In this paper I argue that protest images have a certain aesthetics and a degree of transformative power. Crucial to this aesthetics is the images’ narrative struc- ture, like the representation of goal-directed actions. On this basis, I show that there are more aspects that contribute to the storytelling capacity, like narrative characteristics and an aesthetics of dramatization. Using the example of climate change protests as a case study, I establish that these aspects can contribute to the transformative ability (...) of protest images, if used effectively. (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)

How did cultural factors participate in the event of October in Chile? How were these factors related to each other? What implications did they have for collective action and social life? The purpose of the article is to carry out a cultural reading of the October event. To do this, a dialogue is proposed between cultural sociology and cultural studies, applied to the October protest movement, resorting to interpretive research tools. The appropriation of Plaza Italia, in Santiago, by (...) the protesters, is used in an illustrative way to highlight the cultural elements and their interactions. Among the findings, the production of meaning based on motifs and frames stands out, the production of its own symbolism and iconography and the deployment of performances that allow defining the Plaza itself as an artifact of protest. Then certain scopes of the above for civil society are discussed. It concludes with a projection of the work and a brief reflection on the relationship between social sciences and humanities to deploy an interpretive strategy of empirical research. (shrink)

In 1975, the death of dictator Francisco Franco opened the door to a turbulent period known as the “Spanish Transition.” In the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, national politics, political violence and social demands were interwoven with international shifts in science and technology and global debates on “energy transitions.” In close dialogue with foreign environmental groups, the anti-nuclear movement in Spain deployed a large repertoire of collective action; it ranged from pleasant activities to violent direct actions against nuclear (...) technologies, but also included the making of technological alternatives. Counter-culture activists and counter-experts opposed nuclear energy and promoted renewable energy as two sides of the same coin.This paper explores the pioneering initiatives of an anarchist-oriented group called Self-Managed Radical Alternative Technologies, created in 1976, and a group of young engineers who founded the cooperative Ecotècnia, which was behind the construction of the first commercial wind turbine in Catalonia in 1984. The paper focuses on the transnational circulation of grassroots knowledge, the epistemics of resistance, and the development of wind energy technologies as “technologies of protest.” Technologies of protest illuminate how the social construction of technology is intertwined with what I call the “social destruction of technology.”. (shrink)

In its opening chapters, ‘Languages of the Unheard’ offers a broad account of militancy as an aid to democracy and a principled response to the intransigence of elites and the unresponsiveness of institutions to the public interest. It proposes an understanding of militancy as a civic virtue and a contribution to democratic politics, relying on a normative conception of ‘autonomous democracy.’ In the second part of the book, this understanding of admirable militancy is applied to a wide range of (...) class='Hi'>protest styles, including the nonviolent civil disobedience promoted by Gandhi and King, the disruptive direct action of strikes and other forms organized disruption, the rioting and black blocs of militant street protest, and the armed insurgency promoted by both urban and rural guerrilla groups. (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)

Unemployed and informal workers seem an unlikely source of large-scale collective action in Latin America. Since 1997, however, Argentina has witnessed an upsurge of protest and the emergence of unusually influential federations of unemployed and informal workers. To explain this puzzle, this article offers a policy-centered argument. It suggests that a workfare program favored common interests and identities on the part of unemployed workers and grassroots associations, allowing them to overcome barriers to collective action. State responses to (...) demands for workfare benefits generated a pattern of protest and negotiation that strengthened those groups and dramatically expanded social policy. (shrink)

In recent years sociological research on social movements has identified emotional dynamics in all the basic processes and phases of protest, and we are only beginning to understand their causal impacts. These include the solidarities of groups, motivations for action, the role of morality in political action, and the gendered division of labor in social movements. Anger turns out to be at the core of many of these causal mechanisms.

