The Iranian Green Movement: Fragmented Collective Action and Fragile Collective Identity

The Iranian Green Movement emerged after the presidential election in June 2009. The paper tracks down its foundational origins through the concept of ‘fragmented collective action’, that points to the dispersion of a social movement's political energies and the fragmentation of its constitutive groups. It also addresses the significance of informal mobilizing networks and the widespread use of modern virtual space to bring together an intersubjectively constructed collective identity which was shaped by the movement’s interactions with political forces and with its interlocutors. Finally, the paper argues that the collective identity shaped the movement's strategies over the course of its evolution.     

Obedient children and reckless rebels: Jabotinsky's youth politics and the case for authoritarian leadership, 1931–1933

This article traces the pivotal role that ideas about “youth” and “generationhood” played in Vladimir Jabotinsky's political strategy as leader of the Union of Revisionist Zionists and its youth movement, Brit Yosef Trumpeldor (Betar). During the leadership struggle within the movement between 1931 and 1933, Jabotinsky believed that he could draw upon debates sweeping across Europe about the nature of youth, their role in politics, and the challenges of “generational conflict” in order to convince his followers that his increasingly authoritarian behavior was the only mode of leadership available to Zionist leaders in the 1930s. The article demonstrates that Jabotinsky's deliberately ambiguous and provocative constructions of “youth” and “generationhood” within the movement's party literature and in articles addressed to the Polish Jewish public, as well as the innovative ways in which he delimited “youth” from “adult” in his movement's regulations, allowed him to further embrace authoritarian measures within the movement without publicly abandoning his claim to be a firm proponent of democracy.     

The devil in disguise: action repertoire,visual performance and collective identity of the Autonomous Nationalists

Adopting protest tactics and visual performance of the far left, many neo‐Nazis in Europe, particularly in Germany, have developed a new style. Referencing their political opponents, the far‐left Autonomous Movement, they call themselves the Autonomous Nationalists. Though this new style caused intense conflicts in the beginning, Autonomous Nationalists have gained strong influence in the neo‐Nazi movement. What drives neo‐Nazis to adopt tactics such as ‘black blocs’ and certain symbols and dress of their political enemies? Based on movement's documents, semi‐structured interviews and observing demonstrations, this article uses empirical data to identify central dimensions of the Autonomous Nationalist's action repertoire and visual performance and their impact on the neo‐Nazi movement's collective identity. The analysis of external and internal effects reveals that the shift in public appearance strengthened the movement's mobilization potential, but otherwise decreased ideological internalisation and may increase the turnover of activists.     

RUSSIAN MINERS BOW TO THE ANGEL OF HISTORY

This paper follows the struggles of Russian coal miners who first challenged the Soviet regime in 1989 and helped precipitate its downfall in 1991. In the Arctic city of Vorkuta, the movement's most militant and radical center, the dreams of workers have again, as in 1917, become bonds of their affliction. In response to invading market forces, the city strike committee has turned from support of the new regime to renewed opposition, the independent trade union movement increasingly throws its weight behind the once reviled mine management, and the mines themselves have rallied around the conglomerate, long a symbol of arbitrary power.     

The New Zealand Environmental Movement and the Politics of Inclusion

Engagement with the state has rarely been a comfortable association for environmental movement groups. As Dryzek (1996) illustrates, the conditions for the benign inclusion of environmental and other social movement groups are quite complex, usually requiring not just an intersection between movement and state aspirations but also the continued presence of movement groups in civil society as a democratic counterweight to state power. New Zealand's environmental movement, after a decade of relative political obscurity, may once again be presented with opportunities for political inclusion following the election of a LabourAlliance coalition and seven Green Party representatives in late 1999. This article reflects on the New Zealand environmental movement's past engagement with the state in the light of Dryzek's criteria for benign political inclusion, highlighting the extent of the challenge presented to groups in the movement and the opportunities for future reconciliation with the state.     

Trade unions,the Australian Labor Party and the Trade–Labour Rights Debate

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed.     

