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In this essay I contrast twentieth century heroes of freedom of speech in the Old and New Lefts with contemporary “cancel culture” and social media censorship. In so doing, my aim is to invite you to think with me about this metamorphosis and what it means for social movement research.

Most of the world’s nations have revised their constitutions to protect the human rights of their citizens. Yet there has been no national discussion in this country to write human rights into our own constitution. Building on Blau’s (2015) call to action, this work explores ways in which sociologists can align the principles of our profession to the advancement of human society and the protection of human rights.

This article introduces the term ‘convergence’ in order to explain a distinctive repertoire of protest events in which the following are present: (1) activists with an ideologically anti-capitalist orientation; (2) engage in property destruction; (3) travel from outside of the site of the protest event; and (4) solicit a determinable police response. Convergences have emerged as a subset of the alter-globalization movement since the ‘Battle in Seattle’ in 1999. Convergences have since emerged in resistance to meetings of global financial institutions, political primaries, and recently, the Olympic Games. We examine the logic that activists use to weave resistance to these disparate targets together. In this article, we arrive at this finding inductively, paying particular attention to convergence events at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. Narratives around convergence repertoires allow activists to link seemingly disparate actors with similar and predictable performances.

There have been several cross-national studies published in the world polity theoretical tradition that demonstrate the beneficial impact of international nongovernmental organizations. However, these studies neglect the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations. We address this gap in the literature by conducting a cross-national study that considers the impact of both international and domestic nongovernmental organizations on deforestation. We use data from a sample of 60 nations for the period of 1990 to 2005. We find substantial support for the world polity theory that higher levels of both types of nongovernmental organizations are associated with lower rates of deforestation. We expand the analysis to test a political opportunity structure hypothesis that democracy enhances the ability of nongovernmental organizations to deal with the causes of forest loss. In doing so, we find that international and domestic nongovernmental organizations tend to decrease forest loss more in democratic rather ...

A group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization, called the G22, formed in 2003 to bring attention to important economic concerns of the Global South. ! is coalition building at the global level is instructive to the literature on social movement coalition building and strategies in a transnational context. ! is article examines coalition building among nation-states within the context of the WTO. Drawing upon existing trading blocs, the G22 are able to leverage attention away from the WTO consensus. ! e declining signifi cance of the global institution is a result of the breaking of this consensus.