Civil Society at the Grass-roots: A Reactionary View

1992 ◽  
pp. 152-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Hann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Grass Roots

How has the fight for anonymity and privacy advanced since Snowden’s whistle-blowing?

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Whistle Blowing ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Privacy And Anonymity

This article examines the legal, social, and political forces in a post-Snowden era that clarified the stakes around privacy and anonymity all while pulling more people into the orbit of a contemporary privacy and anonymity movement. It compares and contrasts the 100-year period in which US courts fleshed out free speech ideals and recent grass-roots privacy and anonymity initiatives that have come to reach a critical mass, highlighting the importance of civil society, journalists, and especially hackers whose aggressive pursuit of practical solutions have created the conditions for acting anonymously and securing privacy in our current era.

Networked Advocacy

2018 ◽  
pp. 791-802
Author(s):  
Yifat Susskind ◽  
Diana Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Policies And Programs ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
National Reconciliation ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Women’s networked advocacy is a vital strategy for overcoming the exclusion of local civil society from the policymaking process. Networked advocacy provides activists at the global and local level with an opportunity to share knowledge. In doing so, it allows activists to maximize expertise, and it creates space for local civil society to participate in the development of policies and programs. Using the examples of national reconciliation processes in the Middle East and Latin America this chapter explores the strategies employed by activists to advocate for grass-roots participation and leadership. This chapter argues that networked advocacy facilitates a more inclusive reconciliation process, as it recognizes the positive contributions of local peace-builders and enables the participation of grass-roots women’s civil society. Given this, the chapter suggests that influential stakeholders who act as gatekeepers to formal reconciliation processes must recognize the power of these networks and mobilize resources and support to sustain them.

Turning the Tables on Foreign Assistance in Second-Generation Environmentalism in Russia and China

Inner Asia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-182
Author(s):  
Irina Fedorenko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Environmental Activism ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Linkages ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
New Generation

Civil society and environmentalngos in Russia and China have been facing gradual crackdowns from their governments for the past decade and have been accused of being connected to foreign governments. Due to the changes in political and legal environments and the rise of a new generation of activists, the civil society landscape has been transformed in both countries. Drawing on 14 months of fieldwork, this paper aims to provide an updated account of environmental activism in Russia and China—the post-foreign-funding civil society. It focuses on grass-rootsngos and their relationships with their foreign donors and the consequences of foreign grant withdrawal. The paper aims to understand how foreign support has shaped the image of environmental activism for the generation born shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crackdown on the students’ protests in Tiananmen Square. It argues that young activists in Russia and China see environmentalism as something ‘foreign’, which also makes it attractive to take part in. The paper suggests that, while in some cases foreign funding and international linkages may have endangered existingngos in Russia and China, the opportunity to meet foreigners attracts the younger generation to environmental movements.

Critical agency, resistance and a post-colonial civil society

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver P. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Methodological Approaches

IR’s dominant theoretical and methodological approaches are, to varying degrees, compliance oriented. IR needs a theory of resistance if it is to survive its current methodological and ethical crisis. Resistance, read from a broadly Foucaultian perspective, is a process in which hidden, small-scale and marginal agencies have an impact on power, on norms, civil society, the state and the ‘international’. This may be in the form of individual or grass-roots critical agency not coordinated or mobilized on a large scale but still globally connected. Such agency is often discursive and aimed at peaceful change and transformation. Through such critical agency a post-colonial civil society has emerged, which is transversal, transnational, fragmented, but may be constitutive of new, hybrid and post-liberal forms of peace.

Crafting Mass Partisanship at the Grass Roots

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Samuels ◽  
Cesar Zucco
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Local Branch ◽  
Partisan Identification ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Local Party

What are the sources of mass partisanship? The focus of this article is on the role of party organizational strategies in Brazil, where sociological cleavages are weak. All Brazilian parties post electoral gains by opening local branch offices, but only the Workers’ Party (PT) manages to win voters’ hearts and minds, cultivating mass partisan identification. This follows from its deliberate effort to use its local party organization to reach out to organized civil society – to ‘mobilize the organized.’ Results further indicate that the PT only gains partisan identifiers where civil society is organizationally dense. Together, this suggests that party strategy to cultivate partisanship is insufficient: pre-existing organizational networks must exist in civil society, meaning that ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies are two sides of the same coin.

Engendering civil society: oil, women groups and resource conflicts in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria

2005 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustine Ikelegbe
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Delta Region ◽  
Resource Conflicts ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Niger Delta Region ◽  
Women Groups ◽  
Central Argument

Civil society has been an active mobilisational and agitational force in the resource conflicts of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria. The paper examines the gender segment of civil society and its character, forms and roles in these conflicts. The central argument is that marginality can be a basis of gendered movements and their engagement in struggles for justice, accommodation and fair access to benefits. Utilising secondary data and primary data elicited from oral interviews, the study identifies and categorises women groupings and identifies their roles and engagements in the oil economy. It finds that community women organisations (CWOs), with the support of numerous grass-roots women organisations, are the most active and frequently engaged in the local oil economies, where they have constructed and appropriated traditional women protests as an instrument of engagement. The paper notes the implications of women protest engagements and particularly their exasperation with previous engagements, the depth of their commitments, and the extension of the struggle beyond the threshold of normal social behaviour.

scholarly journals Melawan Hegemoni Media dengan Strategi Komunikasi Berpusat pada Masyarakat

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
YudhiMario Antonius Birowo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Alternative Media ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Community Radio ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The People ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
The Mass Media

Abstract : The present form and structure of mass media has become the most effective tool in the pursuit of globalization and hegemony of ruling elites. Consequently the mass media do not provide a space for people to participate in the process of production, which causes a gap between the mass media and people. Therefore the mass media cannot play a role in social change because it does not have roots within the people. To fulfill this gap, grass-roots people need alternative media which help them to be heard. One type of alternative media is community radio. This media started in the 1940s with the first community radio stations in Colombia and Bolivia. In Indonesia, this media started in 1990s. The existence of community radio cannot be separated from civil society movement.

scholarly journals Kem Ley and Cambodian Citizenship Today: Grass-Roots Mobilisation, Electoral Politics and Individuals

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Norén-Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Grass Roots

Starting with a bang in 2013 and ending silently in 2017, Cambodia experienced a brief democratic momentum that saw people taking to the streets to demand political change. Kem Ley – a political analyst and grass-roots organiser – provided a rallying point that ordinary Cambodians gathered around particularly after his 2016 murder, yet his political legacy remains meagre. The Grassroots Democratic Party that Kem Ley was involved in setting up commands next to no popular allegiance and performed poorly both in local elections in 2017 and national elections 2018. This article seeks to explore an elusive aspect of Cambodia’s democratic momentum: civil society activists moving to engage in electoral politics. It is argued that Cambodian activists have sought to reshape party politics according to civil society logics, but that this has been an ambiguous enterprise with little appeal to a sharply divided electorate.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document