bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Repertoires of Contention
Authors: Della Porta Donatella
Published: January 2013

A repertoire of contention comprises what people know they can do when they want to oppose a public decision they consider unjust or threatening. In the definition developed by Charles Tilly, it includes the “whole set of means [a group] has for making claims of different types on different individuals” (1986: 2). Repertoires refers to “claims making routines that apply to the same claimant‐object pairs: bosses and workers, peasants and landlords, rival nationalist factions, and many more” (Tilly & Tarrow 2006: 16). While the first conceptualization of repertoires of action has been criticized for focusing only on public display of disruptive action, in his most recent work Tilly (2008) has talked of broader contentious performances, stressing the constant innovation in the various forms of contentious politics.
Selective Incentives
Authors: Oliver Pamela
Published: January 2013

Selective incentives are private goods made available to people on the basis of whether they contribute to a collective good. Selective incentives can either reward participants (or contributors) or punish nonparticipants. The concept of selective incentive is important for focusing attention on the factors besides the group goal that affect people's desire to participate in social movements. Selective incentives can be material, solidary, or purposive. The concept of selective incentive is embedded in a rational choice or cost/benefit approach and originates with Mancur Olson in
The Logic of Collective Action
. Collective or public goods have the property of
nonexcludability
: if they are provided to any member of a group, they cannot be excluded from other group members. Nonexcludability can lead to the
free rider problem
or
collective dilemma
wherein rational individuals should prefer to let others pay for collective goods. “Only a separate and selective incentive will stimulate a rational individual in a latent group to act in a group‐oriented way … The incentive must be ‘selective’ so that those who do not … contribute to the attainment of the group's interest, can be treated differently from those who do” (Olson 1965: 51). Formal theorists since Olson have moved far beyond his original statement to show how the interplay between collective goods and selective incentives can produce complex and even surprising collective action dynamics.
Social Problems and Social Movements
Authors: Best Joel
Published: January 2013

Both the sociology of social movements and the sociology of social problems experienced intellectual revivals that began in the 1970s. The study of social movements shifted from accounting for movements' members' discontent, to an effort to understand why movements succeeded or failed, based on models that emphasized framing, resource mobilization, opportunity structures, and identity politics. Similarly, the study of social problems turned from the analysis of harmful social conditions to an emphasis on the process by which social problems were socially constructed.
Political Socialization and Social Movements
Authors: Fillieule Olivier
Published: January 2013

Political socialization (PS) has been defined in various ways in the literature. Among the most frequently encountered definitions is the one that equates PS with mere learning, that is, the state of a person's political knowledge and comprehension. Other definitions focus less on an individual's knowledge inventory than on the developmental sequence by which such knowledge and comprehension are acquired, whereas others focus on the continuity over time of such knowledge and attitudes. However, PS is more and more defined as the gradual development of the individual's own particular and idiosyncratic views of the political world, the process by which a given society's norms and behavior are internalized. This has three main theoretical consequences: primary and secondary socializations are equally important in the socializing process; it follows that not only family and school are central instances of socialization but also many other institutions active in the life spheres of work, affective ties, voluntary work and political engagements; and the political dimension is in play in all socialization processes and doesn't correspond to a specific domain of activity or designated institutions.
State Building and Social Movements
Authors: Hanagan Michael P.
Published: January 2013

Since at least 1780, consolidating states have been providing an unusually fertile terrain for the development of social movements. Compared with other states, consolidating states are more contiguous, with better‐defined borders and also more centralized, with an increased monopoly over violence. They are better able to identify their population, to protect it, and to serve it (or exploit it) than other states. But the association between states and social movements was typically more complex. Between 1780 and the present, empires formed the major alternative to consolidating states and while social movements originally developed within consolidating states they spread almost worldwide, to land‐based empires, and to colonial empires. As they spread from consolidated states to empires, the tactics of social movements more or less retained their familiar form but profoundly changed their content. In our discussions of nineteenth and twentieth‐century social movements, analysts often consider consolidating states as independent entities, but many consolidating states in the modern era were also metropoles, capitals of colonial empires. This entry looks at: (1) social movements in consolidating states, (2) land‐based empires, and (3) colonial states and empires.
Strain and Breakdown Theories
Authors: Buechler Steven M.
Published: January 2013

One classic explanation for collective action involves structural strain or societal breakdown. The logic is that when chronic strain or acute breakdown undermine societal integration, the social controls and moral imperatives that normally constrain collective behavior are weakened. Strain or breakdown thus allows or “causes” collective action that would otherwise be contained.
Strategy
Authors: Jasper James M.
Published: January 2013

