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The central claim of this work is that the diverse and fast-growing environmental justice movement in the United States embodies the newly emerging concepts and practices of critical pluralism, so this chapter turns to the environmental movement for examples of this in practice. Specifically, it looks at the new network structures and processes that have been adopted by grassroots environmental movements, which make connections, and create solidarity out of an understanding and respect for both differences and similarities, and work from a variety of places with a wide array of tactics. The chapter begins by exploring the value of difference (plurality) in the movement, and continues by examining the bases of the environmental justice movement in a number of pre-existing social and political networks, looking at how these networks link issues and establish alliances among diverse groups, how they form in order to deal with environmental issues of varying dimensions, and how they are structured organizationally. The author also examines some of the reasons why this form of organizing is a tactical strength, as it confronts (mirrors and maps) itself onto changing practices in capital movement and political oversight. Finally, in an initial attempt to evaluate the network form, some of the difficulties in, and criticisms of, networking as a social-movement strategy are explored.

This chapter deliberates on the feminization of poverty to illustrate diverging feminist agendas and organizing processes as the first local Chinese women's groups reinforce an enduring organizational base for women's activism in Hong Kong. Women activists confront a difficult dilemma of balance – as popular education, political mobilization, and poor and working-class women's empowerment are being replaced by gender policy assessment, project execution, and social services delivery – and often have to compromise between their feminist ideals and the realities and demands of their socio-political environment. Feminism as a collective action frame is incorporated into organizations, networks, and other sorts of strategic mobilizing initiatives. Frames do not do anything by themselves; they allow different political and social groupings to engage in debate and negotiation. In this way, women activists can embrace diverse feminist organizational forms, rhetoric, and strategies and, at the same time, develop shared understandings and aspirations of changing prevailing gender structures and advancing women's empowerment.

This chapter describes various social factors in the lives of Haitian women that intersect with the experience of depression. It presents an overview of socio-political influences on the health and well-being of Haitian women, as well as an examination of various health-related beliefs and practices that shape the ways in which their physical and emotional problems are understood. The chapter traces the history of Haitian culture with a particular emphasis on the roles of women in social and political movements. Gender emerges as a complex and evolving variable in the lives of Haitians, especially within the context of women's participation in grassroots organizations and the movement toward democratization. Besides tracing the history and impact of social movements in Haiti, the chapter also uses the Multicultural Competency Model to demonstrate the association between culture and depression for Haitian women.

This chapter presents an overview of social work in Latin America. It covers the evolution of social work education and practice, and the scope of social work and labor realities for social workers. Latin America faces many of the same socioeconomic concerns of other countries of the Global South, including an aging population, an ever-growing population of young people, struggles with economic globalization and the fading hopes of global prosperity, the loss of jobs, the depletion of natural resources, issues of human rights, and of course poverty. Within this landscape, Latin American social workers try to create innovative approaches through grassroots movements to address the sociopolitical and economic realities of the marginalized, the impact of neoliberal policies on vulnerable sectors of society, and the social injustice that they create.

This book examines the tensions between cultural authority and the so-called ‘cultures of anyone’ that have reemerged time and again during Spain's economic crisis of 2008. It considers how these cultures of anyone, which arose mostly around grassroots social movements and in collaborative spaces fostered by digital technology, promote processes of empowerment and collaborative learning and create ‘collective intelligence’. The book first discusses the emergence of a new layer of powerful disciplines and institutions that has been deposited over Spain's long tradition of cultural authoritarianism. It then explores some of the disagreements and alternatives that confronted the model of cultural authority during the neoliberal crisis. Drawing on feminist theories of social reproduction, it analyzes aspects of ‘cultural autonomy’ relative to knowledge monopolies and the competitive mechanisms of neoliberalism. Finally, it describes the difficulties in creating stable cultural institutions that can function democratically.

This chapter examines the emergence of everyday state-formation movements. With the peace process discredited through the abuse of the power imbalance between the conflict parties, pockets of local agency in Palestine have shifted their emancipatory struggle from peace towards creating the conditions for a viable and inclusionary state. The chapter then introduces and analyses the concept of everyday state formation as the capacity — and limitations — of non-violent grassroots movements to delineate the political space of an emerging state by pushing back external coercive power and the governmentality of pacification. Everyday state formation illustrates the internal tensions of contemporary statebuilding: without reconciliation across multiple scales — local to global — the complex interactions of structural, governmental, and subaltern power will tend to build societal fragility into emerging state structures.

