for women and sport in the mid-1990s

ABSTRACT The topic of women’s and girls’ rights, access and inclusion in sport and physical activity has become a mainstay of sporting and non-sporting organisational discourse. Notwithstanding, there is little published on why, how and who enabled these topics to become politicised to this extent. For example, academic texts state key moments for the advancement of women and sport, such as conferences and resolutions, but rarely provide further detail. By explaining how transnational women and sport advocacy groups lobbied the United Nations (UN) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) into actions for women and sport in the mid-1990s, this article adds to knowledge about how advocacy groups in international sport succeeded in working together to collectively effect change despite demonstrating contention amongst one another. Data from archival analysis of papers and correspondence of key agents involved in these processes were complemented with semi-structured interviews with some of the same individuals decades later. Using terms and concepts from social movement studies, the article shows how the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) and WomenSport International (WSI) developed in relation to each other and the political environment in which they were playing a key role in shaping. Their relationship was not straightforward, due in part to the formations and structure of each group, but their purposive efforts with other agents contributed to a collective endeavour that achieved milestones for the political legitimacy of women and sport.

Partisan‐Motivated Evaluations of Sexual Misconduct and the Mitigating Role of the #MeToo Movement

AbstractWhen individuals evaluate something as serious as sexual misconduct allegations in politics, they are often motivated to defend their party—but outside forces can reduce these partisan biases. We bridge work from political psychology with studies of social movements to theorize how the #MeToo movement helps to mitigate partisan‐motivated evaluations of sexual misconduct. With a two‐wave survey experiment, we find that partisans are more likely to view out‐party members as guilty of sexual misconduct and that individuals less likely to reflect are particularly biased in their evaluations. We then turn to the #MeToo movement and its potential to promote reflection. We show that support for #MeToo is associated with more evenhanded evaluations of sexual misconduct in politics, particularly among those unlikely to reflect on their own. This study contributes to our broader understanding of how movements can induce reflection and moderate partisan‐motivated reasoning among the mass public.

Interpretative Frames, Phenomenology, and the Question of the Republican Character of Polish and Czech Dissident Movements of the 1970s and 1980s

The Polish Solidarity movement of 1980–1981 and the Czechoslovak dissident movement both developed an original model of democracy. The dissidents sought to reconcile the tensions between the individual and the community—personal independence and engagement with public affairs—by building a pluralist, debating civic community entrenched in objective values. Calling upon on the phenomenological tradition and the interpretative frames perspective used in social movement studies, the author seeks to interrogate the intellectual roots of the dissident vision of democracy and the reasons behind one of its future interpretations, which viewed it through the lens of the republican political tradition. Drawing on the popularity and the character of the phenomenological tradition, the author explains the differences in the understanding of community in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Los movimientos sociales desde la perspectiva feminista: pistas metodológicas para un análisis no androcéntrico de la acción social

Social movements have a determining role in the political landscape. They are agents of change that question and bring to light the power structures that the system does not express by itself. However, as power operates as a network, social movements are not exempt from harboring relations of domination and power. In this context, based on a feminist methodology and the use of gender categories as a device of power, sexual division of labor, access to the public space, and decision-making, the objective of this work is to provide methodological elements for the analysis of non-separatist or mixed social movements, whose main purpose is not related to breaking power relations based on the gender device. The feminist analysis makes it possible to show elements that, from the androcentric theory of the study of social movements, had not been considered as relevant. Ignoring these aspects produces and reproduces, in most cases, political violence against women. Nevertheless, in other cases, it contributes to making the sexual harassment and violence experienced by women activists invisible.

Recognition for resistance: Gifting, social media, and the politics of reciprocity in South Korean energy activism

This article argues for adopting the theoretical lens of gift exchange and reciprocity into the study of social movements and social media in an attempt to widen the horizon of the field of protest and media beyond its technological orientation. This lens invites us to see how protesters can build a movement strategically through the practice of gifting and the principle of reciprocity, and how such practices intersect with socially situated usages of digital media technologies to mediate and facilitate the politics of reciprocity. Based on an ethnographic analysis of energy activism in South Korea, the study suggests four necessary conditions for movement-building through culturally and technologically mediated forms of gift and reciprocity: pursuit of inclusive and open-ended alliances, prohibition of negative exchange, commitment to mutual interest aligned with shared movement goals, and the maintenance of voluntary and creative participation in gift exchange.

Framing the Collective “We” and the Antagonistic “Other” through Metacontrast: Intragroup Homogenization and Intergroup Polarization in the Hindu Nationalist Movement*

The right‐wing Hindu nationalist “Hindutva” movement in India has political control of the world’s most populous democracy. To gain insight into the tools of the movement, this paper examines Hindutva framing rhetoric. Social movement framing entails the crafting of movement messages to motivate collective identity and collective action. This paper takes a new approach to studying social movement framing by using the social psychological principle of metacontrast as an organizing theoretical framework. Metacontrast involves minimizing differences within the group (intragroup homogenization) and maximizing differences between groups (intergroup polarization). We argue dual homogenizing‐polarizing frames work in concert to construct a unified collective identity and mobilize concerted collective action. Using qualitative content analysis of two Hindutva organization websites, we find Hindutva framing rhetoric simultaneously homogenizes and polarizes through two framing strategies: a threat‐counter threat frame that portrays an antagonistic outgroup that must be countered with a unified ingroup, and a striking positive‐negative intergroup contrast that paints the ingroup as a moral protector and the outgroup as a vilified adversary. Notably, key to these efforts is the minimization of deeply entrenched, rigid caste differences. Our findings have implications for the study of social movements, nationalism, collective identity, collective action, and intergroup relations.

