Medicines at Standing Rock: Stories of Native Healing through Survivance

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Selma Hedlund
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
North Dakota ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Clean Drinking Water

In 2016, a historically large gathering of Indigenous peoples, tribal nations, and allies took place at the Standing Rock reservation, North Dakota, in response to the proposed construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Under the assertion of Mni Wičoni (Water Is Life), a social movement emerged with the purpose of protecting clean drinking water and Indigenous lands. Drawing on Gerald Vizenor’s theoretical framework that emphasizes storytelling and active presence over settler resistance, this study argues that Indigenous water protectors’ collective action in the movement, as well as their stories and remembrance of Standing Rock, are acts of survivance, in which they are able to denounce othering and challenge the colonizer’s gaze. While water is often described as a first medicine by Indigenous peoples, the water protectors’ stories in this essay suggest that the movement itself represented another remedy as well. Specifically, this movement represents a pivotal moment of cultural revitalization and community across what participants refer to as “Indian country,” in which individuals are able to engage in large scale grassroots decolonizing praxis rooted in spirituality and ceremony, and suspend genocidal traps of victimry that they have long battled.

scholarly journals Protestation and Mobilization in the Middle East and North Africa: A Foucauldian Model

2017 ◽  
pp. 177-207
Author(s):  
Navid Pourmokhtari
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Sociopolitical Context

Michel Foucault has inspired a rich body of work in the field of critical social theory and the social sciences in general. Few scholars working in the area of social movement studies, however, have applied a Foucauldian perspective to examining the twin phenomena of social mobilization and collective action. This may stem, in large part, from the commonly held assumption that Foucault had far more to say about ‘regimes of power’ than ever about mobilization and collective action or contention politics in general. Be that as it may, a close interrogation of his work reveals the broad contours of a theoretical framework for analyzing social movements whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations.     This paper aims at delineating what a Foucauldian model of social movements would entail, with specific reference to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region traditionally consigned to the margins of social movement studies. An enquiry of this kind is important because, as I argue, the leading mainstream social movement theories that have been applied to contemporary MENA cases invariably fall short of fully elucidating the phenomenon of mass mobilization. Specifically, leading mainstream theories are prone to certain universalistic assumptions and ‘West-centric’ orientations that render them incapable of accounting for the specificities of MENA cases. I shall demonstrate how a Foucauldian perspective on social movements can bypass the problem of applicability to the MENA region by mapping out a theoretical framework whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations. At the same time, I argue that a Foucauldian model transcends social movement theories with their linear conception of social and political progress, their exclusivist understanding of sociopolitical ‘development’ and ‘modernist’ assumptions by advancing an account of ‘multiple modernities.’

Participatory Research Mapping of Indigenous Lands in Darién, Panama

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Herlihy
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sketch Maps ◽  
Cognitive Knowledge

This article describes a participatory research mapping (PRM) project to document the subsistence lands used by the indigenous populations of the Darién Province, eastern Panama. The region is the historic territory of the Kuna, Emberá, and Wounaan peoples, with a biosphere reserve, two indigenous comarca homelands, and one of the most active colonization fronts in Central America. Having fought for recognition of their land rights in the face of encroaching outsiders, indigenous leaders were well aware of the power and importance of cartographic information. Indeed, the Darién was the most inaccurately mapped province in the country, and indigenous leaders embraced the idea of a mapping project to document their expanding settlements and natural resources. Community representatives were trained to complete land-use assessments using questionnaires and sketch maps. They worked with a team of specialists, including the author, to transform this information into standard cartographic and demographic results. The project’s simple design brought outstanding results, including the first large-scale mapping of indigenous lands in this little-known region. The methodology shows how indigenous peoples can work with researchers in data collection and interpretation to transform their cognitive knowledge into standard forms, producing excellent scientific and applied results while enhancing their ability to manage their own lands.

