The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what justifies (...) such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain what a protest is by using the resources of speech-act theory. First, we distinguish the object, redress, and means of a protest. This provided a way to think of atomic acts of protest as having dual communicative aspects, viz., a negative evaluation of the object and a connected prescription of redress. Second, we use Austin’s notion of a felicity condition to further characterize the dual communicative aspects of protest. This allows us to distinguish protest from (...) some other speech acts which also involve a negative evaluation of some object and a connected prescription of redress. Finally, we turn to Kukla and Lance’s idea of a normative functionalist analysis of speech acts to advance the view that protests are a complex speech act constituted by dual input normative statuses and dual output normative statuses. (shrink)

Peaceful protests and strikes are a basic human right as stated in the United Nations’ universal declaration on human rights. But for doctors, their proximity to life and death and the social contract between a doctor and a patient are stated as the reasons why doctors are valued more than the ordinary beings. In Pakistan, strikes by doctors were carried out to protest against lack of service structure, security and low pay. This paper discusses the moral and ethical concerns (...) pertaining to the strikes by medical doctors in the context of Pakistan. The author has carefully tried to balance the discussion about moral repercussions of strikes on patients versus the circumstances of doctors working in public sector hospitals of a developing country that may lead to strikes. (shrink)

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

. . . This brilliant and tightly argued book . . . will be the most important book on moral theology to appear this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter.

This book examines the dialogue between Roman Stoic ethics and the work of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. Elizabeth Agnew Cochran illuminates key theological convictions that provide a foundation for constructing a contemporary Protestant virtue ethic consistent with a number of theological beliefs characteristic of the historical Reformed tradition. Building on this conversation, this book develops the claims that faith holds a unique value among possible moral goods; virtue has a unity that coincides with a soteriology that conceives (...) justification as radically transforming a Christian from a sinner to one who is righteous before God; and moral responsibility is realized through a dispositional consent to God's loving providence. (shrink)

Irena Backus offers the first study in over four hundred years that characterizes Leibniz as both scholar and theologian. She explores his treatment of the key theological issues of his time-predestination, sacred history, the Eucharist, efforts for a union between Lutherans and members of other Christian traditions-illuminating his unique integration of theology into philosophy.Drawing on a wide range of Leibniz's writings, Backus carefully examines the philosophical points and counterpoints of his positions. She shows how Leibniz's Lutheran theology was reconciled with (...) his philosophy, and demonstrates that the solutions he sought to the problems of confessional division were more philosophical than theological. Despite his attempts to merge the two fields, Backus reveals, many of Leibniz's ideas were met with resistance by both theologians and philosophers of his time. Using a wealth of previously unexplored material, Backus also includes the first-ever English translation of the Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken. This study will be an important contribution to the history of ideas, and to understanding Leibniz's place in the mainstream Protestant theology of his time. (shrink)

Legalistic discourse, lawyers and lawyering had minor representation during the 2011 summer protest events in Israel. In this paper we explore and analyze this phenomena by employing content analysis on various primary and secondary sources, among them structured personal interviews with leaders and major activists involved in the protest, flyers, video recordings made by demonstrators and songs written by them. Our findings show that participants cumulatively produced a pyramid-like structure of social power that is anchored in the enterprise of organizing (...) the protest. Our findings explicate how the non-legalistic and even anti-legalistic discourse of the protest was formed, shaped and generated within the power relations of the protest, and how a pyramid of power produced a new poetics of protest that rejected the traditional poetics of state law. The power relations that generated the discourse regarding state law were embedded in socioeconomic stratification along the divide of center and periphery in Israel. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Sports and politics don’t mix’. This platitude has been a pervasive part of U.S. professional sport culture, but it is vague and most of the versions are untrue since politics have been, and must be, a part of professional sports. Its only plausible meaning is that professional players should not make political statements while they are on-the-job. Players have a constitutional right to make political statements outside the workplace, but this right does not apply in privately owned sport associations. I (...) argue that player political protest has ultimately been moral, not political, in nature and that players’ on-the-job political expression can be justified based on the priority of the moral-legal concept of personhood. I propose player political expression policies that U.S. professional associations should adopt. (shrink)

