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In I The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions i , Issa's rich ethnographic study in Nahr el-Bared camp illuminates the ongoing suffering and oppression of the Palestinian 1948 refugees in Lebanon. Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization beyond Partition, edited by Leila H. Farsakh. In I The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions i , Issa is critical of viewing political factions as political structures since they have so badly failed to serve the aspirations and needs of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. [Extracted from the article]

"Settler Colonial City: Racism and Inequity in Postwar Minneapolis" by David Hugill examines the history of racism, inequity, and settler-colonial structures in Minneapolis, particularly focusing on the post-World War II era. The book explores the impact of urban change, racialized policing, and American imperialism on marginalized communities, with a particular emphasis on Indigenous peoples. Hugill highlights the structural barriers faced by marginalized groups and the need to dismantle white supremacist and settler-colonial structures. While the book primarily focuses on the violent aspects of settler-colonial urban policy, it also touches on the need to examine more subtle elements such as access to education, healthcare, and legal services. Overall, the book provides a critical perspective on the history of Minneapolis and challenges the perception of the city as progressive and inclusive. [Extracted from the article]

One of the joys of I The Radical Bookstore i is the series of fascinating, unusual venues Kinder includes, and anyone interested in book culture will no doubt keep a running list of these radical book-based places to patronize next time they travel. As Kinder methodically defines how she is using core concepts of counterplacemaking, constructive activism, and activist entrepreneurship, it quickly becomes clear that the category of "radical bookstore" encompasses myriad variations. THE RADICAL BOOKSTORE: Counter-space for Social Movements: By KIMBERLY KINDER. photos, bibliog., index. [Extracted from the article]

The UEFA Europa League group stage clash on 24 October and 7 November 2019 between Celtic FC of Glasgow and SS Lazio of Rome offers fascinating insight into ultra social movements as forms of leadership. This exploratory research paper conceptualizes this tie as an Event that provides both a pivotal point of cross-cultural reflection on ultra fan groups as emergent social movements, and a means for the examination of forms of social leadership in contemporary society. In such terms, the paper initiates a critical consideration of The Green Brigade, a self-styled ultra fan group of Celtic FC as an emerging social movement, characterizes the group in terms of the differentiated ultra/ultraS binary, begins to qualitatively address the question as to levels of support for the group among the wider constituency of Celtic supporters, and as such, tentatively explores the groups' leadership and organizational characteristics. The research concludes that a creative and action-oriented leadership style can be discerned. While organizational characteristics require further examination, intimations of a logic of development emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the process of co-producing an animated film about the migration journeys of Colombian women resident in Antofagasta, Chile. It first establishes the relationship between feminist epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, which hinges on embodiment. It then turns to a detailed discussion of using film co-production as a research method for accessing and expressing embodied experiences of migration. This discussion highlights how moments of discomfort (Gokariksel, Hawkins, Neubert, and Smith, 2021) experienced by the researcher motivated the search for a more collaborative methodological approach that was better attuned to lived experience. This included striving towards more inclusive practices with respect to recruitment, anonymity, and confidentiality. Moments of discomfort also revealed how care and caring responsibilities are entangled with research, and how they gender possibilities of participation and production for community co-producers and artists, as well as for researchers. Finally, through discomfort, lessons were learned about the politics of representing experiences of migration, violence, and endurance, as well as joy. The paper concludes that, whilst by no means a panacea, collaborative arts-based research methods can offer an innovative toolset for exploring embodied experience and for navigating the relational and representational complexities attendant to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of recognition has been pivotal in critical theory in recent years. This paper discusses how two goals of a critical theory of recognition – to explain and to morally evaluate social change – are interrelated. In doing so, this paper draws the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition. It is argued that if a social movement can be deemed illegitimate, this movement can no longer be understood as struggling for recognition. This implies that the two goals of a critical theory of recognition cannot be fulfilled simultaneously: a moral standard that distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate social struggles cannot distinguish between different types of struggles for recognition, but only between struggles for recognition and other types of social struggles. Drawing the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition in this way helps to better distinguish between different types of social struggle and contributes to a more precise understanding of what struggles for recognition entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a written dialogue among four activists from the Emancipa Popular Education Movement in Brazil, following the principles of Freirean pedagogy as a 'circle of culture'. It delves into how popular knowledge can be experienced as popular power, narrating the history, struggles, and strategies employed by the Emancipa movement in their pursuit of democratizing Brazilian universities. The discussion is set within the context of Latin American structural inequalities and the issue of educational exclusion in Brazil. It emphasizes the vital role of contesting culture and knowledge as part of the movement's fight against social injustices perpetuated by peripheral capitalism, including racist violence and gender oppression. The paper adopts emancipatory pedagogy as the method to empower and mobilize grassroots efforts in this transformative endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom. The research question is how social movements are implementing a process of reactive political identity construction – i.e. political identification – and a political counter-strategy by opposing right-wing populism in power through their Facebook official accounts. It implements a mixed-method research design with in-depth semi-structured interviews and a two-step quantitative text analysis based on Topic Model and Dictionary Method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores conflicts in contemporary Chile between local