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Book part
Publication date: 25 October 2011

Liam Leonard

This chapter will establish the two main strands of the study's theoretical framework. These strands represent the internal and external resources in the GSE case. The resource…

Abstract

This chapter will establish the two main strands of the study's theoretical framework. These strands represent the internal and external resources in the GSE case. The resource mobilisation (RM) strand refers to the internal resources of GSE, while the political opportunity structure (POS) refers to external resources. By referring to the literature on social movements particularly that which dwells on RM and the exploitation of political opportunities, the study will provide an understanding of collective action. This study investigates the campaign of an environmental movement that challenged the waste policy of the state, on the issue of incineration. As the state changed waste policy, the Galway campaign mobilised internal resources and exploited external political opportunities. The shifting nature of this opportunity structure may affect the patterns of internal mobilisation, utilisation of resources and types of networks a movement implements. Government responses to such challenges may also influence the patterns of collective action, as movements attempt to exploit the opportunities of the wider political environment.

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Community Campaigns for Sustainable Living: Health, Waste & Protest in Civil Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-381-1

Book part
Publication date: 31 October 2017

Darren McCauley

Injustice is perceived, experienced and articulated. Social movements, and their constitutive parts, frame and re-frame these senses of injustice. Two often-overlapping accounts…

Abstract

Injustice is perceived, experienced and articulated. Social movements, and their constitutive parts, frame and re-frame these senses of injustice. Two often-overlapping accounts of social movements are in focus in this chapter. Human geography has been flooded with movement-based analyses of environmental justice (EJ). Sociology (more appropriately political sociology) has provided insight into social movements in the form of ‘contentious politics’ (CP). Building on both sets of literature, this chapter seeks to advance thought in human geography through a detailed exploration of master and collective action framing. It argues, firstly, that framing analysis challenges activist researchers to retain ‘spatial constructs’ as their central focus, rather than discourse. It calls, secondly, for us to unbind injustice as much as justice in our analysis of framing. And lastly, it demands a multi-spatial perspective on framing beyond simply scalar accounts.

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Environmental Criminology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-377-9

Keywords

Abstract

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International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 12 no. 4/5/6/7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Book part
Publication date: 16 October 2018

Yang Zhang

Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter…

Abstract

Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter argues that while institutional allies are heavily constrained and unlikely to give open endorsement to grassroot activists, some institutional activists indirectly facilitate movement mobilization and favorable outcomes in the process of advancing their own political agendas. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2012, I illustrate this argument by examining the Anti-PX Movement – a landmark grassroots environmental movement against a chemical plant – in Xiamen, China. I find that the environmental institutional actors were constrained and divided, yet some still fostered opportunities for movement mobilization and in turn exploited the opportunity created by the protesters to pursue their policy interests, thus facilitating positive movement outcomes. As long as the claims are not politically subversive to the authoritarian rule, this type of tacit and tactical interaction between institutional activists within the state and grassroot activists on the street is conducive to promoting progressive policy changes.

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Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-895-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 February 2010

Liam Leonard

To better understand the key issues surrounding Global Ecopolitics, it may be beneficial to examine the background to the environmental movement over time. The environmental

Abstract

To better understand the key issues surrounding Global Ecopolitics, it may be beneficial to examine the background to the environmental movement over time. The environmental movement is perhaps the most significant contemporary global movement to have emerged in recent decades. The relationship between humankind and nature has been the subject of much debate and enquiry over time. The environmental movement had its cultural origins in literary accounts of humanity's relationship with nature, beginning from the romantic poets such as William Blake, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, whose works were concerned with the reconciliation of man and nature. This aesthetic could also be found in subsequent transcendentalist American literature, such as Henry David Thoreau's Walden, published in 1854 (Shabecoff, 2003, pp. 37–71). The transcendentalists were interested in the spiritual connections that connected humankind and nature with God and could be seen as the forefathers of deep green ecologists. Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was published in 1859, creating further interest in the understanding of nature. George Perkins Marsh wrote of the destructive impact of agriculture in his book Man and Nature in 1864. President Teddy Roosevelt would develop the National Parks with Gifford Pinchot of the Forestry Service in the early 1900s. In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, concerns about protecting wildlife led to the emergence of a progressive conservation movement, alongside federal regulation of natural habitats and the establishment of national parks. Influential conservation groups included the National Audubon Society, founded in 1886, and the Sierra Club, founded by John Muir in 1892. Muir and Pinchot would become adversaries in the campaign to prevent the building of a dam in Yosemite National Park in the early decade of the nineteenth century (ibid.).