En el presente artículo me ocupo de la discusión acerca de cuán exigentes son nuestras obligaciones de contribuir con dinero y tiempo a las agencias humanitarias que asisten a personas en situación de pobreza extrema en el mundo. Defiendo una posición intermedia, moderada, frente a la posición extrema formulada por Peter Singer y frente a la posición según la cual nuestras obligaciones son mínimas. La objeción principal contra esas dos posiciones es que, cuando analizan la situación en que los potenciales (...) donantes se encuentran frente a las personas en situación de pobreza extrema, omiten el carácter iterativo que es propio de esa situación. La posición moderada, en cambio, tiene en cuenta ese carácter, gracias a que entiende a nuestras obligaciones hacia los pobres globales como obligaciones imperfectas. In this article I engage in the debate about the demandingness of our duties to contribute with money and time to humanitarian agencies that assist people who live in extreme poverty around the world. I defend an intermediate, moderate, view against Peter Singer's extreme view, and also against the view according to which our duties are minimal. The main objection regarding those two views is that, when they analyze the situation in which potential donors are vis-à-vis people who live in extreme poverty, they miss its distinctive iterative character. The moderate view, on the contrary, pays heed to that character, thanks to its account of our duties towards the global poor as imperfect duties. (shrink)

Reforms in post-Mao China have led to the rise of social movements and collective action. The FalunGong movement, a semi-religious movement, in particular has caught worldwide attention. Indeed, social protests have become a norm in China.

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)

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)

Human action has a technical dimension. This book is a hermeneutic and social theoretical interpretation of how acquired capabilities and the means of action together shape the technicity of action. The enactment of individual, group, and institutio.

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)

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)

Public opinion polls consistently reveal that U.S. society wants three basic characteristics in its healthcare system: (1) convenient access to skilled professionals and quality services for everyone, including primary care and specialty personnel and services especially for the very seriously ill; (2) personal affordability at both levels of service; and (3) happy health professionals. Meeting these three goals simultaneously has proved to be quite challenging. The goal of universal access to basic and specialty services pulls against the goal of affordability. (...) Health professionals caught in the middle of this struggle find that their satisfaction with work conditions suffers as a result. If truth is the first casualty of war, worker and consumer happiness appears to be the first casualty of substantive healthcare reform in the United States. (shrink)

Political protests involving clashes with police are often delegitimized by governments for using “uncivil” and “violent” means. Drawing on a creative video clip made by a group of Gezi protestors, this paper theorizes an alternative response, which refuses the dichotomy between peaceful and violent struggles and instead seeks to transform the field of judgement. The protestors in the clip, by echoing a verse originally written by poet Cemal Süreya, reconstruct destructive activity – breaking billboards – playfully and detached from its (...) presumed ends. Placing their performances in conversation with Giorgio Agamben’s theory of mediality – means without end – I argue that the clip reconstructs political action in play-form, corroding the significance of the means-ends relationship. In doing so, it frustrates the usual grounds of judgement within which the meaning and value of protest activities are arbitrated. (shrink)

On October 27, 1991, a Jewish woman named Rachel Drouk, a settler in the West Bank, was killed by Palestinian Intifada fighters. Twenty-five women spontaneously gathered at the site of the murder and held a vigil—a vigil that eventually developed into a protest settlement. The women, all of whom were married mothers, presented their initiative in maternal narratives: grounds, motives, and justifications for the act, and targets and anticipations were all related to the practice of care. This article conducts (...) an artificial dialogue between the women's discourse and Ruddick's theory of maternal thinking, enabling deconstruction of the former and a critique of the theory of care. (shrink)

Suicide as a form of political protest is a little studied social phenomenon that cannot be dismissed simply as being irrational or patholognomic. We consider protest suicide to be a meaningful social action as purposive political act intended to change oppressive policies or practices. This paper synthesizes theoretical propositions associated with suicide in general, and protest suicide in particular, so as to construct a general explanatory model of protest suicide as a social phenomenon. Then, it (...) analyzes protest suicide as a meaningful social action. People considering protest suicide have to discern the logic of the situation in which such action is to take place. This involves answering two fundamental questions: Is suicide an acceptable course of social action? Is the envisaged protest suicide likely to achieve their hopes, aspirations and goals? How these questions are answered gives rise to a set of protest suicide archetypes. Our analysis generates a more sophisticated understanding of the potential reasons for, and motivations behind, protest suicide as a social phenomenon. (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)

