Social scientists treat stone-throwing as a non-violent act or argue that protest movements may be primarily non-violent despite stone-throwing. However, this study of an iconic example, the first intifada (Palestinian uprising, 1987–1993), demonstrates that stone-throwing is better characterized as unarmed violence. Definitions of violence underscore that throwing rocks is a violent act. Moreover, informed observers and data collected on stone-induced injuries during four years of the intifada illustrate the bodily harm caused by stones. The throwing of stones was central to the intifada and its identity and definition. Stone-throwing was the most visible tactic Palestinians used in the first intifada. Lastly, most scholars emphasize the protestors' perceptions when it might be that the targets' perceptions matter more for understanding definitions of (non-)violence and subsequent policy changes. These findings challenge important social science work and the mainstream Israeli and Palestinian narratives about the first intifada.
The neoliberal project, having in the productive restructuring of the capital its material base, assumed singular forms and caused that various capitalist countries reorganized theirs productive world, procuring to combine elements of the neoliberal ideology and dimensions of the productive restructuring of the capital. The quality control circles proliferated, constituted as groups of workers that they are incentivized by the capital to discuss the work and their performance with conferences to improve the productivity and the lucrative and the company. It is the new form that the capital uses to preempt of the savoir faire intellectual of the work. The worker must think and make by and for the capital, what deepens (contrarily to reduce) the subordination of the work to the capital. This trial is met to explain the form that adopts the capital in front to the work, and for its own reproduction, and offers a series of elements that explain the current standard of capitalist accumulation in so much presents the current state of the world of the work and its forms of organization through the union movement, as social and political movement. The author indicates the most important features of the occupational world: decrease of the manual worker; stressed increase in the new proletariat, of countless forms of subproletarianization or precariousness work; substantial increase in the feminine work; great expansion of medium salaried in the "services sector"; exclusion of the working youths and the "old" workers; escalation and superexplotation of the work of the immigrants, of the blacks, in addition to the expansion of the infantile work levels between others. The author emphasizes the challenges of the syndicalism in Brazil, what can transcend beyond this country, toward a project that it should, in its basic contours, to begin the disassembly of the standard of outstanding capitalist accumulation, through a set of measures that reject a globalization and an integration imposed by the logic of the capital, integrative for outside, for the capital and destructive and disintegrated for the workers. ; El proyecto neoliberal, teniendo en la restructuración productiva del capital su base material, asumió formas singulares e hizo que diversos países capitalistas reorganizaran su mundo productivo, procurando combinar elementos del ideario neoliberal y dimensiones de la reestructuración productiva del capital. Los círculos de control de calidad proliferaron, constituyéndose como grupos de trabajadores que son incentivados por el capital para discutir el trabajo y su desempeño con vistas a mejorar la productividad y el lucro de la empresa: es la nueva forma que el capital utiliza para apropiarse del savior faire intelectual del trabajo. El obrero debe pensar y hacer por y para el capital, lo que profundiza (contrariamente a rebajar) la subordinación del trabajo al capital. Este ensayo se aboca a explicar la forma que adopta el capital frente al trabajo, y para su propia reproducción, y ofrece una serie de elementos que explican el patrón actual de acumulación capitalista en tanto presenta el estado actual del mundo del trabajo y sus formas de organización mediante el movimiento sindical, como movimiento social y político. Se señalan los rasgos más importantes del mundo laboral: disminución del obrero manual; aumento acentuado del nuevo proletariado, de innumerables formas de subproletarización o trabajo precarizado; aumento sustancial del trabajo femenino; gran expansión de asalariados medios en el "sector de servicios"; exclusión de los trabajadores jóvenes y de los trabajadores "viejos"; intensificación y superexplotación del trabajo de los inmigrantes, de los negros, además de la expansión de los niveles de trabajo infantil, entre otros. El autor enfatiza los desafíos del sindicalismo en Brasil, lo que puede trascender más allá de este país, hacia un proyecto que debiera, en sus contornos básicos, iniciar el desmontaje del patrón de acumulación capitalista vigente, a través de un conjunto de medidas que rechacen una globalización y una integración impuestas por la lógica capital, integradora para afuera, para el capital, y destructiva y desintegradora para los trabajadores.