In a world filled with “ambient violence”, public protest is a vital signal of shared discontent. The essential compulsion at the heart of protest, however, is conventionally not recognised for what it is: solidarity with those suffering injustices. Amid authorities’ often-fierce efforts to curtail gatherings of people whose experiences of injustice propel them into the streets, a sharp rise in public protests has been perceived since the early 2000s. Thousands of column inches dedicated to reporting on protests are (...) rivalled in volume only by the reams of academic theories produced around causes. Despite this overabundance of discourses, it often remains unclear what protest, at heart, constitutes. That is, what are we talking about when we talk about protest, and why does this question matter? In this paper I consider the constituent parts of protest formation in the abstract, including grievances, gestures, and tactics, among other. Developing these constituent parts reveals protest to be, first and foremost, a manifestation of a nonhegemonic ethical commitment to justice, requiring courage and coordination, and whose outcome is always contingent, that is, an act of love. I also reflect on the nature of protest as a direct political action that sits on a continuum that ranges from opposition politics to civil war. This continuum offers a graded view ranking expressions of discontent by severity of outcome. (shrink)

Readers of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism recognize that Weber attempts to provide an ideal account of development of modern rational capitalism. What readers apparently do not realize is that Weber believes that there is a political development that is parallel to this economic development. Weber believed that Luther’s passive theology and doctrine of two kingdoms lead to quiet resignation in earthly matters. Luther advises shunning politics and avoiding political confrontation. In contrast, Weber held that Calvin’s theology (...) of awe and his doctrine of predestination lead to active political stances and even imply a duty to resist tyranny. However, Weber rejects both Luther’s and Calvin’s political stances because both believed in a divinely ordered world and held that the consequences of their actions were ultimately left to God. Weber contends that only those people who have the proper understanding of the nature of power and have a real appreciation for the ‘diabolic’ nature of politics are suitable to be political actors. Thus, Weber insists that only those people who will take responsibility for their own political actions have the right to ‘stick their hands in the wheels of history’. (shrink)

Max Weber’s sociological theories of secularization have vastly influenced the study of Protestant belief. _Protestant Modernity_ offers a multifaceted understanding of secularization within the broader context of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism. Anthony J. Carroll reconstructs Weber’s original writings to highlight Protestant motifs, reviews current secularization theories, and settles debates about contested meanings of secularization in this volume that will be essential reading for students and scholars of theology and the sociology of religion.

In the United States, Protestant Christian identity is the dominant religious identity. Protestant Christian identity confers status privileges, yet also creates objectionable status inequalities. Historical and contemporary evidence includes the unfair treatment of Mormons, Native Americans, Muslims, and other religious minorities. Protestant Christian supremacy also plays a significant role in bolstering anti LGBTQ prejudice, xenophobia, and white supremacy. Ways that Protestant Christian identity correlates with objectionable status inequalities are often neglected in contemporary political philosophy. This paper aims to make a (...) modest contribution towards filling that gap. Some forms of inequality linked to Protestant Christian supremacy can be characterized as domination and oppression. Other instances include barriers to fair equality of opportunity for self-determination. Adapting ideas from egalitarian political philosophy I propose an analysis of objectionable status inequality rooted in Protestant Christian supremacy. Alan Patten’s defense of an egalitarian principle for assessing the effects of law and policy is helpful for this task. (shrink)

Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective protests. Chen suggests (...) that routinized contentious bargaining between the government and ordinary people has remedied the weaknesses of the Chinese political system and contributed to the regime's resilience. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China challenges the conventional wisdom that authoritarian regimes always repress popular collective protest and that popular collective action tends to destabilize authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

Writing this article was motivated by the wave of protests in 2013 in Bulgaria. The long and massive protest in the summer of 2013 combined three important features: 1) young people and middle class as the main driver of the events, 2) political action for non-economic value and 3) denial of partisanship and political representation, and support for participatory democracy. These features of the protest relate well to the Inglehart’s framework and describe the profile of “postmaterialists”: people with self-expression (...) values. A question I ask is: how, in a “materialistic democracy” like Bulgaria, with only 2% of postmaterialists, was it possible to take place a large-scale protest for a non-economic value like “moral in politics”, which at the same time resembles other protests that have taken place around the world? The protests were closely connected with the usage of the Internet and social networks and in my article I discuss how the Internet can facilitate behavior consistent with higher-order, postmaterial values. (shrink)