From Cairo to Occupy Wall Street, from Istanbul Gezi Park to DANS protests in Sofia, in recent public sphere movements we have witnessed the emergence of a new wave of creative protest. The surge of creative forms of political action brings to the fore the question of democratic potential of creative political protest. This paper explores in what ways creative protest could deepen democracy. I argue that creative political protest nurtures democracy by generating a peaceful (...) culture of resistance and by providing a peaceful way of responding to politics of intolerance and polarization. (shrink)

Purpose Late in 2019, massive protest demonstrations rocked both Chile and Colombia. They were an expression of discontent with the economic model and social policies implemented in both countries in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Chilean and Colombian news websites framed these social protests and what aspects of the social movements promoted these media to public opinion. Design/methodology/approach The methodology of this research is empirical; the authors use quantitative and discourse analysis techniques to (...) study the news published by the top three most visited main news websites in each country and deduce the main frameworks emerging from them. After analyzing the framing of reality by media in 4,252 news items, the authors suggest that the main news portals in these Latin American countries not only portrayed the collective actions but also promoted interpretations that did not necessarily reflect the demands of the demonstrations. Findings The findings were that in the 2019 protests in Chile and Colombia, the media approach to collective action was not necessarily positive for the activists. This was mainly because framing in the Chilean and Colombian websites had to do with negative aspects of the movements, such as violence or economic costs. Originality/value The originality and value of this research is that despite the fact that there are abundant case studies on the relationship between social movements and media framing in the literature, this study adds to the current knowledge because it compares two Latin American countries and focuses on Web news portals. (shrink)

The paper concerns the principles presupposed in political protest against the totalitarian regime. In contrast to the utilitarian view of participating in political protest the author tries to suggest the moral model of political protest. According to this model, the main reason and motif for challenging the regime is the transgression of the limits of concession, which jeopardizes the spiritual identity and essential qualities of the individuals and all groups. The participants of the protest do not (...) calculate in terms of egoistic or private interests and utilities but in terms of moral values. They consider what action is morally "good" and "bad" or morally "better" or "worse" in this situation, disregarding their personal profits and happiness. The overthrow of the communist system is an incalculating and contingent result of combating the extreme manifestations and worst excesses of the system. (shrink)

This article examines the Belarusian protests of 2020, triggered by the rigged presidential election results and the illegal disproportionate use of force by the authorities. Given that most protesters were apolitical before 2020, the article seeks to clarify how it happened that passive vulnerable individuals were unprecedentedly mobilized for sustained collective political action. The author focuses on protest actions organized by particularly vulnerable social groups (women, pensioners, the disabled) and reveals their importance for the democratic protest against (...) the patriarchal-authoritarian order. The article traces three stages in the protest development: the moment of traumatic shaking, the caesura of the political sublime, and the rapid scale of the peaceful protest movement characteristically represented by the social groups in question. It is argued that their protest actions had a subversive effect with respect to the autocratic rule and re-actualized an alternative normative and axiological horizon in a given life-world. (shrink)

This text aims to offer a epistemic-normative reading of madness in Kant's work and its different developments throughout his work. This to maintain that madness arises from rationality itself when understood it as a force that exceeds the limits that reason imposes on itself. By outlining normality or mental sanity as the restriction of reason to sensibility, Kant intends -I maintain- to outline the minimum subjective and epistemic conditions for a republican political conformation, which is based on the agreement between (...) subjects about the rules that will regulate their actions and interactions. This reading will allow us to outline an understanding of the anti-vaccine protest that took place during the pandemic. Showing that those who promote and follow them break with this minimum agreement on the restrictions of reason, thus reaching selfish excesses that harm democratic dynamics. I concluded that these people can be understood as madness people who represent a danger to the republican and democratic political organization. (shrink)

The Action Chrétienne en Orient was founded in 1922 in order to bring relief among displaced Christians, especially Armenians, in Syria. It also supported the displaced Protestant communities in their ecclesiastical, educational and medical work. In structure the ACO resembled other Protestant missionary societies, but it had some unique features such as its trans-European character. At the time of the decolonization, the work of the ACO changed as the local Protestant churches took charge and the ACO devolved its responsibilities. (...) In the postcolonial period the ACO gradually embraced a missiology that was focused on partnership. This led to the formation of the ACO Fellowship, a communion of churches and mission agencies. (shrink)

