The Politics of Social Protest

Drawing from Latin-American and Argentinean ethnic studies, in dialogue with African philosophy and African youth studies, this essay addresses collective agency as it emerges at the intersection of age and ethnicity within national formations of otherness. These formations organize how people live and define who must die and how. The aim is to develop a theoretical input to enrich the debate on the concept of intersectionality. The essay focuses on how young Mapuche activism dismantles and/or reproduces identities and experiences available to Mapuche youth in contemporary Argentina. This activism gained prominence recently due to a neoliberal change in national politics that rearranged the relationship between the nation and its internal others in order to legitimize violent repression of social protest. Within this context, young Mapuche activists (mainly male) are portrayed as a public menace.

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The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence: Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd Protests

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055421000460 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

TYLER T. RENY ◽

BENJAMIN J. NEWMAN

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Cross Sections ◽

Regression Discontinuity ◽

Social Protest ◽

Large Dataset ◽

Police Violence ◽

Political Orientations ◽

Mass Opinion ◽

The U.S

Does social protest following the police killing of unarmed Black civilians have a widespread “opinion-mobilizing” effect against the police? Or, does the racialized nature of these events polarize mass opinion based on standing racial and political orientations? To answer these questions, we use a large dataset comprised of weekly cross sections of the American public and employ a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) approach leveraging the random timing of the police killing of George Floyd and ensuing nationwide protests. We find that the Floyd protests swiftly decreased favorability toward the police and increased perceived anti-Black discrimination among low-prejudice and politically liberal Americans. However, attitudes among high-prejudice and politically conservative Americans either remained unchanged or evinced only small and ephemeral shifts. Our evidence suggests that the Floyd protests served to further racialize and politicize attitudes within the domain of race and law enforcement in the U.S.

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Colluding With and Resisting the State: Organizing Against Gender Violence in the U.S.

Feminist Criminology ◽

10.1177/1557085120987607 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 155708512098760

Author(s):

Beth E. Richie ◽

Valli Kalei Kanuha ◽

Kayla Marie Martensen

Keyword(s):

Social Protest ◽

Gender Violence ◽

Racial Justice ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Transformative Justice ◽

Past Half Century ◽

Gender Based ◽

Political Praxis ◽

Past Half ◽

The U.S

The movements for racial justice, health equity, and economic relief have been activated in the contentious and challenging climate of 2020, with COVID-19 and social protest. In this context, feminist scholars, anti-violence advocates, and transformative justice practitioners have renewed their call for substantive changes to all forms of gender-based violence. This article offers a genealogy of the battered women’s movement in the U.S. from the lived experiences of two longtime activists. These reflections offer an analysis of the political praxis which evolved over the past half century of the anti-violence movement, and which has foregrounded the current social, political, and ideological framing of gender-based violence today. We conclude with a view to the future, focusing on the possibilities for transformative justice and abolition feminism as a return to our radical roots and ancestral histories.

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