Wave Of Protests Research Articles

Ideology, Legitimation and Collective Action: Evidence from Chile on the Mechanism of Ideological Inversion

Abstract We present evidence on a social mechanism of legitimation—ideological inversion—proposing that a fantasy consensus deters collective actions oriented toward social change, even in contexts were individuals support transformations. This fantasy consensus emerges as individuals infer the order’s validity mainly from the practices of others, which are largely constrained by social structures. Relying on a factorial survey experiment conducted in Chile, our results support the two main hypotheses from ideological inversion: people systematically overestimate the support for the status quo, and this overestimation has a deterrent effect on collective actions oriented toward social change. We argue that ideological inversion helps explain how legitimation crises often remain hidden, and therefore how political crisis often emerge abruptly. For instance, before the revolt of 2019 Chile was perceived as an example of social stability within Latin America, yet after an ordinary subway fare hike the country erupted in an unrelenting and massive wave of protests. Our findings suggest that the social support for the status quo previously perceived in Chile was a fantasy consensus enforced by constrained practices, and that this fantasy was very effective until recently in deterring social change. Ideological inversion thus provides a mechanism that contributes to explain the stability of social structures and inequalities regardless of individual dispositions or shared norms.

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

Total Mobilization from Below: Hong Kong's Freedom Summer

AbstractThis article examines the origins and dynamics of an extraordinary wave of protests in Hong Kong in 2019–2020. Despite lacking visible political opportunities and organizational resources, the protest movement drew resilient, mass participation unparalleled in the city's history and much of the world. Drawing from original on-site surveys and online datasets, we conceptualize the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as a form of “total mobilization from below.” The totality of the mobilization depended on a set of interactive mechanisms: abeyant civil society networks concealed after the 2014 Umbrella Movement were activated by threats over extradition and institutional decay, whereas affective ties developed through conflicts and mutual assistance were amplified by digital communication. The movement's characteristics in terms of protest scale, mobilizing structure, use of alternative spaces, and group solidarity are examined. The spasmodic moments of mobilization are explained by a nexus of network building that took place in an unreceptive environment and at a critical juncture. The roles of threats and emotions in mass mobilizations are also analysed.

The recovery of protest in Japan: from the ‘ice age’ to the post-2011 movements

ABSTRACT For a long time after the end of large-scale student unrest in the 1970s Japan stood out by a comparatively low level of protest. Yet spectacular waves of mass-protest returned with the anti-nuke mobilizations following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown and other ‘post-2011’ movements. In this paper I develop an analytical framework inspired by the multi-level perspective in transition studies to illuminate two questions: how can the relatively low level of protest in Japan before 2011 – in particular the so called ‘ice age’ of protest from the 1970s to the early 2000s – be explained, and what enabled the recovery of protest afterwards, starting in the early 2000s and leading up to the post-2011 protest cycle? I point to the crucial role played on the one hand by niches in the form of social movement spaces in fostering oppositional discourses and on the other hand by landscape changes that destabilized the established politico-cultural regime. A crucial role was played by the creative work of freeter activists in social movement spaces during the 1990s who reinvented activism in response to stigmatization of open protest after the collective trauma of the perceived defeat of the New Left in the 1970s. This creative work was a precondition for the rise of protest movements in the early 2000s which in turn prepared the way for the post-2011 protest wave.

The ‘one bright light’ of Life in a Dark Cell: Reading and Writing in Victorian and Edwardian English Prisons

In 2013, the Ministry of Justice’s ban on sending books to prisoners sparked a wave of protests. It was eventually declared illegal as books were deemed essential to rehabilitation. This heated debate is part of a long history of promoting—and restricting—reading practices in carceral institutions. Between the 1850s and the eve of the First World War, whether penal administrators favoured or hindered reading, prison libraries filled up and pens were put to paper. But how were the books selected? What were the prisoners allowed to read and write? What did they actually read and write? Studying the history of prison reading and writing from above and from below reveals tensions between the perception of prisoners and the reality of life behind bars. This article explores the production and consumption of a wide array of written works in the carceral world. It endeavours to show that, through the stories written and read in prison, the story and history of prisoners come to light. From escapism to protest, from moral elevation to fellowship, written words, authorised or clandestine, were (and still are) a ‘bright light’ in prisoners’ lives.

