Queer Festivals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis

To what extent is queer anti-identitarian? And how is it experienced by activists at the European level? At queer festivals, activists, artists and participants come together to build new forms of sociability and practice their ideals through anti-binary and inclusive idioms of gender and sexuality. These ideals are moreover channelled through a series of organisational and cultural practices that aim at the emergence of queer as a collective identity. Through the study of festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, and Oslo, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe thoughtfully analyses the role of activist practices in the building of collective identities for social movement studies as well as the role of festivals as significant repertoires of collective action and sites of identitarian explorations in contemporary Europe.

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Jasper

During the last 30 years the study of social movements has changed dramatically, under the recognition of how important cultural meanings are to collective action and outcomes. Social movement studies has rediscovered a number of microlevel cultural mechanisms that have enriched our understanding of protest and social movements, bringing some subjective elements to a field that for a generation had been highly structural. These include the collective identities of political players, the dynamics of gender, the role of emotions, strategic choices, and the influence of leaders. In much of this work, sociologists and political scientists in social movement studies have worked in parallel to social psychologists, and there has been insufficient dialogue between the two traditions.


Author(s):  
Olu Jenzen ◽  
Itir Erhart ◽  
Hande Eslen-Ziya ◽  
Umut Korkut ◽  
Aidan McGarry

This article explores how Twitter has emerged as a signifier of contemporary protest. Using the concept of ‘social media imaginaries’, a derivative of the broader field of ‘media imaginaries’, our analysis seeks to offer new insights into activists’ relation to and conceptualisation of social media and how it shapes their digital media practices. Extending the concept of media imaginaries to include analysis of protestors’ use of aesthetics, it aims to unpick how a particular ‘social media imaginary’ is constructed and informs their collective identity. Using the Gezi Park protest of 2013 as a case study, it illustrates how social media became a symbolic part of the protest movement by providing the visualised possibility of imagining the movement. In previous research, the main emphasis has been given to the functionality of social media as a means of information sharing and a tool for protest organisation. This article seeks to redress this by directing our attention to the role of visual communication in online protest expressions and thus also illustrates the role of visual analysis in social movement studies.


Author(s):  
Meredith Rolfe

This article examines collective action, focusing on the role of social interactions, conflict, and the dynamics of interpersonal influence in shaping collective identities and interests. The discussion is based on the co-occurrence of individuals’ interest and group identity through a consistent course of action and begins with an overview of analytical models used to investigate extraordinary forms of collective action. The article then describes formal models and the problem of cooperation between self-interested actors, along with the notion of free-riding and the origin of shared interests and collective identities, paying attention to the importance of conflict, social networks, and interpersonal influence. It also explores the role of multiple levels of decision-making and actors’ consciousness in collective action before proposing a formal approach to collective action that is simultaneously less and more rational than the one currently employed in analytical sociology.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward T. Walker ◽  
Lina Stepick

Scholars of contentious politics expect that social movement organizations (SMOs) are valued according to their ability to craft resonant frames or to enact displays of worthiness. We offer an alternative, relational perspective highlighting the critical role of authenticity in shaping an SMO’s perceived value. Unlike frames and intentional displays, calculated efforts to proclaim authenticity often backfire. We distill two orthogonal types: grassroots (in)authenticity, based on idealized notions of civil society, and institutional (in)authenticity, rooted in cultural-cognitive schemas used to judge fit with established SMO categories. Grassroots authenticity benefits an SMO’s fundamental legitimacy, while lacking it entirely (i.e. “astroturfing”) severely harms public support. Institutional authenticity increases resources and survival chances, intelligibility to elite observers, and clarity of collective identities; still, lacking this (via hybridity) may assist in recruitment and outreach. We build propositions that elaborate these expectations and argue that authenticity should become a more central concept in social movement research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Sokolov

The article deal with the analysis of the phenomenon of collective action. A review of modern ideas about the features of collective action, mass action in politics is made. The great importance of collective identity in the process of organizing and implementing of collective actions is indicated. The network nature of modern collective actions and the significant influence of information and communication technologies in the process of their organization are noted. To illustrate the features of collective action in Russia, the article presents the results of a longitudinal study of collective action conducted since 2014 by interviewing experts from various regions of the Russian Federation (annual sample of at least 14 Russian regions and at least 155 experts). The study allows us to identify the dynamics of the activity of collective actions, the features of their organization, the trends of cooperation, the intensity of protest actions. The conclusion is made about the slowdown in the growth of civic activism and collective action. Relative growth is observed only in their manifestation on the Internet. There is a gradual decrease in the politicization of collective action and youth involvement in mass action. At the same time, the role of Internet tools in organizing politicized collective actions is increasing. The article analyzes the actors of collective action. It is concluded that the development of the Internet is a factor contributing to the formation of wider coalitions in the process of organizing and carrying out of collective actions and the increasing activity of unregistered public associations. It is indicated that there is a tendency for the development of network characteristics of collective actions in modern Russia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80
Author(s):  
Natalya V. Shumkova ◽  
Oleg E. Zubov

