Why “Dissident” Irish Republicans Haven’t Gone Away

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-96
Author(s):  
Robert W. White
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Photo Elicitation ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations

When considering “terrorists” and “terrorism,” the focus tends to be on violence—the threat of violence, its aftermath, the ideology and belief systems that lead to it, and so forth. Political violence, however, represents only a portion of the repertoire of collective action that is available to “terrorists.” Images from “dissident” Irish Republican events and photo-elicitation interviews with activists who participated in these events show that: (1) the repertoire of “violent” organizations includes nonviolent political activity; and (2) the organizational structures and affective incentives that sustain activism in nonviolent voluntary associations and social movement organizations also sustain activism in organizations that embrace physical force or “terrorism.” In combination, these findings show that “dissident” Irish Republicans are likely to persist into the foreseeable future. More generally, the findings also show that our understanding of “terrorists” and “terrorist organizations” will be enhanced if we focus less on their violent activities and more on their similarities with nonviolent activists and organizations.

Reinventing the Concept of Civic Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
Movement Organizations

This article proposes a new and better concept of civic culture and shows how it can benefit sociology. It argues that a better concept of civic culture gives us a stronger, comparative, and contextual perspective on voluntary associations—the conventional American empirical referent for “civic”—while also improving our sociologies of religion and social movements. The article first considers the classic perspective on civic culture and its current incarnations in order to show why we need better conceptual groundwork than they have offered. It then introduces the alternative approach, which is rooted in a pragmatist understanding of collective action and both builds on and departs in some ways from newly prominent understandings of culture in sociology. This approach’s virtues are illustrated with ethnographic examples from a variety of volunteer groups, social movement organizations, and religious associations.

scholarly journals Inclusive unionism: Strategies for retaining idealism in the Service Employees International Union

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyoung-Hee Yu
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Organizational Outcomes ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Personal Projects ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Knowledge Transfers ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Role Boundaries

Despite the vast amount of scholarship covering the progressive turn in unions in the US and in Europe and a widespread recognition that it has been driven by the staff working for reformed unions there has been no examination of the causes, beliefs, and identities that new generations of staff bring into the labor movement. The question asked in this article is how personal projects – defined as a motivational narrative for social action – held by progressively minded union staff can impact inclusiveness in unions. A key focus is how staff's personal projects interact with organizational structures and practices. The study finds that personal projects vary in terms of the way that staff construct role boundaries in their jobs to invest more in certain roles than, others which also affected their investment in skills development. These strategies have theoretical implications for understanding the nexus between staff careers and organizational outcomes in unions in particular and in ‘social movement organizations’ more generally. Results also have practical implications for skills development and knowledge transfers within and across organizations, as well as for union capacities to deal with competing goals.

Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security: How Al Qaeda Affects Southeast Asia

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID LEHENY
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
International Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Movement Organizations

This paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational social movement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaeda's role in Southeast Asia, focusing especially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievances of local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of political violence. In so doing, the paper builds on the often-neglected literature on the politics of terrorism while tying the argument to prevailing debates over social movements. The paper thus aims at clarifying the ways in which Southeast Asian organizations have adopted Al Qaeda's tactics and language but appear to be addressing primarily local or provincial concerns. This perspective also draws terrorism into current discussions of international security while maintaining a detailed focus on the interactions of individual agents and larger violent movements.

scholarly journals Influence of the pandemic lockdown on Fridays for Future’s hashtag activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110265
Author(s):  
Jörg Haßler ◽  
Anna-Katharina Wurst ◽  
Marc Jungblut ◽  
Katharina Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
German Language ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Twitter Activity ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.

Exploiting a Crisis: Abortion Activism and the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.”

Corporate Political Activity and Regulatory Capture: How Some Companies Blunt the Knife of Socially Oriented Investor Activism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 2064-2093 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hadani ◽  
Jonathan P. Doh ◽  
Marguerite A. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Shareholder Activism ◽  
Securities And Exchange Commission ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Regulatory Capture ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Nonmarket Strategy ◽  
Labor Policies ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Impact

Socially oriented shareholder activism is an increasingly important mechanism through which social movement organizations seek to influence the private sector by exerting pressure on corporate activities in areas such as human rights, environmental protection, and labor policies. This activism challenges the status quo of targeted firms and potentially their institutional field, disrupting “business as usual” and often drawing negative attention to the firms. We theorize that some firms might use corporate political activity (CPA) as an indirect, nonmarket strategy aimed at regulatory capture to reduce the impact of such disruptions. We focus on one popular avenue of shareholder activism—the proxy proposal mechanism—and the role the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plays in allowing omission of socially oriented shareholder proposals from the proxy ballot. Using two distinct data sources, we find evidence that for S&P 500 firms, the SEC allows for the omission of the proposals from proxy ballots more frequently for those firms more active in CPA. These findings inform the growing scholarship on socially oriented activism as well as suggest the indirect influence of CPA on government agency decision making.

scholarly journals The Organizational Trace of an Insurgent Moment

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311770065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam D. Reich
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

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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