Browsing by Subject "Protest"

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Affecting change : death, violence and protest in Manipur, Northeastern India
(2015-05) Kshetrimayum, Jogendro Singh; Stewart, Kathleen, 1953-
This dissertation explores some of the ways in which precarity takes form in a reeling present. Many social and political analysts have described the contemporary socio-economic and political situation in the Northeastern states of India, marked by a situation of civil war for more than half-a-century, as an “impasse.” With particular focus on Manipur, one of the eight Northeastern states, this dissertation looks at some of the ways in which people live through this “impasse.” Through a series of extraordinary and ordinary scenes, brief encounters, public testimonies, biographical sketches and autobiographical accounts it speaks of the precariousness of life, relationships, rituals and cultural categories even as people suffer and respond to the ongoing “crisis” of law and order, a defining feature of the “impasse.” Inspired by the affective turn in Critical Theory, this dissertation does not see precarity as necessarily traumatizing, thereby keeping the trope of trauma at a critical distance while attending to the lives of people in a situation of low-intensity armed conflict of long duration. It does not claim to provide any final explanation of what is happening in Manipur today rather it offers an innovative way to revisit anew some of the old anthropological questions about people and places undergoing dramatic changes.
Costly participation : occurrence of hunger strikes by regime type
(2021-12-07) Smith, Katy, M.A.; Liu, Amy H.; Brownlee, Jason
Where do we see more protests? Scholars are split on whether protests occur more in democracies or autocracies. Democratic institutions both encourage and replace the need for demonstrations. Autocracies present a need to protest, but instill fear of retaliation. Some of the shortcomings in past studies on the subject include looking at only one type of protest, focusing on one measurement of protest, and selecting on the dependent variable- only studying where protests occur. To adjudicate this impasse and fill these gaps, I focus on hunger strikes, measuring both frequency and number of participants. In this paper, I introduce a new dataset of hunger strikes across Asia from 1990-2020, including countries and years where no hunger strikes are reported. Results show a positive relationship between democracy level and number of participants in hunger strikes. Difference in democracy measure highlights the mechanisms within democratic institutions that encourage protests.
Jsme plne koblih : food and politics in the Czech Republic
(2020-09-11) Heim, Tracy Lynn; Neuburger, Mary, 1966-; Patel, Raj
This report contributes to studies of food and politics in the Czech Republic by examining the context surrounding a single food product: a filled doughnut, or kobliha. Kobliha (plural koblihy) became a symbol of both Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s political campaign and a motif on signs used at protests against him. As a lens to examine modern politics in the Czech Republic, the koblihy reveal tensions around power, democracy, and the modern food system. Using anti-establishment political theories and a cultural hegemonic lens, the paper displays the importance of doughnuts in both the ANO political party and the Million Moments for Democracy (MMD) protest movement (2018-present) against its leader, Babiš.