This study offers a systematic reconstruction of the theoretical foundations and framework of critical social theory. It is Habermas' "magnum opus", and it is regarded as one of the most important works of modern social thought. In this second and final volume of the work, Habermas examines the relations between action concepts and systems theory and elaborates a framework for analyzing the developmental tendencies of modern societies. He discusses in detail the work of Marx, Durkheim, G.H. Mead and Talcott (...) Parsons, among others. By distinguishing between social systems and what he calls the "life-world", Habermas is able to analyze the ways in which the development of social systems impinges upon the symbolic and subjective dimensions of social life, resulting in the kind of crises, conflicts and protest movements which are characteristic of advanced capitalist societies in the late-20th century. (shrink)

This paper describes a research program that focuses on the explanation of political protest and its causes. The starting point is Mancur Olson’s theory of collective action. This theory is modified, extended and applied to explain political protest. In particular, it is argued that only a wide version of Rational Choice theory that includes ‘soft’ incentives as well as misperception is capable of providing valid explanations of protest behavior. Another part of the research program is the (...) utilization of survey research to test the predictions about protest behavior that are generated from the wide version of Rational Choice theory. The research program further aims at (a) comparing empirically Rational Choice and alternative propositions, (b) providing micro-macro explanatory models, (c) dynamic theoretical models, and (d) explaining preferences and beliefs which are usually treated as exogenous variables. The paper further reports, some results of the research program. (shrink)

Over the last few decades there has emerged a small, yet influential eco-Buddhism movement in South Korea which, since the turn of the millennium, has seen several S?n Buddhist clerics engage in high-profile protests and activism campaigns opposing massive development projects which threatened widespread ecological destruction. This article will survey the issues and events surrounding three such protests; the 2003 samboilbae, or ‘threesteps- one-bow’, march led by Venerable Suky?ng against the Saemangeum Reclamation Project, Venerable Jiyul’s Anti-Mt. Ch?ns?ng tunnel hunger-strike campaign (...) between 2002 and 2006, and lastly Venerable Munsu’s self-immolation protesting the Four Rivers Project in 2010. This article will additionally analyze the attempts by these clerics to deploy innovative and distinctively Buddhist forms of protest, the effects of these protests, and how these protests have altered public perceptions of the role of Buddhist clergy in Korean society. This study will additionally highlight issues relevant to the broader discourse regarding the intersection of Buddhism and social activism, such as the appropriation of traditional Buddhist practices as protest tactics and the potential for conflict between social engagement and the pursuit of Buddhist soteriological goals. (shrink)

The paper examines the emphasis on knowing the inner life of Jesus by a prominent 19th century Liberal Protestant, and Albert Schweitzer's decisive blow to the Life of Jesus movement at the beginning of the 20th century. It gives critiques to both the former and the latter, and identifies the approach of the Liberal Protestants as ‘subjective’ in two senses. While the subjectivity of an interpreter can pose problems in the interpretation of Jesus, it is maintained that the possibility of (...) knowing some aspects of the subjectivity of Jesus cannot be ruled out a priori. A method of correlation is suggested to give a more objective and connected interpretation of Jesus' outer words/actions and his mind. (shrink)

The evidence is clear and consistent that African Americans and Hispanics are treated differently depending on their skin color within their racial or ethnic group, and yet the surveys that show these results also show very few political or political-psychological patterns as a result of skin color. To investigate why this is so, this paper uses the fact that discriminatory treatment by skin color does not necessarily result in political action or perceptions around that discrimination to raise the larger (...) question of when racial or ethnic groups see and protest unfairness, and when they do not. My hypotheses about why this occurs differ for blacks and Latinos. In the former case, the ideology of group consciousness is strong enough, and embarrassment about internal skin-color hierarchy is powerful enough, that blacks don't want to recognize differences by skin color. Light-skinned blacks, in fact, may be more racially identified than dark-skinned blacks — so their economic and social advantages are offset by their commitments to their race as a whole, and they behave politically like dark-skinned blacks do. The case of Hispanics may be better explained in terms of a weak sense of group consciousness rather than a strong one. That is, Latinos may not think of themselves as a group, such that they see skin color differentiation as a consequence of being members of different races rather than as a form of discrimination against some members of "their" group. (shrink)