Derived from the ancient Greek word for a military commander, “strategy” has two common meanings. In business it is a broad plan, and in military terms, similarly, it is what is done before the battle begins (in contrast to the tactics that lower officers use to implement the commander's strategy during the battle). In contrast, as an adjective, strategic and strategic action refer to interactions among players who have both ends and means, and who each realize that the others are also acting strategically to get what they want. In this latter sense, strategy covers almost everything that social movements do.
ACT UP
(
AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power)
Authors: Stockdill Brett C.
Published: January 2013

Outraged by the lack of concerted effort to fight the AIDS crisis, queer activists formed the direct‐action AIDS organization, ACT UP, in 1987. They were enraged because tens of thousands of people, disproportionately gay and bisexual men, had died of AIDS, yet governmental, mass media, medical establishment, and other institutional responses were characterized by homophobia and genocidal neglect. Beginning with the first chapter in New York City in March 1987, activists soon established over 80 chapters in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and over 30 elsewhere, including Australia, Canada, and Europe. ACT UP's repertoire of innovative, confrontational tactics was decisive in publicizing myriad aspects of the HIV/AIDS crisis, increasing government HIV/AIDS budgets, preventing new HIV infections, galvanizing research, reshaping clinical drug trials, securing access to services and treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS, and fighting repressive legislation including calls to quarantine people with HIV/AIDS. ACT UP empowered people living with HIV/AIDS and challenged homophobia, racism, sexism, and other inequalities fueling the AIDS crisis. In the process, the organization ignited gay and lesbian pride, cultivating rebellious queer identities and political action that celebrated sexual difference and envisioned a more just and inclusive world. Most ACT UP chapters declined in the early to mid 1990s but a few continue to do vital AIDS activism today.
Agrarian Movements (
U
nited
S
tates)
Authors: Barnes Donna A.
Published: January 2013

No comprehensive treatment of social movements would be complete without attention to the rich tradition of agrarian movements throughout American history. Organized by farmers goes back to the 1600s and extends to the present. This entry aims to provide a general overview of the major movements initiated by farmers in the United States, with attention to the commonalities and differences among those movements.
Alinsky, Saul (1909–1972)
Authors: Dillard Maria K.
Published: January 2013

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909–June 12, 1972) was one of the most influential social reformers in post‐World War II US history. The legacy of his work and his writings are considered to be foundational to modern community organizing in the United States. Alinsky's ideas about organizing for change have come to be known as his own method. Alinsky is the author of
Reveille for Radicals
(1946), in which he details a political philosophy and methodology for radicalism, and
Rules for Radicals
(1971), in which he sets forth principles of community organizing through a call for revolution. Alinsky's contributions, particularly his work with the poor, have earned him international recognition and notoriety.
Amnesty International
Authors: Monforte Pierre
Published: January 2013

Amnesty International (AI) is probably the most important international nongovernmental organization acting for human rights. It was founded by a lawyer—Peter Benenson—in London in 1961, for the defense of the “forgotten prisoners” in Portugal and for freedom of expression. Soon, several national sections were created and the organization extended its activities to the fight against torture, disappearances, and the death penalty. Today, Amnesty International has 2.2 million members, supporters, and subscribers active in 150 countries. Its mission is the defense and promotion of “internationally recognized human rights.” It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its international campaign against torture.
Anti‐Japanese Colonization Resistance (
T
aiwan)
Authors: Chou Wan‐yao
Published: January 2013

There were two stages in the Taiwanese anti‐Japanese colonization resistance. The first stage was armed struggles against Japan's takeover which took place between 1895 and 1915. The second was characterized by nonviolent movements led by intellectuals from 1920 to 1936. In terms of methods, goals, and participants, very few connections existed between these two modes of anticolonial activity.
Antiwitchcraft Movements in
A
frica
Authors: Bonhomme Julien
Published: January 2013

Movements aimed at the eradication of witchcraft periodically sweep across Sub‐Saharan Africa. One of the best documented is the Mcape, which has been observed in different parts of Eastern Central Africa throughout the twentieth century by anthropologists such as Audrey Richards, Max Marwick, and Roy Willis. As opposed to witchdoctors who provide individual protection against witchcraft, these movements operate on a larger scale and aim at more radical objectives: they offer protection for the whole community and claim to root out all evil once and for all. Witchcraft is addressed as a general and collective threat, rather than being related to interpersonal conflict stemming from the family. The excessive ambition of antiwitchcraft movements explains their transient and recurrent nature. New movements are constantly emerging, rapidly gaining, then losing popularity when they fail to fulfill their promise, hence paving the way for the next movement to appear on this highly competitive marketplace. Compared to more structured cults, antiwitchcraft movements have little formal organization and rely on their leaders' charisma and reputation. They are deterritorialized movements, often led by itinerant witch‐finders who cross ethnic and national boundaries. Antiwitchcraft movements are centered on mass cleansing (and must therefore be distinguished from more brutal witch‐hunts). When the witch‐finder arrives in a village, he authoritatively lines up all the inhabitants and proceeds to identify the witches by divination. He then asks the alleged witches to confess their evil deeds and surrender their harmful “fetishes” or “medicines.” These paraphernalia are publicly destroyed or piled up at crossroads as a demonstration of the witch‐finder's supremacy. The accused are sometimes “branded” with razors, but are not put to death nor banned from the community. Finally all villagers are administered a witch‐cleansing treatment, which is said to protect the innocent and kill those who will attempt to revert to witchcraft.
ANUC
(Colombian Peasant Movement)
Authors: Zamosc Leon
Published: January 2013