This Chapter examines the processes around state and society, traces the role of social networks outside the state realm, and conceptualizes these processes as the complementarity of state and society, where strong ideational linkages led to the formation of an ‘epistemic network’. These processes played a significant role in the final phase of the enactment of the Right to Information Act. The period covered in this chapter coincides with the latter half of the second phase. This chapter establishes that mainstream politics converged with the emerging socio-political processes led by the elite within the social movement, judiciary, the press, bureaucracy, and the academia. This convergence needs to be viewed as one of state–society synergy, where the collective ‘epistemic push’ of actors from both within the state and society ‘tips over’ the institution from ‘secrecy’ to ‘openness’.

In order to educate the new membership and to boost the spirits of the people who had been in the struggle for years, Sue Lorenzi was invited to write a history of the grassroots movement. She read the essay, “The Some People of that Place,” at the elections kickoff meeting. The long-time Movement members and the professionals brought in by coalition-building were profoundly moved and appreciative. Not long after that Sue and Henry spent nearly two months in the North, the most time away from Mississippi since they arrived. Sue wrote of the experience of returning to Mississippi and feeling the painful impact of racism again. What life was like in the Lorenzis’ Balance Due house is described.

This chapter documents the ways in which the Brazilian focus on community mobilization and empowerment has succeeded in implementing timely and effective HIV prevention programs in key affected communities such as sex workers and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. Further, the chapter analyzes the ways in which this strategy made it possible to address many of the structural drivers of HIV in these communities. Of great importance, however, it also highlights the extent to which addressing these structural forces depended on a favorable political context capable of supporting and nurturing such approaches. The subsequent “shift” of focus in terms of HIV prevention in Brazil is then examined to show how the broader political ecology of the country unfavorably changed what had been an effective initial response to ending AIDS in Brazil.

Several Hawaiian historians have marked the 1970s as the beginning of a Hawaiian renaissance. However, many of the Hawaiian strategies of protests in the 1970s were born out of a 1960s environmental group called Save Our Surf (SOS). Organized by a Marxist-trained local-haole surfer named John Kelly and run by young local surfers, SOS was a grassroots movement that halted most coastal development and dredging projects proposed in Hawaii between 1960 and 1990. This chapter first expounds on the influence of SOS on the formation of a Hawaiian renaissance. It then analyzes two other prominent groups formed in the mid-1970s: the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built a Hawaiian double-hulled voyaging canoe called Hōkūle'a; and the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana, which protested the U.S. military bombings on the island of Kaho'olawe. The chapter not only examines how Hawaiian surfers contributed to, and were shaped by, the Hawaiian renaissance, but also analyzes connections between ka po'ina nalu (the surf zone) and Hawaiian resistance in the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter examines the state of computational propaganda in Ukraine, focusing on two major dimensions: Ukraine’s response to the challenges of external information attacks, and the use of computational propaganda in internal political communication. Based on interviews with Ukrainian media experts, academics, industry insiders, and bot developers, the chapter explores the scale of the issue and identifies the most common tactics, instruments, and approaches for the deployment of political bots online. The cases described illustrate the misconceptions about fake accounts, paid online commentators, and automated scripts, as well as the threats of malicious online activities. First, we explain how bots operate in the internal political and media environment of the country and provide examples of typical campaigns. Second, we analyze the case of the MH17 tragedy as an illustrative example of Russia’s purposeful disinformation campaign against Ukraine, which has a distinctive social media component. Finally, responses to computational propaganda are scrutinized, including alleged governmental attacks on Ukrainian journalists, which reveal that civil society and grassroots movements have great potential to stand up to the perils of computational propaganda.

Are bots active in Canada? Yes. Are they influential? Maybe. Using a combination of quantitative social media analysis, content analysis of news articles, and qualitative interviews, we study the use of political bots in Canada. We identify four kinds of bots. Amplifiers game digital systems to promote a message or channel. Dampeners suppress and remove information online. Alongside these problematic bots, we also find a number of benign bots that help journalists, civil society, and governments. These bots include transparency bots that disclose information to the public and servant bots that help maintain services and infrastructures. Even though bots might not yet be influential in Canada, improved media literacy and increased public discussion of the pitfalls of social media are required.