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Massive anti-government protests erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. The crisis activated a potential for resistance that has been simmering under the impositions of late-modern knowledge society. Made salient by the pandemic conditions of sudden extreme reliance on scientific (non) knowledge, the corona protestors activated this potential for resistance and constructed their own counter-knowledge order bound by shared resentment of and distrust in the established order and facilitated by digital platforms. Utilising social network analysis and structural topic modeling for digital critical discourse analysis, in this paper I explore how the corona protest counter-knowledge order is constructed with a particular focus on its contexts, roles, and hierarchies. I find that far-right and conspiracy imaginations are used to level out hierarchies and detach epistemic roles from their contexts to reinstate a superior self into interpretative power. The counter-knowledge order's inherent construction of unwarranted omnipotence points to a more fundamental resistance to the established normative orders of our society that should be addressed more effectively if we want to be prepared for future crises and not lose common ground for making sense of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates protestations as a unique lens into the workings of coercion and resistance in the early modern period. Protestation was a wide-ranging genre of document, written to counter the consequences of coercive forces in myriad forms: familial, economic, religious, and political; on the levels of micro and macro; and across social and geographical space. This remarkable scope has paradoxically proven an obstacle to realizing the historiographical potential of the phenomenon, which remains largely uncharted and familiar only to a few specialists separated by sub-disciplinary divides. This article thus offers a unifying conceptual, analytic, and methodological framework. It interrogates protestations as material objects as well as verbal texts; follows them throughout their lifecycle; and explores their spectra of producers, protagonists, and functions. A variety of case studies from the ancien régime illustrate the significance of the phenomenon on both the micro and macro levels, whether in the struggles of young people against the abuses of patriarchal and familial authority or in the subversive use of protestations in the constitutional crises of absolute monarchy. Protestation is thus shown to be of wide interest to a broad swath of scholars, including historians of gender, family, working-people, elites, high politics, law, and writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new strand of writing in political philosophy deals with the linkage - rather than the tension - between politics of recognition and politics of redistribution. This scholarship usually deals with two-dimensionally subordinated groups (e.g. poor ethnic minorities). In this case study, I explore empirically how such linkages may be manifested in regard to a mismatched status group. Focusing on low-income college-educated people (LICEP), and going beyond the traditional status inconsistency approach, I have explored how LICEP frame their social positioning mostly in terms of self-fulfillment and recognition. This is at odds with LICEP having a pivotal role in social protests globally. Taken together, the findings yield a configuration of a few recognition-redistribution interactions: Low material reward is experienced as misrecognition; LICEP-centered social protests are also about recognition of their lifestyle and are characterized by self-fulfillment potential for this group (i.e. creative environment); and the different modalities of self-fulfillment work as sources for LICEP activists' biographies. This specific configuration takes us beyond abstract notions of the recognition-redistribution linkage and the double subordination examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have Russia’s workers responded in the face of Russia’s current economic challenges? In this article we explore changes in Russian labor protest over time, through the boom and bust cycles of the Russian economy. Relying on independent Russian databases, we examine evidence of a significant increase in labor protest in recent years, which also reveals that, despite apparent changes in the prosperous 2000s, Russian labor relations and protest are returning to past patterns. The protests are often spontaneous and their likeliness to spread stems less from union support than from policies that impact workers and others as a single category, such as the Platon road-tax system and its impact on truckers. Russia’s truckers also illustrate the potential for economic protests to become politicized. In view of this potential, Russia’s leadership appears to be reinforcing past practices such as avoiding mass layoffs, but such steps may harm long-term economic growth, itself a cause of protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Using protest event analysis, this study aims to investigate which risk factors influence the severity of environmental protests in China, thus filling a gap in China-related environmental protest literature.Design/methodology/approach Using a database derived from media coverage of 129 environmental protests in China