To end the Colombian civil war known as La Violencia (1948–1957), the Conservative and Liberal parties agreed in 1958 to reconcile under the National Front, a 16‐year coalition regime based on administrative power‐sharing and presidential alternation (Kline 1980: 71–72). In 1961 Congress passed an Agrarian Reform Law but, bowing to the landowners' interests, the first two governments of the National Front took no serious steps to redistribute land (Tobón 1972). Determined to implement the reform, the next president, Liberal politician Carlos Lleras (1966–1970), promoted legislation granting land rights to tenants and sharecroppers and boosted the capabilities of INCORA, the Institute of Agrarian Reform. In 1967, he also launched an initiative to establish ANUC, the National Peasant Association of Colombia, as a state‐sponsored organization that would promote peasant involvement in the provision of rural services and in the agrarian reform program (Zamosc 1986: 50–54). From the start, it was clear that Lleras expected that, as a peasant force pushing for land redistribution, ANUC would exert the pressure that was needed to overcome the landowners' opposition and facilitate INCORA's work. In the organizational campaign, promoters from the Ministry of Agriculture scoured the countryside instructing peasants about their rights, forming local and regional peasant associations, and grooming promising activists into a national leadership (Zamosc 1986: 54–60). When ANUC's national congress met in 1970, the number of registered members was about one million. The response had been especially strong in the areas of traditional
haciendas
(large estates), where tenants and sharecroppers wanted land of their own; and in the piedmont forest frontiers, where peasant colonists demanded infrastructure and services (Zamosc 1986: 61–62).
Asylum Rights Protest Campaigns
Authors: Monforte Pierre
Published: January 2013

Immigration and asylum are, by definition, global issues which concern transnational actors. However, the definition and implementation of immigration and asylum policies relate to state borders and are therefore traditionally entrenched in national contexts. For this reason, even if social movements mobilizing to defend the rights of migrants and refugees have regularly used international norms to increase their rights at the national level (Soysal 1994; Guiraudon 2000), they have rarely organized collective actions across borders: they have limited their action to the national level and have mainly addressed their demands to state authorities. However, since the mid‐1990s, these movements have increasingly mobilized in order to address international—and in particular European–institutions. Groups and networks have constructed networks, discourses and collective actions which go beyond borders, and they have organized significant and regular transnational campaigns.
Chávez, César Estrada (1937–1992)
Authors: Jenkins J. Craig
Published: January 2013

César Estrada Chávez was a civil rights activist, community organizer, and founder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA), the first union to successfully organize agricultural workers in the United States. A self‐educated follower of Gandhi's nonviolent protest strategy and Catholic theories of penance, he began his organizing career in 1952 with the Community Service Organization (CSO), a civil rights organization for urban Mexican Americans in California. In 1958, he became executive director of the CSO but, due to an abiding commitment to organizing farm workers, resigned in 1962 to found the National Farm Workers Association, the predecessor of the UFWA. In August 1966, he became director of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), a merger of the NFWA and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC/AFL‐CIO), which he led until his death on April 23, 1993. Chávez's major contribution was applying a nonviolent protest strategy to the challenge of organizing farm workers, a group that suffered intense discrimination, little community cohesion, and high levels of poverty, even as they labored in the most profitable sectors of American agribusiness. In 1994 Chávez was posthumously recognized with the Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, for his work on behalf of Mexican‐American civil rights and the rights of farm workers to organize, and in 2003 a US commemorative postal stamp was issued in his honor.
C
hristian
I
dentity Movement
Authors: Aho James
Published: January 2013

The Christian Identity movement (CI) is the product of a marriage between various marginalized knowledges and British Israelism (BI). The betrothal was consummated in Southern California during the 1930s and 1940s by recently arrived Dust Bowl immigrants carrying with them evangelical Methodist/Baptist enthusiasms. While there are many CI congregations, the most notable is the Church of Jesus Christ Christian (Aryan Nations (AN)). When AN was headquartered in Idaho, it spawned a number of terrorist activities in the decades after the 1980s, most notably those of The Order. The Order was implicated in murders, robberies, armored car heists, and arsons. It ended in a fiery shootout with federal agents in 1985.
Contentious Politics in CurrentChina
Authors: Feng Shizheng , Zhao Dingxin
Published: January 2013