Categorising certain forms of human movement as 'migration' and others as 'mobility' has far-reaching consequences. We introduce the migration–mobility nexus as a framework for other researchers to interrogate the relationship between these two categories of human movement and explain how they shape different social representations. Our framework articulates four ideal-typical interplays between categories of migration and categories of mobility: continuum (fluid mobilities transform into more stable forms of migration and vice versa), enablement (migration requires mobility, and mobility can trigger migration), hierarchy (migration and mobility are political categories that legitimise hierarchies of movement) and opposition (migration and mobility are pitted against each other). These interplays reveal the normative underpinnings of different categories, which we argue are too often implicit and unacknowledged.
Why have some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean developed more comprehensive welfare systems than others? Do political and economic factors help us signal the (un)favourable paths taken by countries with different degrees of welfare state development in the XXI century? This paper addresses limitations of previous comparative research to continue (re)searching the conditions of welfare state development. A composite multidimensional welfare state development index is constructed for 18 countries and the period 2000-2015. We use crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) to test how necessary and/or sufficient eight political and economic conditions are (alone or in combination) to foster multidimensional welfare state development in the region. The paper confirms the relevance of democratic strength, revenue-collection capabilities (and to a lesser degree policy legacy of welfare institutions) as sufficient conditions of high and medium levels of welfare state development in the post neoliberal era. In addition to labour movement strength, these same economic and political factors are relevant to understand the factors behind the very low levels of welfare state development in the region ; Peer reviewed
In this article the author attempts to provide a historical understanding of the nature, character and contradictions of the Nigerian labour movement in the struggle for democracy. The article shows the capacity of labour movements' radicalism to influence processes of political transition even in the absence of a meaningful impact on the part of labour organisations themselves. However, only a multi‐faceted analysis of labour, concerned with shifting boundaries between institutions and militancy, centralised bargaining and localised conflict, commitment to democratic stability and to the defence of standards of living undermined by structural adjustment will provide an appropriate space for the study of radicalism and social transformative visions as components in building organised labour as an effective actor in democratisation. In the meantime, the absence of socially and strategically diversified organised labour in Nigeria today is what mostly makes the perpetuation of military power viable.
Abstract What are the impacts of the austerity reforms on the social protection network and the legacy of Social Security, enshrined in the 1988 Constitution of Brazil? The hypothesis of this article is that Brazil's recent political economy demonstrates the antinomy between financial capitalism and representative mass democracy, which results in the corrosion of social protection policies and the regulation of capital/labor relations. The political economy is immunized against democratic grassroots pressure in a clear dispute over public funds and the growing commodification and deregulation of lucrative private activities in the social protection arena. This movement is favored by the existence of a political and electoral system that perpetuates the various conservative elites in a reactionary coalition that hinders the progress achieved in the expansion of citizenship and economic, cultural and social rights. Through national and international studies, as well as the analysis of political measures, we seek to justify this hypothesis.
This article reviews findings from a study of corporate vision in hospice foundation in Britain. Evidence was obtained from 77 different independent charitable hospices about their founding groups, and the projects they carried out. The identified qualities of successful corporate visions are reported. The typical hospice is a very substantial charity organisation, representing a major achievement in both fund‐raising and management terms. The groups who founded these hospices are shown to number 12 members on average, a significant difference from management groups in businesses. Groups also show striking consistencies in the professions represented, indicating a conscious and deliberate approach to recruitment. Social workers and administrators seem to have been under‐represented, leading to later weaknesses in many organisations. An informal delegation of decision‐making authority is evident, and very few decisions are recorded in committee minutes. Even fewer were division votes, which usually resulted in resignations of members. Patterns of leadership are explored, and it is shown that conventional assumptions about the need for charismatic leaders to maintain these projects are false. The leadership of these projects appears to reside in the maintenance of the original corporate vision. It is also shown that these organisations recognise authorities or influences that do not appear in their formal or legal structure, and this is a feature of institutions.
