Being Tolerant and Nationalist Sufi: A Social Movement Study of JATMAN (Jam’iyyah Ahl al-Thariqot al-Mu’tabarah an-Nahdliyyah) and Habib Luthfi

<p class="06IsiAbstrak">Sufism has long been associated with tolerance because of its theological nature that focuses on inner peace. However, this view tends to overlook that Sufi movements are often involved in politics and nationalist discourse. This study explains the social movement logic of a tarekat movement in Indonesia in promoting tolerance and nationalism. JATMAN <em>(Jam’iyyah Ahl al-Thariqot al-Mu’tabarah an-Nahdliyyah)</em> is well-known as a Sufi group currently led by Habib Luthfi. This movement calls to <em>Bela Negara</em> (defending Indonesia) by the jargon <em>‘NKRI Harga Mati’</em> (the doctrine of love for the homeland) and <em>Handarbeni</em> (being proud to locality). This research employs multiple analysis methods to examine the factors that underpin the emergence of this movement. I analyzed Habib Luthfi bin Yahya’s lectures (Rais 'Amm JATMAN) from 2020-2021, scattered on several online media such as YouTube and Instagram. Besides, I conducted interviews with several kiai in <em>Idarah 'Aliyah</em> (the central administrator of JATMAN) and I analyzed dozens of events organized by JATMAN in online media. Drawing on social movement theory, I argue that various motivations are overshadowed by the emergence of JATMAN within nationalism. This movement may not only be driven by piety and theological doctrine (Sufism) but also by social movement logics such as political opportunity structure, resource mobilization, and cultural framing.</p>

The Political Opportunity Structure and the Evolution of the Organizational Base of Peasants’ and Farmers’ Protest Activity in Poland in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

The main research question of this article is as follows: What was the impact on the protest potential of peasants and farmers in the analyzed periods of the relations between the structure of political opportunity and the way these social groups were organized? In the author’s opinion, the impact was indirect, although it remodelled the organizational aspects of how the peasant and farmer movement functioned: from organizations in the form of political parties, through trade unions in the period of state socialism, up to producers’ organizations in contemporary Poland. It must be added, however, that the key factor responsible for these changes in the organizational background of the peasantry was changes within those social groups themselves: firstly, the empowerment of the peasantry in the inter-war period, the professionalization of farmers during state socialism, and the marketization of their activity after 1989.

Environmental Movements in North-East India: Political Opportunity Structure and Movement Success

Since the last two decades, the North-East region of India witnessed many environmental movements with similar goals and forms of mobilisation that challenged government policies and actions. Many of them achieved their goals or objectives whereas others failed. This study is an attempt to understand the factors that determined the success and failure of those movements and protests by employing rich details of four case studies from the North-East to make a systematic comparison. This study uses political opportunity structure as a theoretical construct to understand relative success and failure of environmental movements in the North-East.

The Politics of Eco-violence: Why Is Conflict Escalating in Nigeria’s Middle Belt?

Competition for natural resources has intensified in recent years between nomadic Fulani herders and sedentary farmers in Nigeria's Middle Belt. What were initially sporadic conflicts over cropland and water resources have transformed into daily occurrences of mass violence. While extant research centres on the root causes of such conflicts, the reasons for their escalation remain insufficiently understood. This article examines how political developments have contributed to the escalation of conflicts in the region. Using Homer-Dixon's model, the findings show that changes in Nigeria's 'political opportunity structure' since 2014 were catalysts for escalating the conflicts. The consequences were the unvarnished adoption of nepotistic domestic policies and alliances between elites and militia members, which escalated the violent conflicts. It advocates the devolution of natural resource and security governance to prevent leaders from leveraging shifts in political opportunity structures to favour a specific demographic group.

Money matters: The impact of gender quotas on campaign spending for women candidates

Despite concerns that women candidates are hampered by gender gaps in campaign financing, few scholars have examined how gender quotas impact women candidates’ access to campaign funds. We examine the effect of a party-based gender quota on women candidates’ financing and electoral success in Ireland. Under the gender quota, the number of women candidates increased and parties acted strategically to provide women challengers with increased financial support. However, women challengers spent less candidate funds than men challengers and were less likely to have prior officeholding experiences associated with fundraising. Women challengers’ disadvantage is concerning because candidate expenditures are associated with winning votes. Our findings show that the effectiveness of a gender quota is partly determined by how the quota interacts with the campaign finance system and the political opportunity structure.