By the time of Mao Zedong's death in 1976, the Chinese economy was on the verge of collapse and the Chinese people were leading very poor lives. In this context, grievances mounted all over China. Facing this dire situation, the Chinese government embarked on market‐oriented reform and an open‐door policy in 1978. During the reform, the Chinese state was quickly transformed from a totalitarian regime to an authoritarian regime with growing toleration toward social diversities. Most Chinese no longer believed in the communist ideology, and the legitimacy of the state relied increasingly on the government's performance, especially in its capacity to deliver a fast‐growing economy and better life to the people (Zhao 2001, 2009). The legacies of the Maoist era and the post‐Mao transformation of the state–society relationship opened up the space for and shaped the development of contentious collective actions (CAs) in post‐Mao China.
Disability Rights Movement (
U
nited
S
tates)
Authors: Greene Kyra R.
Published: January 2013

Most sources agree that the contemporary disability rights movement began sometime in the 1960s or perhaps the early 1970s (Percy 1989; Stroman 2003). Unlike the African‐American civil rights movement, the disability rights movement has not been characterized by concentrated periods of time where many large‐scale and/or violent protest events occurred (Barnartt & Scotch 2001). Instead, disability activism has tended to come in the form of service provision, lobbying, and other exercises of traditional and institutional political influence. While much disability activism is directed at improving funding and availability of services to the disabled community, it is important to understand that there is often a significant divide, and sometimes even real conflict, between the goals of the community of service providers and those of disability rights movement activists.
Eastern European Social Movements
Authors: Piotrowski Grzegorz
Published: January 2013

Social movements in Eastern Europe have a long history. Despite problems with defining the region, most scholars tend to locate it in the postsocialist countries of Europe, which re‐gained independence after the fall of the Iron Curtain. One of the most significant movements in the world during this period was Solidarność, which emerged in Poland in 1980. Solidarność developed from a trade union and reportedly had 9–10 million members (approximately 25% of the population). In the Fall of Nations in 1989/1990 hundreds of thousands of people went into the streets protesting against the communist regimes, and this contributed to the collapse of the Iron Curtain. A large variety of movements evolved from that time, with some becoming quite vibrant. Although there are important differences among the countries in Eastern Europe that shape social movements, some parts of the movements' histories and characteristics are common. These differences and commonalities, crucial for the composition of the movements and their repertoires of action, are a result of the movements' histories, legal systems, and political situations.
F
alun
G
ong (
C
hina)
Authors: Sun Yanfei
Published: January 2013

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, started as a qigong movement but increasingly acquired a stronger religious character. It organized the largest demonstration since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which precipitated the Chinese state's crackdown on Falun Gong. However, Falun Gong activists inside China persisted in protests over the years. Meanwhile, Falun Gong groups outside China have used diverse means to publicize their cause and attack the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Gay and Lesbian Movement
Authors: Valocchi Stephen
Published: January 2013

The gay and lesbian movement refers to the manifold collective efforts to benefit people with same‐sex desire. A movement for gays and lesbians could not have happened until “the homosexual” emerged as a distinct person rather than just a set of acts. This occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the result of the efforts of sexologists to define and control nonnormative sexual and gender practices in Europe and the United States. Although an organized movement to reverse the negative discourse of the sexologists first appeared in Germany in the late nineteenth century, this effort was short‐lived. The first sustained activities, organizations, and network‐building for the positive recognition of lesbians and gays and the improvement of their social and political conditions appeared in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s with the establishment of three organizations: the Mattachine Society, the organization for men which devoted itself mainly to social support in a climate of profound public hostility; the Daughters of Bilitis, the organization that concerned itself with the unique challenges of women with same‐sex desire at a time when women were supposed to be dependent on men for economic and social support; andOne Inc.which existed only as a monthly magazine and promoted the view that gay people, rather than psychiatrists or lawyers, are the most qualified to speak for themselves. With the exception ofOne Inc., these organizations stressed respectability and the desire to be accepted into mainstream society.
GlobalJusticeMovement
Authors: Rootes Christopher , Sotirakopoulos Nikos
Published: January 2013

The “Global Justice Movement” (GJM) has been employed as an umbrella term to denote a diverse constellation of organizations, groups, and networks, working with varying degrees of cooperation on a broad range of issues—from the indebtedness of the world's poorest countries, the inequities of the global trade in goods and services, international peace and environmental degradation, to the human rights of workers and immigrants, especially in less economically developed countries. These issues are linked by an emerging consensus amongst activists that their root cause is the neoliberal agenda, or “Washington consensus” (George 2003), that dominates global economic arrangements.
G
lobal
J
ustice
M
ovement in
E
urope
Authors: della Porta Donatella
Published: January 2013

