Suchergebnisse

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the Brazilian cultural and activist network Fora do Eixo (FDE). Since 2005, FDE has emerged at local and national levels as a form of civic engagement in the digital age that connects political, economic and cultural fields of action. FDE has origins in cities outside the São Paulo-- Rio de Janeiro axis that dominates cultural production in Brazil, where it began producing independent music festivals through a system of barter and trade of cultural services. This alternative system soon morphed into an internal "solidarity economy" organized around a complementary currency, Card. FDE has since transformed into a full-fledge social movement, consolidating into communal houses across Brazil where members live and work full-time on a multiplicity of cultural projects and social campaigns and where a collective bank covers their material needs. Digital technology is as central to FDE's daily operations as it is to its institutional identity and to the identity of its members; they have become masterful at harnessing the affordances of new media to elevate their online visibility and promote their agenda and themselves. Its highly sophisticated communication team has allowed FDE to mobilize large publics and capture the attention of mainstream media companies like Globo, as well as high-level politicians including President Dilma Rousseff. The network's relevance as a social force was made particularly visible during the 2013 protests in Brazil where its latest initiative, Mídia NINJA, exposed police aggression and effectively debunked official versions of the protests espoused on mainstream news. This study seeks to understand FDE as a particular model of economic, cultural and political organization for a networked public. I analyze the complex and often messy processes involved in FDE's alternative systems of living, of cultural production and of political mobilization. Its ability to maintain a collective bank involves multifaceted strategies wherein "solidarity", as a discourse, is parlayed into economic, social and political forms of capital. Understanding both the material and symbolic dimensions of FDE's discursive strategies reveals important insights about how power is negotiated nowadays in the struggle for control of alternative cultural and political processes in Brazil

AbstractContemporary transnational times are characterized by renewed struggles over the meaning of democracy. In this postdemocratic moment, political and cultural practices and popular mobilizations and demands have exceeded, and ultimately questioned, some of representative democracy's core conventions, from the mass feminist demonstrations and strikes, to the rise of populist politics both in Europe and the Americas. Importantly, these struggles attest to the tension between failing democratic institutions and the heightening of increasingly authoritarian and cruel forms of social precarization and exclusion. Against these murderous trends, which this article characterizes as marked by an aesthetics of cruelty, some of these struggles foreground the vulnerable character of life and the embodied dimension of politics and its affective domains. This article focuses on the social movement Ni Una Menos to examine the ways in which vulnerability has been mobilized by some contemporary feminist popular struggles, focusing on the current investment in cultural activism opposing the curtailment of bodily life along gendered, sexualized, and racialized lines. Ultimately, this intervention seeks to ponder the emancipatory potential of a political aesthetics that weaves vulnerability into the gendering of democratic claims.

Contemporary transnational times are characterized by renewed struggles over the meaning of democracy. In this postdemocratic moment, political and cultural practices and popular mobilizations and demands have exceeded, and ultimately questioned, some of representative democracy's core conventions, from the mass feminist demonstrations and strikes, to the rise of populist politics both in Europe and the Americas. Importantly, these struggles attest to the tension between failing democratic institutions and the heightening of increasingly authoritarian and cruel forms of social precarization and exclusion. Against these murderous trends, which this article characterizes as marked by an aesthetics of cruelty, some of these struggles foreground the vulnerable character of life and the embodied dimension of politics and its affective domains. This article focuses on the social movement Ni Una Menos to examine the ways in which vulnerability has been mobilized by some contemporary feminist popular struggles, focusing on the current investment in cultural activism opposing the curtailment of bodily life along gendered, sexualized, and racialized lines. Ultimately, this intervention seeks to ponder the emancipatory potential of a political aesthetics that weaves vulnerability into the gendering of democratic claims.

In postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa, the private sector has lacked the capacity to play a leading economic & political role. The weaknesses of indigenous business &, especially, the absence of an autonomous class of private capital, coupled with government controls over business associations, have diminished the possibilities for local business to be at the forefront of economic & political activism. Quite extensive state ownership & public enterprise have also curbed the growth of private sector influence. Even under recent economic & political liberalization, a private sector that can delimit state power is far from extant. Adapted from the source document.