Around 1970, high numbers of traffic casualties among cyclists led to the creation of numerous local protest movements in the Netherlands. While activists employed protest strategies, their main interest lie in the way they exemplify a highly successful instance of “lay expertise”; the idea that users of a technology have a fundamentally different and valuable perspective on a technology than experts or system-builders. Specifically, cyclists claimed to be more knowledgeable about cycling conditions and safety than the state-employed engineers and traffic (...) experts who built the roads and cycling path network. A key actor in this story is the Dutch Cyclists’ Union, a national platform of local action groups formed in 1975. These activists used the cycling experience of everyday utilitarian cyclists to compile maps and blacklists of locations where cycling was dangerous, unpleasant, uncomfortable, or otherwise discouraging. In doing so, they successfully claimed legitimacy as a valuable knowledge partner for local engineers and policymakers. As a result, they gained some level of influence within local governments, a relation which in the intervening years has only grown stronger. This case study shows how users can shape socio-technical systems bottom-up, and can therefore to an extent be seen as a successful example of co-construction of technology. (shrink)

The Protestant Ethic not only had behavioral implications, as Max Weber and others have pointed out, it also had ideological implications in providing a moral legitimacy for capitalism. The Protestant Ethic provided a moral justification for the pursuit of profit and the distribution of income that are a part of the system. Currently there is a good deal of intellectual concern about the moral legitimacy of the capitalist system. Thus it is important to trace the origins of the Protestant Ethic (...) and recover the ideological functions it performs in a capitalistic society. (shrink)

One Protestant Looks At Centesimus Annus is an attempt to analyze Pope John Paul II''s centennial encylical on economic justicein context. It relates the early contributions of Reformation thought to the emergence of laissez-faire capitalism. It describes the social gospel as a convergence of the radical implications of 19th century German Protestant scholarship and the harsh economic/social realities of the industrial revolution. Then it compares the economic teachings of the institutional church from Leo XIII and the old Federal Council of (...) Churches to John Paul II and the World Council of Churches one hundred years later. All of this prepares the way for a critical analysis ofCentesimus Annus with a special emphasis on the Pope''s understanding of Christian truth. Finally there is a postscript relating the encyclical to the ethical challenges facing multinational corporations in developing countries. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the ethics of nonviolent protest when a violent response is either foreseen or intended. One central concern is whether protesters, who foresee a violent response but persist, are provoking the violence and whether they are culpable for any eventual harms. A second concern is whether it is permissible to publicize the violent response for political advantage. I begin by distinguishing between two senses of the term provoke: a normative sense where a provocateur knowingly imposes an (...) unjustified risk of a violent response, and a descriptive sense where the respondent feels provoked. I argue that, when the risk of a violent response is justified, the protesters are not provocateurs but akin to nonculpable, entrapping agents who create an opportunity for the regime to respond with disproportionate violence. The regime’s response can disclose its brutality or criminality and this can be fairly publicized for political advantage. When nonviolent protesters create an unjustified risk of violence either because the injustice they oppose is insufficient to justify the risk of a violent response or because the risked harms are disproportionate with the likely political advantages derived from the protest, they are partially culpable provocateurs. However, I argue these partially culpable provocateurs can still permissibly publicize the disproportionate violence of the regime so as to shape public opinion. (shrink)

Studies of protests against mobile phone masts typically concentrate on the potential health risks associated with mobile phones and their masts. Beck’s Risk Society has been particularly influential in informing this debate. This focus on health, however, has merely served to limit the discussion to those concerns legitimated by science conveniently ignoring other disputed issues. In contrast, this article contends that it is necessary to use a wider notion of risk to understand fully how the current political emphasis on (...) active citizenship may have contributed to the protests. It examines how neoliberal governmentality and the move to empower people are in contention with one another. The study draws upon case material from a small village protest group in United Kingdom and argues that much of the tension arises from the encouragement of the public on one hand to become active citizens but on the other to be passive consumers. (shrink)

In writing this paper I am reminded of a conference that I once attended. On that panel, the Jewish scholar spoke first. he began, and he gave a wonderful talk full of references to the legal rulings and stories of the Jewish tradition. Then the Catholic priest spoke. he began, and he gave a wonderful talk carefully attentive to the moral tradition of the Catholic Church. Finally, a Protestant spoke. he began, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but (...) now I find myself in a similar situation. (shrink)

