European Citizenship: A Political Opportunity for Women?

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.

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How Students on College Campuses Created Opportunities for Workers in Sweatshops

Contention ◽

10.3167/cont.2020.080203 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 21-52

Author(s):

Matthew S. Williams

Keyword(s):

Social Context ◽

College Campuses ◽

The Political ◽

Political Opportunity Structure ◽

Political Opportunity ◽

Opportunity Structure ◽

College Administrators ◽

Political Opportunities ◽

Apparel Companies ◽

A Chain

Political opportunity structure (POS) refers to how the larger social context, such as repression, shapes a social movement’s chances of success. Most work on POS looks at how movements deal with the political opportunities enabling and/or constraining them. This article looks at how one group of social movement actors operating in a more open POS alters the POS for a different group of actors in a more repressive environment through a chain of indirect leverage—how United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) uses the more open POS on college campuses to create new opportunities for workers in sweatshop factories. USAS exerts direct leverage over college administrators through protests, pushing them to exert leverage over major apparel companies through the licensing agreements schools have with these companies.

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Bildung für eine europäische Bürgerschaft: Eine interkulturelle Aufgabe (Education for a European Citizenship: An Intercultural Task)

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3709246 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Christoph Wulf

Keyword(s):

European Citizenship

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Empire's Legacy

10.1093/oso/9780190875664.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

John W.P. Veugelers

Keyword(s):

Voluntary Associations ◽

Alternative Interpretation ◽

Middle Part ◽

Political Opportunity ◽

Far Right ◽

Historical Approach ◽

Southeast Region ◽

Main Thesis ◽

Postwar Europe

Building on the idea of latent political potential, this book offers an alternative interpretation of the contemporary far right. Its main thesis is that relations between colonizers and colonized implanted a legacy that, under certain conditions, translated into support for the far right in France. To make this argument, the book offers a model for the study of political potentials that combines a situational approach to identity relations, a networks approach to subcultural practice, and a historical approach to political opportunity. The early part of this book traces the origins and development of this potential among the European settlers of French Algeria. The middle part examines its transmission via voluntary associations and its channeling into mainstream parties. The latter part examines the conditions under which this potential redirected into the far right. Starting with colonial Algeria, after independence in 1962 the book moves between politics at three levels: France, the southeast region, and Toulon (which in 1995 became the largest city in postwar Europe to elect a far-right administration). Complementing economic explanations for nativism, this book argues that our understanding of modernity errs when it disregards the potency of anachronistic remnants.

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‘It Is a Tradition in the Nuclear Industry . . . Secrecy’: Political Opportunity Structures and Nuclear Knowledge Production in France

Sociological Research Online ◽

10.1177/13607804211025052 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136078042110250

Author(s):

Julie Schweitzer ◽

Tamara L Mix

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Production ◽

Nuclear Energy ◽

Nuclear Industry ◽

Political Opportunity ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Nuclear Program ◽

Opportunity Structures ◽

Shaping Process ◽

History Of ◽

Political Opportunity Structures

Employing the example of France’s civil nuclear program, we connect political opportunity structures (POSs) to mechanisms of knowledge production, identifying how opposing stakeholders generate knowledge about a controversial technology. A history of nuclear dependence in France creates a context that praises, normalizes, and rationalizes nuclear energy while stigmatizing attempts to question or contest the nuclear industry’s dominant position. Integrating Bond’s knowledge-shaping process with Coy and colleagues’ concept of oppositional knowledge, we consider how the broader social, political, and economic context influences opposing stakeholder assessments of nuclear energy. Employing qualitative semi-structured interviews, we offer unique insight into the French nuclear debate, discussing the role of POS in shaping knowledge production.

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