Social Movement Logics—Past, Present, and Future

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Leadership Development ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Core ◽  
Informational Capitalism

This concluding chapter reexamines the Cyber Left against the backdrop of informational capitalism and history. Through this lens, it discusses indymedia as a precursor to Occupy Wall Street and many of the emergent social movements that have developed since the economic crisis of 2008. It also explains how the core logic and strategy of the Cyber Left played a significant role in the inability of the Global Social Justice Movement to build long-term power. It identifies four interrelated, core problems: (1) a retreat from class and capitalism as analytic and political categories; (2) a tendency toward technological determinism; (3) an anti-institutional bias; and (4) no emphasis on political education and leadership development.

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.

Digital is Dead

2014 ◽  
pp. 220-236
Author(s):  
Santos Felipe Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Wall Street

This chapter draws from a 6-month participant-observation with an Occupy Wall Street group in Richmond, Virginia—Occupy Richmond—to deliver an ethnography of public discourse in postcolonial, queer, and multimedia contexts, as part of a critical analysis of imperialism in the digital age. The author develops techno-seduction as a term to deconstruct the lure of technological determinism that promotes static interpretations of democracy, participation, and the digital, in addition to considering how these interpretations impact intrapersonal and group identity formation. Finally, the chapter asks that we suspend our conception of the digital/non-digital dichotomy by thinking of the digital as dead, as a force that guides and influences our sociopolitical interactions, rather than as an isolated concept wholly separable from the non-digital.

Contentious Storytelling Online: Articulating Activism through Negotiation of Metanarratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-607
Author(s):  
Victoria Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Narrative Development ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Dominant Strategies

Narratives are one of the primary ways that activists communicate online and as this study shows, they also prove to be a major source of contention. Analysis of two digital social justice campaigns—the #Wearethe99% narratives (associated with the Occupy Wall Street Movement) and the #BelieveinSwanQueen narratives (associated with the Swan Queen Movement)—suggests that strategies of contentious narrative development online largely involve the negotiation of metanarratives. The online narratives appear to rely upon metanarratives as a foundation for expressing broad societal grievances and personal opinions and struggles. The two dominant strategies for expressing grievances throughout the discourses are the (1) reclaiming and (2) rejecting of “The American Dream” (#Wearethe99%) and “Once Upon a Time” (#BelieveinSwanQueen) metanarratives. The negotiation of these metanarratives has led to the development of an alternative “anti-story,” which serves as narrative structure to navigate both personal and social issues.

Bread, dignity and social justice

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 478-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Arab Spring

Although they produced vastly more turmoil, the uprisings in the Arab world shared many characteristics with other early 21st-century popular protests on both the left and the right, from Spain’s Indignados and Occupy Wall Street to the anti-elite votes for Brexit and Trump. The conviction that political elites and the states they rule, which were once responsible for welfare and development, now ignore and demean the interests and concerns of ordinary citizens takes many forms, but is virtually universal. The Arab world was only one site of this discontent, but the story of the Arab Spring insurrections provides a cautionary illustration of the perils in abdication of political authority and accountability and provokes questions about how we understand historical moments when passions outstrip interests.

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 Feminist and Queer Practices in the Online and Offline Activism of Occupy Wall Street

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Ng ◽  
Sophie Toupin
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
World Order ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Affinity Group ◽  
Digital Media Studies ◽  
Activist Groups

While the Occupy movement has attracted popular and academic interest since 2011, there has been relatively little attention to the significance of feminist and queer practices and discourses to the movement. Drawing from feminist theory, social movement studies, and digital media studies, this paper presents empirical research conducted at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) that highlights feminist, queer, and trans contributions to OWS from its inception, with a focus on the Trans World Order Affinity Group (TOAG). Through its activities at Zuccotti Park as well at its website and on social media, TOAG has challenged gender norms, heteronormativity, and transphobia in both the physical and virtual domains of OWS, and been a key contributor to its online prominence. As such, the group offers an illuminating case study of the challenges and successes of realizing feminist and queer agency during key developments of a major social movement. More generally, this project provides an important corrective to the prominence of class in how Occupy has been discussed and conducted, pointing out how other axes of inequality have also stratified Occupy itself. In addition, it addresses central issues about new media and participation, including negotiating differences between diverse activist groups, the efficacy of digital activism, and the relationship between online and offline strategies.

scholarly journals Documenting the Diffusion of the 2016 French Nuit Debout

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Baciocchi ◽  
Laurent Beauguitte ◽  
Pierre Blavier ◽  
Nicolas Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Multidisciplinary Team ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Dynamic Map ◽  
New Form ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Exhaustive List

In the spring of 2016, France saw a major social movement, with strikes and demonstrations, and a new form of protest, the Nuit Debout. Following the Occupy Wall Street and Los Indignados models, open air assemblies started in Paris on March 31 and then spread throughout France and abroad. The dataset presented here provides the exhaustive list of Nuit Debout gatherings that took place in France in April 2016 and an estimation of their audience. The data was gathered by a small multidisciplinary team (geographers, historian and sociologist) who consulted three main sources: a wiki created by the Nuit Debout movement, Facebook pages and groups created by local assemblies, and the regional press. Combining these sources made it possible to identify 1300 assemblies that took place in 215 different locations. The dataset available online is provided with an R script that generates a dynamic map of the Nuit Debout diffusion.

scholarly journals Social workers’ collective policy practice in times of austerity: Italy and Spain compared1

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Riccardo Guidi
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
Welfare Politics

Although political responsibility lays at the core of social professions, until recently it has only been weakly exerted. Effectively acting for social justice in a context shaped by neomanagerialism, economic crisis and (permanent) austerity has become crucial for the profession, the users and democracy but is particularly difficult. Based on a critical policy theoretical framework, this chapter illustrates and interprets the features of social workers’ policy practice in Italy and Spain in the austerity age. Against deactivation hypotheses, social workers’ potential in affecting welfare politics is enriched in both countries through the action of collective bodies from within the profession. Beyond flat visions of social workers’ policy practice, the analysis also shows that different mobilisation paths exist. The peculiar interactions between the political opportunities’ structure and the characteristics of professional bodies (political culture, resources, skills) in the medium term can account for the divergence. These interactions seem to be pushing social workers’ policy practice towards particularistic/professional or universal/political achievements.

The Case for Social Justice

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-82
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Opposition Movement ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Trayvon Martin

This chapter explains the fomentation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which began as a hashtag in 2013. The chapter explores the ideology and goals of the movement, as well as past and current tactics that the movement participants are utilizing to bring awareness to their cause. The chapter highlights numerous high-profile incidents that propelled Black Lives Matter onto the national stage, including the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland. The chapter juxtaposes Black Lives Matter against other contemporary American social movements such as Occupy Wall Street to better understand the development of an opposition movement in the U.S.

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