scholarly journals Winning on our Issues with Power

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-198
Author(s):  
Amanda Tattersall
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Track Record

Social movement organisations need to have a pragmatic understanding of our current weaknesses and challenge ourselves to be much more adventurous for how to build social power and transformative change. This article considers three core weaknesses of our activist organisations, including how our issue agenda is often reactive, our disconnection from place and our poor track record on collaboration. It then suggests that the hope for stronger social change lies with a proactive issue agenda, strong reciprocal coalitions and the ability to move campaigns at multiple scales (locally, regionally, nationally, globally). The article includes a variety of examples that suggest how this stronger kind of organising is possible.

Accountability in Global Economic Governance

2018 ◽  
pp. 452-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Theoretical Problem ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
Governance Processes ◽  
Global Economic Governance

Contemporary theoretical debates surrounding accountability in global economic governance have often adopted a problem-focused analytical lens—centred on real-world political controversies surrounding the accountability of global governing authorities. This chapter explores four distinctive problems of global accountability for which empirical inquiry has usefully informed normative analysis: first, the problem of unaccountable power within global governance processes; second, the problem of decentred political authority in global governance; third, problems establishing appropriate foundations of social power through which normatively desirable transnational accountabilities can be rendered practically effective at multiple scales; finally, problems associated with the need to traverse significant forms of social and cultural difference in negotiating appropriate normative terms of transnational accountability relationships. In relation to each, this chapter examines how systematic engagement between empirical and normative modes of analysis can both illuminate the theoretical problem and inform practical political strategies for strengthening accountability in global economic governance.

scholarly journals GERAKAN SOSIAL DAN NALAR ISLAM PROGRESIF: MENCARI TITIK TEMU KERANGKA METATEORI

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
Ahmad Izudin
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Important Position ◽  
New Social Movement ◽  
Meta Theory

This article will examine how progressive Islam’s reasoning can be a reference to free human beings from the exploitation and domination of social class? So what social movements can we do in the midst of crush the nation’s problems related to the exploitation of natural resources that increasingly vine? From this point on, I hope to get a meta-theory regulation that can be implied entirely for the benefit of society, in order to be free from exploitation and domination. To answer this important position, the discourse of social movements can be mapped into two, namely old social movement and new social movement. While Islam as a universal religion, there is no need to discuss theological-transcendental issues, but how the theology should create a new, more applicable avenue of dialectics to answer the question the rulers of powers domination. In the hope of a progressive, inclusive, open-minded, and pluralist theological doctrine. The results of this study may contribute to the development of science and the movement that became a turning point and reference in social change.[Artikel ini hendak mengkaji bagaimana nalar Islam progresif yang dapat menjadi acuan untuk membebaskan manusia dari eksploitasi dan dominasi kelas sosial? Lantas gerakan sosial apa yang dapat kita lakukan di tengah himpitan persoalan bangsa terkait eksploitasi sumber daya alam yang kian menggurita? Dari titik ini, maka saya berharap mendapat satu regulasi metateori yang bisa diimplikasikan sepenuhnya untuk kepentingan masyarakat, agar bisa terbebas dari ekspolitasi dan dominasi. Untuk menjawab posisi penting ini, maka diskursus gerakan sosial dapat dipetakan menjadi dua, yakni old social movement dan new social movement. Sementara Islam sebagai agama universal, tidak perlu lagi membahas persoalan teologis-transendental, tetapi bagaimana teologi itu harus menciptakan ruang dealektika baru yang lebih aplikatif menjawab persoalan dominasi kekuasaan para penguasa. Dengan harapan munculnya doktrin teologis yang progresif, inklusif, open-minded, dan pluralis. Hasil kajian ini semoga memberikan kontribusi bagi perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan gerakan yang menjadi titik balik dan acuan dalam perubahan sosial.]

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

The Blob and the Mob

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Beverly Gage
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Stability And Instability ◽  
Significant Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Thought ◽  
Potential Use

This chapter explores social movements as a new lens through which to approach grand strategy. Although grand strategists and social movement strategists often view each other as opposites, they have more to learn from each other—and more in common—than either group might think. Within the realm of strategic thought, there has long been significant intellectual overlap between military, political, and social-movement approaches. Far from standing apart from questions of war and peace, stability and instability, conflict and diplomacy, nearly every significant movement for social change has actively engaged these questions, including the real or potential use of violence. Around the world, still more radical movements, many of them at least nominally Marxist in orientation, produced vast literatures on the virtues and vices of revolutionary strategy, as well as the complex task of transforming members and leaders, after victory, from revolutionaries into statesmen. In modern Western democratic societies, social-change strategists tend to favor non-violent methods, but debates rage nonetheless.

Ninety-Second Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 114-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franca Iacovetta
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
North America ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
State And Society

From April 22–25, 1999, the Organization of American Historians held its ninety-second annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. The theme was “State and Society in North America: Processes of Social Power and Social Change.” More than seven hundred scholars were on the program, an impressive showing; and for Canadian historians, whose community is comparatively small, a source of envy. The participants were, of course, overwhelmingly American and US specialists, but many Canadian colleagues presented papers or attended, as did other international scholars, including Americanists based overseas. While most sessions were held at a downtown hotel, organizers made use of local cultural venues and historic sites. They scheduled a session on the Underground Railroad, for instance, at St. Lawrence Hall, site of the first meeting of the Colored Free Men in Canada and an antislavery lecture by Frederick Douglas.

Buying an Activist Identity: Reproducing Class through Social Movement Philanthropy

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Silver
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Resource Mobilization ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Community Organizers

Those who lack the financial means to organize for social change may turn to elite funders, yet in doing so risk having their goals co-opted. Activist philanthropy minimizes this threat because its grant decisions are made by movement insiders. This structure leaves donors occupying a precarious position. Their money is essential, yet their class position is discrediting. The Crossroads Fund raises its money by integrating donors as activists alongside community organizers. Even though community organizers have greater power inside the foundation, integrating donors requires that community organizers defer to donors' wider class and racial privilege. By showing that securing funding from donors hinges on legitimating their identity claims, this study bridges social movement theories about resource mobilization and collective identity formation.

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