from 2009 to 2015, this empirical study identifies underlying risk factors influencing environmental protest severity, quantifies these protest cases and verifies the associations between risk factors and severity using ordered logistic regression.Findings The results show that higher environmental health threat, economic loss, distrust of local government, lack of local governmental response, improper local government action and higher population density are likely to increase environmental protest severity; however, contrary to expectations, environmental information disclosure has no significant effect. These findings illuminate the vital and variational role of local government throughout all stages of the evolutionary process in environmental protests. Moreover, public distrust of local government is the principal cause of these protests.Originality/value This study enhances the understanding of how Chinese environmental protests arise from the identified risk factors and contributes to quantitative multi-case research in this area. Furthermore, the findings may help local governments in China, as well as in other countries, to enact positive measures to prevent serious environmental protests and improve their ability to address the environmental problems that cause protests. More effective governance can decrease the number and severity of environmental protests and thus promote social stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study attempts to provide a comparative analysis of dissent art in America of the 20th century and the social media of the 21st regarding the protests which took place in the USA during the two centuries. The results reveal the fading of some tactics used by protesters such as poetry and music and the rise of other methods such as images, videos and interactive content shared in the virtual space, putting a heavy accent on the role of social media as a communication channel for both gathering and uniting the people for a common goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the Europeanization of the anti-GM movement. Drawing on a quantitative protest event analysis that covers the period from 1995 to 2009 in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, as well as in the sub-, supra- and transnational spheres (N = 1,865), it compares four pathways to Europeanization: domestication, externalization, supranationalization, and transnational pressure. It explains the relative prominence of these pathways through a general theory of movement behavior that is based on transaction costs and contextual opportunities and on the specifics of the EU's GM policy domain. It then examines alternatives to these standard predictions. While Europeanization is a multilevel process entailing national, sub-, supra- and transnational arenas, nation states remain the key arenas of movement for Europeanization, which is reinforced by the contentious nature of the GM policy domain. While grassroots actors show a certain tendency towards transnational activism, only well-resourced, professional actors exploit opportunities at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of why some people participate in collective action, while most of them do not, has puzzled social movement scholars for decades, continuing to generate a burgeoning literature on what has been termed "differential recruitment." Studies investigating protest participation, however, rarely compare actual participants with nonparticipants. The most important reason is a methodological one: it is difficult to organize a pre- and post-design that allows for disentangling the whole mobilization process leading towards a protest demonstration. In this article, I present data about 2,100 potential and actual participants in a national climate change demonstration in Belgium. Relying on this unique dataset, I present a comprehensive model including interpersonal networks and issue-related motivations to predict and explain participation and nonparticipation in a specific protest demonstration. Conceiving protest mobilization as a multistage process, I indicate how networks and motivations each have a distinct role in different stages of the mobilization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does preelection protest have an effect on the outcomes of authoritarian elections? Electoral authoritarian regimes use elections to consolidate their power and claim democratic legitimacy. Nonetheless, on some occasions authoritarian incumbents lose elections despite their advantages, and a democratic breakthrough is achieved. I propose that preelection protests contribute to such election results. Existing scholarship focuses primarily on the effectiveness of postelection upheavals, and the effects of preelection protest are still theoretically and empirically understudied. This article proposes a theory for why preelection contention has an independent effect on incumbent defeat of authoritarian regimes and democratization. I present empirical support for the association between preelection protest activities, incumbent defeat, and democratization using data from 190 elections across 65 countries with nondemocratic regimes. The findings of this analysis have important implications for studies of social movements, authoritarian politics, and democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws upon the controversy over the use of indigenous-related sports