communities and economic elites over water resources usage, developing a frameworkthat seeks to bridge the gap between the literature on social movements and the scholarly work on business politics. It examines two similar cases. The first case deals with the conflict between large avocado producers and the rural community of Petorca, Central Chile, which has meant water deprivation for the aggrieved community. In the second case, the local community of Aysén, in Chilean Patagonia, successfully challenged business interests by halting a mega-hydroelectric project. We found that local communities can prevail when at least three conditions are met. First, the formation of a broad contingent coalition. Second, the elaboration of collective action frames to mobilise new constituencies. Third, the capacity to forge alliances with elite actors, which enhances the movement’s potential to engage in collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of climate change in Australia remains highly fraught, this is despite the country experiencing acute impacts of a changing climate including mega-fires, floods, and severe and prolonged drought. Government inaction has led to limited market signals encouraging producers or consumers to move away from carbon intensive energy production to clean energy. In the absence of regulation, Australian shareholder activists are engaging directly with company boards and executives to reform corporate behaviour. This engagement, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) shareholder activism, has proliferated since 2017, much later than in comparable jurisdictions. Activists have targeted the mining, oil and gas, and finance sectors, due to their contribution to the Australian economy and their direct impact on global emissions. This paper explores the reasons for, and the implications of, the growth in ESG shareholder activism in Australia. It argues that the emergence of this activism in Australia was delayed due to complexities in the country's corporations' law. Regulatory attempts at stymying ESG shareholder activism resulted in the emergence of a duopoly of actors, at the cost of broader investor and civil society engagement. It is concluded that the rise of ESG shareholder activism in Australia is linked to growing tension between societal expectations, regulation, and the behaviour of firms. And, that ESG activists have been successful in leveraging this tension. There is evidence that large corporates have responded to activist claims, rendering this form of activism a potentially effective method for addressing some of the most pressing issues facing society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how girls' education developed in Norway and Prussia (and later North Rhine-Westphalia, NRW) during the first and second wave of women's political mobilisation. It analyses how organisations and activists of the women's movement were included in different cross-interest coalitions in education politics. The cases are interpreted in light of Rokkanian cleavage theory. In Germany, the women's movement was split along class lines but also along denominational lines. The Catholic women's movement became a part of the Catholic and later the Christian democratic political alliance. In Norway, influential sections of the women's movement were linked first to the liberal movement and later to the social democratic movement. In both cases, women's rights activists left a mark on education policy, but Norwegian women's rights activists enjoyed successes earlier and more consistently. This is a result of the Norwegian women's movement's comparatively greater unity and related to the different cleavage structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the participatory legacies of social movements in democratic settings often find that the individuals who take part in these movements remain more likely to engage in politics, decades later. What is the participatory legacy of social movements in authoritarian regimes, where they are often repressed and erased from public memory? Understanding such impacts is challenging due to self-selection and severe censorship. In this paper, we address both challenges with a unique design, comparing the behavior of individuals who began college just before and just after a massive student movement. This design allows us to measure exposure to the movement and the subsequent state crackdown without directly asking respondents and also addresses endogeneity by predicting exposure using an exogenous indicator, birthdate. We find that exposure to the movement increased participation in elections, reduced participation in protest and lobbying, and had no impact on conventional participation. We argue that social movements can continue to shape patterns of political participation in authoritarian regimes, decades after being crushed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the leadership of the local Catholic Church in a forceful social movement of resistance against long-dated marginalization, inequality, and multi-faceted forms of violence in the main city-port in Colombia's pacific littoral: Buenaventura's Civic Strike process. Based on interviews conducted with religious and lay participants, it explores how spiritual memory, social space, and collective affects act as the enabling condition for this leadership, a condition that the interviewees characterize as a relation of trust between people and Church. The paper argues that this affect of trust implies complex intersections between social protest, Church and State that require, in turn, a different conceptualization of the social space. One that challenges secularism as an epistemology of the social by overcoming its distinctive clear-cut divisions between Church and State, and between State and civil society. The notion of "churchstateness," proposed in recent literature, is hence tested as an alternative analytic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDiverse forms of protest in contemporary Iraq have not altered the country’s political system and in some respects have reinforced it. This paper argues that the existing literature has not fully explained this protest weakness, due in part to a division between an agency-focused protest literature emphasising discourse, symbolic politics, and the micro-politics of protests, where less attention has been paid to the material and structural elements; and a literature focused on the political system which has typically adopted more macro and structural models. By contrast, this paper uses concepts from Deleuze and Guattari to explore empirical case studies of the encounter between protests and political power in Iraq. It finds the notion of social assemblage useful for drawing the expressive and the material, the micro and the macro, back together on the same ontological plane. Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between the behaviours of rhizomatic (decentred) and arborescent (hierarchic) structures can also clarify a key source of protest weakness in Iraq as the rhizomatic tendencies of the country’s political system. This refers primarily to the tendency for destabilisations of the system engendered by protests to function as a mechanism for the expansion of its political power over new social territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, South Africa has experienced a consistent wave of local protests rooted in impoverished residential areas. Given the centrality of ideas about community within these protests, and building on Gramsci and Katznelson, this paper characterizes low-income residential areas as the "community trenches" of contemporary working-class struggle. Drawing on 29 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 287 interviews, I probe the meaning of community within local protests and its relationship to possibilities for building democracy from below. I argue that current manifestations of community have both benefits and limits: they help protesters to build solidarity across division and infuse their struggles with moral weight, but they also encourage localization, geographic isolation, and internal conflict. With reference to both historical and contemporary South African examples, the paper offers three possible rearticulations of community that—when woven together through interscalar connections—may facilitate democracy from below: community as participatory democracy; community as a right to the city; and community as national citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, Egypt saw one of the largest protest movements in its modern history: the 25th of January revolution. One of its major demands was the call for democracy and end of dictatorship after 30 years of Mubarak's rule. After ousting Mubarak, the Egyptian public sphere witnessed an openness. Even with increasing levels of oppression and violence, there were open spaces for freedom of association, expression, and demonstration, etc. Yet, in 2013 and with the intense protests against the elected Muslim Brotherhood (MB) president, the military interfered and ousted the elected president. In light of these events, Egypt witnessed a backlash against democracy under the pretext of fighting 'terrorism'. Since then, Egypt has been seeing manifestations of this relapse on almost all levels, in terms of legislations, decrees, practices that closed the public space to any protesting voices, with higher levels of oppression and violence against the opposition and not only the so-called 'terrorists'. In this context, this paper proposes to dissect the Egyptian stumbling road to democratisation since 2011. It examines internal factors as well as the role of regional and international actors in orchestrating developments in Egypt. The paper proposes that the process of democratisation in Egypt has faced multiple drawbacks, not only related to regime type (military rule) but also with respect to social movements, the involvement of regional actors, etc.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a genealogy of interracial alliances forged in different parts of the world between organisations and social movements in order to show their potential and the challenges they face. Next, I focus on creating a typology of anti-racist alliances in order to illuminate the Mexican case, specifically during the years 2017 and 2018. I highlight the consequences for anti-racist struggles of the ambiguities around Mestizo identification: contexts of mestizaje (mixture) prevent Mestizo people from locating themselves in relation to practices of racism, and from identifying the role they play in the reproduction or elimination of racism. Finally, using two case studies, I explain the nuances of the strengths and the challenges involved in developing alliances, solidarities or, simply, coalitions for common causes, which very rarely imply having the fight against racism as a common cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's transition to democracy in 1987 was driven by social movements. The grand democracy coalition included the opposition party and various civic associations, including student groups, labour unions, and religious organisations. Civil society continued to pressure the post-transitional governments to dismantle authoritarian structures and remove undemocratic practices. Political authoritarianism in South Korea in 1961–1987 was inseparable from the developmental state that delivered the country's impressive economic development. Government reform after the democratisation entailed the weakening, if not dismantling, of the developmental state, to make public governance and policymaking more transparent, responsive, and participatory. In this paper we examine government reform in South Korea, focusing on the first ten years following democratisation. The Roh Tae Woo government created the Administrative Reform Committee in 1988, and the Kim Young Sam government launched the Presidential Commission for Administrative Reform in 1993. Although both agencies engaged civilians in the reform process, it was the Ministry of Government Administration and the Ministry of Finance and Economy that dominated the designing and implementing of the reforms, which demonstrates that the introduction and implementation of collaborative governance in South Korea was state led. Comparative implications are drawn from the South Korean case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions are radical alternatives to state-led diplomacy feasible? Diplomatic studies have so far denied attention to those diplomatic practices taking place without national mediation. Building on the concept of diplomacy from below (DFB), the article aims to understand under what conditions this newly theorised form of alternative diplomacy is possible in contexts of armed violence. To do so, we present the case of the diplomatic action of the (post)autonomist Association Ya Basta! between 1997 and 2004. The study adopts an interpretivist approach, reconstructing activists' stories along four conflict scenarios (Mexico, Palestine, Colombia, and Iraq). The empirical analysis allowed for formulating a "working hypothesis" according to which DFB is feasible only among groups sharing an ideological background and under minimum-security conditions for freedom of movement and physical integrity. The paper innovates debates on (para)diplomacy and opens a new research agenda on diplomatic interactions between subaltern groups in (post)conflict scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how those who adopt an 'anti-diet' stance use strategies to challenge weight-loss dieting norms. We used a qualitative survey to examine how a heterogenous collective of feminists, fat activists and health professionals (and those on the margins of these groups) define the source(s) of power underlying diet culture and discuss the strategies they use to challenge it. One hundred and eighteen people (Mage = 36.67, SD = 10.50) took part. Most were female (n = 112), heterosexual (69%), and residing in Australia (59%). A small proportion (13%) had a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background. Thirty-seven per cent were health professionals, and over half identified as non-diet activists (52%). We generated three themes in our thematic analysis: 'Describing diet culture: Unpacking cultural and material forms of power,' 'Self-care as a political strategy: Refusals and ambivalence in the anti-diet community,' and 'Relational strategies: Challenging diet culture in work and everyday interactions.' Participants viewed diet culture as being reinforced through internalized multi-institutional patriarchal, Eurocentric and capitalist systems. They