Taking Back Teaching: The Professionalization Work of Teacher Activist Organizations

We contribute to the teacher activism literature an understanding of how activist organizations support professionalization processes. We examine how teachers’ involvement in a local activist organization counteracts the de-professionalizing reforms of the standards and accountability movement and fosters the professionalization of teaching. Our findings suggest that the structures of the activist organization provide opportunities for teachers to create and maintain collective knowledge for curricula and practice, sustain their professional commitments to social justice, and build confidence that promotes voice in educational decision-making. We discuss implications for teacher professionalization and identify the need for future studies on the role of teacher activist organizations on teachers, teaching, and the profession.

The Relational Dynamics of Becoming Popular Feminist Subjects: The World March of Women and Rural/Peasant Women’s Organizing in Brazil in the 2000s

The constitution and consolidation of rural and peasant women as popular feminist subjects in Brazil are the result not only of processes internal to these constituencies but also of relational dynamics involving cross-class and cross-movement popular activist organizations. Since the end of the 1990s, organizations and activists identifying with the World March of Women in western Rio Grande do Norte and at the national scale have consciously engaged with rural and peasant women and assisted them in becoming and consolidating themselves as popular feminist subjects. Relational dynamics have also been important in the (unfinished) process of transforming, extending, and deepening the dual meaning of “popular feminism” in Brazil. A constituição e consolidação das mulheres rurais e camponesas como sujeitos feministas populares no Brasil são o resultado não apenas de processos internos desses grupos, mas também das dinâmicas relacionais que envolvem organizações ativistas populares de classes e movimentos. Desde o final da década de 1990, organizações e ativistas que se identificam com a Marcha Mundial das Mulheres da região Oeste do Rio Grande do Norte e em escala nacional têm se engajado conscientemente com as mulheres rurais e camponesas, ajudando as mesmas a se tornarem e consolidarem como sujeitos feministas populares. As dinâmicas relacionais têm sido importantes também no processo (incompleto) de transformação, extensão e aprofundamento do duplo significado de “feminismo popular” no Brasil.

Ontologies of Resistance

This chapter explores the conflicts that arose between Ferguson protesters and local and national activist organizations, as well as the misrecognitions concerning relationships to, and alliances with, the Black Lives Matter organization and subsequent movements. These contestations of meaning, belonging, and territory, as well as concerns regarding who may speak for whom, reveal the multivalent and fluid conditions and constructions of blackness and gender. The Black diasporic subject is fundamentally shaped by shared loss, displacement, trauma, and forms of political death. However, the ways individuals and groups generatively (and differently) practice sociality and antagonize beliefs about “civil society” are creative acts that draw from particularized experiences across space and time. In this way, blackness is “the irreparable disturbance of ontology's time and space.” The resistance that emerged in Ferguson interrogated the boundaries of Black intelligibility and exposed the tensions and contradictions that simultaneously exist within the ontological totality of Black struggle. The chapter looks at some of those tensions in order to foreground the complexity and contradictions of an ontological blackness.

Mightier than the Sword

This chapter examines how, as activist organizations pressure firms to act in more socially responsible ways, the activists influence managers’ perceptions of their firms’ existing practices. We conduct two studies to explain how, using rhetoric, activists attempt to convince managers that their firms’ practices constitute inappropriate behaviors. The first study discerns the types and functions of the rhetorical strategies used by activists, and the second study discerns the sequence, interplay, and implications of these strategies when used during activists’ campaigns in industries. Our findings indicate that activists enact three rhetorical strategies through an intricate process, the essence of which involves using managers’ own cognitive structures to problematize their firms’ practices. Overall, by specifying activists’ methods for facilitating managerial perception change, we enrich interdisciplinary research on activism in industries.

Humanitarian and Human Rights Surveillance: The Challenge to Border Surveillance and Invisibility?

The European border regime has traditionally rested on the hidden surveillance activities of border authorities, which have contributed to human rights violations (including “push-back” and “left-to-die” practices) and a rising migrant death toll. Recently a number of humanitarian and activist organizations, including Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Sea-Watch, and WatchTheMed, have organized to aid migrants in distress at sea using surveillance technologies, ranging from drones to GPS. By doing so, they presented a challenge to the European border surveillance regime. In dialogue with the concept of countersurveillance, this paper introduces the concepts of humanitarian surveillance and human rights surveillance and deploys them to examine and categorize the activities of MOAS, MSF, Sea-Watch, and WatchTheMed. Humanitarian surveillance narrowly focuses on aiding victims of surveillance without problematizing the logic and hierarchies of surveillance, while human rights surveillance operates as a form of countersurveillance; it aims to protect and advance the human rights of victims of surveillance and expose human rights violations committed by authorities through opposing the hierarchies of surveillance. The paper shows how civilian groups incorporate elements of humanitarian and human rights surveillance in their activities at varying levels and discusses the extent to which they challenge the European border surveillance regime.

“We Really Have to Hit Them Where It Hurts”: Analyzing Activists’ Corporate Campaigns

Despite a surge in activism efforts directed at corporations, extant research largely overlooks how activist organizations craft and implement their campaigns. To address this gap, this article applies issues management to examine the process used by activist organizations to pressure target corporations into altering practices and policies that they perceive to be problematic. Using a qualitative approach, this study draws from interviews with 21 activist practitioners, which are supplemented by organizational documents and news articles. This study introduces the Corporate Pressure Process Model, which depicts and describes the various phases of activists’ corporate campaigns, including how these groups determine what threat is most appropriate and select coordinating tactics. Based on the findings, this article also outlines implications for activist organizations and their target corporations.