Tutkimus analysoi Madridin terrori-iskun jälkeisiä poliittisia reaktioita kolmella tasolla: 1) hallitustason kriisitilanteen hallinta ja tiedotus, 2) kansalaistason poliittinen toiminta, ja 3) äänestyskäyttäytyminen neljä päivää iskun jälkeen pidetyissä parlamenttivaaleissa. Tuloksia verrataan olemassa olevaan tutkimustietoon terrorismista ja terrorismiin reagoinnista. Tulokset ovat yksinkertaistettuna seuraavat: 1) Yleinen olettamus, että terrori-iskun aiheuttama kriisitilanne on hyödyllinen poliittiselle eliitille, koska se lisää eliitin suosiota ja helpottaa poikkeuksellisten vastatoimenpiteiden hyväksyntää on liian yksiulotteinen, jotta sitä voitaisiin pitää sääntönä. 2) Madridin tapaus osoittaa, että avoimessa yhteiskunnassa median (ja sitä kautta julkisen mielipiteen) kokonaisvaltainen ohjaaminen poliittisten päämäärien mukaan on mahdotonta, 3) kansalaiset eivät ole passiivisia ja kritiikittömiä kun kriisitilanne (laajemmin ulkopolitiikka) koetaan henkilökohtaisesti merkittäväksi, vaan aktivoituvat tarvittaessa hyvinkin nopeasti ja oma-aloitteisesti. 4) Vaikka terrori-isku herättää pelkoa ja kauhua, terrorismin pelkovaikutusta on yliarvioitu vahvasti. Poliittisella tasolla pelkoa huomattavasti merkittävämpiä tunnereaktioita ovat suuttumus ja ärtymys, koska ne saavat ihmiset aktivoitumaan helpommin kuin pelko ja kauhu. 5)Terrori-isku saa äänestäjät aktivoitumaan ja keskittymään äänestysvalinnassaan tekijöihin jotka liittyvät itse iskuun ja sen hallintaan. Terroristien tulkitut vaatimukset, hallituksen tarjoama vastausmalli ja kriisitilanteessa toimiminen, sekä opposition vaihtoehtoinen vastausmalli ovat kaikki osana sitä kokonaisuutta, jossa erilaiset vastaustavat terrori-iskuun muodostuvat. Toisin sanoen, tutkitussa tapauksessa terrori-iskulla ja sen seurauksilla oli kiistämätön vaikutus äänestyskäyttäytymiseen, mutta terrorismiin reagoinnin monimutkaisesta dynamiikasta johtuen tapahtunutta hallituksen vaihdosta ei voida pitää terroristien "voittona", vaan pikemminkin sellaisen politiikan "tappiona", joka aliarvioi perinteisen demokraattisen järjestelmän keskeisintä pilaria: kansalaisia. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tarjota teoreettinen malli terrorismiin reagoinnin dynamiikasta. Malli perustuu yksilötason tilannearvioissa merkittäviin tekijöihin, jotka johtavat erilaisiin tunnereaktioihin ja sitä kautta mahdollisesti myös poliittiseen toimintaan. ; The main interest of this research is to analyse political responses to the Madrid terrorist attack in 2004 in three different levels: 1) Political crisis governance (including public information policy), 2) civic activism, and 3) electoral behaviour in the parliamentary elections that were held four days after the attack. Results of this analysis are compared to the existing theories on terrorism. Putting it simply, the results of the research are: 1) Common perception, that terrorist attacks are beneficial for the ruling elites because the "rally around the flag effect" facilitates exceptional policies both in the fight against terrorism and in other issues is too simplistic to be considered as a rule. 2)The case of Madrid demonstrated, that in an open society controlling the media (and thereby public opinion formation) for political purposes is not possible, 3) citizens are not passive nor uncritical when a crisis situation (more widely, foreign policy)is appraised as personally relevant. People can mobilize very quickly and spontaneously when they feel it is necessary. 4) Even though terrorist attacks cause fear and terror, the effects of these emotions are overestimated. Politically much more relevant emotions are anger and irritation, since they are more likely to lead into activism. 5) An act of terrorism activate the voters and get them focused on the issues related to the act and its consequences. Interpreted demands of the terrorists, response policy of the Government, and alternative policy proposition of the Opposition played all part of the whole context, where the responses to the attack were formed. In the studied case the attack and its aftermath had an undeniable impact on the electoral behaviour, but due to the complex dynamics of the political responses to terrorism, the electoral overturn cannot be counted as a "victory" for the terrorists, but as a "defeat" for a policy that underestimates the core foundation of conventional democratic political systems: the people. The aim of this dissertation is to offer a theoretical model on the dynamics of political responses to acts of terrorism. The model is based on the factors that are relevant in the appraisal processes of the individuals. These factors lead to specific emotional responses, and furthermore, to certain types of political activism.

