Browsing by Subject "Social movements"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 79

An Examination of the Impact of Information Communication Technologies on Social Movements in Latin America
(2007-02-03) Miller, Aaron
Asociacion Nacional por la Salvacion Agropecuaria: Resistencia cival ante la apertura economica en Colombia
(2004-02-14) Gutierrez Escobar, Laura Maria
The atypical environmentalist : the rhetoric of environmentalist identity and citizenship in the Texas coal plant opposition movement
(2013-12) Thatcher, Valerie Lynn; Brummett, Barry, 1951-
Many contemporary grassroots environmental campaigns do not begin in urban areas but in small towns, rural enclaves, and racially or economically disadvantaged communities. Citizens with no previous activist experience or association with the established environmental movement organize to fight industry-created degradation in their communities, such as coal-fired power plants in Texas, the focus of this dissertation. The Texas coal plant opposition movement is identified as sites of environmental justice, particularly as discriminatory practices against sparsely populated communities. The movement’s collaborative efforts are defined as a new category of counterpublic, co-counterpublic, due to the discrete organizations’ shared focus and common purpose. The concept that a growing number of environmental activists are atypical is advanced; atypical environmentalists often engage in environmental practices while rejecting traditional environmentalist language and identity to avoid stigmatization as tree-huggers, extremists, or affluent whites. Presented are rhetorical analyses of identity negotiation and modalities of public enactments of citizenship within the Texas coal plant opposition movement and a critique of plant proponent hegemonic discourses. Research focused on five sites of coal plant opposition in Texas, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and through a compilation of mediated materials. Asen’s discourse theory of citizenship was used to analyze the data for instances of rhetorical negotiation of environmentalist identity in politically conservative and in ethnically marginalized communities, their localized performances as public citizens, and the collaborative processes between established environmental groups and discrete local organizations. Texas anti-coal activists engaged in what Asen called hybrid citizenship; activists were primarily motivated toward enacted citizenship by a sense of betrayal by authorities. Issue and identity framing theories were implemented to critique rhetorical strategies used by plant proponents. In order to silence the opposition, plant supporters marginalized local anti-coal activists using what Cloud called identity frames by foil; proponents borrowed derogatory rhetorics from well-established anti-environmentalist discourse through which they self-identified positively by framing opponents as Other. The means through which proponents deflected their responsibility to the community by promoting technological solutions to pollution and deferring authority to industry executives and government agencies is analyzed within Chong and Druckman’s competing frames and frames in communication theories.
Autonomy road : the cultural politics of Chicana/o autonomous organizing in Los Angeles, California
(2011-08) Gonzalez, Pablo, active 21st century 1976-; Flores, Richard R.
Since 1994, Chicana/o artists, musicians, and activists have been in dialogue with the Zapatista indigenous movement of Chiapas, Mexico. Such a transnational bridge has resonated in a new and unique form of Chicana/o cultural politics centered on the Zapatista concept of “autonomy” and “autonomous organizing.” In Los Angeles, California, this brand of “Chicana/o urban Zapatismo,” as I refer to it in the dissertation, is symbolic of recent political and cultural organizing efforts by Chicanos to combat housing gentrification, economic restructuring, racial and ethnic cleansing, environmental pollution in low-income areas, and mass anti-immigrant hysteria. This dissertation contends that Chicana/o urban Zapatismo is a result of various local, statewide, national, and international social justice movements that embrace the global trend in urban and rural areas towards constructing locally rooted participatory and democratic methods of organizing that are “horizontal” and that mobilize against such far-reaching social forces as racism and global capitalism. Using ethnographic data and interviews collected between 2005 to 2007, this dissertation maps the emergence of Chicana/o urban Zapatismo by tracing its historical origins to the changing social, political, and economic conditions of ethnic Mexican communities in Los Angeles, California; capturing the everyday internal and external tensions between one primarily working class Chicano autonomous collective, the Eastside Café ECHOSPACE in El Sereno, California; offering the case study of the South Central Farm, a 14-acre Mexican and Latino immigrant community garden; and charting the trans-border organizing of Chicana/o urban Zapatistas surrounding the most recent Zapatista-initiated project, “the Mexican Other Campaign”. These four distinct case studies converge in Los Angeles in the creation of a unique political process referred to as “urban Zapatismo”. This ethnographic study suggests that by uncovering the everyday relationships and tensions between Chicana/o urban Zapatistas in Los Angeles and the communities they live in, researchers looking at the production of different forms of racisms and structural inequalities in urban areas may derive a greater understanding of social (re)organization and mobilization by a growing, diverse, and historically marginalized group like Chicanos in the United States.
