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This paper offers an approach to understanding dramatic social change, entwined with belief revision and shifting knowledge. It explores the interplay between rapidly changing material and ideological conditions through the concept of a rupture. Ruptures are breakdowns in existing social and epistemic practices and relations: periods which call into question what is normalized, such that something else can grow through the cracks. Ruptures do not guarantee any particular replacement, but rather facilitate the emergence of new practices and understandings of the world. Ruptures thus create conditions of possibility for people to explore new social relations and ideas. To develop this idea, this paper draws on Franz Fanon's writings on the Algerian anti-colonial revolution (1954–1962), as a paradigmatic rupture, as well as two smaller-scale ruptures: the student-worker movements over 2015–2016 in South Africa (#FeesMustFall) and Brazil (the primavera secundarista). In their respective contexts, each movement has substantively challenged prevailing practices and understandings that had been hegemonic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the national and transnational character of mobilization against GM crops in India, South Africa and Brazil in the ten-year period to 2005. By examining the contexts and practices of mobilization across the three countries, and in particular the complex, often fraught, local and global connections, the paper examines the diverse mobilizations that have occurred. The paper argues that to understand these processes, particular national political and economic contexts must be appreciated, alongside how the GM debates articulate with other foci for activism and the complex and often fragile nature of alliances that make up activist networks. The paper shows how the debate about GM crops has become a much wider one: about the future of agriculture and small-scale farmers, about corporate control and property rights and about the rules of global trade. In sum, a debate not just about the pros and cons of a particular set of technologies, but about politics and values and the future of agrarian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]