Intersectionality and social movements: Intersectional challenges and imperatives in the study of social movements

AbstractIntersectionality emerged in the border space between social movements and academic politics as a means of better understanding and confronting interlocking systems of oppression. For scholars studying social movements, it offers a framework for better understanding the power dynamics of movements (the inclusions and exclusions). It is also something to be studied. Women of color, and other groups at the intersection of multiple marginalities conceptualized intersectionality as not only a type of integrated analysis or heuristic, but as an active political orientation to be put into practice. In this essay, I review and discuss the benefits and challenges of studying social movements intersectionally (an analysis that might be applied to the study of any movements), as well as the growing literature focused on social movement intersectionality, that looks for and at intersectionally oriented movements and the praxis of intersectionality within movements. This developing area of study provides new ways of understanding and troubling social movement solidarity.

POPULISME ISLAM DALAM GERAKAN 212

This study aims to describe the 212 movement as a phenomenon of Islamic populism based on socio-religious movements followed by various Islamic organizations and their contradictions with other Islamic organizations The results showed that the 212 movement phenomenon was followed by various religious groups, especially Islam, participation was based on various forms of motivation, demands, principles and organizational ideology. In addition, the research results show that not all Islamic organizations support the 212 movement, but there are contradictions among religious organizations regarding their perceptions of the 212 movement. Pros and cons tend to be based on interpretations of religious teachings as well as ideology and organizational principles. The results of the research are then analyzed using the concept of mass mobilization and Islamic populism in the study of social movements that lead to the populist movement. The research findings also show that there is a relationship between social movements and Islamic populism as evidenced by the finding of chains of equivalens and empty signifiers which have implications for the formation of political frointer in the Islamic populism movement 212.

MOVEMENT ANALYSIS ON THE FLY: THE LIMITS AND PROMISE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Disciplined academic study of social movements should help us make sense of the movements and politics of our time, but social science often leads us astray. Particularly, the ideal of limiting the frame of analysis in terms of independent and dependent variables and in terms of time routinely neglects the disparate causes and effects of social protest. These challenges are particularly acute when considering contemporaneous campaigns, that is, analysis on the fly. Using the case of the first Women’s March, staged the day after Donald Trump became president of the United States, I elaborate the false steps that social science analysis encourages by identifying patterned errors of exclusion: applying misplaced models; producing unduly narrow fields of action; the difficulty of evaluating practical possibilities; the challenge of assessing institutionalization; and the necessity of truncating time. I conclude with suggestions for continuing to engage in analysis of contemporary movements and ways to avoid egregious errors while doing so.

Official framing—portraying the implementation of an unpopular policy as responsive governance

ABSTRACT Official framing has received increasing attention in social movement studies. Yet current research often focuses on the negative side of framing, that is, how authorities vilify and demonize challengers to justify coercive reactions, whereas little scholarship has scrutinized positive framing, i.e., how officials recognize the legitimacy of citizens’ grievances and portray state co-optation or conciliation as responsive governance. Neither does existing research examine institutional foundations of official framings. To address these omissions, this paper devises a conceptual framework of negative and positive framings, which incorporates the examination of a variety of formal and less formal institutions undergirding different types of framing strategies. I develop this conceptual framework through a case study of how a local government framed protest against waste incineration in China. It documents how authorities portray the implementation of an unpopular policy as responsive governance and how different institutions facilitate official frames. An in-depth analysis of official framing not only contributes to the development of studies of frames and contentious politics but to a better understanding of social control and legitimation.

The Mobilization for Spatial Justice in Divided Societies: Urban Commons, Trust Reconstruction, and Socialist Memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy. Specifically, it investigates how urban space and urban commons are reclaimed in a post-conflict and post-socialist country such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. By using Sarajevo as a case study, the article explores several grassroots initiatives undertaken by local urban activists to reappropriate cultural buildings and public space in the city. The study discloses that in a post-conflict and post-socialist society urban commons can bear a unifying potential as acts of commoning favor trust reconstruction processes and strengthen community ties. While the erosion of social ties and the legacy of the war might not encourage mobilization for the commons, the reference to socialist-era practices and language can represent a vantage point to advocate in favor of collective governance. Throughout their actions, urban activists instrumentally referred to the historical experience of socialism to develop a discourse that resonates with the domestic cultural environment. The article points also to a generational difference amongst activists in their references to Yugoslav state socialism. While long-time activists strove to critically reappraise it, the younger ones born in the immediate post-war period appear to hold a more superficial and ambivalent historical knowledge of the socialist heritage, to which they had only partial access and no lived experience.

Populism in abeyance: the survival of populist repertoires of contention in North Italy

ABSTRACT Long seen as divergent in nature, the fields of populist studies and social movement analysis have rarely been the focus of cross-disciplinary research. This paper, by encouraging such convergence makes two significant contributions to both the study of populism and social movements. First, by combining a discourse theoretical approach to populism with social movement theories of abeyance and ‘cultural repertoires’, it examines populist discourse as a form of contentious politics. Second, using primary and secondary sources of both a textual and visual nature, it applies this framework to a case study of North Italian populist regionalism and in doing so takes a diachronic approach to populism. This allows for a clearer understanding of not only of the decline of certain populist movements, but also how these movements’ repertoires are transmitted between separate waves of activism.