Criticalmassbulletin Newsletter of the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, American Sociological Association
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CriticalMass 1 CriticalMassBulletin Newsletter of the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, American Sociological Association Volume 40 (1) http://cbsm-asa.org/ Spring 2015 2014-2015 Section Officers Message from the Chair Chair James M. Jasper James M. Jasper Chair-Elect CBSM Section Chair Belinda Robnett Professor of Sociology Past Chair The Graduate Center of the City University of New York Edwin Amenta Secretary/Treasurer Instead of the usual kind of chair’s message, I would like to take this opportunity Sarah Sobieraj to pursue one of my pet goals of making US sociologists more aware of the rest of the world. Like our fellow citizens, two thirds of whom do not even have passports, Council Lee Ann Banaszak we do not speak enough languages, spend enough time abroad, or follow Elizabeth Borland intellectual trends elsewhere. So, as painful as it is for any scholar to relinquish Catherine Corrigall-Brown publishable real estate, I have asked several scholars to share recent developments Manisha Desai Drew Halfmann in their countries with us. Unfairly, I requested that they do this in a mere 500-600 Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum words. Full Bibliographies that accompany these essays can be found at http://cbsm-asa.org/critical-mass/ Committees Nominations Chair: Ashley Currier In This Issue Kathleen M. Fallon David Nicholas Pettinicchio Message from the Chair…………………………………………….... Publications 1 Co-Chair: Marc D. Dixon Global Symposium Reports: Australia, the Netherlands, France, Co-Chair: Grace Yukich China, India, and Russia…………………………………………..…. 1 Lyndi N. Hewitt Recent Publications………………….………………………………. 8 Workshops 2015 Job Market Candidates………………….……………………... 12 James M. Jasper Calls for Papers & Other Opportunities……………………............... 14 Brayden King CBSM Workshop 2015 Program…………………………………….. Sandra R. Levitsky 15 Michelle Marie Proctor Details on CBSM-Related Events at ASA…………………………... 16 Wayne Santoro Mentoring (appointed) Chair: José A. Muñoz many new works focus on familiar themes because Steven A. Boutcher Tanya Saunders Recent they continue to dominate in discussions of equity, Australian change and nation. A new offering that synthesizes Webmaster key issues today is Greg Martin’s forthcoming book Alex Hanna Research Understanding Social Movements (Routledge 2015). Newsletter Editors An edited collection that does similar work is James Kelly Birch Maginot By Catriona Roberts, Goodman and Jonathan Marshall’s Crisis, Movement, Michelle Smirnova University of Sydney Management: Globalising Dynamics (Taylor and Please send all your ideas, Francis 2014). Both texts highlight the principal new feedback, and submissions to Social Movement themes and theories of the 21st century. Goodman is [email protected] research in Australia well-known for his work on social movements in the has a long tradition and context of globalization, and is one of the authors of 3 CriticalMass the impressive book Justice Globalism: Ideology, people engage in processes of social change. As with Crises, Policy (Sage 2012). This technical and densely Goodman’s work, Vromen and her co-authors, move argued book works through key issues associated with beyond the sometimes sneering reduction of young the Global Justice Movement and its ideology. It people’s engagements as nothing more than defends the GJM from criticism that is incoherent and “clicktivism.” just “anti” everything. Bibliography at http://cbsm-asa.org/critical-mass/ The previous Australian government introduced a National Disability Insurance Scheme in 2013, which for the first time brought issues of disability to the fore Imagine: the state is your ally…* for many citizens. Helen Meekosha (UNSW), a disability movement scholar, has been working in the By Jan Willem Duyvendak, University of Amsterdam area for decades. She contributed a strong chapter to the collection edited by Dan Goodley, Bill Hughes, Conspicuously absent from Dutch approaches to Lennard Davis Disability and Social Theory: New social movements is the so-called New Social Developments and Directions (Palgrave, 2012), on the Movement Approach of influential figures such as interplay between space, gender and disability. Co- Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci. Even though writing with Carolyn Frohmader (Executive Director, some have argued that the NSM approach was the Women with Disabilities Australia), the authors “European contribution” to the field of social explore intersectionality – disability and gender in movements par excellence, most Dutch scholars particular - but also the tensions between national and contributed instead to Anglo-Saxon traditions. One international aims within