Mobilizing From Scratch: Large-Scale Collective Action Without Preexisting Organization in the Syrian Uprising

2020 ◽  
pp. 001041402091228
Author(s):  
Wendy Pearlman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sequential Logic ◽  
Scale Challenges ◽  
Dominant Theory

Core social movement research argues that large-scale challenges to authority build upon preexisting organization and civil society resources. How do dissenters mobilize masses in repressive settings where, given curtailment of civil society, autonomous associations scarcely exist and norms discourage trust more than encourage it? Testimonials from the Syrian uprising illustrate how protest can become widespread under such conditions, yet occurs through processes different from what dominant theory expects. Activists get demonstrations off the ground by planning around awareness of their organizational deficits. Once in motion, contention propels both organization and increasing organizational sophistication. To be effective, mobilization sometimes evades or obscures established social relationships, even as it produces new forms of sociability. Bridging literatures on mass and clandestine mobilization, this research reconsiders the assumed sequential logic of movement development from organization to protest, rather than vice versa. It also shifts attention from movement antecedents toward the resourcefulness and strategy that enable mobilizing both from scratch and at grave risk.

Introduction

Us, Relatives ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Bird-David
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Large Scale Project

Contemporary multiculturalist anthropology overlooks huge disparities in population size as well as ethnographic actors’ own scaling of their practices and imaginations. Arguing that scale-blindness limits our understanding of key issues in forager studies and distorts the insights these societies offer us, the introduction develops a theoretical framework for integrating scaling into their analysis. Drawing from studies of kinship, animism, multiscalar anthropology, imagined communities, and notions of being-with, it develops the idea of pluripresence. This theoretical approach is applied in the volume to the ethnography of a South Asian foraging people known as Nayaka, whom the author has studied since the late 1970s. They are introduced as an exemplar of hunter-gatherer peoples, who are among the tiniest communities studied by ethnographers, and as one of many indigenous peoples who have no ethnonyms for themselves and, instead, use terms of kinship and shared humanity as their we-designations. Their plural modes especially are eclipsed by the scale-blind regime, which, in fact, is large-scale inflected since the ethnonyms and other representational conventions (e.g., maps) that are indispensable in anthropology’s large-scale project embody modern imaginations of communities. The introduction explains the volume’s strategy for studying this tiny community.

scholarly journals Words and deeds

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E Cunningham ◽  
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch ◽  
Belén González ◽  
Dragana Vidović ◽  
Peter B White
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Random Sample ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Common Finding ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
The Common

Dissidents can choose among different tactics to redress political grievances, yet violent and nonviolent mobilization tend to be studied in isolation. We examine why some countries see the emergence of organized dissident activity over governmental claims, and why in some cases these organizational claims result in civil wars or nonviolent campaigns, while others see no large-scale collective action. We develop a two-stage theoretical framework examining the organized articulation of political grievance and then large-scale violent and nonviolent collective action. We test implications of this framework using new data on governmental incompatibilities in a random sample of 101 states from 1960 to 2012. We show that factors such as demography, economic development, and civil society have differential effects on these different stages and outcomes of mobilization. We demonstrate that the common finding that anocracies are more prone to civil war primarily stems from such regimes being more prone to see maximalist political demands that could lead to violent mobilization, depending on other factors conducive to creating focused military capacity. We find that non-democracy generally promotes nonviolent campaigns as anocracies and autocracies are both more likely to experience claims and more prone to nonviolent campaigns, conditional on claims.

Revisiting Repertoire Transition: Women's Nakedness as Potent Protests in Nigeria and Kenya*

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Fallon ◽  
Julie Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Colonial State

The influential work of Tilly and Tarrow on social movement repertoire transitions—moving from older, local, and episodic tactics to newer, national, and sustained tactics—has contributed significantly to the development of social movements theory. This article expands Tilly and Tarrow's theoretical framework by drawing on examples from Nigeria and Kenya. First, we examine the causal factors contributing to repertoire transitions in these postcolonial African countries, highlighting the importance of colonial state formation and social networks in changing repertoires. Second, we consider how the gravity and effectiveness of women's nakedness, used by mothers as a collective action tactic to shame those targeted, persisted and maintained its significance across tactical repertoire transitions, despite colonial repression. We argue that the continuance of tactics across repertoire transitions lies in their ability to maintain symbolic resonance, which simultaneously restricts the transmission of tactics to other locations.

scholarly journals Collective nostalgia is associated with stronger outgroup-directed anger and participation in ingroup-favoring collective action

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing-Yee Cheung ◽  
Constantine Sedikides ◽  
Tim Wildschut ◽  
Nicole Tausch ◽  
Arin H. Ayanian
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Online Study ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
The Way

Collective nostalgia refers to longing for the way society used to be. We tested whether collective nostalgia is associated with ingroup-favoring collective action and whether this association is mediated by outgroup-directed anger and outgroup-directed contempt. We conducted an online study of Hong Kong residents (N = 111) during a large-scale democratic social movement, the Umbrella Movement, that took place in Hong Kong in 2014 in response to proposed electoral reforms by the Chinese government in Mainland China. Reported collective nostalgia for Hong Kong’s past was high in our sample and collective nostalgia predicted stronger involvement in ingroup-favoring collective action, and it did so indirectly via higher intensity of outgroup-directed anger (but not through outgroup-directed contempt). We argue that collective nostalgia has implications for strengthening ingroup-serving collective action, and we highlight the importance of arousal of group-based emotions in this process.

