Political Mobilization Strategies in Taiwan's Sunflower Student Movement on March 18, 2014

Taiwan's Sunflower Student Movement on March 18, 2014 has been characterized as a social movement with its sophisticated integration of social and mobile media into mobilizing Taiwanese society through participant recruitment and resource mobilization domestically and globally. Ample research has contributed the roles of these emerging media platforms as one of the main reasons for its success. This study was based on resource mobilization theory (RMT) to examine the roles of new communication technologies on mobilizing resources. This chapter focuses on the resource mobilization strategies by activists and organizations of the 318 Sunflower Student Movement. A large-scale text mining study was developed to examine how cross-national English media have described this social movement in Taiwan. Results and implications were discussed.

Women of ’68 and Their Experiences of Bargaining With Patriarchy

The main objective of this article is to elaborate on the narratives of women who were in leading positions in the ’68 student movement in Turkey and to grasp their experiences and strategies of bargaining with patriarchy. The analysis is based on six selected in-depth interviews I conducted in 2004 with prominent women figures of the movement. By using the theoretical framework offered by the works of Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayşe Durakbaşa, I make a comparison between the women of ’68 and the previous generation, namely the “daughters of the Republic”, in terms of their values, norms and relational patterns. Furthermore, I exhibit the continuities and discontinuities in strategies of bargaining with patriarchy between these two generations of women. Finally, I evaluate the change they triggered in the construction of womanhood and their impact on the next generations of women.

“Turkey Will Be a Second France, Unless Our Demands Are Satisfied”: The Turkish Student Movement in the Long 1960s

The transnational phenomenon that was “1968” was felt keenly around the globe with direct and virtually immediate impact. Turkey stands as a clear example, wherein the development and dynamism of the “Western” student movement had an immediate impact and shaped developments unfolding in Turkey at the time. As elsewhere in the world, “1968” did not hit Turkey out of thin air. The “1968 generation,” and the student movement in general, was mainly Kemalist, one of the significant characteristics that differentiated it from others. It first emerged as a student movement focused on reform within the university system, but toward the end of the 1960s, it evolved into a revolutionary movement, eventually deploying revolutionary violence from 1971–72.

University Reform of 1918: Establishment of the Continental Network of Scientific, Educational and Student Community in Latin America

The transformation of the university system in Latin America, initiated by the reform in Argentina in 1918, marked the beginning of a period of democratization and modernization of society. The university reform was the result of a stubborn and dramatic struggle of students against the clerical-aristocratic order in the universities of Argentina. Ideologically, the movement was based on radical anti-clericalism, on the ideas of the conflict of generations, the special role of the young, on the Kulturtraegerism, on the concept of Arielism — a term coined by Enrique Rodo. The student movement, supported by progressive intellectuals and left-wing political parties, almost from the point of its inception, created a network of contacts and solidarity with other countries of the continent, which showed its high efficiency in disseminating ideas, political programs, and forms of struggle. This ability of the intellectual movements to create cross-border networks of influence and activism is relevant today and not only in Latin America. Thanks to this, the reform spread throughout the continent with various and sometimes contrary results, somewhere very successfully, and somewhere met with fierce resistance. The further ideological evolution of the movement and its leaders led to the emergence of new ideological and political currents, such as revolutionary nationalism, which became the dominant political trend in Latin America in the 20th century world. The spread of revolutionary nationalism, the main ideologist of which was the student leader in Peru, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, relied on the same network of youth structures that led to the spread of the movement for university reform. The reform movement also resulted in the emergence of powerful left-wing movements of the intellectuals, such as the Latin American Union, closely associated not only with the student movement, but also with the labor movement. University reform was not only a political, but also a cultural phenomenon that marked a profound change in Latin American society, which chose the path of modernization of all spheres of life. This work is devoted to the study of this process.

Sullied: The Albanian Student Movement of December 1990

The study analyzes the beginning of the Albanian student movement of December 1990 from a historical–sociological and comparative perspective. This historical interpretation of various sources (newspaper articles, activists’ memoirs, interviews, and archival documents) draws its theoretical arguments from social movement studies, student activism, and the sociology of higher education. The study offers a complex explanation of the role of the movement during the country’s democratic transition by also looking at similar cases. Considerations of the broader international and local implications, the role of the university, the academic staff, and the student organization all are accounted for. After tracing the repertoires of strategies and content of the movement to the Albanian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the study argues that student activism benefitted from the structural opportunities provided by changes introduced in higher education during the historical sequence of late Socialism.

Contesting and reshaping learning spaces: Students’ activism in South Africa

Universities in South Africa are a microcosm of society and thus offer grounds for criticism. In 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall student movement emerged, which demanded decolonization. This movement became one of the most important social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. While the student movement was formed to protest against the university, students created a space for transformative learning within the frame of the university. This article examines the ambivalence of the university: on the one hand, as a target of criticism and as a space for experimentation and reflection on society and societal change; and, on the other hand, as a space for emerging collective processes of transformative learning which created alternative knowledge, for instance in respect of decolonization and thus also discrimination, racism and marginalization.