challenged cultural norms and institutions that reinforce diet culture by being critical of gender norms and rejecting consumerist dieting practices. We argue that the self-care and relational strategies used by participants across communities signify an awkward but unified 'anti-diet movement.' Future research should recruit a more culturally and ethnically diverse sample and examine the 'anti-diet' movement beyond the Global North context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The close scrutiny of social movements in Morocco during the last decade shows that contentious politics changed dramatically from overt high-risk acts of indignation and public defiance in the streets during the Arab Spring to low-risk, tactical boycott campaigns on Facebook and single-issue movements during the last four years. The purpose of this paper is to suggest how we might read, interpret and understand the politics of contention in Morocco in terms of political opportunities. This article argues that political opportunities can be best apprehended using some context-dependent variables and showing the causal correlation between claims as an independent variable and outcomes represented by three dependent variables, namely recognition, policy change and repression. The aim is to map the field and study the political opportunities available to social movements through their contingent antagonistic interactions with the state. The study of variables revealed how structural features of the state and its conjunctural aspects shape political opportunities in Morocco. Though tactical variations were at play, the article delineated relatively constant mechanisms in these interactions. The article analysed data collected from social media and state television using a mixed method approach (netnography, grounded theory and critical discourse analysis). The results show that the Moroccan regime has been reluctant to respond positively to the social movements' claims and to implement any qualitative changes in policy, and reacted in most cases by smear campaigns, discrediting counter-narratives before using coercive means. The Moroccan state is more preoccupied with promoting its image internationally, though. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the lives of LGBT people in Central Asia have recently received scholarly attention, authors do not pay due attention to transgender (trans) issues. This paper explores living conditions of trans people in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as trans organizing in these countries. Semi-structured interviews with 11 trans activists were conducted in March–April 2022. According to the respondents, trans people in Central Asia face pervasive discrimination, harassment and rejection on behalf of society at large and their families. Many live in a desperate economic situation. Access to legal gender recognition aimed to align the person's legal gender with their gender identity is limited; the process requires psychiatric evaluation, medical interventions and/or going to courts. A limited number of doctors can provide transition-related medical care (hormone replacement therapy, surgeries). Trans activists self-organize to address these issues and promote trans rights in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their areas of work include providing direct support, educating doctors, and conducting advocacy with state institutions and international actors. The political environment is hostile towards trans activism. Organizations face problems receiving official registration; in Tajikistan, state pressure on civil society is especially severe. Anti-gender movements are another obstacle for trans activists. Political instability often disrupts activists' advocacy efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines waves of citizen protest against the ethnic citizenship regime of consociational power-sharing. It seeks to contribute to research on power-sharing by bringing together the literature on “acts of citizenship” and “eventful protest” to show how protest waves in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Lebanon seek to contest, destabilize, reimagine, and enact new forms of inclusive citizenship in ethnically divided societies. While research suggests that popular mobilization has destabilizing effects on power-sharing, this paper indicates that protest forms offer important forms of democratic participation and renewal for consociational systems. Towards this, the article illuminates four interweaving citizenship frames developed in protests: Citizens (Demos) versus Elites (Ethnos); Trans-sectarian; Inclusionary; and Inclusionary. The article draws on interviews, media and policy data to explore the voice of protestors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between struggles for housing justice and alternative housing models is riddled with epistemological and methodological challenges. A posteriori definitions of specific housing typologies – for example, “co-operative housing” – fail to account for the often informal and fluid practices that constitute the emergence of housing commoning through collective organizing. This paper offers an empirically grounded theoretical analysis of the development of short-life co-operative housing in London, UK, since the 1970s. Taking a longitudinal view, it explores how performative power surges by squatters and other precariously housed people were sustained by federative organizing and aligned with central and municipal institutional experimentation, giving rise to significant, if precarious, shifts in housing policy and practice. The concept of “precarious institutionalization” names this state of contingency and furthers a political analysis of the maintenance of housing commoning against multiple enclosures, with wider implications for scholarship on contemporary movements for decommodified self-managed housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, researchers have studied commemorative events primarily for their political role in the (re)construction of contested national collective memories and identities, but globalisation, social justice movements, multiculturalism and regionalism forces are further transforming commemorative practices in the 21st century. This study adopts the semiotic paradigm to deconstruct commemorative narratives communicated during major anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In doing so, this paper evidences how interwoven signs in these commemorative events construct multi-layered narratives of transnational collective memory and identity based on shared values that transcend the political boundaries of the nation. The study further showcases how shifting political contexts influence commemorative narratives, whilst at the same time commemorative events may increasingly be designed to appeal to a broader, global audience as leisure phenomena of transnational significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a debate anchored in a dialogue between concepts of insurgent planning and humane urbanism and the idea of a subaltern urbanism through the lens of a critical reflection on the role of city-building professionals. The paper explores the idea of an insurgent urbanism as a collaborative praxis of city design and development that arises from the protagonism of marginalised