Search Results

Mapping the Movement, Situating the Study

Srila Roy

in Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity in India's Naxalbari Movement

This chapter introduces the reader to the Naxalite movement, its history and historiography, and outlines the ethnographic context on which the book draws. It maps the movement particularly in terms ... More

This chapter introduces the reader to the Naxalite movement, its history and historiography, and outlines the ethnographic context on which the book draws. It maps the movement particularly in terms of its gendered and classed economies, and thereby locates it in a longer tradition of communist and peasant struggles in Bengal and accompanied anxieties around sexuality, gender, class, and violence. This discussion also outlines the conceptual gaps in the feminist theorization of resistant violence, and calls for a stronger understanding of everyday violence as being continuous with the violence of political conflict. The last part of this chapter outlines the ethnographic context on which the book draws, offering some reflections on the kinds of issues thrown up in the course of fieldwork conducted in Kolkata.Less

Toward a Critical Internationalism: Nation, Revolt, and Performance in I Hotel

in Across Meridians: History and Figuration in Karen Tei Yamashita's Transnational Novels

This chapter examines the issue of critical internationalism in Karen Tei Yamashita's novel I Hotel. It suggests that this novel represents Yamashita's re-visioning of the Asian American social ... More

This chapter examines the issue of critical internationalism in Karen Tei Yamashita's novel I Hotel. It suggests that this novel represents Yamashita's re-visioning of the Asian American social movement of the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of critical internationalism and her attempt to negotiate the temporal gap between movement politics and current discourses on transnationality in Asian American cultural studies. The chapter also discusses the shift in Yamashita's representational focus in this novel and suggests that the architectonics of her transnational imagination is more complex than it is often made to seem.Less

The Felt Politics of Charity: Serving “The Ambassadors of God” and Saving “The Sinking Classes”

Rebecca Anne Allahyari

in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements

This chapter describes the author's fieldwork among volunteers in the two largest charitable organizations dedicated to feeding the poor in Sacramento, California. At Loaves & Fishes, a Catholic ... More

This chapter describes the author's fieldwork among volunteers in the two largest charitable organizations dedicated to feeding the poor in Sacramento, California. At Loaves & Fishes, a Catholic Worker charity, the staff and “routine volunteers” (mostly middle class and predominantly white) strove to treat the poor with more compassion and love, while at The Salvation Army, kitchen staff and the “drafted volunteers” (mostly working class and male, many of color, and many formerly homeless) labored alike to be more responsible toward others. The felt politics of caring at Loaves & Fishes and The Salvation Army spanned three mutually constitutive horizons: the moral selving of individuals, the emotion cultures of the organizations, and the local politics of charity and social change. The analysis here focuses on the latter two in order to turn our attention most directly to social movement politics.Less

Student Politics

Donatella della Porta, Lorenzo Cini, and César Guzmán-Concha

in Contesting Higher Education: Student Movements against Neoliberal Universities

This chapter examines the different dimensions of student politics and their differences in the four cases. Student organizations differ significantly across countries. Previous research has singled ... More

This chapter examines the different dimensions of student politics and their differences in the four cases. Student organizations differ significantly across countries. Previous research has singled out different models of student representation in decision-making instances, as well as the different traditions of activism and politicization of the student body. The chapter argues that these differences must be considered to understand the capacity of students to become significant and/or influential political actors — even if they rarely exert an influence in a continuous manner. The four cases studied in this book cover four configurations that result from the combinations of (fragmented or coordinated) movement politics and (more or less institutionalized) union politics. Besides providing an historical narrative of student activism in the four regions, the chapter explains how these four configurations have shaped the options for students to generalize a platform of demands and mobilize in each region.Less

Social Movements, Hegemony, and the State

Susan C. Stokes

in Cultures in Conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru

This chapter returns to the theoretical issues taken up at the outset of the study: the successes and limitations of clientelism and state-sponsored systems of lower-class interest representation, ... More

This chapter returns to the theoretical issues taken up at the outset of the study: the successes and limitations of clientelism and state-sponsored systems of lower-class interest representation, and the usefulness of the concept of hegemony or intellectual domination for understanding the suppression of a movement politics in some periods and its emergence in others. The military government was unsuccessful in remaking the social bases of state power, and was unable to remake the urban poor into a pillar of support. Instead, the urban poor bifurcated into relatively passive state clients on the one hand and unruly makers of social movements on the other.Less

Labour and equality II: Power to the people

Eunice Goes

in The Labour Party under Ed Miliband: Trying but failing to renew social democracy

Ed Miliband’s egalitarian agenda went beyond considerations about distributive justice. Whilst he believed that redistribution of wealth was an important tool to reduce inequalities he was equally ... More

Ed Miliband’s egalitarian agenda went beyond considerations about distributive justice. Whilst he believed that redistribution of wealth was an important tool to reduce inequalities he was equally exercised by what he defined as ‘inequalities of power’. This chapter examines Miliband’s ‘power to the people’ agenda which had four main strands: devolution of power to local authorities; a reform of public services based on relational state ideas; the promotion of movement politics and reforms to representative institutions. In order to do so, the chapter maps the ideas that shaped Miliband’s agenda and explains how they were adopted by the party. This agenda was identified as the ‘third leg of Milibandism’ but as result of the different political and institutional constraints the Labour leader encountered it delivered far less than it was initially intended.Less

Clients and Radicals: Political Culture in Independencia

Susan C. Stokes

in Cultures in Conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru

This chapter provides a line-grained analysis of the political action and worldviews of Independencia's inhabitants, revealing a bifurcated local political culture reflecting the shift to a movement ... More

This chapter provides a line-grained analysis of the political action and worldviews of Independencia's inhabitants, revealing a bifurcated local political culture reflecting the shift to a movement politics along with the survival of clientelism. Decades of clientelist ties between the state and the poor during the period of the oligarchic state, the new ethic of participation of the Velasco era, and the reproduction of both clientelism and a movement politics with the revival of civilian government all encouraged a complex political culture among the urban poor. This culture exhibited two distinct and conflicting patterns of belief and action, labeled clientelism and radicalism.Less

Introduction

in Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics

This book investigates the conflicts and contradictions in the practices of advocacy organizations as they fight for social and economic justice in the new millennium, when waning legal exclusions ... More

This book investigates the conflicts and contradictions in the practices of advocacy organizations as they fight for social and economic justice in the new millennium, when waning legal exclusions coincide with heightened social, political, and economic inequalities within the populations they represent. It also systematically examines the issues and strategies of advocacy organizations that speak for marginalized populations in American politics. The book brings together normative political theory and empirical social science research methods to explore representation in American interest group and social movement politics. Advocacy organizations are much more active on policy issues affecting a majority of their constituents than they are on issues that affect subgroups within their constituencies. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in the book is given.Less

Translating Theory into Practice: Urban Planning at UCLA

Edward W. Soja

in Seeking Spatial Justice

This chapter discusses the role of the University of California in the Los Angeles Urban Planning (UCLAUP) in Los Angeles and the urban community in the resurgence of labor-community coalition ... More

This chapter discusses the role of the University of California in the Los Angeles Urban Planning (UCLAUP) in Los Angeles and the urban community in the resurgence of labor-community coalition building. Several features distinguish UCLAUP from other urban planning or urban studies departments in the United States, including the philosophical and educational commitment to social movement politics and community activism, combined with an attempt to keep up with the latest advances in social science theory and methods. UCLA prepared students to be innovative change agents wherever they might be employed by participating in a labor-community coalition.Less