Back to the garden : place, nostalgia, and neoagrarian environmental rhetorics of community gardening
(2018-08) Harrison, Hannah Virginia; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Spinuzzi, Clay; Henkel, Jacqueline; Houser, Heather; Schneider, Stephen A
This dissertation presents rhetorical scholarship at the intersections of social movement participation and epistemologies of place. The study explores the relationship of rhetoric and group identification by examining the rhetorical dimensions of a site that has rarely been researched in rhetoric as a field: an urban community garden project. Using qualitative data from participant observations and semi-structured interviews, the analysis describes how people in one community conceive of their engagement across a spectrum of civic participation. In doing so, this research questions the complicated and sometimes problematic assumptions that structure people’s perceptions of what constitutes political action. It considers, for example, when and how people make connections between their everyday behaviors, such as gardening, and their politics. Community gardening and other iterations of contemporary local food movements are often criticized for their romantic, nostalgic, and overstated promises to mitigate environmental degradation and perceived deterioration of local communities. These movements’ rhetorics are commonly associated with the iconic and malleable trope of the yeoman farmer, an ideograph that has long been used by stakeholders from across the political spectrum. Do participants in contemporary food sovereignty movements feel persuaded to garden because of agrarian nostalgia? Do they see their participation as part of a broader, collective, potentially political movement, such as environmentalism? The data presented in this dissertation reveals that some participants in contemporary community garden projects are not motivated by identification with the visual rhetoric of the yeoman farmer or its political associations. Among other motivators, interviewees said that they began gardening during childhood and have continued to garden as adults. In short, for gardeners in this community, agrarian ideologies and political associations are not the primary motivators of their community membership. As a result, a politically ambivalent community coalesces at this community garden site.
Beyond obesity : historical, social change approaches to improve the fitness of Americans
(2014-08) Harrell, Baker Christian; Todd, Jan
America's growing concern about fatness during the twentieth century developed in parallel with a society that made it increasingly harder to live a healthy lifestyle. Since the 1970s, sweeping political, economic, cultural, and familial changes have occurred in the United States. Many researchers argue that these changes have created an "obesogenic" environment that has contributed to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in America by favoring inactivity and the over consumption of highly-processed, calorie-dense foods and beverages. As a result, the field of public health has increasingly begun to recognize obesity as a "societal disease." In 2001, The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity categorized the number of overweight and obese Americans as reaching "nationwide epidemic proportions." Since that time, America has waged an all-out "war on obesity." Instead of a broader emphasis on health promotion, some public health researchers have suggested that this heightened focus on obesity is 1) guided by America's historically-rooted social disdain for fatness and 2) insufficient to improve the healthy lifestyles of Americans. In searching for a solution to the so-called "obesity epidemic," a growing number of researchers have begun to look to models of social change. After an introductory chapter describing the scope of the problem, this dissertation provides an historical analysis of two, relevant social change models. The first historical case study is an examination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB social marketing campaign. The second study explores the model of social movements through the history of the aerobics "boom" of 1970s America. Based on these histories, this dissertation concludes by proposing a blended approach that harnesses the strengths of both models to organize and advance America's healthy living movement.
Biketivists, hipsters, and spandex queens : bicycle politics and cultural critique in Austin
(2011-05) Ronald, Kirsten Marie; Davis, Janet M.; Engelhardt, Elizabeth
This paper uses an interdisciplinary, multiperspectival approach to analyze biketivism and various anticapitalist biketivist projects in Austin, Texas, in the hopes that a “glocalized” exploration of past and current biketivist struggles can help locate potential sites for political agency in ways that more placeless rhetorical studies cannot. Because the form and content of present-day bike politics in Austin are heavily dependent on biketivism’s historically tense articulations with capitalism, a historical analysis of biketivism as an outgrowth of Progressive Era and Appropriate Technology narratives reveals its crystallization around issues of technological, spatial, and social politics. Three case studies then apply this framework to different sites within the Austin bike community: the sales rhetoric of pro-custom bike shops, the debates over installing a Bike Boulevard in downtown Austin, and the missions and forms of several bike-related cultural organizations. Together, these perspectives on Austin’s bike community indicate that the incorporation (and sometimes outright co-optation) of biketivists’ technological and spatial demands and practices into mainstream culture may fragment the movement into physical and social agendas, but this fragmentation does not necessarily silence biketivism’s more radical social politics. At least in Austin, co-optation of biketivism may paradoxically be helping biketivists meet their goal of bringing (pedal) power to the people.
