Introduction: Education and the Long March through the Institutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tarlau
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Movement Strategy ◽  
Social Visions ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Professional Degrees ◽  
Internal Capacity

The Introduction presents the basic goals of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement’s agrarian reform struggle and explains how its educational proposal is part and parcel of achieving those goals. Then it outlines the three arguments of this book: engaging formal institutions can contribute to the internal capacity of movements; combining contentious and institutional tactics is an effective movement strategy; and the government’s political orientation, the state’s capacity for educational governance, and a social movement’s own infrastructure condition the possibilities for institutional change. The chapter argues for a Gramscian perspective on social movement–state relations, which views public institutions as an ambiguous sphere that protects the state from attack and is also an arena for resistance. Through the contentious co-governance of public education, movements can integrate more youth and women into the movement, equip movement leaders with professional degrees, and allow activists to prefigure their social visions.

Taiwan's State and Social Movements Under the DPP Government, 2000–2004

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-sho Ho
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Democratic Progressive Party ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
Conservative Policy ◽  
Movement Strategy ◽  
Progressive Party

This article explores the evolution of social movement politics under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government (2000–2004) by using the perspective of political opportunity structure. Recent “contentious politics” in Taiwan is analyzed in terms of four changing dimensions of the opportunity structure. First, the DPP government opens some policy channels, and social movement activists are given chances to work within the institution. Yet other features of the political landscape are less favorable to movement activists. Incumbent elites' political orientation shifts. As the economic recession sets in, there is a conservative policy turn. Political instability incurs widespread countermoblization to limit reform. Last, the Pan-Blue camp, now in opposition, devises its own social movement strategy. Some social movement issues gain political salience as a consequence of the intervention of the opposition parties, but its excessive opportunism also encourages the revolt of antireform forces. As a result of these countervailing factors, social movements have made only limited gains from the recent turnover of power.

Contentious Cogovernance and Prefiguration: A Framework for Analyzing Social Movement–State Relations in Public Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 0013189X2110234
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tarlau
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
Landless Workers Movement ◽  
Movement Participation ◽  
State Relations

This article offers a framework for analyzing social movement participation in public education through a focus on universities in Brazil. It builds on the literature on social movement–state relations, participatory governance, and community organizing in schools, drawing on the case of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and the National Program for Education in Areas of Agrarian Reform (PRONERA) to illustrate the need to recenter the idea of conflict as a central and ongoing process of social movement participation in public schools and universities. The article also introduces the concept of prefiguration and highlights how students can prefigure in the formal public school system the types of social and economic practices they hope to build in the future. Contentious cogovernance and prefiguration are tools not only for improving educational equity but also for increasing the strength and internal capacity of social movements, paralleling the role Paulo Freire envisioned for nonformal popular education within grassroots organizations.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-302
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tarlau
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Educational Initiatives ◽  
Movement Participation

The Conclusion reflects on the significance of the MST’s educational initiatives for understanding states, social movements, and education. The chapter revisits the theoretical claims in the Introduction and clarifies how activists’ long march through the institutions sustains their movements. It outlines the exact mechanisms that facilitated the MST’s ability to lead this massive process of institutional change. It also makes a case for why public education is a strategic sphere for social movement participation. Finally, the chapter describes the implications of this study for understanding the consequences of social movements’ contentious co-governance of state institutions in Latin America and globally.

scholarly journals TRAJECTORIES OF TRANSNATIONAL MOBILIZATION FOR INDIGENOUS RIGHTS IN BRAZIL

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 380-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANA CAROLINA ALFINITO VIEIRA ◽  
SIGRID QUACK
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Transnational Mobilization ◽  
1960S And 1970S

ABSTRACT While research on episodes of transnational activism has advanced substantially in recent years, our knowledge about how long-term trajectories of cross-border activism affect the formation of national social movements and their capacity to influence domestic institutional change is still limited. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing transnational mobilization around the political and economic rights of indigenous groups in Brazil. We show that early pathways of transnational mobilization generated a set of ideational, organizational and institutional outcomes that enabled previously marginalized actors to shape the directions of institutional change within the country at the time of the Brazilian democratic transition. We identify three initially uncoordinated trajectories of transnational mobilization taking place in the late 1960s and 1970s and show how they converged over time through two social mechanisms - institutional cross-referencing and social networking - to form an increasingly tightly knit inter-sectoral social movement that was capable of influencing institution-building during the period of the National Constitutional Assembly (1978-1988). We conclude with a discussion of the linkages between transnational activism and national social movement formation.