Roots,rock, Breizh: music and the politics of nationhood in contemporary Brittany*

Abstract. The three terms Roots, Rock and Breizh (or ‘Brittany’) seem to make unlikely companions: their meeting looks more like a collision than a confluence. However, these disparate forces have fashioned a unique cultural dynamic in Brittany. This paper analyses this cultural‐nationalist movement. It considers its socio‐cultural context, presents some case studies of particular singers and festivals, and evaluates the movement's significance.     

‘They Finally Found Out that We Really Are Men’: Violence,Non‐Violence and Black Manhood in the Civil Rights Era

This article explores how peaceful protest and armed resistance reflected and shaped certain gender identities in the southern US civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, and reveals much about the significance of violence for ‘marginalised masculinities’ within the African American freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. In the Deep South, civil rights organisers found that their non‐violent strategy's connotations of effeminate submissiveness hampered attempts to win over black men to the movement's cause. Conversely, those African Americans who decided to use armed force to protect the movement against racist attacks were proud of their ability to defend themselves and their communities. A comparison of armed resistance efforts in southern civil rights campaigns with those of post‐1965 Black Power groups such as the Black Panther Party shows both commonalities and differences with regard to the inter‐relationship between self‐defence and gender. In the southern movement, the affirmation of manhood remained a by‐product of the physical imperative to protect black lives against racism. Among Black Power militants and their black nationalist precursors, self‐defence, while initially intended to stop police brutality and other racist oppression, ultimately became mainly a symbol of militant black manhood. The Black Power movement's affirmative message countered stereotypes of black male powerlessness and instilled a positive black identity into many activists, but the gendered discourse it produced also tended to perpetuate black women's subordination.     

The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History

Historians with feminist commitments have expressed reservations about men's history and men's studies. This unease has existed more or less from the first appearance of men's history as a specialised area of inquiry, and shows no signs of abating. The first part of this article explores the sources of this unease. It discusses several guiding premises of men's history and shows that they tend to lead to the occlusion of men's gendered power over women. Nonetheless, the scrutiny of the gender of men is the logical outgrowth of several decades of theoretical and empirical work on gender–witness the many historians of women and gender who have recently turned their attention to the systematic study of manliness and masculinity. With the help of examples drawn from the scholarship on the history of the British colonies in America and the early United States, the second part of this article enumerates several strategies for successfully highlighting men's gendered power in histories of manliness and masculinity.     

The Political Art of Patience: Adivasi Resistance in India

Abstract: This article documents the emergence of the Denotified Rights Action Group (DNG‐RAG), a national social movement orchestrated to assert the citizenship rights of adivasi (indigenous) populations in India. It assesses the movement's efforts to engage the central Indian government in meaningful dialogue to accommodate the inclusion of marginalized adivasis in the democratic politics of the nation. In doing so, the DNT‐RAG reasserts the primacy of the Indian state as the principal engine driving the project of nation building, and as such, the site that activists target to further an agenda of equitable development and democratic rights for those known as India's Denotified Tribes.     

Modernising colonialism: The British Labour movement and Africa

The article evaluates the widely held view that the Attlee governments lacked a distinctive approach to colonial affairs by examining the Labour movement's post-war, institution building activities in Kenya. In Labour's colonial policy deliberations, Kenya was the focus of particular attention and is used as a case study to shed light on the Labour leadership's wider imperial concerns and objectives. From the 1920s, the Labour party advocated that the colonies be encouraged to develop trade unions, co-operatives and local government. Some tentative moves in this direction were made in 1930 by Ramsay MacDonald's administration but it was not until Labour came to power in 1945 that, in response to international pressure and the nationalist challenge, significant steps were taken to promote institutions which would organise the African masses. The argument advanced is that Labour leaders drew on their movement's historical traditions to encourage forms of African economic and political activism which were likely to stabilise colonial rule.     

