Study Of Political Activism Research Articles

Рец. на кн.: AMIRA MITTERMAIER. GIVING TO GOD: ISLAMIC CHARITY IN REVOLUTIONARY TIMES. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. XIV+233 p.

Amira Mittermaier’s book examines the practices of Islamic charity in contemporary Egypt. To answer the question of how and why pious Muslims engage in charity in their mundane lives, the author visits not only mosques, shrines, charitable and volunteer organizations, but also Tahrir Square in Cairo, an important locus for understanding Islamic piety. The place became widely known in 2011 due to the massive anti-government protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring in Egypt. The study of political activism allows the author to get a better grasp on the ordinary ethics of Islamic charity that considers the issues of social justice to be no less important compared to the political activism. But unlike liberal emancipatory projects, the understanding of social justice within the framework of Islamic piety relies on a fundamentally different ethics, political ontology, and temporal orientations. Drawing upon different cases, Mittermaier demonstrates the diverse ethical repertoire of Islamic giving, ranging from the examples of radical asceticism and self-denial, based on the Sufi ideal of the gift, to the more utilitarian approaches to charity, where gift exchange is considered to be a means to collect divine rewards for performed virtues. By comparing the Islamic gift ethics with the secular projects of social restructuring and reducing poverty, the author urges the reader to rethink Islamic charity as having a specific political meaning and potential vis-a-vis progressive ideas and politics.

Political activism across the life course

ABSTRACTThe study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current political landscape, the essay argues that the study of political activism can be enriched by engaging with the temporal dimensions of people’s everyday social experiences because it enables the discovery of political activism in mundane activities as well as in banal spaces. The authors suggest that a values-based approach that focuses on people’s relationships of concern would be a suitable way to surface contemporary political sites and experiences of activism across the life course and for different generations.

Militância no Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST): um olhar psicanalítico

Resumo: Pretende-se trazer as contribuições da psicanálise para pensar a militância no Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) como práticas que ressignificam o passado e podem ser enriquecedoras para os sujeitos. Para tanto, apresentaremos as contribuições dos psicanalistas Arantes (1999) e Muldworf (2000) para o estudo da militância política e faremos uma breve caracterização do MST e de seus militantes. Destaca-se que a adesão a ideais sociais e lugar de prestígio que ocupa o militante no movimento lhe possibilita gratificação e revitalização narcísica e que estas não devem ser negligenciadas pelos movimentos sociais e nos estudos sobre a temática.

Political Activism Research: Studying the Evoution of Political Behavior

The study of political activism has grown significantly within the last fifty years. Political participation was always the cornerstone of research in political science, but the advent of comparative political behavior studies and quantitative analysis has paved the way for data-driven investigations of who votes, why people participate and what types of political activities citizens prefer. This article is an introduction to the main scholarship in political participation studies, its evolution since the beginning, the shift in focus from conventional activism to unconventional engagement, up to the most recent innovation of digital participation. The political behavior field has showed how citizens are not necessarily prepared to be polit-ical animals, how political interest and opportunities play a role in the levels of participation recorded and how individuals may choose newer, confrontational modes of political expression that better fit their needs. In the end, the entire development of this field of research highlights once more the relevance of political action, especially with regards to how participation has changed in Europe, over time and across borders.

A study of political activism in labour courts

We analyse 1234 judicial decisions to estimate political activism amongst judges arbitrating dismissal disputes in Australian labour courts. The political colour of the appointing political party and judges’ work background affect probability of employee success by about 10% points.

Participar sin pertenecer. La participación política de los ciudadanos no nacionales en dos áreas urbanas: Alicante y Florencia

El estudio sobre el activismo político y la participación de los ciudadanos no nacionales se considera un tema estratégico para muchas investigaciones a nivel local e internacional. Recientemente, aparece una nueva perspectiva de estudio en diferentes autores que pone el enfoque en la participación en un nivel más amplio que el de la Unión Europea. Hay numerosos estudios que tratan el tema de la participación política de los ciudadanos no comunitarios y también de los residentes comunitarios. Sin embargo, faltan estudios que pongan sistemáticamente en comparación los tres diferentes estatus de ciudadanía que se manifiestan en el contexto de la Unión Europea. Este artículo se centra en tres categorías de individuos, que se diferencian en base a la dimensión formal y sustancial de la ciudadanía: ciudadanos comunitarios, neo-comunitarios y no comunitarios. Este trabajo se centra en dos contextos urbanos de la eurozona mediterránea, Alicante (España) y Florencia (Italia) que se pueden considerar most similar systems por la historia migratoria.

A Descriptive Study of Political Activism in First-Year Pharmacy Students

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to assess first-year pharmacy students' attitudes toward and interests in political activism due to the lack of published information on the political awareness, attitudes, and involvement of pharmacy students. First-year pharmacy students at a southern university were administered a questionnaire pertaining to political activism. Frequencies and descriptive statistics were calculated. In addition, an exploratory cluster analysis was performed based on a political activities scale. Students agreed that pharmacists should be aware of public policy issues and influence policy decisions. Voting was the most common form of participation in the political process, and when considered in the aggregate only one-third of the students were interested in being actively involved politically. The cluster analysis revealed four distinct groups of students with markedly different attitudes toward political participation. Two groups had a greater tendency for political activism; howe...

From Thought to Deed: Understanding Abortion Activism1

Many people have opinions on abortion, but relatively few contribute a substantial amount of time and effort to actively support their causes. This study investigated factors associated with level of activism in the abortion movement. The issue was addressed from a cost‐benefit framework based on theory and research from other social movements. In a sample drawn from pro‐life and pro‐choice organizations, activism was related to attitude salience, attitude polarization, social ties to abortion activists, and agentic self‐esteem. Potential constraint variables (e.g., employment) and social approval from important others showed little relation to activism. Factors affecting activism were similar for pro‐choice and pro‐life activists. Findings were generally consistent with studies of political activism for other social causes.

Outside the Imagined Community: Basque Terrorism, Political Activism, and the Tour de France

Since its publication more than a decade ago, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities has offered an enticing, if romantic, way of conceptualising nationalism. Fine-grained ethnographic analysis, however, of the ways in which local populations actually imagine their community raises some questions for the continuing viability of such a notion. In many places around the world, people consciously and conspicuously place themselves outside of the imagined community, and it is the social, cultural, and political consequences of such actions that this article seeks to explore. Drawing on a period of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in France in the mid-1990s, this article examines very public contestation and sabotage of the Tour de France by pro-Basque supporters. This specific case study of political activism through sport provides a compelling example of the ways in which a dominant symbol of French national identity is usurped and upstaged by a minority group so as to reinvent or re-imagine a new kind of community.