Political-Social Movements: Community-Based: China

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824402097501
Author(s):  
Buhari Shehu Miapyen ◽  
Umut Bozkurt

This research discusses the environmental pollution by the capital in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria and identifies two historical agents that have the potential to harmonize their social power through a common language that may create a new social and political agency. We argue that the working class and the community-based social movements are necessary but not sufficient agents of transformation in the Nigerian oil-dependent capitalist economy. The cooperation between the global and local sites of resistance is an imperative: a synergy and deliberate action by the conglomerate of trade unions, community-based social movements, nongovernmental organizations, local and global activists, nurtures the potential to transform the capitalist domination, exploitation, and expropriation in Nigeria. Using secondary literature sources, we re-visit the conversation on the role of capital and the pollution of environment in Nigeria through the concept of “Movement of Movements”.


Author(s):  
Hilary Darcy ◽  
Laurence Cox

The 15-year-long resistance to Shell’s pipeline in Rossport, Ireland became a strategic and symbolic site for resistance to neoliberalism and the petroleum industry, combining a community-based environmental justice struggle with a range of left social movements and international ecological activists. The movement faced state violence and media demonisation as well as divisions within the community, tensions between ecological and redistributive priorities and instrumentalisation by some political parties. Despite this the campaign was unusually long, forced substantial changes to state policy and contributed to anti-austerity alliance formation and popular learning processes in resisting fracking, as well as raising the political and financial cost of such projects. Its eventual defeat had more to do with the balance of forces against it than with internal difficulties. This chapter highlights the importance of sustained popular mobilisation, learning through action, counter expertise and alliance formation as key elements needed to bring about a better world.


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