communities and the accumulative knowledge of social movements, activists and scholars. It focuses on three different learning dimensions based on the experience of teaching/research actions developed at a self-organised squat in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 2018 and 2022. Dialoguing with ideas of social learning, it shows that these practices have created a relevant exchange of different types of knowledge and have contributed to the development of other solutions that challenge the hegemonic and neoliberal city production and can therefore be seen as alternatives for the development of more egalitarian and imaginative futures that expand beyond the context of squats in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the increasing Dalit activism on social media through the lens of publics and counter-publics, this paper shows how the Bhim Army, a popular on-ground Dalit organisation in North India, makes use of two social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, to further its organisational agenda, and to recruit, inform and mobilise. Using insights from digital ethnography and interviews with Bhim Army leaders, this paper also builds on the theoretical and methodological understandings of social media usage by marginalised actors and intervenes in the debates regarding the role of social media in social movement mobilisation, as well as the frameworks of organisational activities on Twitter and Facebook. Finally, it shows how the different techno-architectural make-up of the two platforms produces different kinds of mobilisations and functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might those of us located within post-secondary institutions support students who have experience of the mental health system in a meaningful way? Drawing on scholarship in social movement studies and a case study in Ontario, Canada, I distinguish between the prevailing mental health and wellness offerings of educational institutions and distinct forms of grassroots organising led by and for mad-identified students. This paper reflects on my past engagement with mad student intra-university organising in Ontario. Sifting through archival materials, personal writing and correspondence, I contemplate how my involvement as a past organiser in a radical student-run peer support and advocacy group has shaped and informed my scholarship within the field of Mad Studies. Connections are made between the activist knowledge-practices fostered within mad student groups and the growth of Mad Studies in Canada. Building from social movement studies, I argue for supporting and engaging in activism alongside politicised students who are organising on campuses to confront inequitable social relations, on their own terms. Doing so requires critically unpacking white dominant hegemonic ways of thinking about what constitutes 'mental health and wellness' from a student perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 2015–2016, high school students in Brazil occupied hundreds of schools across the country. Students fought to keep public schools open, funded, and functional, against outsourcing and privatisation, and in solidarity with teachers' trade unions and strikes. The 'primavera secundarista' ('student spring') was the most significant school student movement since the struggles against the military dictatorship (1964–1988). This paper firstly addresses the political dynamics of the primavera secundarista. Secondly, it discusses the movement's educational practices, which flourished in the months that students occupied their schools. Thirdly, it discusses the forms of community and solidarity that students built with other social actors and how they each learnt from this. In doing so, the paper builds on the work of Aziz Choudry and other scholars of social movement learning to argue that such student movements are prime sites of counter-hegemonic knowledge production and dissemination. Shown through the Brazilian high school occupations, the paper highlights how student movements are unusual in being situated in formal epistemic institutions, and yet are not widely recognised, especially in high schools, as blending formal and informal learning to produce and share knowledge-from-below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research can make significant contributions to policymakers and other researchers interested in building evidence-based knowledge. However, it is difficult for students to imagine how their research can effectively contribute to social change while respecting curriculum requirements, especially with regard to maintaining methodological and scientific rigour and the validity demanded by academic standards. The rich work and experience of Aziz Choudry contribute directly to overcoming these obstacles and challenges, as he conceptualised research and knowledge production as an activity not exclusive to academia or research institutes, but widely present within social organisations and social movements. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences of conducting research within community organisations as graduate scholars. Building on our respective research experience, including popular education in our research practice, we highlight how popular education spaces offer opportunities for scholars to disseminate their research results and contribute to raising awareness, but also to achieve the standards of intellectual rigour expected by academia. The main goal of this paper is to position the field of social movement learning and knowledge production as key for students who want to develop engaged and relevant research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with two Islamist movements in India since 2011, this article contributes to a better understanding of how Muslim community leaders try to spearhead third front alliances with secular and religious minorities through discourses of shared political and economic victimhood and the provision of protection against the assertions of Hindu nationalists in an era of unprecedented Hindu vote consolidation. While such alliances exist, the paper analyzes a new trend within Muslim politics that promotes a political departure from the traditional patronage of the Indian National Congress (INC) and other low-caste and socialist parties, which have historically represented the Muslim masses. I then discuss the limitations of these third front leadership ambitions, whereby Islamist movements are seen as incompatible with gender equality and secular norms. Theoretically, the paper informs the academic debate on coalition-building processes within social movement theory (SMT), which has partially ignored the role of conservative religious actors in democratic as well as authoritarian systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratization. Observational data and protest event analysis are employed to assess the scaling up of claims-making and its relationship to protest size and group solidarity. The paper argues that radicalization can best be understood relationally, between a hybrid regime, on the one hand, and moderates and radicals in the opposition, on the other. It identifies the following three points of convergence that lead to similar protest trajectories in both cases: the marginalization of moderates along with their gatekeeping role of