A Study on the works of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn with reference to Indian Genocide

IJOHMN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
V. Padmanaban
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native American Studies ◽  
American Government ◽  
White American ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The People ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Westward Movement ◽  
Wounded Knee

This work is a study on the works of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn who is proficient scholar and hails from South Dakotas and Sioux nations and their turmoil, anguish and lamentation to retrieve their lands and preserve their culture and race. Many a aboriginals were killed in the post colonization. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn grieves and her lamentation for the people of Dakotas yields sympathy towards the survived at Wounded Knee massacre and the great exploitation of the livelihood of the indigenous people and the cruelty of American Federal government. Treaty conserved indigenous lands had been lost due to the title of Sioux Nation and many Dakotas and Dakotas had been forced off from their homelands due to the anti-Indian legislation, poverty and federal Indian – white American policy. The whites had no more regard for or perceiving the native’s peoples’ culture and political status as considered by Jefferson’s epoch. And to collect bones and Indian words, delayed justice all these issues tempt her to write. The authors accuses that America was in ignorance and racism and imperialism which was prevalent in the westward movement. The natives want to recall their struggles, and their futures filled with uncertainty by the reality and losses by the white and Indian life in America which had undergone deliberate diminishment by the American government sparks the writer to back for the indigenous peoples. This multifaceted study links American study with Native American studies. This research brings to highlight the unchangeable scenario of the Native American who is in the bonds of as American further this research scrutinizes Elizabeth’s diplomacy and legalized decolonization theory which reflects in her literature career and her works but defies to her own doctrines.

Institutional Legacies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Massimiliano Andretta ◽  
Tiago Fernandes ◽  
Eduardo Romanos ◽  
Markos Vogiatzoglou
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Protest Policing ◽  
Institutional Legacies

Chapter 3 addresses the institutional legacy (that is, the set of formal and informal rules that regulate the exercise of power in a political regime) of the transition to democracy, particularly those institutional dimensions that are more relevant for social movements—what social movement studies have defined as political opportunities. After setting the theoretical framework by specifying the main qualities of democracy the research has addressed, the chapter covers the legal and constitutional provisions on civil (especially protest) rights, political rights (right to resistance, majoritarian versus consensual assets), and social rights as well as practices—particularly with regard to protest, citizens’ participation, protest policing, and concertation.

scholarly journals From invention to industry from a social movement perspective: the emergence of the 3D printing industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lechner ◽  
Abeer Pervaiz
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
New Ventures ◽  
Printing Industry ◽  
Longitudinal Case Study ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
Industry Emergence ◽  
Entrepreneurial Action ◽  
Emergence Phase

Abstract In the entrepreneurship literature, the phenomenon of industry emergence has been largely investigated from an institutional perspective. Appropriate institutions would allow then a group of individual entrepreneurs (“the heroes”) to create an industry through innovative ventures. New ventures create new industries and firm entry, survival, and exit drive industry evolution. Our research, however, explores what creates the favorable set of circumstances for new ventures to emerge and focuses on the pre-emergence phase and we propose that the patterns of emergence resemble those of social movements. Through an actor perspective, this research highlights the existence of diverse actors, not necessarily entrepreneurs, who are necessary to trigger a collective action during the pre-emergence phase of industries. This research is also distinct from entrepreneurial ecosystems as its development already requires some successful entrepreneurial action. The 3D printing industry was chosen as a single longitudinal case study, where the actors are the embedded units of analysis. The findings of the study lead to the identification of three aggregate dimensions—“Social Movement Composition,” Temporal Engagement,” and “Coalitions Development”—that were prevalent during the pre-emergence phase of the 3D printing industry. Our propositions emphasize the importance of large collective action and the role of multiple actors in order to create the conditions for, first, firm emergence and, the second, to the process of industry emergence.

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