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Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General Theory that ‘practical men […] are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,’ we might be wont to dismiss such a push from below. While it is sometimes true that grassroots movements channel preexisting economic thought, I wish to argue that grassroots economic thought can also precede developments subsequently elaborated by economists. This paper considers such a case: by women at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the claimants’ unions movement in 1970s Britain. Oral historical and archival work on these working-class women and on achievements such as their succeeding to establish unconditional basic income as an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement forms the springboard for my reconstruction of the grassroots feminist economic thought underpinning the women’s basic income demand. I hope to demonstrate, firstly, how this was a prefiguration of ideas later developed by feminist economists and philosophers; secondly, how unique it was for its time and a consequence of the intersectionality of class, gender, race, and dis/ability. Thirdly, I should like to suggest that bringing into the fold this particular grassroots feminist economic thought on basic income would widen the mainstream understanding and historiography of the idea of basic income. Lastly, I hope to make the point that, within the history of economic thought, grassroots economic thought ought to be heeded far more than it currently is.

Democratic renewal in Sri Lanka as well as a cross the Global South depends on strengthening democratic social movements within varieties of patrimonial capitalism. Patrimonial capitalism, emphasising patron–client relations, coincide with weakening democratic institutional cultures and practices. The dominant corruption/anti-corruption narrative is bracketed with elite class strategies aimed at negotiating a ‘managed corruption’. The realm of representative politics creating consent for patrimonial capitalism is shaped by: ethnic and class relations; the weakening of working-class parties; patriarchal cultures within parties; links with criminal networks; opaque finances and the integration of mainstream media with party patronage.

Democratising the realm of representative politics points towards democratic social movements. The internal dynamics of social movements, their relationships with political parties and collective learning are significant factors that shapes the strategic orientation of social movements. State repression of social movements highlights the need for demilitarisation and the abolition of prisons. The global sense of this local struggle relates to transforming financial markets and platform economies towards notions of financial and digital commons. The integration of different realms of politics, such as representative, movement, life and emancipatory politics, is vital for reinforcing solidarity as the basis for counter-hegemonic struggles.

In this article, the authors analyse the impact of the 2020 lockdown and the subsequent measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Italy in the hospitality industry by looking at the social demands brought forward by the restaurant sector.

To analyse social demands, the authors choose Twitter as an observation point using two hashtags as keywords to scratch the data: #iononriapro and #ioapro, which correspond to two different instances conveyed by the same subject: the restaurant sector. The instances linked to the hashtags produced different levels of engagement and penetration within the social structure and digital platform. To analyse the first block of data linked to the first hashtag-flag #iononriapro, the authors used content analysis. To analyse the second and third block of data linked to the hashtag-flag #ioapro, the authors used an automatic procedure, emotional text mining.

The analysis procedures allow us to reconstruct the positioning of the topics of closures and reopenings due to lockdown in this sector and to identify two explanatory dimensions: structural and affective, which explain the tension that has emerged between the State and the restaurant sector around COVID-related closures.

The study's findings not only contribute to the current understandings of the birth, transformation and penetration of social issues by the restaurant sector over the specific period linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures imposed for its containment but are also valuable to analyse the dynamics through which Twitter hashtags and the social issues they represent find strength or lose interest in the public.

In recent years, there has been a growth in research aimed at understanding the foundations of modern activist communication in media-rich and multi-platform environments. For example, Chon and Park's analysis of the American Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement built on Kim and Grunig's STOPS model. Yet, social and political injustice can exist for extended periods of time without successful movements emerging, so what leads people to demand social and political change through activism? This paper posits that crisis is trigger that motivates people to activism and evaluates that within the context of the Scottish independence movement.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with 26 advocates for Scottish independence, which yielded more than 32 h of data. Data were analysed using Strauss and Corbin's (1990) constant comparative method approach using open coding, axial coding and selective coding finding thematic saturation after only 10 interviews.

The study provides a clear extension of Chon and Park's model of activism by finding that crises are critical triggers for activism. Moreover, these findings also provide insights into not only the Scottish independence movement but more broadly the extension of traditional public relations and communication theory in multi-platform and multi-actor environments.

There are several contributions this piece makes. First, this paper extends activist, crisis and strategic communication research to more systematically consider the role that crisis plays in social and political advocacy. Second, this paper affords the opportunity to consider the challenges of communication, democracy and activism in the social media age. Finally, this paper supports an international view that discrimination and affective injustice experiences cut across many different kinds of identities and experiences instead of the traditionally considered ethnic, religious and gender-based experiences traditionally addressed.

This study aims to analyse how the collective processing of the #MeToo legacy in the form of community discourses and activism conceptualises organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and enhances the development of new accountability instruments.

The study draws on social movement theory and the intellectual problematics of accountability, together with the empirical insights from two research engagement projects established and facilitated by the author.

The study reveals multiple dimensions of how post-#MeToo community activism impacted the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work. The movement enhanced discourses prompting a new societal sense of accountability for sexual wrongdoings. This in turn facilitated public demands for accountability that pressured organisations to respond. The accountability crisis created an opportunity for community activists to influence understanding of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and to propose new accountability instruments advancing harassment reporting technology, as well as an enhancing the behavioural consciousness and self-assessment of individuals.

The study addresses a topic of social importance in analysing how community activism arising from a social movement has transformed accountability demands and thus both advanced the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and established socially desirable practices for it. The study contributes to theory by revealing the emancipatory potential of community activism to influence organisational accountability practices and to propose new instruments at a moment of organisational hesitation and crisis of accountability.

The popular uprising, the Aragalaya, was a response to a debt crisis as well as a catharsis of accumulated public discontent, which overlapped with the pandemic. A key lesson from the pandemic was the need to strengthen state social provisioning capacities to protect the health status of citizens. In addition, enhancing local economies and sustainable livelihoods is central to avoiding the vulnerabilities of international migrant labour and tourism. The limitations of representative politics highlight the need to strengthen democratic social movement politics. Along with cross cultural alliances, building multi-class alliances is central for strengthening politics of redistribution. In a context of integration of party politics with criminal networks, demilitarisation as well as the abolition of prisons is indispensable for democratisation. In a global scale, democratising financial markets and platform economies suggests regulation and regional experiments not simply by the state but also multiple publics. In demanding participation in representative institutions, the Aragalaya combined a protest movement with a sense of commons. In turn, it pointed towards the possibilities of a public-driven economy based on the democratisation of the state as well as markets. In framing this movement as a ‘struggle of love’, it revitalised the realm of life politics and alternative pleasures of life.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter – a top-down soft regulation initiative that has been framed as a “movement” to promote good employment across the local area.

The research draws on 24 semi-structured interviews with policy officers, trade unions, employers and civil society actors and various professional and employer bodies who have been involved in the charter since its inception. The interview data are complemented by documentary analysis.

The findings underline the importance of institutional factors such as political access points and the mobilising structures of the state in creating a space for progressive employment policies such as charters to emerge. We also find that the framing of the charter as a mechanism to achieve both social justice and improved productivity allows diverse actors to engage, but at the same time this results in a degree of ambiguity over the normative and substantive reference points for “good employment”.

The article contributes to our understanding of the changing nature of top-down political initiatives that seek to change business practices by engaging a wide range of stakeholders as Allies not adversaries. We argue that while charters are a potentially useful demand side intervention, in the absence of significant workplace or grassroots engagement and without coordinated mechanisms of monitoring and enforcement, their effects on low wage labour markets will be limited.