transgressive discourses; the creation of digitally enabled protest networks that facilitated mass mobilization and claims diffusion; and the intensification of protest policing that provoked a departure from reformist to revolutionary claims. The argument offered here shows similarities to but also nuanced differences from the repression literature and casts doubt on the assumptions about the demobilizing impact of autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles of professional networks in mass protests. The extensive participation of professionals in the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, using their professional expertise, specialized networks and institutional positions, constituted a novel form of collective action. Based on framing analysis of sectoral petitions and interviews with participating professionals, this paper shows that state–corporatist arrangements and social movement abeyance structures laid the foundation for sectoral mobilization in the anti-extradition movement. It reveals the conditions under which professional activism can move beyond individual practices and overcome organizational barriers to generating resources to sustain a mass movement. Perceived threats to the professional ethos triggered cross-sectoral participation. Sectoral mobilization modes and levels were contingent on an array of institutional constraints, informal networks and conjunctural events that made for widespread and legitimate professional involvement in a networked movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes how (post)-migrant media outlets discussed the position of (post)-migrant people in France. (Post)-migrant media are periodicals, radio stations, and other forms of media produced by (post)-migrant actors and addressed to them. I argue that changes in the Global Cold War order, French national politics, and social changes in French (post)-migrant communities fostered a transition from anti-imperialist to multicultural understandings of migration in the examined media. The paper shows how these changes affected the experiences and identities of (post)-migrant people and adds a global history perspective to existing explanations about generational change and national political developments. It tracks how (post)-migrant media offered a space to negotiate the position in France against the backdrop of global developments such as the Cold War, decolonization, the disillusion with postcolonial governments, and the rising human rights movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Right to the City concept extends beyond cities to include broader urban-rural dialectical processes. This paper proposes that by analyzing claims to transform spaces as struggles to reshape underlying processes, it is possible to identify shared struggles between movements seeking to transform urban and agrarian spaces. The paper examines the role of agrarian social movements, such as La Via Campesina, in reconfiguring urbanization through their claim for food sovereignty. It builds on critical urban and agrarian studies to offer a process-based understanding of the commonalities between seemingly disconnected claims to reshape urban and agrarian spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "spirit-murder" reminds us that the violence Black girls and women suffer in academic spaces travels beyond the mental and emotional; it manifests on a spiritual level as well. Consequently, spiritual healing is a priority for Black girls and women to traverse the world whole and worthy. This paper intends to first, theorize endarkened third spaces, sites fashioned to enact healing through the Divine and resistance against White supremacy. We, then, explore a set of extraordinary literacies—cleansing, language making, and sister circles—that prepare these endarkened third spaces as transient sites of spiritual rejuvenation. To examine these extraordinary literacies, both authors investigate their respective spiritual practices in the context of their roles as students, educators, and researchers in communion with each other. The authors commit to a joint self-study, using the methods of educational journey mapping, unstructured interviews, and Archaeology of SelfTM to elicit insights from their histories and present. Second, this paper considers what these endarkened third spaces and extraordinary literacies offer Black girls and women attempting to thrive in various academic spaces. We contend that practicing these extraordinary literacies build an endarkened third space that operate as a site to re-imagining and re-conceptualizing of self as being communicative with the present, ancestral past, and the greater Divine, which thus free Black girls and women to heal from the harms of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1926 the weekly journal of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the New Leader, welcomed a new editor. Fenner Brockway was an experienced journalist, a committed socialist, and devoted to the ILP. His appointment was a consequence of a more militant left-wing outlook gaining prevalence in the party, careful political manoeuvring, and a desire to communicate the necessity for socialism to the ordinary working class. Until 1946 Brockway worked tirelessly on the New Leader, combining this with several other party roles and external commitments. This article scrutinizes the nature of the paper under Brockway's editorship, which has previously been cursorily dismissed as a failure and disappointment. It examines the format and content of the paper, its function within the party, staffing, circulation, and distribution. Despite the decline of the ILP, it is argued that Brockway delivered a newspaper which met the requirements of the party at the time. Further, it demonstrates that, despite the drastically decreasing party membership in these years, the New Leader consistently broadcast the ILP's message to a wider audience than previously thought. Finally, this article contributes the first account of Brockway's New Leader and a detailed provenance for a journal which has regularly been utilized as a source by historians of the ILP and of the wider labour movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chile’s Inclusion Law, passed in 2015, significantly increased government regulation of one of the most privatised education systems in the world and provided major redistributive benefits. How did Chile’s government succeed in passing and implementing this legislation in the face of a powerful and cohesive opposition? Our study finds that student protesters served as the initial impetus, shaping the education debate and increasing the political salience and urgency of education reform. In line with power resource theory, other left movement organisations and voters used their power to support redistributive education reform, and Bachelet’s centre-left coalition followed through on its mandate by proposing the Inclusion Law. Also, a well-connected policy network helped articulate problems with the status quo and shaped the specifics of the education bill. To develop this argument, the paper draws on historical information on the student movement in Chile, quantitative data on education stakeholder appearances in the press, public opinion surveys, and detailed analysis of the 13-month legislative proceedings – to