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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social forces that shape perceptions of risk and sustain community‐based protest against controversial construction projects.

This paper uses a thematic story‐telling approach which draws on ethnographic method and theories relating to social contagion, group dynamics and collective action.

The paper shows how collective action against projects is maintained by a high degree of interconnectivity and relational multiplexity between participating individuals and groups. Other determinants of movement continuity include the protective role of hidden social networks, overlapping protest group memberships, the plurality of protest issues faced and the quality and nature of social ties, experiences and emotions that link activists in collective action over the protest movement's lifetime.

This research extends existing research in protest mobalisation in the social and political domain into the area of protest continuity against controversial projects.

Mismanaged community concerns about controversial projects can escalate into long‐term and sometimes acrimonious protest stand‐offs that have negative implications for the community, firms involved and for industries as a whole. The findings of this paper can help project managers avoid this.

This paper will be of value to project managers involved in managing community perceptions of risk on controversial projects within or outside the construction industry. It explains for the first time how perceptions of risk about major projects are shaped in communities and provides recommendations about how best to communicate with communities to prevent conflict.

Identity movements rely on a shared “we-feeling” among a community of participants. In turn, such shared identities are possible when movement participants can self-categorize themselves as belonging to one group. We address a debate as to whether community diversity enhances or impedes such protests, and investigate the role of racial diversity since it is a simple, accessible, and visible basis of community diversity and social categorization. We focus on American communities’ protests against Walmart's entry from 1998 until 2005 and ask whether racial diversity affects protests after accounting for a community's sense of pride and attachment to their town. We use distance from historical monuments as a proxy of a community's pride and attachment, and after controlling for it, we find that community's racial homogeneity significantly increases protests against Walmart.

Despite the abundant research on social movements, there is sparse scholarly investigation of the link between community settings and how they contribute to persistent protest participation. This paper illuminates the cultural and social mechanisms within a religious retirement community that engender members’ sustained commitment to a ten-year long peace protest. A shared religious-based collective identity also deepens activists’ commitment to this cause. This study draws on semi-structured interviews with 14 peace protesters who reside in this community at two points in time: 2010 and 2013.

One of the features of current society is that of protest against environmental issues and this paper considers protest against road building and the ecoprotest movement. In doing so it considers both the local inhabitants and new age travellers who are involved in such protest to show that not only does ecoprotest, as a form of protest, raise the profile of environmental issues within public discourse but also opens up space for such discourse. Of greater significance is the effect which the ecoprotest, movement has upon a local sense of identity and community. Indeed the travellers themselves, through their action and engagement, demonstrate that the key determinant of community identity is grounded in self‐belief and shared aspirations rather than in an externally imposed definition or in any economic imperatives. This paper shows that the migration of this sense of self‐belief into mainstream society serves to demonstrate that community spirit and identity are extant in modern society but need a catalyst for their re‐emergence. In doing so the role of ecoprotest points towards a possible mechanism for the re‐emergence of an active and participatory sense of community identity within society as a whole.

Ireland has witnessed a succession of community-based protests in recent years. Issues have included water charges, refuse collection taxes, infrastructural developments, incinerators, dumps and toxic industries. This chapter will argue that the basis for these disputes is the Irish state’s neo-liberal and neo-corporatist policy framework, which favours accelerated and reckless infrastructural development while excluding community concerns about health and environmental issues. The chapter will also examine the use of communications technologies, which form a large part of the modern economy, as a tool for community resistance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how shadow constituents are redefining corporate social responsibility (CSR) through activism, and how oil companies in Nigeria are responding to this development.

This paper contributes to the conceptual framework of CSR which asserts that whereas all stakeholders of a company do not have an equal say in its strategic direction, they are affected by such direction, and must hence be considered.

The findings reveal these points: activists are gaining a strong foothold in forcing oil companies to cooperate with their vision of social change; Nigeria lacks legislation compelling oil companies to contribute to the development of their host communities; and although internal oil company documents suggest efforts to help their hosts communities have been made, no meaningful agreement between the oil companies and the indigenous communities have been reached.

The paper encourages a broader conception of CSR. Shadow constituents have become such influence wielding stakeholders in organizations today that we need to explore more fully the role they play in dictating public agenda and influencing policy globally.

Multinational corporations can develop a better understanding of strategies and techniques that can enable them to balance the interests of a wider group of stakeholders and manage the interconnected social, environmental and economic impacts of their businesses.

This paper enriches the research database on CSR.

The purpose of this paper is to explore urban mobilisation patterns in two post-Soviet cities: Vilnius and Moscow. Both cities were subject to similar housing and urban policy during Soviet times, and they have implemented urban development using neoliberal market principles, provoking grassroots opposition from citizens to privatisation and marketisation of their housing environment and local public space. However, the differing conditions of democratic Lithuanian and authoritarian Russian public governance offer different opportunities and set different constraints for neighbourhood mobilisation. The purpose is to contrast local community mobilisations under the two regimes and highlight the differences between and similarities in the activists’ repertoires of actions in two distinct political and economic urban settings.