The LIBERATOR Magazine, November 2015
(University of Texas at Austin, 2015-11) The University of Texas at Austin
(Politically) Black at Toronto Pride : queering diaspora, borders, and disruption
(2019-05-07) Davis, Khyree Dean; Gill, Lyndon Kamaal; Livermon, Xavier
On July 3, 2016, the Toronto Pride parade began its procession down Toronto streets. Before it would end, Black Lives Matter – Toronto organizers would disrupt the event with a protest. This collective of Black queer and trans organizers demanded the attention of Toronto Pride and its participants in a manner which challenges the normalization of state-presence and involvement in Pride, Toronto Pride’s own anti-Black histories, as well as myths surrounding the multiculturalism of Canada’s society and government. Black Lives Matter – Toronto’s use of the Black Lives Matter global network, its own membership’s diaspora positionalities, and its deployment of protest within a homonationalist context all work to forward a Black queer diaspora and geopolitical critique of homonormativity and anti-Blackness enacted and practiced by mainstream gay spaces, like Toronto Pride, and settler-colonial states, like Canada. Embracing theories and methods out of Black queer (diaspora) studies, geographies, and performance studies, this project reveals that Black Lives Matter – Toronto and their protest function as transnational resistance against an international project of anti-Blackness at the same time it operates in a distinct local-national context
Producing abolition : public space and protest in Seattle’s Black Lives Matter movement
(2022-05-05) Bissiri, Anthony Daniel; Sletto, Bjørn
Scholars in planning and geography have relied on Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of space to understand how urban protest is a practice through which subaltern groups contest hegemonic political structures. However, few who use Lefebvre's theories have researched the protests of U.S. social movements centered on abolitionist politics, including the immensely influential Black Lives Matter movement. In this thesis, I investigate the Black Lives Matter protests that took place during the summer of 2020 in Seattle to better understand the specific role that the production of space played in furthering the abolitionist goals of the movement. Drawing on informal interviews and personal experience, I identify the embodied actions that protesters took to produce uniquely abolitionist space. I discuss both the usefulness and limits of applying Lefebvrian theory to the case, suggesting that the social production of space in conjunction with abolitionist political thought reveals the importance of embodied actions of protest for new urban social movements resisting racial capitalism.
Radical dismissal : Stokely Carmichael and the problem of inclusion in public deliberation
(2020-08-13) Hatch, Justin Dean; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Longaker, Mark G.; Sackey, Donnie; Gilyard, Keith; Joseph, Peniel
“Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation” has two interrelated goals—first, to lay bare the rhetorical mechanisms by which those in power silence dissent, and, second, to view with greater clarity Stokely Carmichael’s rhetorical strategies and legacies. Toward those goals, I examine Carmichael’s words in the year following SNCC’s release of the slogan “Black Power,” and I look closely at the almost universally negative responses to them during the same period. While the terms—angry, hateful, demagogue, racist, etc.—that Carmichael’s critics use to dismiss him vary, they all direct attention away from his institutional critique toward his relationship to subjective norms of discourse. I open the dissertation by introducing Carmichael and relevant context and by developing the dissertation’s overarching theoretical framework. I borrow from scholars writing on “civility” to develop “civility policing” as rhetorical action that preserves unjust harmonies (Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict 154), displaces blame from oppressor to oppressed (Welch 110), and silences dissent (Lozano-Reich and Cloud 223). Chapter One finds that Carmichael’s critics shaped his image and longer legacy by amplifying a distorted version of his message. An exploration of Carmichael’s words especially within a set of letters to Lorna Smith offers a corrective. Chapter Two explores the utility of two definitions of the term “demagogue” for distinguishing anti-racist rhetoric. While critics accuse Carmichael of being a “demagogue,” his words in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America not only contradict the claim, but also return the charge. Chapter Three builds on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “dissociation of concepts” and Janice Fernheimer’s “dissociative disruption” to better understand the adaptive rhetorical strategies Carmichael used in his most famous speech given at Berkeley. I offer the term “subversive dissociation” as a charge to discover the dissociative foundations of dominant racial narratives.
“Read this and pass it on” : a history of mimeographed resistance to the Uruguayan dictatorship
(2018-06-25) Whittington, Emma Elizabeth; Twinam, Ann, 1946-
Scholars have paid scant attention to the mimeograph’s role in influencing social change, despite the fact that such media have long allowed counter-narratives a space for expression. This dual degree Master’s thesis explicitly addresses this gap in historical literature by using a case study to explore how mass duplication technologies have enabled flyers and leaflets to make serious interventions into dominant political narratives. Specifically, the case study examines how, during the 1960s and 1970s, Uruguayan leftist protestors used mimeograph machines to produce a large corpus of political propaganda that harshly criticized the country’s authoritarian rule. Not only did these missives sharply critique the country’s leadership, but they also diffused otherwise-censored news, organized increasing-illegal demonstrations, and promoted solidarity efforts that consolidated the Left into a cohesive political project.