organizations. Anita Ghai’s can speculate why certain approaches resonate so interesting chapter, in this mostly British focused strongly in some countries and less in others. Here, I book, brings together issues of disability and want to hypothesize that the Dutch political culture of postcolonialism in a discussion that sits neatly with openness toward protest and protestors has been local Australian arguments. mirrored in the popularity of scholarly approaches that emphasize the importance of political opportunities A focus on intersectionality is now common in social and resources. It is not that the Netherlands have been movement research more generally. Intersectionality less influenced by “May 68,” by the huge cultural and Social Change (2014), edited by Lynne Woehrle, transformations of the 1960s and the 1970s that would has a fine chapter by Emma Partridge and Sarah explain the absence of the NSM-approach in the Maddison on gender, race and violence in the context Netherlands. On the contrary, the Dutch “new” social of the Australian feminist movement. These authors movements have been far stronger than their French suggest that using intersectional frameworks for and the Italian counterparts. The literature shows, imagining collective identity allows us to recognize however, that these huge cultural changes have been the complexity of Indigenous women’s identities. possible due to rather specific political conditions. It is Other chapters explore intersectionality in a variety of this specificity of the Dutch political context – the North American, South American and European openness to and the “absorption” of social movements contexts, creating a detailed picture of the field. by and in the Dutch state- that explains the popularity of paradigms that focus on (perceptions of) The impact of social media in social movements is, not opportunities. surprisingly, an expanding area of research. Ariadne Vromen (University of Sydney) is a key figure in this However, this openness, in which “the state” often field. Her work on young people and political activism positions itself more as an ally than an adversary, has explained some of the new ways community fuelled one of the main criticisms of an overly transformation is imagined and performed in virtual structuralist Political Process Approach for positing a worlds. The Networked Young Citizen, co-edited with rigid distinction between states/ governments and Bryan Loader and Michael Xenos (Routledge 2014), social movements. Studies of many Dutch social is a collection of thoughtful pieces on how young movements, such as the women’s and the LGBT CriticalMass 4 movement, point to large intersections between states configurational thought of Norbert Elias, and movements and the implications of these Bourdieusian critical sociology, and the expanding intersections for theorizing political opportunity dominance of an interactionist paradigm in research on structures. In more recent work, scholars at the activism, lent some originality to current research. University of Amsterdam (Broer & Duyvendak 2009, 2011; De Graaff & Broer 2012; Grootegoed, Broer & The lion’s share of the last twenty years of Duyvendak 2013) have further challenged core publications in social movement studies has been assumptions of the structuralist PPA, inspired by the dedicated to three domains. work of American scholars who have emphasized the importance of emotions and culture in social First, the diversity of repertories of action, signalling movement research (Jasper 2011). In their work, these the critical importance of Charles Tilly’s legacy. For UvA researchers show how in the policymaking example, on demonstrations (Fillieule and process itself political subjectivities are formed that Tartakowsky 2013), hunger strikes (Siméant 1998), enable people to fight precisely those policies. Often, squats (Péchu 2006), rent strikes (Hmed 2006), public however, it is no so much dissonance that is the meetings (Cossart 2013) or ethical consumption outcome of the political process but resonance: (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2009; Balsiger 2010). Research policymakers and people have the same definition of also examined modes of resistance to authority, the situation and no mobilization occurs. Or something associated with the initiative to import social else happens, as Robert Davidson (also UvA) shows in movement theory in research on the MENA region his recent work on the LGBT-movement: the Dutch (Bennani-Chraïbi, Fillieule 2003, 2012; Zaki 2005; government – both national and local- mobilizes Vairel 2014), on Turkey (Gourisse 2014) on Latin together with social movement organizations in order America (e.g. Massal 2005) and on black Africa to change public opinion to become (even more) (Siméant 2014). favorable regarding homosexuality. In such a context, “the state” as an enemy just doesn’t make sense.