The paper employs qualitative methodology using data from semi-structured interviews conducted with community activists and state officials, presented using a comparative case study design.

Although, citizens’ mobilisations in the two cities are reactions to the neoliberalisation of housing and local public space, they take different forms. In Vilnius they are institutionalised and receive formal support from national and local authorities. Moreover, support from the EU encourages organisational development and provides material and cognitive resources for grassroots urban mobilisations. In contrast, residents’ mobilisations in Moscow are informal and face fierce opposition from local authorities. However, even in an authoritarian setting, grassroots mobilisations evolve using creative strategies to circumvent institutional constraints.

Little attention has been paid to grassroots urban mobilisations in post-Soviet cities. There is also a lack of comparative attempts to show variation in post-Soviet urban activism related to housing and local public space.

Using protest event analysis, this study aims to investigate which risk factors influence the severity of environmental protests in China, thus filling a gap in China-related environmental protest literature.

Using a database derived from media coverage of 129 environmental protests in China from 2009 to 2015, this empirical study identifies underlying risk factors influencing environmental protest severity, quantifies these protest cases and verifies the associations between risk factors and severity using ordered logistic regression.

The results show that higher environmental health threat, economic loss, distrust of local government, lack of local governmental response, improper local government action and higher population density are likely to increase environmental protest severity; however, contrary to expectations, environmental information disclosure has no significant effect. These findings illuminate the vital and variational role of local government throughout all stages of the evolutionary process in environmental protests. Moreover, public distrust of local government is the principal cause of these protests.

This study enhances the understanding of how Chinese environmental protests arise from the identified risk factors and contributes to quantitative multi-case research in this area. Furthermore, the findings may help local governments in China, as well as in other countries, to enact positive measures to prevent serious environmental protests and improve their ability to address the environmental problems that cause protests. More effective governance can decrease the number and severity of environmental protests and thus promote social stability.

Women comprise a significant and growing proportion of the law enforcement population. Despite this, their potentially unique reactions to job-related posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and depression have been underrepresented in the relevant literature, particularly within the context of exposure to community violence. Also understudied is the role of empathy in the development of post-trauma reactions, which has been a risk factor for the development of posttraumatic distress in previous studies. With the recent endorsement of empathy training by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, it is important to examine ways in which empathy may contribute to differences in PTSS and depression for male and female officers. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Male and female police officers (n=189) exposed to violence during the 2014 Ferguson protests completed a battery of measures designed to assess demographic information, prior trauma history, and mental health outcomes.

Moderation analyses showed that empathy moderated the relationships between exposure and PTSS and exposure and depression in female officers, such that exposure was associated with higher posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms only for female officers with high levels of empathy. These relationships were not found for men.

This study is the first to examine sex differences and the role of empathy in the mental health effects of law enforcement secondary to violence during community protests against policing.

Purpose – The present study looks at the dynamic process of Mexican immigrant children and youth's civic engagement through their participation in community and family activities. In particular, it explores how their collaboration in a grassroots, immigrant community-based Centro in New York City allows for civic engagement. We demonstrate how active community participation, in the form of civic engagement, shapes children and youth's citizenship constructions.Methodology – Based on extensive participant observations and focus group interviews, this article demonstrates how children and youth's civic engagement is mediated by their integration and contributions to family and community civic activities and how these activities inform children and youth's knowledge of citizenship discourse. We present evidence that demonstrates that children and youth's involvement and participation in protests, rallies, volunteer activities, as well as the creation of a booklet, associated with immigration, human rights, and social justice, organized through the Centro Guadalupano, facilitated their knowledge about illegality and citizenship issues.Findings – Findings suggest that when indigenous Mexican children and youth are integrated into the important activities of their community, as active and engaged members, they develop a deeper understanding of civic engagement and what it means to be a participatory “citizen.”Research implications – The present study provides a starting point for future research on the importance of and possibilities for child and youth civic engagement in grassroots community organizations. For example, children and youth learn that through active civic participation and community contributions, they are able to challenge dominant discourse on immigration, human rights, and citizenship. This study sheds light on the value of involving children and youth in civic engagement opportunities – a process that can facilitate the construction of citizenship among marginalized groups, particularly undocumented Mexican immigrants from indigenous regions.Value – The findings presented extend broader discourses on the politics of immigration and citizenship, and also challenge, to some extent, mainstream constructions of children and youth. More research in these areas is needed; our paper is a small contribution to the emerging field of indigenous and immigrant children and youth's political socialization and activism.