This study focuses on two main arguments about the secularization of Protestant work ethic and the uniqueness of Islamic work ethic. By adopting a linguistic point of view, this study aims to grasp a common understanding of PWE and IWE in the field of work ethic research. For this purpose, 109 articles using the keywords PWE and IWE in their titles were analyzed using content analysis. The findings support the argument that emphasizes universally shared values of PWE. In addition, the (...) findings reveal that IWE provides a unique perspective on how to improve organizational performance, but at the same time differs in work orientation and commitment across cultures. (shrink)

This study focuses on two main arguments about the secularization of Protestant work ethic (PWE) and the uniqueness of Islamic work ethic (IWE). By adopting a linguistic point of view, this study aims to grasp a common understanding of PWE and IWE in the field of work ethic research. For this purpose, 109 articles using the keywords PWE and IWE in their titles were analyzed using content analysis. The findings support the argument that emphasizes universally shared values of PWE. In (...) addition, the findings reveal that IWE provides a unique perspective on how to improve organizational performance, but at the same time differs in work orientation and commitment across cultures. (shrink)

Some competition was associated with all European voyages of discovery, whether considered in an intellectual or a nautical sense, but the character of the competition became confessional as the contest between states over resources to be exploited gave way to disputation between denominations over how souls might best be saved. This happened when, in the late sixteenth century, Protestant publicists began to disparage the colonial endeavours that the Spanish and Portuguese authorities had been engaged upon for more than a century, (...) and when they resolved to start the colonial process all over again, with a view to making the Atlantic World a Protestant rather than a Catholic space. This was to be achieved both by releasing what remained of the Native American population in Central and South America from Spanish tyranny, and by establishing Protestant colonies to evangelise the native populations in extensive areas of America to which the Iberians had no more than titular claims. A comparison between French and English colonial undertakings in the West Indies, and between the literatures associated with these endeavours over the course of the seventeenth century, establishes that these Protestant ambitions proved as elusive in practice as they had been myopic in theory. The conclusion seeks to explain why colonial efforts in which Catholic religious orders were involved proved more capable of linking scientific investigations with missionary concerns than was possible in colonies that were self consciously Protestant. (shrink)

This chapter examines the simultaneous rejection and endorsement of natural theology within Protestantism, focusing on two contentious issues representing the tensions within Protestant perspectives on natural theology. Firstly, it considers the historical theological question of the attitude to natural theology amongst the Reformers and the post-Reformation Protestant Orthodoxy. The chapter engages with the established consensus that the increasingly positive evaluation of the possibility and value of natural theology within Protestant Orthodoxy represents a regrettable discontinuity with the ‘original’ rejection of natural (...) theology by the early Reformers. Secondly, it explores the place of natural theology within contemporary Protestant philosophical theology, looking in particular at Alvin Plantinga's ‘Reformed objection to natural theology’. The chapter disputes Plantinga's argument that the Reformers' rejection of classical foundationalism, in favour of a Reformed epistemology in which belief in God can be properly basic, entails a Reformed objection to natural theology. Rather, it suggests the possibility of an alternative Reformed natural theology consistent with the epistemological framework characteristic of Reformed dogmatic theology. (shrink)

Based on a dataset of more than 5,000 contentious collective actions from 1700-2000, this paper examines the relation between popular protest and democratization of the Danish political system. The first wave of protests began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so-called ‘constitutional struggle’ and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes, and contributed to the parliamentarization and (...) nationalization of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of World War II, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis show that ‘democracy’ was the central issue of contention in all four of these protest waves, and support the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have developed a novel conception of blame as a kind of moral protest. This Protest View of Blame faces doubts about its intelligibility: can we make sense of inner ‘protest’ in cases of unexpressed blame? It also faces doubts about its descriptive adequacy: does ‘protest’ capture what is distinctive in reactions of blame? I argue that the Protest View can successfully answer the first kind of doubt, but not the second. Cases of contemptful blame and unexpressed (...) blame offer initial counterexamples to the view. The Protest View can accommodate these examples by appealing to a broader notion of protest, but, I argue, at the cost of retreating to a broader category that no longer captures what is distinctive about blame. Moreover, nonviolent resistance, in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. King, characteristically protests without blame, presenting another powerful challenge to the Protest View. These challenges, I argue, undermine the view, while helping to illuminate and defend the appeal of nonviolent resistance. They also offer an alternative conception of the relation between protest and blame, characteristic of nonviolent resistance and obscured by the Protest View. On that alternative, the relation is not descriptive but practical; rather than understanding blame as a kind of protest, we should aim, in many cases, to replace blame with protest. (shrink)