This article studies the structure of collective identities of modern student youth. The subject of the authors’ scientific interest is the role of regional identity in the structure of collective identities of young people in the Republic of Mordovia. The specifics of regional identity as a form of collective identification, its mobility, contextuality, heterogeneity, latency, productivity, and collective genesis are considered in detail. The priority of purposeful construction of positive regional identity as an effective tool for the preservation and development of human capital at the regional level is substantiated. The methodological framework of the study is based on the works by V. A. Tishkov, V. A. Yadov, and M. P. Krylov. The empirical basis of the study includes the data from a mass survey of student youth in the Republic of Mordovia (2020, questionnaire, quota sample, n = 414). Based on the collected empirical material, the regional component of students’ collective identity is comprehensively analyzed. According to the data obtained, identification with the regional community belongs to the identities of the modal level. Only a third (32%) of the surveyed students have a positive regional identity, while the majority of young people in Mordovia identify themselves with the region only nominally. The pronounced emotional component of regional identity is mostly characteristic of the representatives of the titular (Mordovian) nationality. The authors emphasize that in this case, the merging of ethnic and regional identities does not have any conflict potential, because the majority of the respondents perceive Mordovia as a full-fledged subject of the Russian Federation. The conclusion is made about the necessity of diversifying “image projects” in order to build a positive image of the republic among young people.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liora Moskovitz ◽  
Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the unique role of enactment in the dynamics of motivation and participation in prefigurative social movements, with the intention of providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms, inherent to prefiguration, driving change through collective action. We achieve this through examining what motivates people to participate as activists in a social movement trying to enact changes within the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. To do so, we explore the narratives of 23 activists working to develop the NHS Change Day movement. The narratives describe how NHS frontline staff engage in daily grassroots change activities while having to navigate top-down, planned, organisational change interventions. We analyse our findings in light of recent developments in the understanding of group identity processes in the mobilisation of collective action, and highlight the role of enactment in these dynamics. The findings indicate that it is not the overall top-down managerial strategies, but rather the daily participation and enactment of self-initiated small-scale change actions that gives meaning and direction to the activists’ participation in the social movement – a meaning which is constructed through the encapsulation of a sense of personal agency and collective efficacy, contributing to a sense of the affirmation of vocational and organisational identity. We contend that the relationship between the experience of the daily enactment of self-initiated activities within a supportive group setting and the motivation to participate in collective action is mutually constructed, and as such, inextricable.


Author(s):  
Mykola Makhortykh

AbstractThe chapter examines the role of geospatial data in Russia’s online ecosystem. Facilitated by the rise of geographic information systems and user-generated content, the distribution of geospatial data has blurred the line between physical spaces and their virtual representations. The chapter discusses different sources of these data available for Digital Russian Studies (e.g., social data and crowdsourced databases) together with the novel techniques for extracting geolocation from various data formats (e.g., textual documents and images). It also scrutinizes different ways of using these data, varying from mapping the spatial distribution of social and political phenomena to investigating the use of geotag data for cultural practices’ digitization to exploring the use of geoweb for narrating individual and collective identities online.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-292
Author(s):  
Manuela Badilla Rajevic

This article reflects on the connections between space, social movements, and urban memory by analyzing the effects of quarantine on the massive Chilean anti-neoliberal movement. It explores two aspects of the quarantine that have unsettled and challenged the spatial dimension of collective action: restrictions on transit through the city and the imposition of hygienic measures on infrastructure and social interactions. The article suggests that these aspects represent a concrete threat to social movements, while at the same time push to strengthen alternative spaces and repertoires of action. It concludes by illustrating the role of urban memories on the potential continuity of the mobilizations and their demands.


Author(s):  
Veit Bader

Global migration has become more diversified and also the settlement, citizenship and integration package has changed. These changes have important consequences for cultures and identity-definitions, for the socio-political conditions of collective action and claims-making, for established institutional policy-patterns and dealing with claims, for citizenship and democratic representation, and for theories of multiculturalism. My focus is on changing socio-political conditions of collective action because it seems to be the empirically least researched topic and because the competing, fashionable paradigms – ‘intersectionalism’, ‘transnationalism’, ‘mobility’ or ‘superdiversity’ – are kryptonormative, overgeneralized and misleading. I start with conceptual, theoretical, empirical and normative objections against the superdiversity paradigm because it seems to have rapidly increasing traction. Next, however, I proceed from the criticized assumption that superdiversity diagnoses would be empirically true: If, and to the degree to which, cultural practices get more radically flexible, hybrid and fluid and objective social positions, collective identity definitions, netness, groupness and organizations would get fluid and flexible, less stable claims-making can be expected: immigrant ethno-religious minorities of all kinds would loose collective voice. Contrary to the normative praise of superdiversity and ‘individualization’ and of ‘diversity-policies’ this would be – in the real world of structural power-asymmetries – not a praiseworthy utopia but a nightmare.


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