explain the law’s passage in congress. To underscore the significance of the Inclusion Law and to contextualise the Chilean case, the paper also compares Chile to other countries with nation-wide school choice systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On October 26, 2011, a post appeared on the Occupy Wall Street Library blog titled "I would prefer not to." The constant refrain of Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener became one of Occupy's defining mottos, appearing on placards, T-shirts, and tote bags. The phrase became so symbolic that it was used on the posters promoting the general strike called for May 2012. Bartleby's mode of passive resistance has been theorized extensively. His appropriation by OWS has been the source of much theorizing too. What I want to do in this paper is use Bartleby as a useful analogy for exploring the educational logic of Occupy Wall Street. While some read a dangerous and threatening "Bartlebyan inscrutability" into OWS's various refusals (the refusal to issue demands, to address questions of political ontology, to specify conditions of success), I argue instead that the performativity of Bartleby's refusal helps cast light on the need for pedagogical intervention in moments and movements of utopian rupture. The very indeterminacy of study as a mode of educational being within OWS—of "preferring not to" actualize potential, adopt a political subjectivity, elucidate any determinate ends—created a vacuum that precluded the movement from learning from itself. The oscillating state of permanent suspension, in which the utopian possibilities contained within the movement were held im-potential, led to paralysis and neglect. In contrast to the "weak" utopianism ascribed to OWS by Tyson Lewis, I conclude the paper by calling for a "strong" utopianism conceived as a collective endeavor and iterative process but one within which pedagogical organization plays a crucial facilitating role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zeitgeist of our time calls on social workers and the social work profession to reconsider the ways in which we practice, teach, and learn. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 reawakening of the racial and social justice movements profoundly influence how social workers approach the directive from our accrediting body (CSWE) calling on us to intentionally integrate an anti-racist framework in our implicit and explicit curriculum. This paper re-introduces "use of self" as an anti-oppressive pedagogical tool that can build and hold brave spaces of transformation. Orienting ourselves to the use of self as a kind of pedagogy is one way to reengage with our social justice mission. Although we believe that pedagogy and practice are intricately connected, for the purposes of this paper, we focus on pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2004 the SF Movement has developed a global community of food producers and activists called Terra-Madre. Every two years representatives of the community meet in Turin for five days of workshops and conferences. Due to Covid-19 crisis SF has radically changed the nature of the meeting, presenting a six-month calendar of digital and physical events around the world. The paper examines the exchange occurring between communities as a form of translocal activism and considers to what extent SF can be defined as a movement for food sovereignty. It draws on digital data collection on the online activities and research with participants involving semi-structured interviews and observation notes. The paper reflects on the experience of digital fieldwork and how the new format of Terra-Madre provides insights into SF as a translocal movement characterized by conflicts, common perspectives and emergent capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the human body – whose matters, where, when, and how much – has long been of concern in geographical thinking. Vegan geographies pose a challenge to this 'body,' bringing in critical concerns for and about animal bodies. In this paper, interviews with vegans based in Britain are used to discuss the role of the body and embodiment in veganism, a social, cultural and political movement that has been relatively under-studied in geography. Drawing on feminist and embodied geographical theory, this paper discusses the role of the body in three spaces of veganism: (1) in establishing vegan cultures through building shared 'truth narratives'; (2) in shifting veganism beyond individualism in meat-centric society; and (3) veganism as a world-making project, stretching beyond the body into social and cultural space. I conclude by discussing the wider implications of this empirical work understanding the social and cultural geographies of veganism, and how these further embodied geographical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing social movements, in the course of their everyday activities, continually share and produce knowledge, a process defined as learning. This paper addresses a gap in the literature on housing activism, looking at learning as a crucial domain of housing movements' politics and practice. By looking at housing activism through the lens of theories on learning in social movements, we provide a nuanced understanding of Barcelona's neighbourhood-based housing groups. Previously centralized in one movement (the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca), housing activism in the city is now spread into a heterogeneous network, including small and localized collectives. The paper examines one neighbourhood housing group, the Grup d'Habitatge de Sants, and its relations with other groups, scrutinizing how processes and potentials of learning unfold in four critical moments: assemblies, workshops, direct action and debates/congresses. We reveal learning as a complex and multilayered phenomenon, arguing that it is fundamental for housing activism and an essential path towards achieving housing justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of homeownership in the working-class peripheries of post-war Europe has received little attention in planning history. The main reason is probably that public housing built at the time of massive operations of constructing Modernist housing estates in Western and Eastern Blocs adopted tenancy as the predominant form of tenure in almost all cases. In the context of widespread growth of urban homeownership during the second half of the twentieth century in European countries, this paper addresses the singularities of ownership in Francoist Spain. In this case, the main peculiarity is that the working classes that flocked to inhabit the new outskirts were the main protagonists of the intense process of the spread in homeownership. First, the article discusses the ideological roots of the spread of homeownership in Spain as a singular phenomenon. Second, the spectacular growth of homeownership in the peripheral working-class districts of Barcelona and in the municipalities of its metropolitan area is analysed. Then, the paper considers the relationships observed between ownership in the new peripheries and the development of powerful urban movements. A final epilogue places such movements in the Western European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the articulation of the 15-M movement in Spain and