In the accepted view, the basic disposition of believers is one of absolute obedience, humility, and lack of critique, doubt, or, indeed, defiance of God. Only through such a disposition do believers convey their absolute faith and establish the appropriate hierarchy between God and humans. This article challenges this view and argues that, in mainstream rabbinic tradition, the believer is not required to renounce his or her moral autonomy and certainly not his or her understanding of God and the world. (...) Indeed, faith rests on such understanding; moreover, human autonomy is the mechanism through which humans convey God’s goodness and perfection. Their questions and criticism are part of a persistent effort to close the evident gap between their assumptions about God’s goodness and the flawed imperfect reality. The analysis focuses on rabbinic tradition but its implications go beyond it, presenting a model of a life of faith that compels subjects, as believers, to preserve their constitutive foundations as rational autonomous creatures. (shrink)

Stakeholder management is an important method for reducing business risk. Recent decades have seen the growth of a new type of stakeholder: social protest stakeholders, individuals engaging in protest action which is directed at other unrelated parties, often the government. However, the actions of social protest stakeholders may negatively affect companies located nearby. This stakeholder category has not received any formal attention in the literature, and this article addresses the knowledge gap by exploring the effects of community-driven protest action in (...) South Africa and the strategies that firms adopt to mitigate the negative consequences of such protests. A multiple case study analysis was used to describe this type of stakeholder group and the management of the consequences of social protest action. Eight manufacturing companies in the Gauteng province participated in the study, the companies varied in size and industry. Among the key findings are that companies need to be highly adaptable if they are to mitigate the impact of protest action. We make practical suggestions about how companies may manage these risks, including the recommendation that companies engage more directly with social protestors to manage risks. The study makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying an additional key category of stakeholder and proposing a risk management approach to avert or minimize loss and damage. (shrink)

"If Catholic and Protestant ethicians were asked to name a single theologian who was qualified to write a comprehensive overview of the historical divergences of Catholic and Protestant positions on ethical questions, the bases for those divergences in fundamentally different philosophical and theological perspectives, and the possibilities for future convergences of the traditions, my guess is that James Gustafson would be the one.... This brilliant and tightly argued book... will be the most important book on moral theology to appear this (...) year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter. (shrink)

For more than 100 years, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has set the parameters for the debate over the origins of modern capitalism. Now more timely and thought-provoking than ever, this esteemed classic of twentieth-century social science examines the deep cultural "frame of mind" that influences work life to this day in northern America and Western Europe. Stephen Kalberg's internationally acclaimed translation captures the essence of Weber's style as well as the subtlety of his descriptions and causal (...) arguments. Now, for the first time in one volume, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the West integrates Weber's exploration of the spirit of capitalism's origins with his larger project: a multi-causal analysis of the West's distinctiveness and its sources. Weber's texts present wide-ranging discussions on the Western city, state, forms of rulership and law, and modes of economic innovation. Moreover, in many selections Weber offers in-depth and insightful comparisons to China and India. Readings on the "economic ethics" of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism further illuminate the distinct qualities of the West's trajectory and its diverse causes. A separate section examines the long-range influence of the ascetic Protestant sects and churches on American society.To draw readers into the material, this engaging volume includes extended introductions by the editor, many new translations, a chronology of Weber's life, an expanded glossary and bibliography, and numerous clarifying endnotes. In addition, Kalberg addresses a variety of debates concerning the central elements of contemporary life. Ideal for courses in sociology, anthropology, political science, history, international relations, and economics, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the West is an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the origins and endurance of the modern West. (shrink)

This volume of Social Philosophy Today contains a selection of papers presented at the 31st International Social Philosophy Conference (2014), an annual event sponsored by the North American Society for Social Philosophy. The theme of the conference was "Power, Protest, and the Future of Democracy". This volume invites wider discussion of the issues explored at the conference.