Reflections on a Peaceful Demonstration
(Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, 1971-01) Mann, Philip A.; Iscoe, Ira
Resisting ethnic cleansing : Crimean Tatars, Crimea, and the Soviet Union, 1941-1991
(2017-10-02) Straw, Andrew Dale; Wynn, Charters, 1953-; Neuberger, Joan; Suri, Jeremi; Neuburger, Mary; Moser, Robert
“Resisting Ethnic Cleansing: Crimean Tatars Against and Within the Soviet Union, 1944-1991,” examines Stalin’s multifaceted ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Peninsula and how the region’s largest ethnic group, Crimean Tatars, created a decades-long protest movement to resist each aspect of Stalin’s policy. First, I argue that Stalin’s deportation and exile of Crimean Tatars amounted to a bureaucratic genocide: a Soviet iteration on state violence that used inefficiency, irresponsibility, confusion, and loyalty to the system to destroy the national and class “enemies” of the Soviet Union. Second, this study emphasizes how ethnic cleansing in Crimea was extraordinary in the way Soviet power transformed Crimea after the deportations. From 1944 to 1954, this transformation created a “new Russian Crimea” through policies of mass settlement, land redistribution, and renaming geographic locations and rewriting history. Third, having revealed the full extent Stalin’s project, I explore how Crimean Tatars created the largest protest movement in the postwar Soviet Union. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Crimean Tatar activists and everyday citizens established contacts with Soviet dissidents and Western human rights activists to create a transnational protest movement. Through this network, a small, repressed nation demanded specific changes from what was one of the world’s most complex state bureaucracies and framed their arguments within the international language of protest and human rights. They accomplished their main goal, and returned to Crimea as the Soviet Union collapsed. Overall, this project highlights how activists can incorporate the ideas and language of post-Nuremburg human rights into practical actions and how ordinary citizens can work simultaneously within and outside of a system to resist a repressive police state.
The rhetoric of : regulating dissent since 9/11
(2010-05) Battaglia, Adria; Cloud, Dana L.; Brummett, Barry; Cherwitz, Richard; Levinson, Sanford; Aune, James
Since the conspicuously broad and vague definition of terrorism in the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into legislation on October 26, 2001 to increase governmental power in domestic security procedures, legal doctrine and normative practices of free speech have become sites of struggle over the meaning of both terrorism and freedom of expression. In 2005, twelve cartoonists drew the Prophet Muhammad for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The subsequent reprints and republications led to boycotts, protests, and riots in over 27 countries culminating in at least 139 deaths. Now known as the Danish cartoons controversy, news and entertainment sources alike narrate a story about protecting a fundamental characteristic of American identity—free speech—in the face of a terrorist threat. In American universities, David Horowitz’s proposed legislation, the Academic Bill of Rights, targets Left academics, who, according to Horowitz, “influence, in a negative way, America’s war on terror.” In August 2008, protesters at the Republican National Convention were formally charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. In this dissertation, I explore how the rhetoric of free speech is a naturalizing and legitimating ideology employed to organize people around particular interests and mobilize them toward particular political ends. My research is guided by the question: How has the ideological terrain of the First Amendment—specifically, the right to free speech—changed since September 11, 2001, and why? I argue that rhetoricians should approach the traditional free speech narrative as part of an instrumental political act, as opposed to a universal principle. Cast as a discursive tool in a hegemonic struggle, the traditional free speech narrative offers the potential to open up spaces of protest and infuse ordinary citizens with political agency. Using the method of ideology critique, I develop and test these arguments through three case studies of free speech since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: the Danish cartoons controversy, David Horowitz’s Academic Freedom Campaign, and protests during the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Somewhere between here and there : Sharon Hayes and Catherine Opie, picturing protest
(2013-05) Rubin, Caitlin Julia; Smith, Cherise, 1969-