The evidence is clear and consistent that African Americans and Hispanics are treated differently depending on their skin color within their racial or ethnic group, and yet the surveys that show these results also show very few political or political-psychological patterns as a result of skin color. To investigate why this is so, this paper uses the fact that discriminatory treatment by skin color does not necessarily result in political action or perceptions around that discrimination to raise the larger (...) question of when racial or ethnic groups see and protest unfairness, and when they do not. My hypotheses about why this occurs differ for blacks and Latinos. In the former case, the ideology of group consciousness is strong enough, and embarrassment about internal skin-color hierarchy is powerful enough, that blacks don't want to recognize differences by skin color. Light-skinned blacks, in fact, may be more racially identified than dark-skinned blacks — so their economic and social advantages are offset by their commitments to their race as a whole, and they behave politically like dark-skinned blacks do. The case of Hispanics may be better explained in terms of a weak sense of group consciousness rather than a strong one. That is, Latinos may not think of themselves as a group, such that they see skin color differentiation as a consequence of being members of different races rather than as a form of discrimination against some members of "their" group. (shrink)

The introduction of digital technologies in collective actions seems to have transformed the dynamics of movement organizing and enabled divergent forms of protest organizing. While some studies emphasize “organizationless” organizing in which traditional organizational forms—social movements organizations and formal-bureaucratic structures—have been pushed into the margins, other studies showcase how traditional forms have assumed alternative features, for example, connective leadership and organizations with fluid boundaries. While existing research correctly points out the evolving organizing dynamics and forms in digital activism, few (...) studies have accounted for why digitally enabled protests take certain organizing forms over others among multiple modes of interaction between protesters and digital technologies. Using a case study of a protest campaign organized by Chinese American immigrants, this study illustrates why immigrant activists struggled to keep the campaign “organizationless” on WeChat, a China-based digital platform that afforded other forms of organizing over such an organizing mode. Building on the mechanism-based approach in social movement studies, the findings show that immigrant activists’ emotional–cognitive responses to the changing digital environments became the driving force behind the relational choices to maintain the protest “organizationless.” The study, therefore, may not only inform future studies to explore why certain structures of protest networks emerge and develop but also contribute to the mechanism-based approach by foregrounding emotional–cognitive mechanisms, which mediate environmental and relational mechanisms. (shrink)

A co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, its newspaper, and hospitality houses, the writer Dorothy Day promoted public peace nationally and internationally as a journalist, an organizer of public protests, and a builder of associational communities. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s conceptions of the role of speech and action in creating the public realm, this paper focuses on several of Day’s most controversial public positions: her leadership of non-cooperation against Civil Defense drills intended to prepare New York City residents to (...) survive a nuclear war; her urging of Catholics to find common cause with the Cuban revolutionary government; and her support for interracial farming communities in the Southern United States. As Arendt asserts about Rahel Varnhagen’s salon in Berlin, by being public meeting spaces hosted in private houses, Catholic Worker communities fostered egalitarian rather than “agonal” politics. Like Gandhi’s newspapers and ashrams as well as “Occupy” communities such as Zuccotti Park, Day’s newspaper was a center for incubating and implementing social reform. The Catholic Worker provided a place where writers could question the official rhetoric of such conflicts as World War II and the Cold War, put forward different interpretations of unfolding events, and chart possible alternatives to establishment agendas. (shrink)