Reclaiming Neoliberal Amman: The Role of Space in Jordanian Contentious Politics

Abstract Jordan is often discounted in comparison to its regional counterparts since the “Arab Spring.” With the Hashemite regime still in power a decade later, have Jordanians given up on calling for change? On the contrary, Jordanians have continued to mobilize since the hirak from 2011 to 2013. In all contentious mobilizations, Jordanians challenge the neoliberal economic policies pushed by the Hashemite regime through subsequent governments. This essay will look at two recent rejections of neoliberalism, the 2018 protest wave against an imf-sponsored tax bill and the historic 2019 public school teachers strike. How does space fit into these contentious actions? Why did protesters and strikers choose certain sites of contention? This essay argues contentious sites in the 2018 and 2019 waves of protest in Amman were symbolic rejections of neoliberalism.

Friends or Foes? U.S. Women’s Perceptions of Racial Justice and the Black Lives Matter Protests during the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the first waves of the Black Lives Matter protests (2013–2014) has emerged in recent years but little is yet known about women’s responses to the cycle of Black Lives Matter/George Floyd protests that occurred in the Summer of 2020. This study analyzed semi-structured interviews with a racially diverse community sample of 20 women and two nonbinary individuals who mostly identified as feminists (mean age = 34.05, SD = 13.11). To address the salience of BLM framing practices during an ongoing protest, this study explored an awareness of structural racism and reactions to the presumed goals and tactics of this antiracism social movement. We identified six themes in how this racially diverse sample responded to these protests against racism and police brutality: 1) Caricatures of BLM protestors as criminals; 2) Protests were too extreme; 3) Concern about the COVID risks and social context of COVID; 4) More education needed about race relations; 5) Protests were long overdue; and 6) Protests were effective and necessary. Implications for better understanding the rhetoric of white liberalism, solidarity within racial justice movements, and fragmentation or unity among women were explored.

Digital Management of Political Actors and Media Agents During the Republic of Belarus Events in 2020–2021: The Discursive Field and Dissemination Mechanisms

The article is devoted to identifying the features of digital management of opposition (protest) and pro-government producers of relevant content (political actors and media agents) who actively participated in the protest wave in the Republic of Belarus in 2020–2021. Certain similarities of communication and political culture allow us to say that unconventional forces can use the applied algorithms to destabilize the situation in the Russian Federation. Using a hybrid technique, including discourse analysis and automated social media analysis, the authors studied the digital management of content producers, the contextual discourse field, and the features of communication strategy in a network environment for broadcasting the generated discourses.

Manhandling and mediation: unpacking the repressive repertoire in Kazakhstan’s 2016 anti-land reform protests

ABSTRACT Regimes generally possess multifaceted repressive repertoires. When faced with societal challengers, a regime can utilize overt or covert forms of coercion as well as indirect forms of repression, known as channeling. Using case material from Central Asia, this article investigates the interplay between channeling and coercion in two contexts: 1) the regulation of civil liberties; and 2) Kazakhstan’s efforts to demobilize a protest wave. Through an overview of freedom of assembly laws across the region, we demonstrate that most Central Asian states mix coercive and channeling tactics to limit opportunities for contentious acts. We then analyze Kazakhstan’s repressive reactions to a single coherent national protest wave (the 2016 anti-land reform protest). Our analysis reveals that in response to the threat of these protests, the Kazakhstani regime utilized coercive and channeling tactics in roughly equal measure. We show that the most prominent form of channeling attempted was elite mediation, whereby officials personally encouraged protesters to relocate to non-public spaces and/or offered to articulate collective grievances to higher authorities in exchange for protest dispersal. Through evaluating the role of channeling in this wave we demonstrate how non-democratic regimes can maintain regime stability when challenged without relying solely on overt forms of coercion.

‘The only thing is you have to know them first’: protest policing and Malaysia’s BERSIH protests (2011–2016)

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the models of protest policing deployed by the Malaysian police during the BERSIH 2.0 wave of protests (2011–2016). Based on participant observation and critical ethnography of these protest events, it explains how the state and police adapted to the surge of street protests in Kuala Lumpur by bringing together various elements of policing practices in its attempt to contain dissent on the streets. I argue that the new ‘Peaceful Assembly assemblage’ of policing practices, though distinct and significantly different in its overall governing logic compared to its predecessor, it remains heavily connected to late colonial forms of public order and counterinsurgent policing, especially the Special Branch and the Federal Reserve Unit (riot police). In this sense, the article shows that colonial policing’s afterlife is a major factor for understanding how Malaysia’s protest policing experience complicates and departs from patterns of protest policing development observed in the Global North.