emblems that has recently sparked a series of protests across the United States against the Washington Redsk*ns name and imagery. It focuses on the visual aspect of the debate, tracing the white-supremacist foundations of the Washington team's insignia to the institutional construction of Native identity through popular Indian head pennies, gold coins, and buffalo nickels in the period between 1859 and 1938. Pointing at the seemingly paradoxical discrepancy between the minted messages and the systematic political, legal, and military invasion on American Indian sovereignty in that period, it proceeds to deconstruct the paradox by exposing the numismatic pictorial language as a manifestation of the same ideological project and the configurations of power that have remained unchanged to this day. The continued circulation of indigenous-based iconography in the contemporary American context shows that the same cultural imagination continues to serve not only as a powerful rationale for European America's historical, national, and political narrative but also as a form of 'anti-conquest' that both obscures and enacts the established formulas of colonial domination and control. Observing the alterations of the Washington Redsk*ns logo design across some of the key socio-historical moments of the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the analysis explores how various forms of national anxiety transcend into identity through the politics of representation. In that light, it regards recent activism against mass-mediated symbolization of indigenous identity as an important arena in which centuries-old hegemonic discourses are contested against new venues of self-determination and internal decolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper positions Calcutta (Kolkata) not only as a key site for the practical implementation of the indentured labour system, but as a key arena for discussion and negotiation of, and resistance to, this form of labour migration. It analyses debates on indenture as they took place in the colonial capital between 1836 and 1842, exploring their influence on the colonial policies and regulations that came to govern the system throughout the British Empire. In so doing, it highlights how the coming together of economic, humanitarian, political, and imperial agendas in debates around the so-called ‘coolie question’ helped shape the global indentured system. By exploring Calcutta’s interactions with the indentured question and the influence of discussions in Calcutta on metropolitan debates and decisions, the paper considers how Calcutta functioned as a colonial capital within wider imperial networks. Drawing on recent studies that perceive the empire as a web, with nodes located at the metropole, colonial capitals, ports,entrepôts, and other interacting centres within the empire, it will seek to rethink Calcutta’s position within this system, and thus contribute to understanding how nodes of the Empire interacted outside strict binary divisions of colony and metropole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study adds a great deal of understanding about the use of social media for political purpose. The current review paper brings to the knowledge that the consumption of social media for news stimulates political debates among the users that ultimately leads them to find solutions of their political problems. The paper tells that if the authorities do not address the concerns of the users then new media technologies serve as instruments and facilitate them to contrive different devices to achieve their goals. So the use of social media for getting news, discussing political issues and other public affairs ultimately fetch protest behavior among its users in order to raise demands for solving their political problems. Moreover, disintermediation of social media and its anti-hegemonic nature make it more appealing as a global agenda setter for the users to highlight their disquiets at international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study engages collective action framing theory to examine the strategies employed by Singaporeans, rarely seen on the front lines of politics, on social media to organize a protest against the government’s immigration policy. It addresses critical and theoretical questions on the formation and dynamics of collective action frames on social media, and the implications for social movements. An analysis of 1805 posts and comments on blogs and Facebook leading up to the May 1, 2013 protest reveals that while organizers and protestors resonated in their development of diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames, they placed different emphasis on the frames. This variable use of frames helps explain that while the protest was successful in mobilizing thousands to the outdoor site, it was not able to sustain the movement demanding immigration reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the notice of opposition provided by the Lanham Act after the publication of a mark for opposition in the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Official Gazette in the U.S. One is the petition for declaration of interference which is available only to complaining parties who are applicants or registrants. Another is to file a letter of protest that permit outsiders to the ex parte examination process to contribute factual matters to the attention of the PTO.