Acts of futile resistance—harms against an aggressor which could not reasonably hope to avert the threat the aggressor poses—give rise to a puzzle: on the one hand, many such acts are intuitively permissible, yet on the other, these acts fail to meet the justificatory standards of defensive action. The most widely accepted solution to this puzzle is that victims in such cases permissibly defend against a secondary threat to their honour, dignity, or moral standing. I argue that this solution (...) fails, because futile resistance is not plausibly regarded as defensive in the relevant sense. I propose instead that futile resistance is justified as a form of protest, where protest is analysed as an expression of rejection of victims’ wrongs. Such protest is justified, I argue, when and because it is the fitting response to the circumstances of futility. (shrink)

While suicide occurs in numbers across countries, it has rarely been used as a form of collective action. In South Korea, however, a total of 107 protesters died from the act of committing suicide, most notably by means of self-immolation, in protest against injustice in the country. While they are regarded as political "martyrs," it remains unclear why they committed suicide and what they wanted to achieve with this highly unusual and costly form of protest. The paper (...) addresses this largely neglected issue by examining the suicide notes left by 48 Korean suicide protesters. The findings reveal that at least in Korea suicide protest was used not only as a from of protest and resistance, but also as an unusual form of micromobilization of mobilizing "consensus" and "action" among halfhearted activists and apathetic bystanders, by accusing the political and economic system as unjust and illegitimate, by identifying the apathy and inaction of the people as the main culprit for persistent injustice, and by urging and shaming the target audience to join a movement. The model presented here of suicide protest as a form of micromobilization provides a useful conceptual framework with which to compare seemingly diverse incidents of suicide protest across countries. (shrink)

What course of action do officers have when their conscience is in conflict with their duty? William A. Gouveia, Jr., describes the case of Col. David Hackworth, whose moral indignation at the conduct of the Vietnam War led him to public condemnation of the conflict, and the premature end of his brilliant military career. Gouveia argues that Hackworth's story has continuing relevancy and highlights important issues of the military?civilian relationship in a democracy.

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)

Contemporary protest movements are skeptical of mainstream media outlets, and so to communicate, they make extensive use of social media such as YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. Most research to date has considered how protest movements, as preexistent entities, use such social media to communicate with stakeholders, but little, if any research, has considered how a protest movement is constituted in and through communication. Using the Montreal School’s ventriloquial approach to communication and using YouTube video footage of the (...) gilets jaunes – a contemporary French protest movement – in action, the purpose of this article is to explicate how a protest movement that resists the state’s authority is constituted in and through a textual artifact. Findings indicate that the protest movement is not only discursively constructed through the commentary that accompanies the video, but it is also constituted by non-human actants such as space, buildings and clothing. The protest movement mobilizes networks of human and non-human actants that invoke a moral authority that resists legally authorized state-sponsored networks which are also made up of human and non-human actants. (shrink)

This article focuses on Max Weber’s understanding of “ethos” in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and the benefits afforded by this concept. The reference is not accidental as it is in this work that Weber could consistently explicate his ethical argument. The idea of ethos becomes clearer in comparison with the concept of habitus, which is actively used today in social science. It is shown that the distinction between ethos and habitus may be more productive than the (...) conflation common in modern research. The category “ethos” is compared with the value-rational action from the later typology of action in Weber’s “Economy and Society”, while habitus is associated with traditional action from the same typology. The concept of ethos is further clarified by the example of Weber’s opposition of traditionalism and ethical modern Western capitalism. By focusing on ethical issues and using character as a theoretical tool, Weber not only puts forward a convincing interpretation but lays the foundations for a specific line of analysis in social and economic science. The category of ethos in conjunction with the value-rational type of action acquires special significance due to the potential for novelty and change that is embedded in it. (shrink)

This article analyses and systematises the repertoires of action and reaction within conflicts between corporations and adversarial campaigns. Particular attention is paid to the parameters that turn conflicts between corporations and their critics into productive or destructive exchanges. Are protest campaigns able to fulfil a function that goes beyond serving as a seismograph for civil society’s concern and discontent? Which are the circumstances that enable conflicts between protest campaigns and corporations to unfold their potential for correcting social (...) deficiencies? The analysis starts by outlining several typologies of confrontational and cooperative repertoires of action. Based on this starting point, a comprehensive analysis of more than 100 campaigns is presented, which systematises the dynamics of conflict between protest campaigns and corporations. An exemplary comparison of two particular conflicts completes the article in order to elaborate on the interplay between confrontation and cooperation. (shrink)