the expansion of Feminist Economics (FE) at the feminist base of this movement, in particular, in Feminism Committees (FC-15 M). We assert that this expansion was due to FE's capacity to explain the 2008 crisis beyond its economic-financial dimensions and to analyse the effects of the political-economic austerity measures on the sustainability of life. We claim that a differentiating feature of FE in Spain is its permeability to dialogue with social movements. Therefore, it has become more politicized and critical than other academic fields. This influence has also been reflected in the structure and contents of the most recent FE national conferences, which from 2013 on included not only the classic academic strand but also training and political action strands. In order to explore this development, our methodology includes interviews with key informants; document analysis of material generated in the conferences and the Feminism Committees of 15-M; questionnaires to activists, academics, and practitioners of FE; and informal observation as direct participants of the described processes and events. The paper begins with an introduction to FE thought and its connections with so-called 'Feminism for the 99%' and continues with a methodological section. The twofold results section analyzes the dialogues between FE and FC-15 M. It concludes with a summary of the key ideas presented and some final remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of social movements on the Indian state's developmental paradigm. Adopting from Varigonda's (2020) framework, the paper argues that the impact of social movements on state policy and its implementation is primarily determined by three key factors: the collective action repertoires of social movements; the politicization of the Indian state's developmental paradigm; and the openness of state input structures. This framework is tested through a comparative study of two movements that have emerged against two examples of the Indian state's developmental paradigm: a proposed nuclear plant at Kovvada and a proposed thermal plant at Sompeta, both in Andhra Pradesh. The Sompeta agitation was successful in impeding the thermal plant's inception while the movement in Kovvada eventually petered out. The paper demonstrates how the variation in the impact of the two movements can be attributed to the social movement in Sompeta benefitting from stronger collective action repertoires; greater politicization of the state's developmental paradigm; and more open state input structures, vis-à-vis the movement in Kovvada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how a comparatively weak Indigenous movement succeeded in establishing a precedent of Indigenous prior consultation reform in a national context adverse to Indigenous rights. The in-depth study of Peru shows that alliances between civil society actors and people inside certain state institutions who supported Indigenous claims can explain this outcome. The paper focuses on the collaboration of many human rights lawyers who became part of the Peruvian state. Still, the analysis also shows the limits and challenges of these alliances, particularly in the regulation phase. The paper shows that progressive state activists without strong ties to social movements, and the barriers they face inside institutional settings, can also contribute to the reproduction of weak institutions, particularly during the regulation phase of approved norms. The paper is based on long-term qualitative research in Peru. Data is culled from various source documents and semi-structured interviews with key actors, bureaucrats, Indigenous leaders and human rights professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent surveys suggest that the anti-Asian attacks that began during the COVID-19 pandemic may continue to occur. One of the ways school leaders can respond to this problem is by implementing ethnic studies courses. Unfortunately, organizers of social movements sometimes thwart efforts to increase ethnic studies courses, claiming that this type of curriculum is anti-White. But since well-taught ethnic studies courses are designed to benefit all students, this claim is based on misconceptions. In this paper, I clarify how ethnic studies courses benefit students from all ethnic and racial groups and why more of these courses need to be implemented to fight the recent rise in anti-Asian attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising influence of actors and worldviews from the Global South in contemporary movements calls for renewed approach, method and epistemology in social movement studies. It raises practical, theoretical, methodological and epistemological challenges. How to study global movements without ceding to the pitfalls of methodological globalism and epistemic extractivism? How to conciliate the diversity of struggles with the global dimensions of a movement? This reflexive paper draws on the author's previous research on global movements since 1999 to discuss these challenges and propose an approach built on four pillars: multi-site research, transnational analytical tools, dialogues with local actors and researchers, and an ethic oriented towards intercultural dialogues. Under these premises, global sociology becomes a collective project that combines researchers' and actors' reflexivities in a common quest for a better understanding of our world and the actors who seek to transform it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion is a long-established concept that deals with the mechanisms explaining the prevalence of social movements. However, previous empirical studies on digital movement merely used diffusion as a term referring to increasing numbers of posts or public attention, without distinguishing what is diffused nor asking how information is diffused. Studies applying social network analysis have restricted themselves to retweet networks from a static perspective and emphasized the main actors and critical messages driven by the crowds. While the previous studies examined information diffusion as an outcome, they were unable to reveal the underlying processes that define how digitally networked movements spread over time among crowds embedded in different communities. As a case study, this paper investigates how the German-speaking network #FridaysForFuture was facilitated and contested through different diffusion dynamics. By inferring a diffusion network based on 237,892 retweeting sequences and the following/follower relationships of the 51,803 engaged actors in the early stages of #FridaysForFuture, it quantifies the digitally networked movement from a top-down perspective: the network, the tweets, and the retweets, concerning aspects of both actor and content. The findings suggest the development of digitally networked movements depends on their ability to influence and spread among different networked publics. The diffusion mechanisms of information, discourses, and beliefs of digitally networked movements were mainly enabled by, and flowed through, preexisting networks rather than situational spontaneity. However, they varied according to issue salience and were distinguished by the network structures, political positions, ideological lines, and geographical proximities of the involved communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]