Legal and political activism: the next wave of student-athlete protest

ABSTRACT Historically, there have been many instances where Black student-athletes utilized activism to be change agents within athletics and the broader society. This article utilizes Harry Edward's four waves of Black athlete activism as historical context for legal and political activism as contemporary and future protest strategies among Black student-athletes. Likewise, we use racial formation theory as a theoretical context to do the same. Finally, after the historical and contemporary analyses, we offer a discussion and conclusion for legal and political activism as enduring racial projects for Black student-athletes.

THE ROLE OF EUROPEAN UNION POLICIES TO COUNTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IN NORTH AFRICA

The issue of illegal immigration from North Africa to Europe is one of the most prominent phenomena that have preoccupied analysts, researchers, and decision-makers, considering that it affects the security of countries and societies alike in North Africa, especially after the wave of protests in 2011. The proposed study focuses on two main questions: What are the repercussions of illegal immigration on the European Union? What are the most important European Union policies to address illegal immigration from North Africa? The methodology of the study employs the qualitative method since it helps provide a substantial and rich description of this complex phenomenon, tracking unique or unexpected events by analyzing the following policies: the Barcelona Process, the Schengen Agreement, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the 5+5 Dialogue, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and the Union for the Mediterranean. This article presents an analytical study of European policies to confront illegal immigration from North African countries. Finally, it is concluded the need to adopt a preventive strategy to confront illegal immigration in the Mediterranean region by addressing its causes, especially in the southern Mediterranean countries, which are considered source countries, for improving economic and social conditions.

Textualizing YouTube: Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong

Textualizing YouTube:Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong Ka Lee Wong (bio) Introduction Swallow Life (燕子生命) is an online collaborative platform in Hong Kong that aims to cultivate bonds of community and provide entertainment to political prisoners who participated in the pro-democracy protests. In 2019 and 2020, the largest waves of protests in Hong Kong responded to increasing forms of authoritarian control exercised by mainland China in the city. More than 10,000 protesters were arrested and around 3,000 individuals were prosecuted for offenses related to the protest. In view of this, an anonymous group of local Hong Kongers established an online platform, Swallow Life, to consolidate resources to help improve the lives of the imprisoned protesters. On their website, Swallow Life hosts a wide range of guidelines and suggestions about detention, bail, trial, sentence, and inmate visitation, so that protesters and their families can prepare for and plan their responses to the initial arrest and detention. The platform is unique in the sense that it attempts to create a network of community for the detainees through various forms of online collaboration. Besides arranging pen pals for prisoners, it also initiates a special service called "YouTube Streaming Box" (YouTube 機頂盒) to simulate an online experience for inmates who have no access to the internet in prison. To enable detainees to "watch" YouTube videos in prison, Swallow Life invites volunteers to help convert YouTube videos to a format accepted by the local detention facilities. Every week, volunteers upload transcripts of YouTube videos on the platform so that either volunteers on the platform, inmates' pen pals, or families can download and then send the printouts to prison. This [End Page 25] textualization of YouTube videos stretches our understanding of what is meant by media shareability: the circulation of online videos in prison is not made possible by an effortless click of a share button, but is enabled by the labor involved in connecting volunteers and converting videos to a format approved by local prisons. In this essay, I reflect on how this labor-intensive process to textualize and distribute YouTube videos prompts us to rethink what media shareability means. I contend that Swallow Life's practice of sharing YouTube videos is not a form of clicktivism where netizens perform their support to a political cause with an effortless click of a share button. Instead, the platform demonstrates the power of bottom-up participatory culture by fostering an intimate community offline, where volunteers can bond with the arrested protesters, sharing not just their popular media but also emotional support. Context: The Largest Scale Protests in Hong Kong's History The waves of protests in Hong Kong were triggered by the local government's proposal in March 2019 to amend the extradition law. When the amendment is stipulated, anyone who commits crimes in Hong Kong or other places that have extradition treaties with the city will possibly be sent back to mainland China for trial. This is very concerning for the local people, because it will mean the end of the independent status of Hong Kong's judicial system. An independent judicial system, along with other civil rights including the right to assembly, publish, and demonstrate, ought to be sustained in the city until 2046, according to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The latter was signed by the United Kingdom and China in 1984 and determined the future of the then-British colony Hong Kong, which was then handed over from the UK to China in 1997. The proposed extradition law triggered much anxiety in Hong Kong. Many believed that the law signified a more direct control by China in the city; thus, they would not be able to enjoy as high a level of autonomy as before. The two large-scale Sunday marches on June 9 and June 16, 2019, which were attended by 1.3 and 2 million people respectively, were the beginning of a series of protests in the city where 7 million people reside. The Hong Kong government did not take heed of these oppositions; instead, they decided to proceed with passing the law, while stepping up to suppress the protests with the police...