Composed of supra‐national networks of individuals and organizations, the Global Justice Movement (GJM) has developed at the turn of the millennium, mobilizing in transnational events and demanding social justice and participatory and/or deliberative democracy. Especially since the second half of the 1980s, international summits were often accompanied by protest counter‐summits, that took place in the same locality as the official intergovernmental gathering. Transnational mobilizations of this type have also targeted European Union (EU) institutions. One of the first of them was the European Marches against unemployment, insecurity, and exclusion addressing the Amsterdam summit in 1997; two years later, 30 000 mobilized on the same issues at the EU summit in Cologne (Mathers 2007). These marches played an important role in the emergence of the European wave of protest that became visible in the July 2001 anti‐G8 demonstrations in Genoa (della Porta et al. 2006). In fact, since Amsterdam and Cologne, counter‐summits have contested all of the main EU summits.
Greenpeace
Authors: Markham William
Published: January 2013

Greenpeace is a large, highly visible social movement organization, which combines environmental goals with crusading for peace. It is a multilevel organization, with international, national, and local units. Its international reach and broad support allow it both to influence transnational corporations, international treaties, and regulatory agencies and to operate within nations.
H
izb
U
t‐
T
ahrir
Authors: Karagiannis Emmanuel
Published: January 2013

Hizb ut‐Tahrir al Islami (the Islamic Liberation Party—hereafter Hizb ut‐Tahrir) was founded by Taqiuddin an‐Nabhani, an Islamic scholar of Palestinian origin in East Jerusalem in 1953 (Taji‐Farouki 1996). The party gradually expanded to become a truly international movement with branches from Morocco to Indonesia. From the 1980s onward, Hizb ut‐Tahrir has also managed to establish branches in Western countries which have sizeable Muslim communities, including Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, the United States, and Australia. Since the 1990s, Hizb ut‐Tahrir has also become active in the former USSR and China. The current leader of Hizb ut‐Tahrir is Ata Abu Rashta, a Palestinian civil engineer who studied in Cairo and served previously as party spokesman in Jordan, but his whereabouts are unknown.
I
ndian
I
ndependence
M
ovement
Authors: Crist John T.
Published: January 2013

Until Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915, protest against the British had been episodic and mostly localized. The era of the Indian Independence Movement (1917–1947) emerged as Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress—the INC, or Congress, the vehicle for nationalist opposition—and radically altered its composition and tactics. Through the INC and his own independent cadres of nonviolent activists, Gandhi forged a popular nationalist coalition of urban elites and rural masses against foreign occupation. Under his guidance, Congress adopted the tactics of nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience, and noncooperation in loosely structured national campaigns that together comprised a sustained challenge against colonial occupation over three decades.
I
ranian
I
slamic Revolution of 1979
Authors: Parsa Misagh
Published: January 2013

The Iranian revolution took many experts and scholars by surprise. Iran had been one of the most rapidly industrializing third‐world countries and possessed a powerful, loyal army and secret police able to repress and demobilize all opposition. Compared to many other twentieth‐century revolutions, armed struggle played little role in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty, which came to power in 1925 when Reza Shah Pahlavi ousted the previous dynasty. Instead, Iran's urban population, organized in part through mosque networks, carried out the mobilization and collective actions that formed the basis of the revolution. More importantly, the revolution's outcome diverged sharply from other modern revolutions where revolutionary movements fought in the name of secular ideologies, such as nationalism or socialism. Iran's revolution, in contrast, produced theocracy.
K
ing,
M
artin
L
uther,
Jr
(1928–1968)
Authors: Jackson Thomas F.
Published: January 2013

Recent scholarship on Martin Luther King, Jr looks beyond King's eloquence as a charismatic orator who inspired masses of people to nonviolently protest segregation in America. We now appreciate more fully King's religious background in sustaining his leadership. More importantly, we see multiple ways in which King was shaped and inspired by larger movements for racial and economic justice around the world. King did not initiate any of the local protest movements for which he became a spokesman and symbol. He was nevertheless a brilliant strategist of protest confrontations; a master at reaching national and international publics and elites through print and broadcast media; a mobilizer who inspired thousands of people to risk life and limb against forces of violence and repression; and, finally, a coordinator and mediator among a range of protest leaders whose power and talents have been overshadowed by King's fame. Recent scholarship has especially focused on King's final years, when his lifelong commitment to opposing the “evil triplets” of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation were most fully put into action. King's final crusades against the Vietnam War, against big city apartheid, and against poverty and low wages were less successful than the Southern movement to dismantle legal segregation. But the full amplitude of King's radical challenge to America's political economy and foreign policy has now become more visible.
Labor Movement inLatinAmerica
Authors: Stillerman Joel
Published: January 2013