Over the past eleven years, activists – particularly public pension funds such as the California Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) – are credited with prompting boards to roust underperforming management at some of the largest US corporations, and they have pushed for reforms in areas ranging from compensation to corporate strategy. Evidence for shareholders' increased interest in corporate governance is clear. In the 1984–5 proxy season, shareholder resolutions totaled 275, and the average vote was 5.74%; by 1991–2, resolutions and the average vote on them had climbed to 487 and 24.06%, respectively. In 1992, shareholders were also successful in pushing through regulatory changes that gave them the right to communicate with each other outside the management–dominated proxy system.After 11 years of shareholder activism, where does the movement stand today? Understanding the development of the shareholder–rights movement, the prospects for governance reform, and the future evolution of the movement requires a sophisticated understanding of how the politics of corporate control is accomplished and, in particular, the important role that social structure plays. In this article, we suggest that social movement theory, which sociologists have used to explain collective action by groups ranging from the Civil Rights movement to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, provides a useful tool for analysing owner–management conflicts, and in particular, the recent rise of the shareholder–rights movement in the United States. After briefly discussing the traditional economic view of corporate governance and its shortcomings, we argue that more–or–less organized politics is an essential ingredient of the American system of corporate governance. We then present a social movement framework to explain the rise in investor activism. We conclude by continuing our application of this framework to examine the maturation of this movement and to assess its future, in part by comparing it to other contemporary, confrontational movements.
Social theory can aid comparative legal studies by revealing currents of social ideas in which law develops. A comparison of major contributions to French and German social theory between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth century presents striking contrasts in understandings of the nature of legal responsibility and the function of the state. It shows two different movements of thought: one elaborating a view of law mainly as a technology of government overseeing and co-ordinating individual interests; the other emphasising the law's importance in nurturing social solidarity and facilitating collective responsibility.
Social theory can aid comparative legal studies by revealing currents of social ideas in which law develops. A comparison of major contributions to French and German social theory between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth century presents striking contrasts in understandings of the nature of legal responsibility and the function of the state. It shows two different movements of thought: one elaborating a view of law mainly as a technology of government overseeing and co-ordinating individual interests; the other emphasising the law's importance in nurturing social solidarity and facilitating collective responsibility.
El artículo analiza la inclusión de la antropología y etnografía digital en el estudio de la audiencia online que condiciona la ciberpolítica con el uso de las redes sociales en Internet. Desde hace algunos años, el ciberactivismo político de usuarios, realizado a través de los medios sociales, juega un papel importante en el fortalecimiento o respaldo de movimientos, partidos y líderes políticos, influyendo directamente en los resultados de los diversos comicios electorales en diferentes partes del mundo. Para entender este fenómeno es importante tener en cuenta las disciplinas mencionadas las mismas que constituyen paradigmas en la eclosión de los nuevos movimientos políticos en red y que aplicadas a las redes sociales configuran un coctel de estudio cada vez más necesario. Para el presente trabajo se realiza una revisión bibliográfica de la descripción y características fundamentales de la antropología y etnografía digital y se han tomado como referencia las páginas web de los principales medios sociales (Facebook, Twitter e Instagram) de partidos y líderes políticos en las elecciones de 2019 en España. El resultado obtenido sugiere un uso cada vez más especializado de las técnicas etnográficas y antropológicas en el estudio las redes sociales en ámbitos políticos o sociales, y, por consiguiente, su uso en el estudio de audiencias de los medios en Internet. ; The article analyzes the inclusion of digital anthropology and ethnography in the study of the audience online that conditions cyberpolitics with the use of social networks on the Internet. For some years now, the political cyber activismof users, carried out through social media, has played an important role in strengthening or supporting movements, parties and political leaders, directly influencing the results of the various electoral elections in different parts of the world. In order to understand this phenomenon, it is important to take into account the aforementioned disciplines, which constitute paradigms in the emergence of new political ...