The State in Feminist Theory: Hopes and a Critique of Governance Feminism

Contemporary feminist theory rarely engages with the discussion of political strategies and the issue of the state. Feminist philosophers tend to interpret the state as an omnipotent institution continuously governing women’s lives and bodies, while defining women as rather passive objects of state politics. The new global wave of feminist protests against domestic violence and sexual harassment that has erupted in the last four years inspired a new cycle of theoretical debates about the meaning of gender equality and the role of the state in the feminist liberation project. The increasing power of feminist movements coupled with new feminist attempts to infuence political institutions raise new questions about the dominant feminist political strategies and engagements with the state. How should feminist movements view the state? What does the state mean, and what role do women play in it? The article discusses the state as a major feminist theoretical issue. It argues that feminist thinkers and activists need to engage with state issues if we are to achieve such large scale and structural changes as gender equality, the end of female poverty, or abolition of unpaid reproductive labor. The paper reconstructs the political theory of carceral feminism, i.e., the dominant form of political feminism in today’s world, developed by Catherine A. Mackinnon’s reviewing its recent critique formulated by Janet Halley. It concludes by posing the question about other alternative and non-carceral forms of feminist governance.

Sudan after Omar al-Bashir: A territory of instability

Sudan has a long history of civil wars and conflicts, much of which occurred during the 30-year (1989-2019) rule of Omar al-Bashir. The crisis in the Arab world, which came to be known as the “Arab Spring” and manifested itself in the early 2010s in major political upheavals in North Africa, did not spare Sudan, which has experienced several waves of popular protests over the past decade. The political situation in this country has noticeably worsened due to the loss of most of the oil fields as a result of the division of Sudan in 2011 into two states - the Republic of Sudan (RS) and the Republic of South Sudan (RSS). While mutinies by soldiers and officers were a common occurrence in the RS, it was the mass protests in late 2018 and early 2019, organized by the civil opposition and dubbed the “December Revolution” that provoked the military coup in 2019, which resulted in the overthrow of the long-lived president. However, the establishment of a transitional military-civilian government did not resolve the numerous contradictions in Sudanese society - between the army and civil society, individual security agencies, the ruling coalition and the leaders of the rebel movements, with whom a peace agreement was signed. Political instability was exacerbated by economic problems associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and on October 25, 2021, another military coup took place, which, however, was not accompanied by regime transformation or significant changes in the composition of the ruling group, but allowed the military to extend the transition period and delay the transfer of supreme power in Sudan to civilians. Meanwhile, the intensity of military and political contacts between the Russian Federation and Sudan created a solid foundation for the expansion of bilateral relations, which continued to develop after the ouster of Omar al-Bashir.

Savremena migrantska kriza

The paper points out, first of all, the fact that the contemporary migrant crisis represents a projected migration of peoples and that everything that is happening in the world today (the so-called Arab Spring - a wave of demonstrations, protests and rebellions, started in December 2010 in Tunisia and continued in other countries of North Africa and the Middle East, wars in certain countries, millions of homeless people, refugees and migrants, etc.) is not accidental at all. International law and its theoretical principles have never been more developed, on the one hand, but they have never been violated or compromised in practice, applied by naked political force and political power, on the other hand. Namely, all this is an integral part of the realization of the idea of the New World Order, which is by no means new. The destruction of "national sovereignty" and the creation of "limited sovereignty", the de-sovereignation of national states is the harsh reality of the modern world. This is done through the creation of supranational regional organizations (for example, the European Union) and institutions of global financial power (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and others).