Charting contemporary Chamoru activism : anti-militarization & social movements in Guåhan
(2013-08) Naputi, Tiara Rose; Cloud, Dana L.
This project examines social movements in Guåhan (Guam) and activism within this unincorporated territory of U.S. Two assumptions guide this work. First, Guåhan is the site of rhetorical struggle over identity, indigeneity, and Americanness. Second, indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) struggles must be examined within the historical context of colonial projects, which have established a political economy of stratification. Thus, the complexities of social movement organizing might be better understood when historicized with political and economic realities. To get a more complete understanding of how indigenous social movements and activism in contemporary Guåhan are shaped by understandings of national identity, colonization, and military buildup, I analyze three sets of artifacts: (1) testimonies at United Nations from 2005-2012; (2) the texts and activities of the group We Are Guåhan and its legal action against the Department of Defense (DOD) regarding the U.S. military buildup; and (3) interviews with social movement members and organizers regarding activism in Guåhan and contending with American influence. The project argues that resistance takes place through social movement efforts centered on the issues of ancestral land, language and cultural revitalization, and self-determination for Chamorus; and these moments occur primarily through actions that both depend upon and reinforce communicative channels directed against the U.S. nation-state. This phenomenon is articulated through the rhetoric of both/neither that demonstrates complex and contradictory identities positioned as both part of the U.S. while simultaneously remaining exterior to it.
“Civilization’s supreme test" : cooperative organizing in New Orleans, 1890s-2014
(2015-03-26) Gessler, Anne McGivern; Davis, Janet M.; Adams, Paul; Dooling, Sarah; Engelhardt, Elizabeth; Thompson, Shirley
This dissertation argues that cooperatives in New Orleans have drawn on homegrown ethnic and religious communal traditions to confront the vagaries of capitalism and its fraught connections to race, class, and gender. To historically and theoretically anchor my project, I examine seven cooperatives whose shifting alliances with labor, political, and consumer activist networks sustained the movement’s commitment to fashioning a new, egalitarian society. In chapter one, I analyze how socialist Catholic Creole, Caribbean, and European cooperatives transcended racial and ethnic barriers to citywide labor organizing in the 1890s. Chapter two examines the racial and class assumptions undermining white female activists’ interwar cooperative movement. Chapter three explores multiracial, cross-class, and gender-inclusive Popular Front cooperatives to recuperate the history of the city’s integrated political organizations. Chapter four examines one family’s intergenerational cooperative career to reveal the influence of black cooperative enterprise on twentieth-century civil rights projects. Finally, chapter five studies the continuity and rupture between pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina cooperatives, as well as their vexed negotiation of neoliberal economic and political policies perpetuating systemic inequality. While my dissertation highlights New Orleans’ contributions to U.S. cooperative and social movements, it expands economic history more broadly. Using the methodological interventions of gender studies, cultural geography, oral history, and critical race theory, I contend that neighborhood context affects cooperatives’ ability to implement economic alternatives, while cooperatives’ moral economy is also inscribed on the physical landscape of their community. Studying scenes of cooperative members’ daily lives reveals an accretion of ongoing political activity that contributes to a genealogy of social protest and grassroots mobilization. My dissertation offers a new, on-the-ground perspective on how cooperatives remold communities to reflect and strengthen a larger ethical project of societal transformation in modern America.
