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Throughout its brief history, photography has had a close relationship to social movements. From the Commune of Paris in 1871, the first political uprising to be captured by camera, to the 1990s anti-globalisation movement, the photographic medium has played a crucial role in political struggles. The book reflects critically on the theory of photography and the social movements themselves. It draws on a range of humanities disciplines, including photography theory and history, social movement theory, political theory, cultural history, visual culture, media studies and the history and theory of art. The book takes as a starting point 1968 - a year that witnessed an explosion of social movements worldwide and has been interpreted as a turning point for political practice and theory. The finishing point is 2001 - a signpost for international politics due to September 11 and a significant year for the movement because of the large-scale anti-capitalist protests in Genoa. Within these chronological limits, the book focuses on a selection of distinctive instances in which the photographic medium intersects with the political struggle. The three case studies are not the only pertinent examples, by any means, but they are important ones, not only historically and politically, but also iconographically. They are the student and worker uprising in France in May 1968 and two moments of the contemporary anti-capitalist movement, the indigenous Zapatista movement in Mexico and the anti-capitalist protests in Genoa in 2001.
1 Introduction to social movements: anarchism as a unique example The purpose of my life all has been focused on: helping everyone to have a spring, so that everyone’s heart will be bright, everyone will have a happy life, and everyone will have the freedom to develop in any way they want. (李尧棠 [Ba Jin])1 Today’s anarchist movements are not brand new, neither are they simple replicas or resurrections of old anarchist movements. They are reasonable – if not always predictable – descendants of previous anarchist movement iterations. While new in many of their foci
1 Politics, social movements and technology According to Resnick (1998), the politics of cyberspace can be conceptualised in three distinct ways: politics within cyberspace – involving the internal operation of cyberspace and those who are online; politics which impacts upon cyberspace – the policies and legislation which affect cyberspace; and political uses of cyberspace – how the technology is used to affect political life offline. All three aspects need to be taken into consideration for they are all intertwined and all of them impact upon environmentalists
8 Social movements and cycles of contention: theoretical appendix This book is a study of a cycle of contention, in which a gatekeeper to the political sphere interacted through framing transactions with a series of disorderly social movements. The purpose of this appendix is to define some of the key terms and concepts I’ve used, with a view to minimising unnecessary scholarly dispute. Social movements and framing processes Social movements can be defined as groups within society which combine three factors: an oppositional or reformist stance towards the
This book examines the ways in which contentious parades and protests in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland are contested by affective publics mobilised on social media. In this way, it will contribute to the extant interdisciplinary scholarship on digital citizenship and the role of digital media in contemporary social movements. This chapter contextualises the research findings presented throughout this book by exploring three key issues. First, it introduces the contentious politics framework and applies it to the Northern Irish conflict. Second, it explores
3 Social democracy and social movements from crisis to crisis George Ross Social democracy and social protest movements have been closely related since the rise of industrial society. The social democratic story began with a congeries of anti-capitalist protest movements confronting powerful enemies that eventually coalesced into the dominant reformist force in democratic industrial societies. In time, however, social democracy ‘normalised’ into a conventional political force working within the frontiers of a capitalism it doctrinally claimed to oppose
The black flag means negation, anger, outrage, mourning, beauty, hope, and the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with the earth. This book aims to destroy many of the assumptions and stereotypes about anarchism, anarchists, and anarchist movements. It introduces Mario Diani's definition of a social movement: networks of individuals and organizations, united by some shared identity, that engage in extra-institutional action with the interest of changing society. Social movements must be composed of individuals. The book provides new insights into individual participants in anarchist movements by investigating what the micro-level characteristics of contemporary anarchists are, and how these characteristics differ from those of anarchists in past movements. The anarchist movement can be interrogated from many vantage points (especially macro- and meso-analyses), in both longitudinal and cross-sectional contexts. The book explores the usefulness (or lack thereof) of social movement theories for understanding anarchist movements. It challenges the assumption that the state is a strategic location of opportunity from the perspective of radical, anti-state movements. The essential dimensions of "new social movement" (NSM) theories are discussed, with highlights on the differences between the contemporary anarchist movement and other NSMs. The book also explores ideas from major social capital theorists, and considers the value of social capital. Whereas most sociological research on anti-authoritarian diffusion and isomorphism has focused on mainstream organizations or reformist social movements, anarchist movements pose a particular challenge to the earlier findings focused on the non-anarchists.
6 Urban social movements and the making of Portuguese democracy Urban social movements and democracy Epilogue: the urban movement after November 1975 The Lisbon urban social movement did not disappear on 25 November 1975. Many residents’ commissions remained active even if the movement’s leading federations, the Inter-comissões and the CRAMO Secretariat, never regained the political influence they had enjoyed just six months earlier. As the new Provisional Government and the first elected Cabinet that followed it progressively removed many of the concessions
collaborate with the state’ ( Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers, 2008 : 50). Governance is not a static ‘thing’, but a negotiated process between politicians, customary authorities, ethnic associations, social movements, armed groups, churches, multinational corporations, the national army and international and national NGOs. These negotiation arenas are informal: ‘embedded in social relations’ ( Hagmann and Péclard, 2010 : 551). In order to operate, MSF needs to build up and maintain an extensive network to communicate with, and receive security reassurances from, relevant
‘reconfigured on the model of the market to produce entrepreneurial, upwardly mobile subjects, leveraged toward strategic and measurable goals’, in the process shifting the focus away from structural oppression and ‘defus[ing] confrontational politics of social movements’ ( Fernandes, 2017 : 3). The speaking out dimension of témoignage also aims to express anger and outrage over civilian suffering in order to mobilise shame. Research in