The Politics of Calendars: State Appropriations of the Contested Iranian Past

This paper seeks to investigate how commemorative practices, rituals, and holidays are invented, deployed, and recast for political and ideological purposes, to reinforce and sustain a particular narrative of national identity. It argues that the choice of particular moments of a country’s past to be commemorated in calendars as national holidays and the way in which the collective past is preserved and remembered both reflect and articulate a country’s vision of its present essence, of who its people are. Recognizing the link between the collective memory and national identity, the Iranian states before and after the 1979 revolution made a special effort to articulate their narrative of the past by commemorating a particular set of holidays and rituals. Viewing the calendar as a political artifact, this paper compares changes in the Iranian national calendars in the Pahlavi era (1925–1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979–2018). It examines the inclusion of new religious holidays and the removal of national days associated with the monarchy as well as the assignment of new meanings and celebratory practices to the old ones as the signifiers of a political maneuver to articulate a new shared public memory and narrative of identity since the 1979 revolution. It then examines two nationwide celebrations before and after the 1979 revolution, representing two state-sponsored, competing narratives of Iranian identity: firstly, the 2500-year celebration of the Persian Empire in 1953, and, secondly, the Ashura commemoration, a religious gathering dedicated to the remembrance of Shia Imams. These commemorations provided the state a unique political opportunity to present its own appraisal of the past and, in turn, national identity.

Linguistic ambivalence amidst suburban diversity: LGBTQ2S municipal ‘social inclusions’ on Vancouver’s periphery

Social inclusion frameworks to enhance ‘diversity’ inform late neoliberal municipal governance in North American metropolitan areas, especially in central cities, but suburban LGBTQ2S constituencies are neglected by researchers. This paper, therefore, uses linguistic discourse and content analysis of an LGBTQ2S-inclusion archive of municipal public-facing communication in the Canadian peripheral municipalities of Burnaby, New Westminster, and Surrey, in the Vancouver city-region to trace the micro-patterns of linguistic ambivalence shaping suburban sexual citizenship. It demonstrates municipal variance in vernacular vocabularies of LGBTQ2S social inclusion that signals equivocation within divergent local linguistic political opportunity structures for suburban sexual and gender minorities. It concludes with a typological narration that details varied gradations of linguistic obfuscation, revealing patterns of civic ambivalence towards LGBTQ2S social inclusion amidst suburban diversity. Across a shared regional geography, the paper shows that LGBTQ2S populations are infrequently referenced relative to other marginalized social groups and that their presence in social inclusion frameworks is dictated by the extent to which they align with civic priorities, particularly festivalization and marketization, but also safety, welcoming newcomers, integrating seniors, and anti-discrimination initiatives.

Analysing how crises shape mass and elite preferences and behaviour in the European Union

The COVID-19 pandemic proved the latest stress test for the European Union, after Brexit, the Eurozone crisis and the large influx of refugees. This highly relevant and well-timed special issue examines how past crises have left an imprint on the opinions and behaviour of ordinary citizens and political elites regarding the European Union. This Forum article reviews the special issue contributions by spelling out which lessons we can learn from each of them and which paths for future research they have opened up. In terms of a path forward, I argue that scholars ought to pay more attention to (a) the role of political elites, (b) political opportunity structures, and (c) heterogeneity both between and within member states.

Why highways remake hierarchies

This chapter lays out the volume’s documentation of many of the uneven – and unexpected – experiences of mobility transformation as it unfolds as a developmental imperative across vast and complex landscapes of South Asia. Whether journeys become shorter, faster, more treacherous, cheaper, or more costly, questions about ownership, management, access to ‘public goods’, responsibility, and other critical concerns consistently take new shape when expressed through the coming of a new road or transportation network. We posit that roads are fragile political achievements. In response to the sweeping state promises about new mobilities and modernization that highways are purported to deliver, the stories comprising this volume, and outlined in this chapter, speak from other perspectives, such as how political opportunity is routinely met with a measure of public scepticism and at times efficacious protest.

The Politics of Eco-violence: Why Is Conflict Escalating in Nigeria’s Middle Belt?

Competition for natural resources has intensified in recent years between nomadic Fulani herders and sedentary farmers in Nigeria's Middle Belt. What were initially sporadic conflicts over cropland and water have transformed into daily occurrences of mass violence. While extant research focuses on the root causes of such conflicts, the reasons for their escalation remain insufficiently understood. Based on fieldwork conducted during 2018-2019, this article examines how political developments have contributed to the escalation of conflict in the region. Using Homer-Dixon's theory of civil strife as a conceptual framework, the findings show that changes in the 'political opportunity structure' in Nigeria since 2014 were a catalyst for escalating the conflicts. These changes resulted from the 2014 insecurity in Nigeria caused by terrorist acts committed by non-state actors and the outcomes of the 2015 election. The consequences were the unvarnished adoption of nepotistic domestic policies and alliances between elites and militia members.