During the twentieth century, the labor movement profoundly affected the politics and societies of Latin America, the region including Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. The labor movement is here defined as workers' organizations with the capacity and willingness to engage in collective action. While labor protest dates back to slave brotherhoods and artisan associations formed after Spain and Portugal's fifteenth‐century colonization of the region, this entry focuses on the twentieth century, when trade unions were formed in many countries. Scholarship on the labor movement goes back at least to the 1920s, though it developed in earnest after World War II. Scholarly frameworks adopted in the study of the labor movement include modernization theory (Germani 1965), Marxism and dependency theory (Spalding 1977), social and cultural history (Levenson‐Estrada 1994), comparative politics (Collier and Collier 1991; Murillo 2001; Burgess 2004), and social movements theory (Kay 2005; Almeida 2008).
Mandate of Heaven (
C
hina)
Authors: Zhao Dingxin
Published: January 2013

After conquering the Shang dynasty (circa 1600–1045
BCE
), the rulers of the Western Zhou dynasty (circa 1045–771
BCE
) claimed that they were able to come to power because Heaven had taken away the mandate of ruling China from the bad Shang king and passed it onto the virtuous Western Zhou rulers. The concept of “Mandate of Heaven” was created for a clear propaganda purpose, in part to suppress the resistance of the conquered population. Yet the lessons that the Western Zhou rulers learned from the demise of the mighty Shang state also compelled them to use the same message to educate their own people on the importance of being a good ruler. For instance, in an early Western Zhou document, it is stated that: “We should use the people instead of water as mirrors. Now that the Shang rulers have lost their mandate bestowed from Heaven, why should not we treat history as mirror and learn a hard lesson from the demise of the Shang state?” (Book of Documents 1980: ch.
Jiugao
). A similar message appeared in another document: “It is all contingent upon human conduct whether or not mistakes and evils will occur…Heaven cannot be trusted. Heaven will not take away the mandate that King Wen had received if only we carry on his virtuous conduct” (Book of Documents 1980: ch.
Junshi
). The Western Zhou rulers saw the heavenly mandate as precarious and believed that the only way to hold on to it was by governing well. In other words, while the Western Zhou rulers propagated the Mandate of Heaven concept, it was right conduct that they actually emphasized. This way of thinking later entered the teachings of Confucius and his followers during the Spring and Autumn (770–481
BCE
) and Warring States (480–221
BCE
) eras, and gradually became the single most important political concept in Chinese history.
Media Activism
Authors: Mattoni Alice
Published: January 2013

Media activism can be understood in three different manners, going from broad to narrower interpretations: activism
through
the media, activism
in
the media, activism
about
the media.
Modernity of Nationalism
Authors: Hechter Michael
Published: January 2013

Nationalism is widely perceived to be one of the leading threats to order in the contemporary world. Many lives have been ruined or lost in its name and, partly as a consequence, nationalism swirls in perpetual controversy. Part of the problem is that it seems to be an uncannily protean phenomenon. Nationalist political demands differ from place to place and time to time: sometimes they are linguistic, sometimes they are religious, sometimes they are cultural in a rather more diffuse sense. Strong nationalist movements often emerge in a given territory, subside, and then suddenly reemerge years later to nearly universal surprise. While the literature on nationalism is voluminous and growing at an increasing pace, there still remains a lack of conceptual agreement among scholars of the subject.
Nuclear Freeze Movement
Authors: Meyer David S.
Published: January 2013

The nuclear freeze movement was an American campaign against nuclear weapons based around an ostensibly moderate demand with radical implications: a negotiated and bilateral end to the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Neither the freeze idea, nor opposition to the arms race more generally, was new in 1980 when the freeze emerged, amid resurgent allied antinuclear weapons movements across Western Europe. Astute activist opportunism, in conjunction with a series of more aggressive foreign policies from the US government, aligned to produce unusually heightened attention to national security policy in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. In this regard, the nuclear freeze movement loudly echoed previous periods of mobilization and concern, including antinuclear campaigns following the first use of weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945–1947), surrounding the long debate about a ban on testing (1954–1963), and in opposition to the deployment of antiballistic missile systems in the US (1968–1973). Although some activists are constantly trying to draw public attention to the costs and dangers of nuclear weapons, they only succeed episodically. The cyclic mobilization against nuclear weapons reflects more vigorous institutional debates about nuclear weapons strategy.
Piqueteros
(Workers/Unemployment Movement in
A
rgentina)
Authors: Rossi Federico M.
Published: January 2013