American Public Education and the Responsibility of its Citizens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Stitzlein
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Crisis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Citizen Support

Not only is the future of our public schools in jeopardy, so is our democracy. Public schools are central to a flourishing democracy, where children learn how to deliberate and solve problems together, build shared identities, and come to value justice and liberty. As citizen support for public schools wanes, our democratic way of life is at risk. While we often hear about the poor performance of students and teachers, the current educational crisis is at heart not about accountability, but rather about citizen responsibility. Yet citizens increasingly do not feel that public schools are our schools, that we have influence over them or responsibility for their outcomes. Citizens have become watchdogs of public institutions largely from the perspective of consumers, without seeing ourselves as citizens who compose the public of public institutions. Accountability becomes more about finding fault with and placing blame on our schools and teachers, rather than about taking responsibility as citizens for shaping our expectations of schools, determining the criteria we use to measure their success, or supporting schools in achieving those goals. This book sheds light on recent shifts in education and citizenship, helping the public to understand not only how schools now work, but also how citizens can take an active role in shaping them. It provides citizens with tools, habits, practices, and knowledge necessary to support schools. It offers a vision of how we can cultivate citizens who will continue to support public schools and thereby keep democracy strong.

Contrasting Patterns of Belonging and Believing

2019 ◽  
pp. 102-126
Author(s):  
Brian Stanley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
The Media ◽  
Religious Body

This chapter analyzes the strikingly divergent trajectories of Christian belief and practice in Scandinavia and the United States. All Scandinavian countries in the twentieth century experienced a decline in regular church attendance that appears to have been consistent throughout the century, and that may have begun as soon as religious compulsion was lifted in the nineteenth century. This protracted decline mirrored the slow waning of orthodox Christian belief, but this was not a decline from a previous golden age of faith; rather there seems every likelihood that the adherence of many Scandinavian people to Christian faith had been quite tenuous ever since the region was first evangelized. Yet the Scandinavian countries also illustrate in a pointed way the possibility that in certain conditions, stable patterns of religious belonging can exist almost independently of personal religious belief. Meanwhile, the United States in the twentieth century was by some criteria a more “secular” nation than Sweden or Denmark. The American state from its inception has refused to give any religious body privileged status before the law. In consequence, religion in the United States has always been divorced from the apparatus of government and public institutions to a much greater extent than in the Scandinavian nations, and in the course of the twentieth century, that divorce became more absolute in certain spheres, notably in the universities, public education, and the media.

scholarly journals Legal Activism for Ensuring Environmental Justice

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Saiful Karim ◽  
Okechukwu Benjamin Vincents ◽  
Mia Mahmudur Rahim
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Movement Strategy ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article reviews some of the roles environmental lawyers have played in ensuring environmental justice in Bangladesh. It leans on law and social movement theories to explicate the choice (and ensuing success) of litigation as a movement strategy in Bangladesh. The activists successfully moved the courts to read the right to a decent environment into the fundamental right to life, and this has had the far-reaching effect ofconstituting a basis forstanding forthe activists and other civil society organisations. The activists have also sought to introduce emerging international law principles into the jurisprudence of the courts. These achievements notwithstanding, the paper notes that litigation is not a sustainable way to institute enduring environmental protection in any jurisdiction and recommends the utilisation of the reputation and recognition gained through litigation to deploy or encourage more sustainable strategies.

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