EL MOVIMIENTO POR LA VIVIENDA EN SEVILLA. DE LA “VIVIENDA DIGNA” AL 15M

In recent times, Spain has seen the emergence of a number of social movements advocating for decent housing. This has been in parallel with the deepening and generalization of this problem for an important part of the population. These movements integrate political ideas and forms of collective action that have developed and matured over the last two decades in markedly different situations. This article proposes that, rather than disconnected groups and movements, we can speak of a long sequence of on-going mobilization with various waves of urban protests, which reached their maximum relevance under the economic crisis. This narrative takes the city of Seville as a case study and depicts the main features of this cycle as observed from an investigation based on direct participant observation.

Emotionality and Rationality of Participants in Women’s Civic Protests in Poland (the Case of the Greater Poland Voivodeship)

After 22 October 2020, when the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland announced the judgment on the protection of foetuses and grounds for permitting the termination of pregnancy, a vast wave of civic protests swept through Poland. During these protests, new spaces for expression of discontent and resistance that were previously absent during protests against the tightening of abortion laws emerged. Their innovation was largely based on creating boundary areas with their liminality clearly beyond the sub-world of protests. Relations between the emotionality and rationality of the protestors’ actions played a unique role in this process. This text is an attempt to diagnose the tendencies signalled above.

HALYCHYNA AND THE FIRST CHOLERA EPIDEMIC

The paper deals with the events and consequences of the first cholera epidemic in Halychyna in the first half of the ХIХth century, when the area was still part of the Habsburg Empire. The aim is to present and properly evaluate the events of the first cholera epidemic in Halychyna, which played an important role in the history of Ukraine and the whole of Europe, but which has so far received little attention. The paper examines the events of the first cholera epidemic, the measures taken against it, the structure of the defense, and the social consequences of the epidemic. The research was based on a number of unpublished archival sources and literature on the topic. The Kingdom of Hungary, which also belonged to the Habsburg Empire, was the first country to join the fight against the epidemic as an area adjacent to Halychyna, so the archival data of Transcarpathia and Hungary contain an abundance of the relevant source material. The history of the epidemic was studied in the earliest times by such renowned researchers, as August Hirsch, Heinrich Haeser, Nottidge Charles Macnamara, and Georg Sticker. But there are also excellent contemporary works on the subject, such as the research by Richard S. Ross III or Irene Poczka, which provide important resources for this research. The cholera epidemic first reached this part of Europe in the late 1830s. With the spread of the disease, almost everyone blamed the Russian troops that came to quell the Polish uprising. The Viennese court acted as a supporter of the Russian Tsar in the system of the Holy Alliance, which caused a significant wave of protest among the Hungarian nobility, who sympathized with the Poles. Although the Habsburg Empire’s defense against the epidemic was considered the strictest in all of Europe, the disease still made its way into the territory of the empire from Russia and took its first victims in Halychyna. After the plague, it was the largest epidemic in all of Europe. Its tragic consequences are well illustrated by the fact that nearly a quarter of a million people became ill in Halychyna and almost half of them (almost a hundred thousand) died of the disease.

Modern academic libraries regulation: The case study in the emerging country

The modern world of libraries must be accessible, responsive, and reliable. This means that the libraries need to be user-sensitive and establish themselves as knowledge-creating hubs for academics, researchers, and students; supply-side to deliver customized products and services to add value to the users’ experience of university life. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training (2017) addressed student’s demands in a higher education sector in all South African universities, which resulted in multiple waves of protest. Amongst other things transformation, restructuring, and strengthening the higher education system. The objective of the article is to establish the extent of the balance between the demand and supply of tangible and intangible library materials in existing library systems and processes that meet daily library users’ needs. The agile response to the library demand of the ever-changing higher education landscape has enhanced new ideas in innovative learning spaces and aligned to new services, such as virtual reference, digitizing archival material, and collection (Raju & Schoombee, 2013). Quantitative data was collected from 380 sample questionnaires, spread among the University of KwaZulu-Natal library users. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and multiple regression, respectively. The results suggest a user-centered approach to library plans and services. It recommends collaborations of operations.