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the South Sudan question: reconsidering moderation

This article examines the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement's stand on the South Sudan question. The aim here is to contribute to the ongoing debate over the MB's moderation. Throughout the civil war in Sudan, the MB consistently objected to South Sudanese secession. Yet, while it had traditionally framed its objection in religious terms, describing the South Sudanese struggle as a Christian conspiracy against Islam, in the decade preceding South Sudan's declaration of independence it moved to base its opposition on more practical grounds, revolving around issues such the absence of democracy, stability and infrastructure in South Sudan. This correlated with wider shifts in the MB. Since the 1990s, the movement has claimed to have undergone a transformation, adopting a moderate, pro‐democratic stance. These statements persuaded many scholars that the MB has come to represent political moderation in both its domestic and international agenda. More recent works on the movement, however, have come to question the MB's moderation hypothesis, suggesting that even though the movement has changed its discourse and some aspects of its activism, this could not be seen as a linear process of moderation. This article uses the South Sudan case to further support this critique from a foreign policy perspective. It demonstrates that even though the MB changed its tactics and discourse, its goals remained unchanged— even when the circumstances and the normative environment changed dramatically. Moreover, it shows that at times of crisis, the liberal discourse gave way to the old‐fashioned radical discourse of previous decades.     

The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns

The North American labor movement continues to wrestle with the challenges of organizing workers in the US South. This article explores the contradictory position of the South in the contemporary labor movement, using the circulation of the $15 minimum wage to ground the analysis. By problematizing the place of the South in US labor, this article contributes to efforts to complicate the geographic imaginaries of the South and to our understanding of the contemporary labor movement's expansionary projects. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation in Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, I trace the abstract circulation of organizational resources, strategies, and tactics of the $15 wage movement into, throughout, and back out of the South.     

Gendered networks and migration decision-making in Northern Vietnam

This paper examines the gender aspect of migrant networks, particularly the different ways networks are expected to assist men's or women's migration during migration decision-making processes. Through the case study of a farming community in Northern Vietnam, it shows that migrant networks are not gender neutral and, more importantly, men and women capitalise on different functions of networks to facilitate their migratory endeavours. Whilst men tend to be connected to relatively more extended networks primarily for practical support, women are more likely to be tied to family networks, which provide them with not just information and practical support but also social protection. These gender-specific expectations and uses of migrant networks have important implications for men's and women's mobility. The paper provides new insights into the way migration choices are made by men and women and at the same time underscores the importance of understanding migrant networks in researching migration.     

Anti‐racist Practice and the Work of Community Food Organizations

Whiteness enables the coherence of an alliance organized to promote community food security and sustainable farming. This unnamed presence shapes a discourse identifying the focus of struggle as well as resource allocation, conference form and content, list serv discussions, staffing and programming. Unacknowledged white privilege gives the lie to the movement's rhetoric of justice, good intentions and sustainability. And yet it is clear that racism is an organizing process in the food system: people of color disproportionately experience food insecurity, lose their farms and face the dangerous work of food processing and agricultural labor. Critical analyses of social movements argue that a failure to confront difference undermines progressive change efforts. The paper provides evidence of how the community food movement reproduces white privilege and proposes ways it might engage with anti‐racism.     

The Mobile Politics of Emotions and Social Movement in Oaxaca,Mexico

In light of recent debates between affect and emotions in geography, this article focuses on how the emotional landscape of spatial struggles in Oaxaca articulated people together, thereby generating solidarities and a collective sociality offering the potentiality of interconnection that geographers of affect emphasize. Through an analysis of a women's march, I demonstrate how social movements move people, mobilizing them both physically and emotionally, with effects that go beyond a movement's political demands. Engaging with how emotions do movement‐building work means going beyond a focus on the relational construction of emotions and arguing instead for their collective agency, including their power to transform participants into activists. Highlighting the centrality of spatial struggles and emotions to the shifting, mobile politics of social movements brings into sharp relief the importance of a situated, historical analysis for theorists romanticizing the emancipatory possibilities of a revolutionary transnational articulation between social movements.     