AbstractThis article discusses the social mobility of combatants and introduces the notion of circular return to explain their pendular state of movement between civilian and combatant life. This phenomenon is widely observed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Congolese youth have been going in and out of armed groups for several decades now. While the notion of circular return has its origins in migration and refugee studies, we show that it also serves as a useful lens to understand the navigation capacity between different social spaces of combatants and to describe and understand processes of incessant armed mobilization and demobilization. In conceptualizing these processes as forms of circular return, we want to move beyond the remobilization discourse, which is too often connected to an assumed failure of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration processes. We argue that this discourse tends to ignore combatants' agency and larger processes of socialization and social rupture as part of armed mobilization.
Mass school closures have become commonplace in urban school districts. To explain their actions, school system leaders often rely on a dominant frame that presents closures as an inevitable, data-driven, and politically neutral phenomenon in an educational landscape defined by shrinking budgets, demographic changes, and increased school choice. In response, research has typically focused on how communities tell counternarratives that seek to interrupt official accounts of school closures. Using a critical frame analysis of qualitative data from the 2013 school closure process in Washington, DC, I discuss another grassroots approach to disrupting school closures: counterframes. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and social movement theory, I discuss counterframes as discursive arguments that allow communities to directly challenge official rhetoric and offer alternatives. Findings show that communities in DC crafted counterframes that pushed back on the notion that the closures were inevitable, questioned the data guiding the process, and attempted to expose hidden agendas and interests behind shuttering schools. The article concludes with the relevance of counterframes to broader educational mobilizations as well as their limitations. ; El cierre de escuelas se ha vuelto común en los distritos escolares urbanos de EE.UU. Para explicar sus acciones, los líderes del sistema escolar a menudo confían en una narrativa dominante que presenta los cierres como un fenómeno inevitable, basado en datos y políticamente neutral en un entorno educativo definido por presupuestos ajustados, cambios demográficos y una mayor elección de escuela. En respuesta, la investigación a menudo se centra en cómo las comunidades cuentan narraciones contrarias que buscan alterar las cuentas oficiales de cierre de escuelas. Basado en un análisis de datos cualitativos del proceso de cierre de escuelas de 2013 en Washington, DC, analizo otro enfoque popular para interrumpir el cierre de escuelas: counterframes. Basado en la teoría crítica de la raza y la teoría del movimiento social, analizo los counterframes como argumentos discursivos que permiten a las comunidades desafiar la retórica oficial y ofrecer alternativas. Los hallazgos muestran que las comunidades en DC crearon counterframes que impulsaron la idea de que los cierres eran inevitables, cuestionaron los datos que guían el proceso e intentaron exponer agendas e intereses ocultos detrás de las escuelas cerradas. El artículo concluye con la relevancia de los counterframes para movilizaciones educativas más amplias, así como sus limitaciones. ; O fechamento de escolas tornou-se comum em distritos escolares urbanos dos Estados Unidos. Para explicar suas ações, os líderes do sistema escolar geralmente confiam em uma narrativa dominante que apresenta encerramentos como um fenômeno inevitável, orientado a dados e politicamente neutro em um cenário educacional definido por orçamentos reduzidos, mudanças demográficas e aumento da escolha da escola. Em resposta, a pesquisa geralmente se concentra em como as comunidades contam contra-narrativas que buscam interromper as contas oficiais de fechamento de escolas. Com base em uma análise de dados qualitativos do processo de fechamento de escolas em 2013, em Washington, DC, discuto outra abordagem popular para interromper o fechamento de escolas: os counterframes. Com base na teoria crítica da raça e na teoria do movimento social, discuto os counterframes como argumentos discursivos que permitem às comunidades desafiar a retórica oficial e oferecer alternativas. As descobertas mostram que as comunidades em DC criaram counterframes que empurraram a idéia de que os fechamentos eram inevitáveis, questionaram os dados que norteiam o processo e tentaram expor agendas e interesses ocultos por trás das escolas fechadas. O artigo conclui com a relevância dos counterframes para mobilizações educacionais mais amplas, bem como suas limitações.