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Global Ecological Politics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-748-6

Book part
Publication date: 13 March 2019

Amanda Buday

The focus on local-level policy initiatives in US anti-fracking movements presents unique opportunities to explore interactions between professional advocacy organizations with…

Abstract

The focus on local-level policy initiatives in US anti-fracking movements presents unique opportunities to explore interactions between professional advocacy organizations with regional/national constituencies and grassroots organizations with constituencies who will directly experience changes in local landscapes resulting from unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD). However, research on anti-fracking movements in the US has considered dynamics of interorganizational cooperation only peripherally. This chapter examines factors that motivate coalition building, sources of coalition fragmentation, and the progressive polarization of grassroots anti-fracking and countermovement activists using qualitative research on an anti-fracking movement in Illinois. While grassroots groups may experience some strategic advantages by collaborating with extra-local, professionalized advocacy organizations, these relationships involve navigating considerable inequalities. In the case presented here, I find that coalition building was important for putting UOGD on the policy agenda. However, when anti-fracking activists began experiencing success, institutionalization rapidly produced fragmentation in the coalition, and a countermovement of UOGD supporters was formed. I highlight how ordinary movement dynamics are particularly susceptible to polarization in the context of local land use disputes that “scale-up” to involve broader movement constituencies as perceptions of distributive injustice collide with perceptions of procedural injustice.

Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2006

Aaron M. McCright and Terry Nichols Clark

We examine how political characteristics of communities explain variation in the mobilization and outcomes of the American environmental movement in 257 large American…

Abstract

We examine how political characteristics of communities explain variation in the mobilization and outcomes of the American environmental movement in 257 large American communities. In the process, we introduce our own typology of the political opportunity structure concept as a basic accounting scheme. We find that non-institutional political factors are more powerful predictors of environmental movement mobilization and outcomes than are institutional political factors. This is an important finding since non-state dimensions of the political opportunity structure are typically understudied in existing research given the overriding emphasis on formal state characteristics. Also, we find that the characteristics of allies have a more significant effect on environmental movement mobilization and outcomes than do the characteristics of opponents.

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Community and Ecology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-410-2

Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2014

Darren McCauley

Environmental justice activism is increasingly globalized, multi-faceted and multi-scaled (Bickerstaff & Agyeman, 2009; Walker, 2009a, 2009b). The existence or perception of…

Abstract

Environmental justice activism is increasingly globalized, multi-faceted and multi-scaled (Bickerstaff & Agyeman, 2009; Walker, 2009a, 2009b). The existence or perception of injustice triggers the development of social activism in increasingly diverse contexts. The present contribution seeks to assess the explanatory value of resources in understanding activism (Freeman, 1979). In place of justice, the under-studied social movement theory of resource mobilization is explored as a complementary and partly oppositional account of justice activism. The highly controversial anti-GMO movement in France is selected as an invigorating context for evaluating activism. The perceived injustice of lifting restrictions on the importation of GM maize into France inspired the mobilization of a nationwide movement. In sharp contrast to existing literature, ideology is considered as a resource that effectively promotes or hinders social activism. Significant conclusions are developed for environmental justice activism research around emphasizing instability, heterogeneity, cultural sensitivity and above all, the limitations of agency-centric arguments.

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Occupy the Earth: Global Environmental Movements
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-697-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2004

Stephen Zavestoski, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Phil Brown, Brian Mayer, Sabrina McCormick and Rebecca Gasior Altman

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c…

Abstract

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c) health inequality and inequity based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and/or sexuality. These movements have challenged a variety of authority structures in society, resulting in massive changes in the health care system. While many other social movements challenge medical authority, a rapidly growing type of health social movement, “embodied health movements” (EHMs), challenge both medical and scientific authority. Embodied health movements do this in three ways: (1) they make the body central to social movements, especially with regard to the embodied experience of people with the disease; (2) they typically include challenges to existing medical/scientific knowledge and practice; and (3) they often involve activists collaborating with scientists and health professionals in pursuing treatment, prevention, research, and expanded funding. We present a conceptual framework for understanding embodied health movements as simultaneously challenging authority structures and allying with them, and offer the environmental breast cancer movement as an exemplar case.

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Authority in Contention
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-037-1

Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2006

Lei Xie and Arthur P.J. Mol

This chapter explores the characteristics of emerging environmental movement organizations in China, and more specifically the role of guanxi – or personal networks – in Chinese…

Abstract

This chapter explores the characteristics of emerging environmental movement organizations in China, and more specifically the role of guanxi – or personal networks – in Chinese environmental activism. While organizational networks of environmental NGOs are still weak in Chinese environmental activism, personal networks of environmental activists are instrumental in building the first sprouts of a green civil society. We explore this via an in-depth case study of relatively successful environmental activism to halt the construction of a number of hydro-electric projects on the Nu River. The case study illustrates that in China, more so than in western countries, informal personal networks, rather than formal organizational networks, play a crucial role in the organization and success of contemporary environmental campaigns. This is partly explained by the immature environmental movement, and partly by the specifics of Chinese social networks.

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Community and Ecology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-410-2

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