The article provides procedural guides for the construction lawyers to bring a federal bid protest at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the U.S. GAO was established by the government as an independent governmental agency under the direction of the Comptroller General to hear bid protests. Bid protester should be a prospective bidder who wrote the bid protest to the GAO with relevant issues under compliance to the requirements to pursue the protests.

Probes the social and political mechanisms behind the success or failure of the method of protest of the refusenik movement in Israel. Impact of the September 2000 armed clashes between Israel and the Palestinians on the Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories; Statistics of the refusenik community by early 2003; Definition of civil-militarism.

The aim of this paper is to suggest an analytical framework through which the complex question of hospital closure and local protest can be further explored. The significance of this area of study lies with the extraordinary events that surrounded a campaign to save the Kidderminster General Hospital from downsizing. Whilst the hospital was not saved, the local campaign committee organizing the protest took their fight into the political arena and were successful in gaining a parliamentary voice in the 2001 general elections. Such an achievement has had considerable political implications, however, the question asked here is how might we begin to interpret the events that took place. To this end, the paper draws on current geographical literature in an attempt to construct a framework that accounts for both national policy debates and the local context within which such campaigns emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining two political protests that took place in the Buenos Aires of the late 1990s, this article explores the theatrical strategies through which the social movements that opposed President Menem's neoliberal government succeeded in weakening the ruling bloc's hold on the public sphere. The author argues that much of this struggle was fought around modalities of seeing, displaying, watching, and being seen. While the state utilized spectacle and panopticism in the attempt to reproduce its authority, the protesters turned to these strategies to disseminate their polemic self-performance as Argentina's people and its critical public. This representational strategy pursued a twofold purpose. On one hand, the protesters strove to confine the state to the double role of spectator of their dissent and object of their critical scrutiny. On the other hand, the protesters provided their audiences with a site of identification and unification that proved effective in mobilizing support to their struggle against the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of photography in the society. Background on the significance of communication technologies; Analysis of images of mass protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington; Details on the link between the paintings of Winslow Homer and the social documentary photography of Lewis Hine.

Drawing on an ethnographic account of toxic waste protest in post-reunification Germany, the article compares three models of environmental activism (by Douglas and Wildavsky, Melucci and Latour respectively) which problematize the production of knowledge. Insights from social studies of science are used to examine the entanglement of language and matter in en-vironmentalism. The article suggests, however, that unless scholars pay due attention to the way they frame their questions, they are at risk of finding their work irrelevant or impotent. On the other hand, it suggests that to achieve relevance and power, empirical, particularly ethnographic accounts, which emerge out of a meeting between activism and academia, are also required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of the Internet in the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington. Campaigns for social justice through the Internet; Citations of several groups protesting WTO practices; Issues of hacktivism practiced by various social activists.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the discursive practices of resistance deployed in two recent waves of dissent in Serbia: the 1996--97 demonstrations against the Milosevic regime, and the 1999 anti-NATO protest. I explore three identity motifs running through both protests ('victims', 'underdogs', and 'rebels'), and explain how they were differentially articulated into a discursive practice of defiance. In contemporary Serbia, they resonate with everyday mechanisms of coping and belonging, grounded in nationalist rep-resentations of what it means to be a Serb. By analysing the contradictory deployment and performance of these motifs in two very different outbursts of dissent, this article offers an understanding of the tactical polyvalence of discourses of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on political symbology as applied in Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' politics. Definition of symbols; Emotional and sacred properties of symbols; Impact of protester symbols on direct demonstrations; Psychological effect of symbols on outcomes of protest demonstrations.

Discusses the effectiveness of protest-group activity in local politics. Definition of a protest group; Criteria of policy responsiveness; Factors that affect responsiveness.

Focuses on the consummatory function in native American protest rhetoric. Reasons due to which the demand for land restoration is motivated; Significance of ritual discourse to militant Indian protest rhetoric; Principle of ritual enactment.

Focuses on an arbitration involving racial protests and self-help under the Taft-Harley law. Under federal labor law, a bargaining unit employee who, ignoring grievance and arbitration procedure available to him, engages in self-help by a work stoppage or a refusal to obey reasonable orders, runs the risk of discharge or other forms of discipline. He thereby loses the protection of the Taft-Hartley law. But there is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court a case involving employees who are arguing that, as the purpose of their self-help was to vindicate rights guaranteed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, they did not lose the protection of law by choosing not to stay within the limits prescribed by the collective agreement. The author suggests that courts must decide such cases in the light of the union's policies not only with respect to the particular grievance but of its total record with respect to minority races.

Discusses some legal and ethical considerations regarding the rhetoric of the streets or the rhetorical expressions or tactics employed by contemporary protest groups in the U.S. as of April 1976. Examples of the rhetorical expressions created by civil rights movements; Categories of criticism directed at the contemporary rhetoric of the streets; Discussion of those who advocate and practice civil disobedience.