Both Sharon Hayes’s "In the Near Future" (2005-2009) and Catherine Opie’s photographs of assemblies and rallies (2007—) take protest as a topic of investigation. Hayes enacts solo protests in urban centers and documents her project’s iterations; Opie attends organized marches and demonstrations and photographs the gathered crowds. Yet while both projects perform or picture protest in the present-day, neither is wholly of this moment. In her staged actions, Hayes holds the signs and slogans of earlier social movements, and both she and Opie create and consider the images they capture in relation to experiences and visual records which predate them. This thesis considers the ways in which expectations and desires for present and future moments are rooted in understandings of social or political pasts, investigating the work of Hayes and Opie alongside the events of Occupy Wall Street and the histories of the movements these artists reference: ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), Queer Nation, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968. Focusing on the role of the documentary image in the creation and remembrance of historical events, the paper looks at how the longing to reinhabit a pictured past becomes incorporated within a desire to feel historical, and how fantasies of the past and future are absorbed into the charged space of present. Concentrating first on this temporal rearrangement (referred to by Hayes as an “unspooling of history”) and turning next to the reengagement and embodiment of symbolic imagery, this thesis explores how works by Hayes and Opie emphasize disappointment in the present scene while simultaneously endeavoring to establish alternative spaces of social and political possibility—both new sites and reimagined worlds of belonging.
Staging the campus anti-rape movement : representations of sexual assault and rape culture in U.S. theatre and performance
(2021-07-29) Baglereau, Laura Elizabeth; Canning, Charlotte, 1964-; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul; González-López, Gloria; Heinzelman, Susan; Rossen, Rebecca
This dissertation looks at representations of rape, its aftermath, and rape culture in performance(s) within the campus anti-rape movement in the United States. I analyze three types of performance: protests, performance art, and interactive prevention plays. I argue for the importance of studying such representations, in part, because sexual assault—and the perception of sexual assault—is, and has been, a continuing problem in U.S. culture. Throughout the dissertation my analysis not only considers how and in what ways these representations understand concepts of rape culture but also the current paradigm of rape in which they were created and performed. I draw conclusions about the ways these representations affect the national imaginary about sexual assault, rape culture, victim-survivors, and rapists. As such, this work contributes to the field of rape studies, sociology, and performance studies. By situating this dissertation among and between these fields I demonstrate how a consideration of representations of sexual assault can contribute to our understanding of rape, the sociology of sexual violence, and social movements. The introduction provides a brief overview of the anti-rape movement. I argue for a turn away from the wave metaphor to categorize different periods of the feminist movement in order to better track the dis/continuities within the anti-rape movement since the late 1960s. Chapter one examines campus anti-rape protests as performances. I use a performance studies lens to read the ways these protests represent the movement’s demands for change from university administration, federal policy, and rape culture. The next chapter focuses on performance art by individual artists and artist-survivors as acts to raise awareness as well as process their experiences with sexual assault. The third chapter analyzes interactive prevention plays for the ways they provide undergraduate students with opportunities to develop empathy for victim-survivors, rehearse bystander intervention, and practice verbally negotiating consent. I argue these prevention plays point to a shift in the anti-rape movement from a fear-based rhetoric to a pro-consent discourse.
The production of an urban revolution: tactics, police and public space in Cairo’s uprising
(2011-05) Gaber, Sherief A.; Dooling, Sarah; Getman, Julius G.
The following thesis presents a narrative of the uprisings that took place in Cairo, Egypt between 25 January, 2011 and 11 February, 2011 as they relate to notions of cities, the state and citizenship in spatial terms. I do so by looking at different series of events that took place during those 18 days of revolution: spatial tactics that protestors used against police, popular committees set up by neighborhoods to defend the streets after the withdrawal of the Egyptian police, the sudden participation of nonpolitical actors and groups, and ultimately the occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square and the production of public space and new notions of citizenship that occurred within the square during this period. These various narratives are used to argue that sovereignty is ultimately very spatially limited (ontologically, not necessarily territorially), how the "informal" city and modes of urban existence produced not just resistance to the state but were transformed into tools of provocation and insurrection, and how public space—devalorized and heavily policed by the Egyptian state—was produced through the actions of protestors occupying Tahrir Square.