Research indicates that insufficient emphasis on community collaboration and partnership can thwart innovative community-driven work on the social determinants of health by local health departments. Appreciating the importance of enhancing community participation, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) helped lead the development of the Health Equity Project (HEP), an intervention aimed at increasing the capacity of urban youth to identify and take action to reduce food-related health disparities. DOHMH partnered with the City University of New York School of Public Health and several local youth organizations to design and implement the intervention. HEP was conducted with 373 young people in 17 cohorts at 14 unique sites: six in Brooklyn, six in the Bronx, and two in Harlem. Partnered youth organizations hosted three stages of work: interactive workshops on neighborhood health disparities, food environments, and health outcomes; food-focused research projects conducted by youth; and small-scale action projects designed to change local food environments. Through these activities, HEP appears to have been successful in introducing youth to the social, economic, and political factors that shape food environments and to the influence of food on health outcomes. The intervention was also somewhat successful in providing youth with community-based participatory research skills and engaging them in documenting and then acting to change their neighborhood food environments. In the short term, we are unable to assess how successful HEP has been in building young leaders who will continue to engage in this kind of activism, but we suspect that more extended interactions would be needed to achieve this more ambitious goal. Experiences at these sites suggest that youth organizations with a demonstrated capacity to engage youth in community service or activism and a commitment to improving food or other health-promoting community resources make the most suitable and successful partners for this ...

Purpose
Scholars have identified various uses of Facebook by activists and social movements in political activism and beyond. They overlooked, however, the possibility that social movements may take advantage of certain capabilities provided by social media platforms, while neglecting others, thereby creating differences in patterns of use between movements. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these differences and to assess the role of the lived experience of activists and supporters in shaping them.


Design/methodology/approach
This study compared two protests in Israel with respect to activists' use of social media, the class profile of participants and the leadership's demands and their resonance among various social groups. Each case was analyzed by combining thematic and quantitative analysis of online data from Facebook pages and of offline data from various sources.


Findings
The two protests exhibited distinctively different patterns of use of the capabilities provided by Facebook. These differences are associated with the lived experience of protest participants and of the individuals the movement leadership sought to mobilize.


Originality/value
This study is the first to show that successful public policy protests can exhibit distinctive use patterns of social media for political activism. It also identifies lived experience as an important factor in shaping these patterns.

The political activism of the American counterculture during the 1960s remains a subject blighted by misconceptions and stereotypes. To many, the political thought of the 1960s is synonymous with widespread drug abuse, failed social experiments, and general irresponsibility. Despite sustained public interest, few remember that many of the freedoms and rights Americans enjoy today are the direct result of those who defiantly challenged the established order during this tumultuous period. The period frightened both mainstream and elite Americans and still does. In Generation on Fire, both well-k

Notwithstanding their absence in the formal structures of power, women have engaged actively with disarmament for over a century. Their activism has been rich and complex. It is, however, not a history that is generally familiar to those outside the world of feminist activism and scholarship. This article tells the story of feminist activism and scholarship and how women have sought to overcome exclusion, marginalization, and silencing in both policy and law in pursuit of what the author describes as a transformative disarmament agenda. It is concerned not only with women's political activism and the struggle for equal participation in disarmament circles, but also demonstrates the ways in which feminist thinkers have worked to reposition and reframe the disarmament discourse and challenge mainstream thinking on and around weapons and disarmament by probing established assumptions and generating critical analyses in order to provide new solutions to old problems.