Factoring in the paradoxical relationship between faith and empiricism in Protestant epistemology, this essay attributes Othello’s disaster to his inability to take the leap of faith a Protestant sensibility demands. Protestantism inherits from Luther a rigid compartmentalization of the knowable and the mysterious. Othello, innately inclined and further conditioned to think in terms of “tangible evidence,” cannot imagine alternative possibilities. His handling of Cassio’s brawl shows how Othello requires that facts speak for themselves, and how he has no access to (...) the “imaginative effort” necessary for charity. Additionally, Iago’s manipulation renders imagination intolerable for Othello, and reinforces his tendency to literalism, doctrinal purity, and a need for certainty. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the question of whether an individual has a moral obligation to sign a protest petition which has been initiated on moral grounds. It is argued that there is such an obligation when the petition represents a viewpoint with which one broadly agrees. This is a general dury which may lapse with changed circumstances or which may be redeemed by some alternative action. It is argued that the duty to initiate a protest petition is, on (...) the other hand, supererogatory as far as an individual is concerned, but may be a duty for a community or group. Finally it is argued that protest petitions are essentially protests, not against evil deeds as such, but against evil deeds done in one's own name, and are therefore a vital aspect of democracy. (shrink)

When bringing philosophical attention to bear on social movement slogans in general, philosophers have often focused on their communicative nature—particularly the hermeneutical failures that arise in discourse. Some of the most popular of these failures are illustrated in ‘all lives matter’ retorts to ‘black lives matter’ pronouncements. Although highlighting and criticizing these failures provides much needed insight into social movement slogans as a communicative practice, I claim that in doing so, philosophers and slogans’ users risk placing too much importance on (...) outgroup understandings. This emphasis is misguided because gaining such uptake is not required of particular slogans to perform their functions; indeed it is an inherent risk of them. I show how such an emphasis can also be distracting to users. Since social movement slogans that express values are first and foremost for users, I argue for a shift in focus in what these slogans (such as ‘Black Is Beautiful’ and the more recent ‘Black Lives Matter’) do for users, as well as what they demand from users and enable them to express. When slogans have done these things, regardless of uptake, we can say they have performed one of their key functions. (shrink)

The technological revolution and appropriation of internet tools began to reshape the material basis of society and the urban space in collaborative, grassroots, leaderless, and participatory actions. The protest squares’ representation on Television screens and mainstream media has been broad. Various health, governmental, societal, and urban challenges have marked the advent of the Covid-19 virus. Inequalities have become more salient as poor people and minorities are more affected by the virus. Social distancing makes the typical forms of protest impossible to (...) carry out. Under social distancing, some state-led policies took advantage of social media to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic to silence social and political activities, censor criticism, and control the press. However, during the pandemic era, the movements for social justice have been particularly active, focusing on defending workers’ rights, mutual aid and solidarity, monitoring policymakers, and popular education. These progressive movements combined concrete practices and experiences to confront the reactionary, capitalist, and governmental actors that sought to shape and envision the world. Through different case studies of protest movements during the pandemic in Europe, the UK, and Asia, this paper argues that at the time of rising racial, social, and economic inequalities, the social activities adapted to the circumstances determined by the social distancing and the impossibility of people gathering in physical spaces. Subsequently, the people in different countries had various individual and collective responses to the support of health workers, systemic inequalities, loss of jobs, and other societal and financial challenges imposed by the governments. It means that, rather than disappearing, the social movements have adapted to the unexpected situations during the pandemic outbreak. The pandemic broke the new digital global wave of protests in this sense. (shrink)

The General Elections of November 24 1991 will secure a place in Belgian political history. On this 'Black Sunday' one third of the electorate changed party. The traditional parties were heavy losers and the swing was wholly to the advantage of 'Vlaams Blok' and 'Rossem'. Since the election a never ending stream of explanations has appeared. Immediately after the elections the Interuniversity Center of Political Opinion research, located at the Catholic University of Leuven, began a national survey of political attitudes (...) and beliefs among 2,691 Flemish voters. This article explores the reasons for voting for the winning parties. Is it appropriated to speak of protest, disappointment and apathy?The authors expect stable, traditional voting behaviour to continue to decrease in future as a result of loosening ties with the "pillars", the decline of church involvement and the process of individualisation. The article ends with some critical comments on the role of the media as a producer of explanations andlegitimations. (shrink)

