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The streets of cities around the world have been filled with a new theatrical model of protest, with creativity, fun, pleasure, and play as the cornerstones of this new approach. This book examines the historical use and development of 'play' as well as the recent ways in which it has infused protest and community building.

University tuition fees in Quebec remain among the lowest in North America, despite recent government attempts to raise them. What explains the success of the 2012 Quebec student protests? This paper, drawing upon scholarship on social movement success, argues that the unfolding of political events in 2012 demonstrates the counter-intuitive manner in which a state can come to reflect a social movement's objectives. The Quebec student movement succeeded not by garnering public support or directly influencing policy decisions, but by allying itself with an opposition party that won an election in spite of its association with the movement. The student movement was not backed by popular opinion, and its success resulted from aligning itself with a party that was able to withstand the detrimental effects of this relationship.

The United Nations (UN) has a multitude of global conventions and treaties in which its members states can choose to sign and ratify. Two of those treaties are CERD, the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, adopted in 1966; and CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted in 1979. Throughout the world, almost all UN member states have ratified CERD; however, all but a few minority states have ratified CEDAW. Amongst those few minorities is the United States. Although the U.S. has decided not to ratify CEDAW, there are various localities, such as San Francisco, that have taken the task to implement CEDAW at the municipal level. The task has not been an easy one, but San Francisco has successfully been able to pass a CEDAW Ordinance. The Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, along with other organizations who are part of the New York City Human Rights Initiative (NYCHRI) coalition, has worked diligently to pass a legislation with principles and language from both CEDAW and CERD in New York City. The legislation has yet to pass, but this thesis analyzes the ways in which an organization can simultaneously be positioned in a country that does not consider economic, social and cultural rights as rights, and try to pass a legislation that deals with these very rights. Through field observation, interviews, and research, my thesis concludes that US-based human rights or women's rights organizations can simultaneously exist in the United States—a country whose actions do not follow their human rights rhetoric—and follow through with a radical and sometimes even revolutionary agenda. The information gathered during research will hopefully be applied to other cities across the United States, and serve as evidence that human rights are needed in the United States.

Front Cover -- Praise -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements and Credits -- 0. Invocations -- What Moves Us -- Shailja Patel -- The Movements of Movements: An Introduction and an Exploration -- Jai Sen -- 1. Movementscapes -- From the Mountains of Chiapas to the Streets of Seattle: This Is What Democracy Looks Like -- David McNally -- Anti-Systemic Movements and Transformations of the World-System, 1968-1989 -- Fouad Kalouche and Eric Mielants -- Beyond Altermondialisme: Anti-Capitalist Dialectic of Presence -- André C Drainville -- Storming Heaven: Where Has the Rage Gone? -- Tariq Ali -- Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism -- Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel -- Indigenous Feminism and the Heteropatriarchal State -- Andrea Smith -- Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Neo-Zapatista Social Movement Networks -- Xochitl Leyva Solano -- 2. The Movements Of Movements: Struggles for Other Worlds -- Dalits, Anti-Imperialist Consciousness, and the Annihilation of Caste -- Anand Teltumbde -- Rethinking Self-Determination: Lessons from the Indigenous-Rights Discourse -- Jeff Corntassel -- The Tapestry of Neo-Zapatismo: Origins and Development -- Xochitl Leyva Solano and Christopher Gunderson -- Ecological Justice and Forest Rights Movements in India: State and Militancy-New Challenges -- Roma and Ashok Choudhary -- Open Space in Movement: Reading Three Waves of Feminism -- Emilie Hayes -- International Feminisms: New Syntheses, New Directions -- Virginia Vargas -- Re-Creating the World: Communities of Faith in the Struggles for Other Possible Worlds -- Lee Cormie -- Mahmoud Mohamed Taha: Islamic Witness in the Contemporary World -- François Houtart -- Local Islam Gone Global: The Roots of Religious Militancy in Egypt and Its Transnational Transformation -- James Toth.

In this paper, I apply the typical stages of social movements—emergence, coalescence, and institutionalization—to an Iranian environmental social movement. I show how each of the stages does, or does not, play out in the Iranian case, using interview data and documentary analysis. The first two stages of social movements are achieved in the movement. But, due to a centralized state that uses violence and repression, the movement cannot play on the stage of the dominant narrative's institutionalization. However, the movement is not in decline. I suggest using the idea of "persistence/resistance" for the last stage rather than institutionalization, as institutionalization may be just a form to assure that social movements will persist. There are other cases like this movement around the world, but there is not a specific argument to challenge the limitations of the dominant narrative. My study helps scholars rethink this narrative according to the context of the countries in their research.

This study is devoted to the process of transferring such social practice as social political movements to the cyberspace. This process was analyzed through the case of the political and civil actions unfolded in Russia in winter of 2011/2012 and then continued in spring 2012. Using the methods of network analysis, netnographical analysis and content analysis the capacity of the digital social network for mobilizing the new members for social movement and for spreading the new ideas was described at some level. Due to the hypothesis that Internet can generate a special perception framework for community members and a special envieronment to create new solidarities, in this research a cognitive approach and a subculture concept were used. Also a memetics theory as the main concept of methodological design and strategy was tested in order to systematize multiple variables of such complicated phenomenon and to unite different methods to perform finally a harmonious and logical study.

This essay traces the rise of new civic movements in Japan from the 1970s. Challenging claims that these movements are transforming the country's civil society, the article shows how state, corporate, and civic actors have fashioned a domesticated and largely apolitical sphere of social activism. Not only have bureaucratic and corporate elites fostered cooperative and useful groups, leading civic activists have crafted a pervasive logic of "proposal" which demonizes contentious politics, espouses self-help as the solution to all social problems, and celebrates intimate engagement with the state and market. Accordingly, the article argues for a more nuanced reading of transformation in Japan's civil society.