Search results

Alison E. Adams is a Sociology PhD student at the University of Florida. Her research interests center on social movements, political sociology, and environmental sociology. She is currently involved in a collaborative research project on the environmental movement in communist Czechoslovakia and post-communist Czech Republic. She has recently published in the Sociological Quarterly, American Behavioral Scientist, and Sociological Inquiry.

Existing research indicates that collective identity is critical in sustaining social movements, especially in the face of significant opposition. We extend this literature by analyzing the ways collective identity evolves and develops over time to combat external barriers and obstacles. Drawing from a unique dataset on activists in the post-communist Czech environmental movement, we analyze how women rallied around their gendered identity to protest against nuclear power. Our analysis focuses on the case of the South Bohemian Mothers (Jihočeské matky), an organization that rallied specifically around the protection of children and healthy communities. The activists faced extensive obstacles including: post-communist patriarchal institutions and sexism; the South Bohemian Daddies, a male-dominated pro-nuclear countermovement; and pervasive anti-environmentalist sentiments. Our results highlight the complex and evolutionary nature of collective identity and the role it can play in sustaining activism in the face of external challenges.

This chapter begins with a short story based on a personal memory which is about how the interplay between ‘human’ and ‘technology’ may indicate a level of mastery in knowing in practice. The story suggests that ‘human’ and ‘technology’ can perform tasks that could not be performed by only one element. I turn to discuss how papers could be designed to be accepted as ‘scientific’, providing examples of the use of stories in research and explicitly sets ‘story’ in relation to Dewey’s ‘art as experience’. Dewey states that we should pay attention to what a product does with and in experience; something that is relevant for scientific products. Different forms of writing contribute knowledge that lie outside the strict framework of scientific articles. Notwithstanding this, a story needs a framework of some sort if it is to connect to a scientific discourse. To be able to write differently, we need arenas for publications that are accepted within the evaluation systems that govern academic careers. This matters to researchers’ careers and to the relevance of the knowledge that is developed in the scientific community and the relevance of universities as ‘knowledge providers’. If the formal structure of an academic article determines what researchers can say, then the scope of scientific knowledge will be limited. The inclusion of stories can stimulate dialogue, potentially link creative and logical thinking together, and bridge theoretical and practical knowledge. We need stories to heal and unite separated life worlds.

Representations of female perpetrators of political violence contribute to society's thinking about women, gender, violence and agency. Analysis of this discourse is vital to understand its influence on society's knowledge of women and violence. The study investigates how gendered narratives are used to frame female ex-combatants in Nationalist and Unionist newspapers in the post-conflict society of Northern Ireland. The media is a central agent in the construction of knowledge; and this is significant for women who have perpetrated crimes or (political) violence. The existing research found that violent women are narrated and interpreted through gendered discursive frameworks to dismiss or make sense of their violence. However, in the Northern Irish case, although the women are constructed within gendered frames, this does not deny their agency in past political violence.

This chapter uncovers the destabilizing and transformative dimensions of a legal process commonly described as assimilation. Lawyers working on behalf of a marginalized group often argue that the group merits inclusion in dominant institutions, and they do so by casting the group as like the majority. Scholars have criticized claims of this kind for affirming the status quo and muting significant differences of the excluded group. Yet, this chapter shows how these claims may also disrupt the status quo, transform dominant institutions, and convert distinctive features of the excluded group into more widely shared legal norms. This dynamic is observed in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and specifically through attention to three phases of LGBT advocacy: (1) claims to parental recognition of unmarried same-sex parents, (2) claims to marriage, and (3) claims regarding the consequences of marriage for same-sex parents. The analysis shows how claims that appeared assimilationist – demanding inclusion in marriage and parenthood by arguing that same-sex couples are similarly situated to their different-sex counterparts – subtly challenged and reshaped legal norms governing parenthood, including marital parenthood. While this chapter focuses on LGBT claims, it uncovers a dynamic that may exist in other settings.

Through association with a family member who uses substances, stigma and shame can be experienced by children and young people whose parents use substances. Such stigma and induced shame can lead to fear of being treated unfairly and for some young people the experience of bullying and discrimination from peers, adults, and practitioners. Within my research, young people often described feeling that they had ‘survived’ within their experiences of parental substance use, rather than ‘thrived’, leaving them feeling lonely and isolated from support. Stigma played a role in this survival. By understanding the stigma experienced by young people whose parents use substances, we can move beyond young people only surviving their experiences to supporting them to thrive. Within this chapter, experiences of delivering interactive workshops and teaching practitioners about the lived experiences of children and young people whose parents use substances are reflected upon. Young people who experience parental substance use want practitioners and learners to have four key takeaways when supporting or working with young people: realisation and awareness of the impacts on young people, recognition of ways young people cope, responding in ways of understanding, and resisting further stigmatisation and isolation of young people.