scholarly journals New Social Movements as Postmodern Challanges To Neoliberalism and Representative Democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Efe Tuğberk ÖZTÜRK ◽  
Aslı DALDAL
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Suitable Concept ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Legitimacy Crisis ◽  
The Relationship

In this article, the relationship between new social movements, representative democracy and neoliberalism is examined. Starting with student protests in Europe and the United State, the late 1960s have witnessed the emegence of new social movements. Ecological, anti-nuclear, feminist, student, anti-racist, and LGBTI+ protests all have been examined with the scope of the new social movements paradigm. The remarkable protest wave of the 1970s has been followed by contemporary movements in different forms like the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. Although these movements differ in terms of issues they deal with and goals they seek, they have a lot in common. Unlike the old movements like labour protests, these new movements primarily focus on postmaterial issues. Postmaterial identity demands and rights of these movements conflict with material demands of neoliberal governments. Furthermore, modern democracies fail to address these issues. Representative democracy is seen as an obstacle to political participation. On the other hand, postmodernism is a suitable concept to explain internal discrepancies and dispersion of new social movements. It is argued that (a) the legitimacy crisis of representative democracy and neoliberal response of capitalism to its structural crisis have triggered new social conflicts and movements, (b) these movements differ from old movements in terms of their forms, goals, and demands, (c) new social movements are postmodern.

scholarly journals Political Parties and Participative Approaches to Democracy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiano Gianolla
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Five Star Movement ◽  
Representative Model ◽  
The Relationship

Representative democracy is currenty facing strong social criticism for its incapacity to envolve people in a way that makes them part of the decision-making process. An existing gap between the representatives and the represented is hereby emphasized. In this space, the role of political parties is central in order to bridge society with institutions. How much are parties concerned about this issue? How and in which context do they interact more with their electorate and the wider society? Participatory democracy is emerging throughout the world in different forms and with different results, but the dominant pattern of democracy remains the liberal western democratic paradigm in which people can contribute barely through electing candidates. In order to achieve what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls ‘democratisation of democracy’ the role of political parties is therefore fundamental in particular to achieve a more participative democracy within the representative model. This article approaches this theme through a bibliographic review comparing social movements and political parties with a focus on the innovation of the Five Star Movement in Italy. Finally, it provides a reading of the relationship between political parties andparticipation, including good practice and perspectives.KEYWORDS: Participation, political parties, social movements, political movements, representative democracy, participatory democracy.

3. Geopolitical architectures

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
International System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Financial Crisis Of 2008 ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Territorial States ◽  
The Relationship

‘Geopolitical architectures’ suggests that our understandings of a world composed of an international system based on territorial states, exclusive jurisdictions, and national boundaries is enduring but not all encompassing. What is the relationship between fixity and flow? How do architectures seek to impose fixity on flows? Neo-liberal globalization, with due emphasis on market accessibility and privatization, encourages two kinds of geopolitical architectures – one predicated on spatial containment (as epitomized by the war on terror) and the other underpinned by spatial administration. The financial crisis of 2008 onwards has revealed some of this geopolitical work, and the ‘Occupy Movement’ was in large part about trying to fix flows.

scholarly journals Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting

1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gelman ◽  
Gary King
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Methods ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
The Relationship

We demonstrate the surprising benefits of legislative redistricting (including partisan gerrymandering) for American representative democracy. In so doing, our analysis resolves two long-standing controversies in American politics. First, whereas some scholars believe that redistricting reduces electoral responsiveness by protecting incumbents, others, that the relationship is spurious, we demonstrate that both sides are wrong: redistricting increases responsiveness. Second, while some researchers believe that gerrymandering dramatically increases partisan bias and others deny this effect, we show both sides are in a sense correct. Gerrymandering biases electoral systems in favor of the party that controls the redistricting as compared to what would have happened if the other party controlled it, but any type of redistricting reduces partisan bias as compared to an electoral system without redistricting. Incorrect conclusions in both literatures resulted from misjudging the enormous uncertainties present during redistricting periods, making simplified assumptions about the redistricters' goals, and using inferior statistical methods.

scholarly journals ГРОМАДСЬКІСТЬ МІСТА ЯК КОЛЕКТИВНИЙ СУБ’ЄКТ СОЦІАЛЬНОЇ ДИНАМІКИ

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-16
Author(s):  
Mikhno Nadiya
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Cognitive Analysis ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Urban Activism ◽  
The One

The article deals with the phenomenon of urban activism as a manifestation of «grassroots» self-organization of city dwellers. The logic of the emergence of the centers of urban activism in the postmodern cultural situation has been determined, which is marked by the processes of deconstruction of the principles of modernity, in particular the principle of universal rationality. The possibility of conceptual arrangement and cognitive analysis of urban activism through the lens of the study of «new social movements», which is, on the one hand, a catalyst for social change, and on the other, a representation of current trends of postmodernism.

scholarly journals Social Movement Literature and U.S. Labour: A Reassessment

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-179
Author(s):  
Keith Mann
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Common Features ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Arab Spring