The
piqueteros
, or unemployed workers movement, is the main contentious actor in the resistance to the social consequences of neoliberalism and the struggle for reincorporation of the popular sectors (i.e., the poor and/or marginalized strata) into Argentina's political arena. The name
piqueteros
(picketers) is based on the type of protest that made this movement publicly known—the picket on the national roads. The origin and characteristics of the
piqueteros
movement are traceable to four main processes: (1) the social consequences of the collapse of industrialization by substitution of the imports model and the application of neoliberal reforms that produced a massive and fast deindustrialization from the 1980s; (2) the territorialization of politics since redemocratization as a result of the dissolution of the main corporatist arrangements for solving popular sectors' claims; (3) the adaptation to a democratic setting of left‐wing groups that had participated in armed struggle during the 1970s; and (4) the creation of territories for political organization without risks for unemployed people, by some unions, human rights organizations, and Catholic Church dioceses in the 1980s and 1990s.
Poor People's Movements
Authors: Zorn Annika
Published: January 2013

Poor people's movements describes contentious collective actors that are considered to be particularly powerless or weak in resources compared to other members of a community. Often, the term is used to describe spontaneous mass protest by members of social groups that are at the lower end of a socioeconomic scale or in a particularly marginalized position in a society, such as the homeless or the unemployed. Research into poor people's movements has shown, however, that these movements share similar organizational and coordinated social action to other movement activity. This entry examines the shared characteristics of these movements, how studies of poor people's movements over the past decades have changed, and the insights we have gained from studies on social movement activity of the poor for social movement theory.
P
opular
A
ssembly of the
T
owns of
O
axaca (
M
exico)
Authors: Tamayo Sergio
Published: January 2013

Every May 15, Mexico commemorates teacher's day. On June 14, 2006, in the southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) sponsored, as they did every year, a routine mobilization for better wages. The teachers were assaulted by police helicopters and riot police on the orders of the state government, to stop the demonstration taking place in Oaxaca's downtown. Due to police inefficiency and the resistance of the demonstrators, the police were not able to halt the demonstration, which generated considerable citizen reaction. As a result, the Popular Assembly of the Towns of Oaxaca (APPO) was created. It was formed by teachers participating in the general strike, neighborhood and district residents, nongovernmental organizations, indigenous towns, some municipal authorities, transportation officials, youth and students, communicators, peasants, members of religious orders, small businessmen and tradesmen, academics, artists, and intellectuals. The eclectic movement demanded the removal of the governor, because of his authoritarianism and corruption.
Populism/Populist Movements
Authors: Caiani Manuela
Published: January 2013

Academic attention to populism has sharply increased in recent years. As Mudde (2004: 541) notes, thousand of books, articles, columns, and editorials have been written about it in the last two decades. Yet a commonly accepted definition is still lacking, with scholars disagreeing on categorization, labels, and boundaries between its different manifestations. Some also stress that there is an abuse of this term in public discourse. One of the difficulties regarding the definition of populism is that it has been applied (and adapted) to several very different historical phenomena (movements, parties, regimes, intellectuals), across various periods of time: from the American People's Party of the late 1800s to postwar European movements such as the Italian Common Man's Front (late 1940s), thepoujadist(conservative reactionary movement to protect the business interests of small traders) French Union for the Defense of Merchants and Artisans (late 1950s), the Dutch Farmers Party (1960s), or the Danish Progress Party (1970s). Some scholars have argued that populism was a key feature of Mussolini's and Hitler's regimes (Mammone 2009).
Separatist Movements
Authors: Gupta Devashree
Published: January 2013

Separatist movements advocate for greater sovereignty for their members, who are often part of a common ethnic, religious, or territorial group, and who resist further incorporation into the larger polity, believing instead that they should exercise more control over their political, economic, or cultural affairs than the national states in which they live. While some separatist movements may attempt to achieve their goals within the confines of existing state boundaries, seeking to increase group autonomy or gain more power in local governance structures, such movements can also challenge existing state boundaries and call for the formation of entirely new or reconstituted territorial units. Since World War II, separatist movements in Europe, Asia, and Africa have nearly quadrupled the number of independent countries in the international system and increased the number of United Nations members from 51 at its founding to 192 members today. By some counts, there are over 70 current separatist movements around the world, mostly concentrated in Europe and Asia. Not all of these involve ongoing, active mobilization, and fewer still feature violent resistance, though the violence that such movements engender can be particularly intense and intractable.
SocialForum,World
Authors: Byrd Scott
Published: January 2013