Como las oportunidades políticas influenciaron las formas actuales de los movimientos sociales en el norte del Cauca
(2008-02-09) Moreno, Renata
Confronting the moment : remaking politics through “Ku-Klux”
(2019-09-11) Sumrall, Allen; Tulis, Jeffrey
White supremacist rhetoric has long been part of the American political tradition. However, not all white supremacist movements have adopted the same rhetorical strategy. Though the Ku Klux Klan has traditionally been treated as a single movement that has undergone periods of resurgence, attuning to the distinct discursive practices and effects of each resurgent movement reveals how discourse can shape political development. This report argues that treating the Reconstruction-era Klan as a different movement than the Klan of the early-twentieth century offers an opportunity to study the “work” that Klan discourse can do. During Reconstruction, “Ku-Klux” did more than refer to the group that invoked it. It was also a synecdoche for white paternalism, mystery, domination, secrecy, Democratic party politics, and the proper role of the federal government. “Ku-Klux” discourse served as a vehicle to preserve antebellum ideas while simultaneously shepherding in reunification. By focusing on the “work” of particular discourses, we can better understand the role of rhetoric and ideas, including white-supremacism, on the direction of American political development
Contrajuventud: ensayos sobre juventud y participación política
(2001) Venturo Schultz, Sandro
Controlling the fire : new-left governments and contentious movements in twenty-first century Latin America
(2022-02-27) Burt, Thomas; Weyland, Kurt Gerhard; Madrid, Raul; Hunter, Wendy; Brinks, Daniel; Young, Michael
How did the progressive governments of Latin America’s “pink tide” respond to the pressure of contentious social movements? Whereas the conventional wisdom depicts a “bottom-up” dynamic in which leftist presidents helped radical groups achieve long-term goals, I claim instead that left-wing rulers also employed “top-down” mechanisms to bring these organizations under control. In some cases, governments developed friendly ties with movements, helping them pursue long-sought objectives. In others, however, presidents neglected their demands and subjected groups to tactics of suppression. What explains this variation? I argue that two essential variables shape executive responses to radical mobilization: 1) the levels of compatibility between government and movement objectives; and 2) the degree of power concentration enjoyed by the executive. Based on eight months of field research about the new-left presidencies of the Kirchners in Argentina and Evo Morales in Bolivia, I demonstrate how these two factors conditioned the strategies that “pink-tide” presidents employed to handle the pressure of progressive social movements. Specifically, I argue that the interplay between these variables will produce one of the following results: a) alliance; b) cartelization; c) co-optation; and d) coercion. In considering a breadth of possible outcomes, my explanatory framework captures the varied patterns of government-movement interactions, and presents a novel take on the relationship between these actors during Latin America’s political move to the left.
Crucible of conflict : abortion rights organizing in Texas
(2016-12) Stevenson, Amanda Jean; Potter, Joseph E.; Pettit, Elizabeth; Johnson-Hanks, Jennifer; Young, Michael P; Vaz de Melo , Pedro O.S.; Cavanagh, Shannon E
This dissertation uses digital records of a massive online conversation among opponents of an abortion restriction bill in Texas during summer 2013. It describes the geography of the participants, investigates the role of emotions and social ties in shaping engagement, and describes a radical change in the way movement participants talked about their aims. Theoretically, it approaches the investigation of abortion rights organizing from the perspective of both social movement studies and the sociological and demographic study of reproductive health. Methodologically, it employs a hybrid of computational and qualitative techniques to analyze a very large dataset.
Defending Pussy Riot metonymically : the trial representations, media and social movements in Russia and the United States
(2013-05) Kolesova, Ekaterina Sergeyevna; Cloud, Dana L.
During August 2012 the issues of women's rights in Russia attracted attention of the U.S. newspapers, which was an unusual occurrence for this unprivileged region in feminist theorizing. In my thesis I explore the rhetoric around the Pussy Riot trial and verdict. I argue that international media rendered the protest metonymically, thereby reducing its political content to human rights and Cold War frames. I explore the usage of historical references in the narratives, based on these paradigms. The oppressiveness of the Russian government is constructed through Cold War rhetoric by references to Stalinism, which masks the neoliberal content of this case. The confrontation is represented as a clash of cultures based on the contrast between democracy and oppressive regimes, with Pussy Riot as martyrs for Western values and Putin as an Oriental dictator. I argue that this rhetoric has troubling implications for social activism, that democracy could be only achieved through non-violent and individualist symbolic activism which relies on the Western standards. The second part of my thesis analyzes how social movements in the U.S. and Russia interact with each other and influence each other's tactics through interaction with media representations of the Pussy Riot trial and dominant narratives regarding activism. My support for this argument comes from an analysis of the U.S. and Russian movements' responses to the Pussy Riot trial. Embracing a complex combination of political meanings, these events were significantly determined by prolific mass media coverage and mediated interaction between activist groups.