Tribes, revolution, and INGOs : toward better social science measurement
(2017-05-04) Reith, Nicholas Edward; Paxton, Pamela Marie; Charrad, Mounira M; Pedahzur, Ami; Powers, Daniel; Weinreb, Alexander
This dissertation advances a call for improving measurement in the social science studies of political phenomena with three article-length stud- ies. Study 1 unearths historical, qualitative evidence of an overlooked and under-explored social group, namely tribes in the Tunisian revolution. It highlights the durability and socio-economic survival strategies of tribes despite decades of eradication strategies by sitting governments, as well as their political re-emergence and mobilization at key historical junctures. The Tunisian revolution of 2010-2011 is one such juncture, for which I pro- vide qualitative evidence of the effects of tribal mobilization on the start of the revolution. Study 2 builds upon this evidence of tribal survival and mobilization by testing, in a quantitative model of protest and violence, a measure for the Hamama tribe against baseline explanations including Islamists, Unions, Youth and other Economic, Demographic, and Social Me- dia factors. It also considers evidence for the role of momentum, parsing out the ways that protest and violent government repression can interact to fuel or suppress each other. Findings support both the early role of tribal mobilization as well as the cyclical dynamic of the dissent-repression nexus. The key to this chapter is the utilization of new measures of tribes, protest, and violence. Finally, Study 3 applies these measurement principles to an existing and widely-used measure of country memberships in International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs). In cross-national, quantitative perspective, this chapter diagnoses and corrects the problem of erroneously low or zero membership counts for new countries. These errors are most problematic in the context of Eastern Europe and have a strong likelihood of affecting statistical findings in many cross-national studies. Two com- mon threads are woven throughout all three studies. The first is the asser- tion that careful attention to measurement has the potential to substantially revise existing social science theories and findings. The second is that poor measurement of social science concepts in developing countries may hin- der understanding of a variety of phenomena in other parts of the world. Accordingly, each chapter addresses a particular omission or error in the ex- isting literature, suggesting a regionally nuanced approach including new data, new methods, or new measures.
We will not be quiet: clientelism, keystone organizations, and the dynamics of protest in indigenous Southern Mexico
(2015-12) Price, Jessica Jean; Madrid, Raul L.; Brinks, Daniel M; Dietz, Henry; Speed, Shannon
This dissertation examines how local people organize, despite poverty and ethnic discrimination, and use public protest to gain a voice in politics. The municipalities of Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, provide a vantage point to observe the forces that drive public protest in ethnically-diverse new democracies. How frequently people protest varies among residents of different counties, as does whether or not local people include ethnic rights demands in their protest repertoires. I develop a new theory about how protest networks spread at the local level to explain this variation. I theorize that political clientelism inhibits the growth of protest networks. By contrast, keystone organizations, which are organizations that have a disproportionate effect on the political environment relative to their actual abundance, facilitate protest. The growth of keystone organizations provokes changes in the local political environment that encourage local people to adopt public protest as part of their political repertoires. I argue that the partisan left and ethnic minority organizations are the most important keystone organizations for protest in ethnically-diverse new democracies. These organizations build political efficacy among poor people and ethnic minorities. Local people internalize the moral narratives that keystone organizations forward, which portray public protest as justified and appropriate, and they become more likely to protest. If these moral narratives rely on rights claims, people who internalize these narratives become more likely to demand rights. The government also encourages local people to shift their protest demands to include group rights through the implementation of ethnic rights regimes. I evaluate this theory using comparative case studies of five Mexican municipalities and a statistical analysis of protest events. I rely on an original dataset of protest events that I coded from local newspapers that covers the period surrounding each Mexican federal election from 2000 through 2012 and includes 1,103 protest events. I conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weakness of protest as an accountability mechanism.