The first World Social Forum (WSF) was organized by a group of Brazilian and French activists in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001, coinciding with the meeting of the World Economic Forum, and challenged neoliberal globalization under the slogan “Another World is Possible.” Organized under a set of principles outlined in its charter, the WSF was intended to be an “open meeting place” for civil society actors to commit to “reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals and free exchange of experiences” (World Social Forum 2002). While explicitly critiquing neoliberal globalization the gatherings were also meant to be a “permanent process of seeking and building alternatives” and “open to pluralism and diversity.” Politically, social forum activism is characterized by more radical versus mainstream approaches to social change and is focused mainly on social justice and human rights concerns regarding models of development; gender, indigenous, labor, and environmental issues; and the forces of globalization writ large.
Women's Movements
Authors: Dahl Crossley Alison , McKee Hurwitz Heather
Published: January 2013

Women have organized throughout the course of modern history and in all parts of the world. Women's movements are broadly defined as “all organizing of women explicitly as women to make any sort of social change” (Ferree & Mueller 2007: 577). Mobilizations of women arise out of gendered structures of oppression and opportunity, and women's movements have been among the most enduring and consequential movements in modern history. Participants in women's movements frequently use gender to form a collective identity on the basis of their social position as women. While many women's movements embrace a feminist identity and seek to advance the social position of women, it is not always the case. Women also mobilize around claims that are unrelated to or in opposition to feminism.
Civil Rights Movement (
U
nited
S
tates)
Authors: Andrews Kenneth T.
Published: January 2013

The civil rights movement emerged in the 1950s as a massive challenge to US racial inequality. The movement relied on diverse tactics including litigation, community organizing, and direct action to pursue political empowerment, expanding economic opportunities, desegregating major institutions, altering social relations, and transforming the broader culture. The movement remains one of the central cases in the study of social movements, and it had enduring impacts on American society and politics. This entry focuses on the movement's origins, organizations and leadership, dynamics, decline, and legacy.
Arab Spring
Authors: Moss Dana M.
Published: January 2013

Over the past several decades, few puzzles have captivated academic imaginations more than the persistence of authoritarianism in the Middle East. Scholars have dedicated volumes to exploring possible causal factors, including the role of oil rents, the “robustness” of coercive apparatuses, Islamist movements, civil society, elite fragmentation, and other such political processes and characteristics (Posusney & Angrist 2005). However, the eruption of what has been dubbed the “Arab Spring” in late 2010 sent shockwaves through the world, decimating myths about Arab sociopolitical gridlock. Sweeping social change in the region appeared largely “unthinkable” (Kurzman 2004) until an unprecedented series of popular movements turned streets into occupied protest zones across the region.
Bisexual Movement
Authors: Klesse Christian
Published: January 2013

Bisexual movements have been politically active in many parts of the world for several decades. Most historical accounts locate the roots of the modern bisexual movement in the early 1970s. In the United States, bi‐identified activists have been part of the lesbian and gay civil rights or liberation movements since the mid‐1960s. Distinctively bi political manifestos, social or political groups, and community structures have spread from the early 1970s onwards. These steps to bisexual self‐organizations took inspiration from the women's and the gay liberation movements. Early bi activists often advocated a sex‐radical agenda which reflected the sexual liberationist ethos of countercultural politics at the time. Bisexual politics in the United States solidified in the 1980s. Local groups mushroomed throughout the country. Bisexual feminists strongly shaped this period of US bisexual politics, which resulted both in the prominence of female key activists in the wider movement and the simultaneous growth of separate organizations. Bi men later formed their own networks. Attempts were made at regional organization throughout the 1980s, with the first national bisexual conference in the United States taking place in 1990.
Collective (Public) Goods
Authors: Oliver Pamela
Published: January 2013

In economics, public or collective goods are contrasted with private goods. The enjoyment of a private good can be restricted to those who pay for it, and the consumption of a private good by one person makes it unavailable to anyone else. Markets “work” for private goods, where individuals make clear decisions about cost/benefit tradeoffs and prices are the consequences of the forces of supply and demand. By contrast, public (collective) goods are nonexcludable—shared by everybody, whether they helped pay for the good or not—and nonrival—in that one person's “enjoyment” of the good does not affect another's. People who share in a public good without paying for it are often called “free riders.” Because people can share in a public good if it is paid for by others, the usual assumptions of the market fail, and economists and social scientists generally argue that public goods need to be provided through taxation or other collective means. Public goods are an instance of the more general matter of externalities, in which one person's actions or choices affect the costs or benefits to other people who did not make the choice. Within economics, there has been a great deal of elaboration of these ideas. Some goods are nonrival but excludable (e.g., satellite television), others are nonexcludable but rival (e.g., environmental resources); both excludability and rival‐ness are continua rather than dichotomies. Public or collective goods vary greatly in important ways that affect the social dynamics of their provision, including their lumpiness and the linearity or nonlinearity of their production functions. Moreover, the same “good” (like clean air or a bridge) can be provided in different ways that have different production functions relating contributions to benefits. Introductory overviews of these issues may be found in the cited references.