Peter Harrison explains the disappearance of symbolic meanings of animals from seventeenth-century works in natural history through what he calls the “literalist mentality of the reformers.” By contrast, the present article argues in favor of a different understanding of the connection between hermeneutics and Protestant natural history. Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Jean Calvin continued to assign moral meanings to natural particulars, and moral interpretations can still be found in the writings of Protestant naturalists such as (...) Conrad Gesner, Caspar Heldelinus, Jeremias Wilde, Thomas Penny, and Thomas Moffett. If there are differences between Protestant and Catholic interpretations of animals, then these differences derive from the reformer’s greater insistence on providing textual support for assigning symbolic meanings, their resulting greater reluctance in assigning prophetic meanings to animals, and their elimination of spiritual interpretations of animals that are in tension with central tenets of Protestant theology. These differences in hermeneutics and theology may explain some of the divergences between the symbolic interpretations of animals proposed by Protestant natural historians and their Catholic colleague, Ulisse Aldrovandi. (shrink)

Around 1970, high numbers of traffic casualties among cyclists led to the creation of numerous local protest movements in the Netherlands. While activists employed protest strategies, their main interest lie in the way they exemplify a highly successful instance of “lay expertise”; the idea that users of a technology have a fundamentally different and valuable perspective on a technology than experts or system-builders. Specifically, cyclists claimed to be more knowledgeable about cycling conditions and safety than the state-employed engineers and traffic (...) experts who built the roads and cycling path network. A key actor in this story is the Dutch Cyclists’ Union, a national platform of local action groups formed in 1975. These activists used the cycling experience of everyday utilitarian cyclists to compile maps and blacklists of locations where cycling was dangerous, unpleasant, uncomfortable, or otherwise discouraging. In doing so, they successfully claimed legitimacy as a valuable knowledge partner for local engineers and policymakers. As a result, they gained some level of influence within local governments, a relation which in the intervening years has only grown stronger. This case study shows how users can shape socio-technical systems bottom-up, and can therefore to an extent be seen as a successful example of co-construction of technology.ZusammenfassungUm 1970 führte die hohe Zahl von Verkehrsunfällen unter Radfahrern zur Gründung zahlreicher lokaler Protestbewegungen in den Niederlanden. Obwohl die Aktivisten auch Proteststrategien einsetzten, besteht das Hauptinteresse dieses Artikels in der Art und Weise, wie sie ein äußerst erfolgreiches Beispiel für „Laienkompetenz“ darstellen. Die Idee dahinter ist, dass Nutzer eine wertvolle und grundlegend andere Perspektive auf eine Technologie haben als Experten oder Systembauer: Radfahrer gaben in Umfragen an, mehr über die Bedingungen und die Sicherheit von Fahrrädern zu wissen als die staatlich angestellten Ingenieure und Verkehrsexperten, die die Systeme des Straßen- und Radwegenetzes gebaut haben. Ein Hauptakteur dieser Geschichte ist der Fietsersbond [Radfahrerbund], eine nationale Plattform lokaler Aktionsgruppen, die 1975 gegründet wurde. Diese Aktivisten nutzten die Mobilitätserfahrung täglicher Radfahrer, um Karten und Liste von Orten zusammenzustellen, an denen das Radfahren gefährlich und unangenehm oder auf andere Weise beschwerlich war. Damit beanspruchten sie erfolgreich Legitimität als wertvoller Wissenspartner für lokale Ingenieure und politische Entscheidungsträger. Infolgedessen gewannen sie einen gewissen Einfluss auf die Kommunalverwaltung; eine Beziehung, die seitdem immer stärker geworden ist. Diese Fallstudie zeigt, wie Nutzer sozio-technische Systeme „von unten“ gestalten können; sie kann daher in gewissem Maße als erfolgreiches Beispiel für die kooperative Konstruktion von Technik angesehen werden. (shrink)

This article examines the participation of women in the 1985 labor strike at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. The author views the strike as a deeply gendered act of protest where the issues, strategies, tactics, and resources used by women workers differ from those used by men, and simultaneously, as the occupational site that provided workers an opportunity to affirm, to modify, and to contest their understandings of gender. Paradoxically, women both challenge and conform to normative gender scripts for protest. They resisted the (...) efforts of men to impose a gender division of labor and sought to mobilize the community in support of the strike. (shrink)