Notwithstanding their absence in the formal structures of power, women have engaged actively with disarmament for over a century. Their activism has been rich and complex. It is, however, not a history that is generally familiar to those outside the world of feminist activism and scholarship. This article tells the story of feminist activism and scholarship and how women have sought to overcome exclusion, marginalization, and silencing in both policy and law in pursuit of what the author describes as a transformative disarmament agenda. It is concerned not only with women's political activism and the struggle for equal participation in disarmament circles, but also demonstrates the ways in which feminist thinkers have worked to reposition and reframe the disarmament discourse and challenge mainstream thinking on and around weapons and disarmament by probing established assumptions and generating critical analyses in order to provide new solutions to old problems.

Consumers have been advocating for a variety of causes, and in turn, retailers are expressing their political opinions through social-media posts in hopes of aligning with their customers' views. This study looks at a single case in which customers reacted to a retailer's political opinion posted on a social media account. Data was collected at the time of the retailer's political post and up to three years afterward. Content analysis was employed to identify themes from the customer reviews posted, and four themes were identified. Of significance, this study found that customers of a retail store typically merge feelings on the retailer's product and political post or the retailer's service and the political post within their social media responses. Thus, a majority of customers in this case were not exclusively focused on battling the political post on social media. Also, a shift in customers' opinions of the retailer shifted positively over time.

Standard histories of European integration emphasize the immediate aftermath of World War II as the moment when the seeds of the European Union were first sown. However, the interwar years witnessed a flurry of concern with the reconstruction of the world order, generating arguments that cut across the different social sciences, then plunged in a period of disciplinary soul-searching and feverish activism. Economics was no exception: several of the most prominent interwar economists, such as F. A. Hayek, Jan Tinbergen, Lionel Robbins, François Perroux, J. M. Keynes and Robert Triffin, contributed directly to larger public discussions on peace, order and stability. This edited volume combines these different strands of historical narrative into a unified framework, showing how political economy was integral to the interwar literature on international relations and, conversely, how economists were eager to incorporate international politics into their own concerns. The book brings together a group of scholars with varied disciplinary backgrounds, whose combined perspectives allow us to explore three analytical layers. The first part studies how different forms of economic knowledge, from economic programming to international finance, were used in the quest for a stable European order. The second part focuses on the existence of conflicting expectations about the role of social scientific knowledge, either as a source of technical solutions or as an input for enlightened public discussion. The third part illustrates how certain ideas and beliefs found concrete expression in specific institutional settings, which amplified their political leverage. The three parts are enclosed by an introductory essay, laying out the broad topics explored in the volume, and a substantial postscript tying all the historical threads together.

Este artículo invita a pensar el rol de las emociones en la participación y la radicalización política de jóvenes estudiantes chilenos provenientes de barrios populares. Este estudio etnográfico fue realizado durante el proceso de contestación estudiantil de los años 2011 y 2012 en Santiago de Chile. El argumento propuesto señala que el paso a una acción riesgosa en una carrera militante está fuertemente ligado a las dinámicas emocionales que se presentan en cada actor. Lo que queremos analizar es cómo se construye y cómo se organiza esta dinámica emocional, es decir, las formas a través de las cuales las emociones se despliegan, desaparecen o se transforman durante un proceso de contestación. ; Based on an ethnographic study carried out during the 2011 and 2012 student protests in Santiago de Chile, this article focuses on the role of emotions in the political engagement and radicalization of Chileans students from working class neighborhoods. We argue that the adoption of riskier tactics by youth activists during their engagement is closely tied to the emotional dynamics of individual actors. We therefore seek to understand how such emotional dynamics are constructed and organized, as well as how they unfold, disappear or transform during the protest life-cycle.