Largely due to its conservative profile at the time, the U.S. labour movement was largely absent from modern social movement literature as it developed in response to the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Recent labour mobilizations such as the Wisconsin uprising and the Chicago Teachers’ strike have been part of the current international cycle of protest that includes the Arab Spring, the antiausterity movements in Greece and Spain, and Occupy Wall Street. These struggles suggest that a new labour movement is emerging that shares many common features with new social movements. This article offers a general analysis of these and other contemporary labour struggles in light of contemporary modern social movement literature. It also critically reviews assumptions about the labour movement of the 1960s and 1970s and reexamines several social movement concepts.

scholarly journals "What if No One Had Spoken out Against this Policy?" The Rise of Asylum Seeker and Refugeee Advocacy in Australia

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Gosden
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees

This paper examines the rise of an asylum seeker and refugee advocacy movement in Australia in recent years. It situates this phenomenon within Alberto Melucci's understanding of social movements as variable and diffuse forms of social action involved in challenging the logic of a system. Following this theoretical framework, it explores the empirical features of this particular collective action, as well as the struggle to redefine the nature of the relationship between citizens of a sovereign state and 'the other' in the personage of asylum seekers and refugees.

scholarly journals Aspiring to alterpolitics

Focaal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (72) ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Riccardo Ciavolella ◽  
Stefano Boni
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Current Economic Crisis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Western Hegemony ◽  
The Arab Spring

This theme section inquires into the contribution of political anthropology to radical theories, social imagination, and practices underlying political “alternatives”, which we propose to call “alterpolitics”. The issue of an alternative to contemporary powers in globalization is a central topic in social movements and radical debates. This sense of possibility for political alternatives is associated with the desertion of the belief in “the end of history”: the current economic crisis and the decline of Western hegemony presumably announce a radical transformation of the neoliberal world, opening space to alternatives. Actually, the reconfiguration of twentieth-century capitalism is associated with a growing mistrust of political institutions, the crisis being “organic”, in the Gramscian sense (Gramsci 1975). Recent social movements and insurrections around the world—from the “colored revolutions” in Central Asia to the Spanish indignados, the US Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, uprisings in Bosnia—have raised the issue of alternatives as a reaction to the incapacity of capitalist political institutions—from electoral democracy to dictatorships—to deal with people’s problems and meet their aspirations for emancipation and a better future.

Assemblies and the struggle to diffuse power

Focaal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (72) ◽  
pp. 9-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Boni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Consensus Building ◽  
East African ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The One

The article is focused on the practical mechanisms of assembly management in egalitarian settings in a comparative perspective: on the one hand, I examine assemblies in what may be termed classic ethnographic settings (principally East African pastoralists); on the other hand, I turn to meetings in recent social movements (the Occupy movement in the United States and Slovenia; the 15M in Spain; Greece and Bosnia). I have two principal aims. First, I wish to identify and evaluate similarities and differences in the running of meetings with regard to processes of consensus building; the coordination of assemblies through the creation of roles and the menace of leadership; and the management of place, time, and speech. Second, I aim to evaluate current social movements' use of alterpolitics, intended as the practical and imaginary reference to group meetings of the historical, sectarian, or ethnic other.

Gamifying Contentious Politics: Gaming Capital and Playful Resistance

2021 ◽  
pp. 155541202110141
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Huang ◽  
Tingting Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Technical Competencies ◽  
The Relationship

This article uses the Bourdieusian tradition to examine the relationship between gameplay elements and contentious politics. When investigating Chinese progressive social movements, this study found that the development of local gaming industries has conditioned three ways in which gameplay elements are employed to organize “playful resistance”: game as an action tactic, game as the mechanism for critical pedagogics, and game as a tool for public education . Gaming capital has become a useful resource for organizing contentious activities and disseminating progressive political views. Two forms of gaming capital are identified: one is the technical competencies needed to design games; the other is the cultural capacity to imagine social movements through game design mechanisms. This article shows how playful resistance challenges both authoritarian governance and the capitalist logic of gaming, offering a glimpse into how the actual process of gamification has taken place in a non-Western context.

scholarly journals The Arab Spring Protests and Concurrent Disability Protests: Social Movement Spillover or Spurious Relationship?

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon N. Barnartt
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Physical Proximity ◽  
Close Physical Proximity ◽  
The Arab Spring

Protests from different social movements sometimes coincide, but does that mean that one movement is influencing the other and increasing its “action mobilization,” or are different sets of factors causing the coincident protests? This paper examines that question in reference to two sets of coincident protests: those of people with disabilities and those of the pro-Democracy protests of 2011. It shows that, although disability protests did not start at the same time as the pro-Democracy protests, a number happened during and after, and in close physical proximity to, those protests. Neither set of protests acknowledged or referred to the other. While it is likely that a new law in Egypt and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities were among the mobilizing factors for people with disabilities, it also appears that the language of “rights” began to diffuse from the pro-Democracy protests to the disability protests.  

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