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Social movement scholarship convincingly highlights the importance of threats, political opportunities, prior social ties, ideological compatibility, and resources for coalition formation. Based on interviews with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists involved in two transnational coalitions in Israel/Palestine, this chapter illustrates the emergence of transnational coalitions, particularly those that cross polarized ethno-national divides, depends not only on such facilitators, but also, and critically, on the belief that such diverse cooperation is strategic. I argue these unique coalitions intentionally formed with individuals and organizations situated in different national communities out of a strategic decision by the Palestinian initiators, given the closed political opportunity structure they faced domestically, to enlarge the scope of conflict by drawing in new people and communities who may have some leverage on the Israeli government. Consequently, this chapter also makes clear that partners in the Global South make intentional choices about who to partner with, and that the agency is not solely linked with their more privileged partners in the Global North (cf., Bob, 2001; Widener, 2007). Finally, it illustrates that coalition partners are recruited not only because of social ties, prior histories of interaction, ideological similarity, and shared organizational framing, but also due to key considerations including perceptions of what the ethno-national diversity, varying networks, and differing privileges make available.

Building on previous work from Frith, McElwee, Smith, Somerville and Fairlie this chapter further explores entrepreneurship as practiced by an entrepreneur (who is also a drug dealer) in a rural, UK, northern, small-town context and how he does ‘strategy’.

This research was conducted in a broadly grounded approach using a conversational research methodology (Feldman, 1999). A series of conversations were conducted with a career drug dealer, guided by a very basic agenda-setting question of ‘how do you earn money?’ Emergent themes were explored through further conversation before being compared with literature and triangulated with third party conversations.

Implications for research design, ethics and the conduct of such research are identified and discussed. As a research project this work is protean and as a case study the generalisations that can be made from this piece are necessarily limited. Access to and ethical approval for research directly with illegal entrepreneurs is fraught with difficulty in the risk-averse environment of academia. This limits the data available directly from illegal entrepreneurs. The credibility of data collected from third parties is limited by their peripheral interest in and awareness of entrepreneurship discourse, entrepreneurial life themes and the entrepreneurial dimension to crime, as well as by the structural bias implicit in the fact that many of these third parties deal only with what might be termed the unsuccessful entrepreneurs (i.e., those that got caught!) Findings represent a tentative indication of potential themes for further research.

This article presents the results of a 15-year longitudinal study of the major educational peacebuilding initiatives in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, during times of relative peace and of acute violence (1993–2008). Using longitudinal field research data and surveys, it examines how peace initiatives, that work across conflict lines, adapt to hostile and unfavorable environments. Additionally, it investigates the criteria that allows some peacebuilding initiatives to survive and persist, when the large majority do not. Building on the organizational and social movement studies literature, I contend that organizations need to successfully attend to a variety of challenges such as maintaining resources, maintaining legitimacy, managing internal conflict, and maintaining commitment to have a significant chance for survival. Moreover, I argue that for organizations committed to working across difference and inequality in unfavorable and hostile conflict environments, it is critical for organizational effectiveness and survival to pay heed to the quality of the cross-conflict relationships, as well as, to matters of equality.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the Chilean student movement and state force action during the period 2000–2012, placing specific attention on three waves of student contention that took place at the turn of the century. During the decade under study, the Chilean students became more contentious, they broadened their demands beyond specific grievances to encompass a critique to the education system as a whole, their alliance system grew (gaining from these denser networks of collaboration more resources to mobilize), and they managed to win public opinion on their side. However, the relationship with state forces has not been static across time, and both students and state forces have experienced changes in how they interact with each other. The results of this paper are based on a mixed method approach that drew on a quantitative database of student contention in Chile (n = 491 student events) and 15 in-depth interviews with leader activists from the most salient recent Chilean student movements of three periods under study, in addition to some key informants. The findings confirm that when student protests target the government, when they use disruptive strategies that affect the status-quo, and when they mobilize alongside other challenging actors, they are more likely to be met with direct repression by authorities. The research shows that there is a “dialect of repression” at play by which state forces' direct repression of protest can be two-fold: on the one hand, it gives students visibility in the public opinion, but on the other, it can be negative for ushering support if the media and authorities are successful in portraying them as violent or a threat to public order. In this sense, the figure of the “encapuchado,” students who disguise their identity and purposefully seek confrontation with authorities during mobilizations is problematized by the movement itself. How to win public opinion and use that visibility in their favor is related to decision-making mechanisms that the movement puts at play but also to the calculations done on the part of the government and security forces about the leverage of the movement.

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) LNG project had a direct impact on many rural villagers in the project area. A Livelihood Restoration (LR) program, and later a Community Livelihood Improvement Program (CLIP), was established to assist displaced villagers with food supply and entry into the cash economy. Here we use a case study of the food processing component to focus on gender and social issues addressed through the action research process.

Over the period from 2015 to 2017, over 9000 women and men had received some training during the CLIP program, of whom 77 per cent were women. In the food processing component, women and men were trained to produce a variety of dishes. Training was also conducted in preparation of tasty and nutritious meals for the households, basic human nutrition and hygiene.

Using the action research process, we modified the program as the situation changed and as we learnt from the successes and failures in the program. Overall, the LR and CLIP programs were very successful. Several positive social outcomes occurred, including improved financial independence of many women, raised status of women in their community and a reduction in domestic violence.

Contributions to the program’s success include a gender-balanced team of agricultural, food processing and community engagement specialists; the team learnt from mistakes and modified the program using the action research process; the program was well funded by the PNG LNG Project; and success in the early stages of the program led to ongoing funding once the construction phase ended.

Pre-colonization, Tribes lived in ways that were well-adapted to natural hazards and stewarded the environment respectfully. Colonization and the federal reservation system have stuck Tribes in static, often hazard-prone, areas; removing their foundational capabilities for avoiding disaster and environmental hazard impacts. The premise of ceded lands and the reservation system was a trust responsibility of the federal government to provide resources for continuing self-governance of Tribal Nations. Fulfillment of the federal government’s trust responsibility to Tribal Nations in the realm of climate change and disasters is predicated on the provision of sufficient resources for the Tribal Nation itself to properly govern. The trust responsibility is not fulfilled through the federal government allowing applications to program-dictated grant opportunities or even consistent, yet insufficient, recurring funding for disaster management. Nor is the trust responsibility fulfilled through the preparation and resourcing of outside entities – local, state, and up to the federal government itself – to enact disaster management actions on sovereign lands. The ability of a nation to develop and administer governmental programs and services independent of outside interference is the very foundation of sovereignty and self-determination. The fulfillment of the trust responsibility for disaster management hinges, therefore, on the allocation of sufficient resources and legal space for self-governance for Tribal Nations to return to pre-colonization levels of capability and sovereignty for disaster management for their citizens and residents.