Suchergebnisse

The article focuses on socio-political activism, main features of socio-political contradictions and the couses of the recent social protests in Thailand. Thailand has the longest democratic tradition among ther countries of South-east Asia. Yetbackin 1932 the country has changed the absoulute monarchy to a constitutional one. However in the XXth century Thailand had lived through more than five decades of authoritarianism. The number of military coupd'etats which took place in Thailand now equals to almost twenty. At the same time, despite such a long authoritarian rule the country witnessed the formation of various elements of civil society. In the second part of the XX century the student protests of 1973–1976 became the most vivid example of civic activism. The social protest in Thailand reached its most active phase in the first decade of this century when the country splitted into two camps – one of thes-o-called «Red Shirts» and Another One of the «Yellow Shirts». The «Red Shirts» supported billionere Thaksin Shinawatra, a Prime Minister of Thaialnd in 2001–2006. The «Yellow Shirts» opposed him. Thet women tioned camps created new social movements – «People's Alliance for Democracy» («Yellow Shirts») and «United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship» («Red Shirts»). Since 2006 Thailand has seen several stages of the development of the social protest. The most recent one starte din November 2013 and end edin May 2014 when after more than half a year of mass meetings in the country's capital Bangkok the military took power again.

Bridgewater State University undergraduate Introduction to Folklore students, overwhelmingly young and white, with little to no experience with folklore, found a voice to honor and highlight liberatory and social justice-oriented protest folklore in and around the world and in their own experiences. Students in the fall 2020 Introduction to Folklore classes were confronted in life-altering ways with a global pandemic that endangered them and their loved ones and shone a light on hideous health inequities. The relentless killings of black people stripped away any illusions that systemic racism and white supremacy were not daily, ever-present forces. At the same time, Bridgewater State University was making purposeful and intentional efforts to being a social justice university. These factors seem to have led to a transformation of consciousness on the part of many white students, as they moved toward a critical consciousness that is so necessary for ensuring a responsible and accountable citizenry. Social protest folklore is a vehicle for focusing justified political anger and outrage toward the sources of oppression. Protest folklore has existed, and is ongoing, among people of all historic times and geographical spaces in order to reveal a society's injustices, brutality, and oppressions, while expressing the struggle for justice, compassion, dignity, and human rights. The social protest texts contributed by Introduction to Folklore students as part of a course assignment represent accusations against a toxic culture and its multiple oppressions. The folklore texts stand for the demystification of all that has been normalized, including gender-based violence, racial oppression, social injustice, denial of human rights. The folklore texts students explored represent a variety of folklore genres including visual art and craft, performance art, spoken word, poetry, song, music, chants, slogans, gestures, and signs. The process of investigating and sharing social protest folklore allowed students a chance to reach for authentic engagement with social suffering, voices of protest, and their own developing critical consciousness.

Protesters in China may face two types of targets. One is the target of blame that is deemed responsible for causing their grievances, whereas the other is believed to be obligated to solve their grievances. Upward targeting occurs when citizens whose grievances are connected to lower-level authorities approach higher-level authorities for solutions. Based on a collection of over 12,000 instances of collective protest in China from 2000 to 2018, this study finds that some groups—such as small groups, veterans, and petitioners—are more likely to resort to upward targeting than others. However, collective actions directed at central authorities are more likely to be suppressed. Blame attribution and the difficulties in coordinating large-scale upward-targeting actions have combined to manifest protest patterns in China. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

The Republic of Haiti is not a country of the twentieth century. Plagued by questions of race and color, illiteracy, an exhausted soil, a population explosion, a history of ineffectual and corrupt governments, and the worst poverty of the hemisphere, little has been accomplished since independence in the welter of civil wars, coups d'état, and assassinations. An inevitably large body of social legislation, therefore, does not hide the fact that the Haiti of today is a poor, underdeveloped land, relying for its food on archaic and destructive agricultural methods, packed rather than inhabited by a cheerful but disease-ridden negro people.