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Recent studies point to the relevance of situational factors in the emergence of violence. This paper applies these insights to a systematic analysis of how and why peaceful protest marches transform into violent clashes. It focuses on the micro-situational patterns and emotional dynamics during protests. The exploratory study compares 20 peaceful and violent protests of the Global Justice Movement in the United States and Germany. It employs a triangulation of visual data with document data. The study relies on in-depth qualitative analysis, based on the principles of process tracing. Findings suggest that in those protests where violence emerges, a prior micro-situational pattern is systematically visible. The discussion of exemplary cases shows that two emotional phases precede the outbreak of violence. These phases emerge in a specific temporal danger zone of 1–3 h after the start of a protest. Further, specific triggering moments seem to prompt the outbreak of violence, like the breaking-up of police–protester lines, actors being outnumbered, or falling down. The emotional dynamic between protesters and officers during a protest likewise influences the intensity of violence and how violent situations end. Consequently, the paper suggests that actors need to go through a confrontational micro-situation in a demonstration in order to be able to use violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we interrogate the demand and practice of autonomy in social movements. We begin by identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: (1) autonomous practices vis-a-vis capital; (2) self-determination and independence from the state; and (3) alternatives to hegemonic discourses of development. We then point to limits associated with autonomy and discuss how demands for autonomy are tied up with contemporary re-organizations of: (1) the capitalist workplace, characterized by discourses of autonomy, creativity and self-management; (2) the state, which increasingly outsources public services to independent, autonomous providers, which often have a more radical, social movement history; and (3) regimes of development, which today often emphasize local practices, participation and self-determination. This capturing of autonomy reminds us that autonomy can never be fixed. Instead, social movements' demands for autonomy are embedded in specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts, giving rise to possibilities as well as impossibilities of autonomous practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant American social movement scholarship has become detached from the concerns of actual social movements. But the dramatic growth of social movement activity in recent years, especially the global justice movement, is creating the conditions for an emerging new direction in social movement scholarship which prioritizes the relevance of such work to the movements themselves. A problem in the current social movement literature is that the different schools of thought tend to overemphasize particular variables and pit them against one another. Rather than simply seeking to emphasize a different variable in the lifecycle of a social movement, a movement-relevant approach has the potential to transcend these schisms (such as structure versus culture). At the same time, this approach does not categorically reject earlier theoretical perspectives, but instead seeks to glean what is most useful for movements from these earlier works. Likewise, this emergent direction entails a dynamic engagement with the research and theorizing already being done by movement participants. In this paper, we explore this growing convergence of movement-relevant scholarship, identifying the academic work being used by movement participants as well as the analysis taking place within the movements themselves, with a particular focus on the global justice movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in social movement coalitions has been increasing significantly in recent years. While this growing body of research has paid much attention to conditions and processes of coalition building, the consequences of coalitions remain understudied. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of coalitions' internal impact by exploring how different types of coalitions affect each other. In particular, we analyse how coalitions across countries influence coalitions across movement sectors. The article explores the diverse coalitions in the Global Justice Movement (GJM) in Europe and Southeast Asia, a movement characterized by its strong transnational as well as cross-sectoral ties. Our analysis includes four case studies from different transnational coalitions within the GJM: the peasant network La Vía Campesina, the debt-relief campaign Jubilee 2000, the network of women's movements World March of Women, and the grassroots network Peoples' Global Action. The case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines, the UK and Italy show how coalition building across countries can both enhance as well as hinder coalitions across sectors. We demonstrate how transnational coalitions in some cases deepen divides between local movement sectors and hamper domestic coalition building, while they help bridging divisions within local movement coalitions in others. Our findings point to the relevance of conflicts, power inequalities and trade-offs in coalition building as well as to the importance of negative effects of coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the strategic choices that radical activists face when a cycle of contention ends. It investigates the reorientation of the autonomous anarchists or left-libertarian activist milieu in Sweden after the riots at the Gothenburg summit in 2001, which ended a cycle of anti-globalization protests in Sweden. The article identifies five strategies by which this activist milieu attempted to reconstruct collective agency, build a new alliance structure, and renew the repertoire of contention: (1) rescaling and targeting of micro-politics; (2) moving from secluded to open communities; (3) rethinking collective agency with the help of a new movement theory; (4) reversing dominant discourses and opening up discursive space; and (5) redefining militancy and shelving of violent confrontation. The study builds on activist interviews and ethnographic research in Stockholm and Malmö. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of transnational activism and of the Global Justice Movement have paid scarce attention to Southern transnationalisations. A good way of understanding the material and symbolic logics that underlie such processes is to study the way Southern activists participate in transnational events. Based on a collective ethnographic survey conducted at the World Social Forum (WSF) held in Nairobi in 2007, this article examines the practical modalities of access of African participants to the WSF, i.e. how they actually managed to travel to Nairobi, through what material help and to what extent they depend on the NGO sphere. It aims to show that the concept of career is a relevant lens to underline both activism and internationalisation as a process, which helps to avoid binary qualifications of internationalisation of Southern participants, reduced to being either simply part of the ‘civil society’ or ‘unauthentic’ because of their very internationalisation. It then examines how this internationalisation process reveals some affinities, albeit critical ones, with the former colonial sphere, but also how their engagement with the international sphere transforms their daily existence, through processual stages (as internationalisation is not always an effect of a cosmopolitan socialisation, but can also be encouraged by Northern partners' stance and orientation towards sending ‘authentic’ grassroots people to the North), and how the ‘NGOisation’ of social movements in the global South may in turn be understood as a specific form of political enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we first trace the ideological development and collective framing of the World Social Forum (WSF) as a non-hierarchical gathering for collaboration and networking within the global justice movement. We then analyze the consequences of organizational design, thematic resonance, and technological innovations implemented to produce more open and horizontal collaboration. We do this by conducting two-mode network analysis of organizations that facilitated sessions and workshops during two separate meetings (2003 and 2005) of the WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Our findings indicate that organizational affiliations were less hierarchical in 2005, but we uncover mixed results from analyzing patterns of interaction produced by individual organizations and groups of organizations. Finally, we discuss the implications of such macro-level innovations on the dynamics of multi-organizational fields (collaboration, coalition building, and thematic resonance) and the contributions of such an approach to the study of transnational organizational networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite longstanding traditions of tolerance, inclusion, and democracy in the USA, dissident citizens and social movements have experienced significant and sustained - although often subtle and difficult-to-observe - repression. Using mechanism-based social movement theory, I explore a range of twentieth-century episodes of contention, involving such groups as mid-century communists, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the modern-day Global Justice Movement. Cracking open the black box of state repression, I demonstrate how four interactive social mechanisms - Resource Depletion, Stigmatization, Divisive Disruption, and Intimidation - animate state repression. A fifth mechanism - Emulation - diffuses the effects of these four Mechanisms of Repression. First I delineate a typology of state actions that suppress dissent. Then I shift analytically from these ten actions to the Mechanisms of Repression, explaining how these mechanisms work. Drawing on scholarship from an array of fields, and pulling data from a variety of sources, I explain how the state has engaged in activity that - operating through social mechanisms - inhibits collective action, either through raising the costs or minimizing the benefits of mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]