The Missionaries of Francis: The Theology of the People and the Unification of the Argentine Piquetero Movement (2014–2018)

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Pablo Forni

Founded in 2014, the Missionaries of Francis is a small social movement organization made up of activists from several other social movement organizations representing informal workers and the unemployed. Its goal was to promote the message of the newly appointed Pope Francis among the poor and excluded. Drawing inspiration from the theology of the people, the movement is contributing new repertoires of contention based on popular religious images and icons to Argentine social movements. Starting in 2016, it has occupied a key role, bringing together ideologically and politically heterogeneous social movement organizations to resist the neoliberal social policies of President Mauricio Macri. Fundados en 2014, los Misioneros de Francisco son una pequeña organización formada por activistas de varios movimientos sociales que representan a los trabajadores informales y a los desempleados. Su objetivo fue promover el mensaje del recién nombrado Papa Francisco entre los pobres y excluidos. Inspirado en la teología del pueblo, el movimiento está aportando nuevos repertorios de protesta basados en imágenes e íconos de la religiosidad popular a los movimientos sociales argentinos. Ha jugado un papel clave a partir de 2016, reuniendo organizaciones de movimientos sociales ideológica y políticamente heterogéneos para resistir las políticas sociales neoliberales del presidente Mauricio Macri.

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Halebsky

This research investigates the outcomes of local social movements through a comparative analysis of superstore siting controversies. Data were generated by qualitative case studies of six attempts by local social movement organizations to prevent the siting of a Wal-Mart superstore in their communities. A comparison of the cases reveals that the SMOs were most likely to succeed when they produced evidence of widespread opposition, framed the issue broadly, received backing from the media, did not have to contend with a counter social movement organization, and benefited from blunders by Wal-Mart. It is suggested that these five factors can be generalized to help explain the outcomes of other local social movements. It is suggested further that the first three of these factors combine in a mutually reinforcing fashion to enable a small SMO to expand its influence and thereby increase its ability to prevail against a more powerful target.


2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan J. Wang ◽  
Hayagreeva Rao ◽  
Sarah A. Soule

When do protest organizations borrow issues or claims that are outside their traditional domains? Sociologists have examined the consequences of borrowing claims across movement boundaries, but not the antecedents of doing so. We argue that movement boundaries are strong when there is consensus about the core claims of a social movement, which we measure by cohesion and focus. Cohesion and focus enhance the legitimacy of a movement and impede member organizations from adopting claims associated with other movements. Analyzing movement organizational activity at U.S.-based protest events from 1960 to 1995, we find that a social movement organization is less likely to adopt claims from other movements when the social movement in which it is embedded exhibits high cohesion and focus. However, when movement organizations do borrow claims, they are more likely to do so by borrowing from movements that themselves exhibit high cohesion and focus. We describe the application of our findings to organization theory, social movements, and field theoretic approaches to understanding social action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
YuTong Sun

Social movement organizations (SMOs) have been performing a significant role in terms of gathering like-minded civil individuals with common interests during social movements. Stepping into the digital era, the social media becomes prevailing in transforming people’s lifestyles. This essay will discuss the 15-M Movement in Spain to explore the transition of SMO’s position from conventional social movements to those in the digital era in the light of collective action logic and connective action logic. With the phenomenon that SMO itself sometimes is the original source of problems to trigger social movements, it is reasonable to see the decreasingly important SMO with the successful example of the 15-M Movement to engage over 60 cities in Spain and avoid the “free ride” problem via completely excluding brick and mortar organizations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110265
Author(s):  
Jörg Haßler ◽  
Anna-Katharina Wurst ◽  
Marc Jungblut ◽  
Katharina Schlosser

Social movement organizations (SMOs) increasingly rely on Twitter to create new and viral communication spaces alongside newsworthy protest events and communicate their grievance directly to the public. When the COVID-19 pandemic impeded street protests in spring 2020, SMOs had to adapt their strategies to online-only formats. We analyze the German-language Twitter communication of the climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF) before and during the lockdown to explain how SMOs adapted their strategy under online-only conditions. We collected (re-)tweets containing the hashtag #fridaysforfuture ( N = 46,881 tweets, N = 225,562 retweets) and analyzed Twitter activity, use of hashtags, and predominant topics. Results show that although the number of tweets was already steadily declining before, it sharply dropped during the lockdown. Moreover, the use of hashtags changed substantially and tweets focused increasingly on thematic discourses and debates around the legitimacy of FFF, while tweets about protests and calls for mobilization decreased.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311770065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam D. Reich

The relationship between social movements and formal organizations has long been a concern to scholars of collective action. Many have argued that social movement organizations (SMOs) provide resources that facilitate movement emergence, while others have highlighted the ways in which SMOs institutionalize or coopt movement goals. Through an examination of the relationship between Occupy Wall Street and the field of SMOs in New York City, this article illustrates a third possibility: that a moment of insurgency becomes a more enduring movement in part through the changes it induces in the relations among the SMOs in its orbit.


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