Destrúyelo todo : the women behind the Mexican feminist spring
(2023-07-31) Santillana, Melissa Analy; Beltrán, Mary C.; Straubhaar, Joseph D.; Strover, Sharon L; González de Bustamante, Celeste; Davis, Stuart
This dissertation explores Mexican feminist activism from different angles and interventions, including the role of news media, social media, and activist leadership, to provide a better understanding of how these operate in the context of a history of gender violence, public policy aimed at improving women’s lives, and political activism. Feminist activists have been organizing under the hashtags #NiUnaMenos, #NiUnaMas, and #VivasNosQueremos to protest feminicide as well as misogynistic and patriarchal criminal systems. This study focuses particularly on Mexico City as it is one of the biggest epicenters for feminist protest across Latin America. The scope of this research is centered around the social actors involved and represented in feminist activist movements in Mexico, as well as the roles they play in collective mobilization and influencing public opinion. This project relied on ethnographic methods, including participatory observations, in-depth interviews, and a qualitative content analysis to answer questions regarding the news media representation Mexican feminist protest has in national mainstream, alternative, and international media. This study also answers questions regarding feminist activists’ use of digital media technologies to contest hegemonic narratives about feminist protest, as well as the ways in which they occupy the physical space to network and create alliances. This project investigates the changing dynamics of protest culture and the socio-cultural context that leads to the use of radical protest tactics, direct action, and the emergence of radical feminist protest groups. I argue that feminist protests are a performative demand for recognition of the precarious situation women experience in Mexico.
Digital intifada : a discourse analysis of the Palestine solidarity groups in social media
(2016-08) Almahmoud, Meshaal Abdullah; Atkinson, Lucinda; Love, Bradford
This thesis investigates the discourse adopted by Palestine solidarity groups utilizing Facebook. Three pro-Palestine groups were highlighted as a case study for this thesis: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, International Solidarity Movement and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. The research questions address the methods of discourse Palestinian solidarity groups' employ, utilization of different contents and themes, level of engagement, selection of format, news resources, and impact of 2014 Gaza war. This study analyzes variations among the three groups and components influencing differentiations. The literature review highlights transformation in both individual and collective communication and social media's changing social and political structures. Research includes the usage of social media to frame social movements’ platform and social media benefits for collective action and how framing is achieved and collective identity developed. Lastly, it illuminates the trend of connective action and personalization. The discourse analysis approach was applied to investigate the set of selected Facebook posts in 2014. The results show that the three solidarity groups generally applied resource mobilization theory. Posts reporting some form of a violation contained the most correlating content. Human rights theme rose to the majority of the total number of posts. The most used contents in the posts aim for audience sympathy, responsibility and being connected, as for a shared pursuit to occur. Reporting a violation, the most used content, triggers sympathy. Responsibility is motivated by calling followers for action, which is the second most used content by all groups. Reporting news as applied to many types of top used contents, resulted in the group member's feeling connected. The total average engagement for the three groups multiplied highly during the war in Gaza, but sank considerably after termination of the war. However, the average engagement subsequent to the war remains markedly higher than pre-war levels. The patterns of posting revealed tendencies not to post only text, without attaching another format. Posts with links or photo account for a higher proportion. The majority of the three solidarity groups' news resources come from five pro-Palestinian major news websites. Yet, numerous international sources, either mainstream or independent media, were utilized as well.
La dinámica de los actores regionales y el proceso de descentralización: ¿el despertar del letargo?
(2002-11) Tanaka Gondo, Martín
El derecho a la tierra : rural and urban grassroots resistance in the Dominican Republic
(2018-10-04) Tejada, Crysbel; Arroyo, Jossianna; Sletto, Bjorn
This project investigates and collects stories of resistance from women defending their land, water and community in the Dominican Republic (DR) and puts them in conversation with each other. These movements are different from each other as one is in the community of the Los Platanitos, in the Guaricanos of Santo Domingo Norte, while the other is in Loma Miranda, a community about 20 minutes from the town of La Vega. The barrio of Los Platanitos is situated next to a cañada (ravine), which due to recent developments has now been covered by a road. Mujeres Unidas is a group of women from the community, who are organizing to protect their community from displacement, submitting “propuestas” (protests in a form of proposals) to government officials in order to improve their living condition against flooding, in addition to empowering themselves through entrepreneurship initiatives. In the community of Loma Miranda, Falcondo - a mining corporation - proposed an expansion mining project in the mountain. This mountain belongs to the foothills of the northeastern part of the cordillera central, the highest mountain range on the island of Dominican Republic. Loma Miranda is one of the most biodiverse regions of country. The mountain is also considered a “water mine” because of the many springs, basins and rivers flowing through it. In the Loma Miranda resistance movement, women are playing a significant role “behind” the scenes and on the frontlines. As the researcher the insider/outsider positionality plays a significant role in choosing to use a decolonial methodology in which alternative forms of knowledge production are used in the writing of this thesis. Part of this methodology is the transformation of silence into action by having the women speak for themselves through poetry, creative writing, first person memoirs and narratives, and sharing stories of struggle by connecting these movements through intentional gathering.
El Santo Negro en la tierra del petróleo. La fiesta de San Benito en Cabimas
(2007-02-03) Miranda, Oleski