Responding to the ‘crisis of masculinity’: the perspectives of young Muslim men from Glasgow and Edinburgh,Scotland

Debates about the so-called crisis of masculinity have tended to focus on the experiences of white working class young men and black young men to the exclusion of other groups of men. This article seeks to redress this omission by exploring young Muslim men's knowledge and understanding of the crisis of masculinity and the ways in which they respond to such discourses. Using qualitative data collected during interviews and focus groups with young Muslim men – mainly of Pakistani heritage – living in Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, I demonstrate that young Muslim men's responses to the crisis of masculinity debate are informed by a complex range of issues including their own class position, familial and related gendered expectations alongside the young men's interests in sport and leisure activities.     

Of “madness,” against Babylon: A story of resistance, (mis)representation,and paradox in the Caribbean

This article provides a postcolonial feminist account of the complex politics of the Earth People, an anti-systemic movement in Trinidad and Tobago who organised against the post-independence status quo during the 1970–1980s. The purpose of the piece is twofold. Firstly, on a scholarly level, it endeavours to (re)tell a theoretically-driven empirically-based story of the nuances that surfaced during the Earth People's resistance to “Babylon” (i.e. racial capitalism, Western institutions, rise of a post-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie). Secondly, on a political-epistemological level, we are countering conventional ways Caribbean people, histories, social movements, and the region at large are documented, studied, and ultimately written about within mainstream academia. To do so, we outline the fraught politics of (mis)representation that arise in established ethnography, with specific care afforded to the perspectives and political agency of participants from the movement. Our analysis emerges out of fieldwork guided by critical race theories, decolonial critique, feminist ethics, and community collaboration. Our methods included archival research, focus groups, oral histories, go-along interviews, and narrative inquiry with former members of the group. In general, the piece historicises the Earth People's efforts to evade and defy colonial norms, capitalist logics, and Westminster state power by “returning to nature.” Further, we offer a synopsis of movement's worldviews, social relations, and ideological standpoints, which despite being episodically paradoxical and not adopted widely throughout the Caribbean, merit further respective attention and critical scrutiny apropos regional posterity and orthodox academic knowledge production.     

Quotidian geographies: placing feminism

We discuss Susan Hanson's contributions to geography during the 1970s and 1980s through the lens of quotidian geographies, geographies of the everyday. Beginning from our own experiences as graduate students and new faculty members, we describe the social and theoretical context in which Susan published her initial studies of men's and women's activity patterns that examined gender differences in travel behavior and their origins in men's and women's different household responsibilities. We also review her success peopling the discipline of geography. We conclude that human geography has benefited from the incorporation of feminist theory and methods as Susan predicted.     

Twentysomethings and twentagers: subjectivities,spaces and young men at home

This article examines young men's (aged 18–25 years) meanings of home and practices of homemaking, comprising material and social relations. The discussion contributes to three areas of geographical interest: home, masculinities and youth. Both geographies of home and masculinities have begun to consider men's experiences and meanings of home, but young men's domestic practices remain largely unexamined. Geographical work on youth has examined housing transitions, but the gendered experiences of young men need further interrogation. To provide insight into young men's homemaking, this article presents qualitative case studies drawn from fieldwork that investigated relations between masculinities and domesticities in Sydney, Australia. Young men are arguably out-of-place at home in conventional discourses of gender and space, but homes are nevertheless crucial sites for shaping masculine subjectivities. Masculinities and homes are co-constituted through domestic practices, generating diverse intersectional subjectivities and spaces. In this article, three subjectivity-space, or masculine-domestic, relations are discussed, which also counter the centring of heterosexual couple family homes in domestic imaginaries: young men in parental homes, share-housing and ‘alternative’ family homes. I examine similarities and differences across and within these masculine domesticities. This multiplicity of ‘youthful masculine domesticities’ offers a set of qualitative examples for use in public rhetoric that seeks to redress uneven gender dynamics in contemporary domestic life.