Some normative theorists believe that there is a principled moral reason not to retain benefits realized by injustice or wrongdoing. However, critics have argued that this idea is implausible. One purported problem is that the idea lacks an obvious rationale and that attempts to provide one have been unconvincing. This paper articulates and defends the idea that the principled reason in question has an expressive quality: it gets its reason-giving force from the symbolic aptness of such an act as an (...) expressive response to wrongdoing. The paper thus argues that at least in a certain subset of cases, renouncing benefits realized by injustice amounts to a powerful and uniquely apt expression of protest against the disrespect for the victim that is implied by the wrongdoer’s actions. The paper shows how this idea can inform the question of reparations for slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Lastly it develops an important objection to the argument presented and gives an account of how this objection can be met. (shrink)

This paper approaches the spectrum of theater studies in Indonesia in an interdisciplinary manner, encompassing both descriptive and normative perspectives. From a descriptive standpoint, the spectrum is shaped by various ways of attributing meaning to theater as an entity. In a normative approach, various disciplines offer perspectives that contribute to creating a spectrum of meaning for theater in relation to the life of Indonesian society. Through a literature review, the research identifies at least three approaches to constructing theater studies in (...) Indonesia: synchronic, diachronic and, combined. These three approaches are drawn from disciplines outside of theater, such as historical, anthropological, and sociological studies. Based on this perspectives, theater studies in Indonesia has moved from viewing theater in its meaning as a form of sacred ritual in the past to theater as symbolic capital today. These interdisciplinary perspective has an influence on the meaning of theater in theater studies itself as a discipline. Theater in Indonesia as a subject of study, therefore, is not only understood as an art that originates from dramatic works, but is more broadly understood as all forms of art that are centered on human action displayed in live performances, including sacred rituals, cultural performances, and theatrical protests. (shrink)

In spite of much candid protest and overt criticism against the service delivery record and corruption of the South African government, the governing party, the African National Congress, once again secured a persuasive victory in the 2014 national elections. This situation begs the question whether the ballot box is really the only efficient instrument for disgruntled voters to influence government policy and behaviour. This article examines the possibilities that the mobilisation of civil society offers in this regard. The central (...) theoretical argument is that civil society can be an important instrument through which the citizenry can exercise their critical function with regard to the government in an effort to address poor service delivery and corruption and to influence government policy. Christian organisations can play a crucial role in this process. Two examples of past efficient action by civil society serve to illustrate this argument. With the assistance of churches and Christian organisations,these organisations profoundly influenced government policy and are consequently presented as models for action today. The first example is the ‘United Democratic Front’ that forced the pre-1994 South African apartheid government to a negotiated settlement despite the strict security laws that the state utilised to keep the UDF in check. The second example is the ‘Treatment Action Campaign’ that forced the post-1994 Thabo Mbeki government to adopt a policy of free provision of antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive patients. These two influential civil organisations offer models of how civil society can act as critical watchdog. In future, these models can be used to mobilise civil society, including churches and Christian organisations, to act correctively in defining and enacting government policy, despite the ANC’s strong position in government and the large majority that the governing party can secure at the voting polls. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that street protests are typically driven by rage due to grievances perceived to inflict on a group. This emotive atmosphere can shape protest methods to be vandalistic to the point where armed attacks against targeted opponents are justified. This paper suggests that rage-influenced struggle can be counterproductive as it obstructs a movement from building a coalition board enough to challenge the ruling elites it opposes. This paper argues that carnivalization of protests can prevent this setback (...) in two directions. First, it potentially transforms protesters’ collective emotion from rage to cheerfulness. This effect may lessen a possibility where protesters project violent revenge on those thought to represent the ruling elites. Second, while helping protesters to address sources of their grievances, carnivalesque protests create a “friendly” image that may convince a public audience outside the movement to support its cause. In assessing a political process of carnivalesque protests, this paper bases its analysis on an account of protest actions by Thailand’s Red Sunday group emerging after the 2010 crackdown. (shrink)