Rights, the environment and Part V of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Using figures derived from the UK Home Office, this paper analyses and reviews the impact and deployment of Part V of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 since its enactment. This is done with special reference to its impact on citizenship and the regulation of ‘the environment’ and associated rural spaces. It is argued that, notwithstanding the actual use of the public order clauses in Part V of the Act, its underlying meanings are largely of a symbolic nature. Such symbolism is, however, a powerful indication of the defence of particularist constructions of rural space. It can also open out new conditions of possibility, providing a useful ‘oppressed’ status and media spectacle for a range of protesters and activists.

En attendant Sarko? France’s mainstream Right and Centre, 2012-2014

In winning the municipal elections of March 2014, France’s mainstream opposition – the Centrists and the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) – benefited not only from the unpopularity of the Left in power, but also from its own (partial) reconstruction. The Centrists had reorganised; the UMP had reaffirmed its right-wing programme and drawn strength from the opposition social movements launched in 2013. The European elections of 2014, however, demonstrated the limitations of this reconstruction. Their weak institutionalisation – the original sin of France’s Right and centre-Right – left internal ideological differences and (above all) personal rivalries unchecked within both forces. These tensions were compounded, in the UMP, by a series of financial scandals. At their heart was former president Nicolas Sarkozy, still the activists’ darling, ever more clearly a candidate for 2017, but also more hobbled by judicial investigations.

The case of pre-natal diagnosis

This chapter reconsiders critiques of pre-natal diagnosis in Disability Studies. Underlying assumptions about reproductive technologies are analysed to demonstrate that while many critiques of pre-natal diagnosis by Disability activists and theorists are concerned about children being the product of 'choice' through the selective effects of pre-natal diagnosis, the issue that reproductive technologies (such as IVF) themselves necessarily always already rely on 'choice' -- namely the choice for a 'biological' or 'own' child (different terms are used) -- is nowhere considered. The chapter considers several consequences of thinking through this issue and its implications.

Living the Revolution: urban communes & soviet socialism, 1917-1932

This book follows a revolutionary trend popular among young activists and would-be radicals after 1917, the formation of collective units of cohabitation and association known as 'urban communes'. In these spaces, activists tried to live what they understood as the 'socialist lifestyle', self-consciously putting Marxist and Bolshevik theories into practice. By telling the story of the urban communes, this book reveals how grand revolutionary ideals, such as collectivism, equality, proletarian ethics, and modern practice, were experienced, understood, and appropriated on a human level. This enables us to better understand the messy realities of the early Soviet state, showing how ideological beliefs and revolutionary contingencies actually came into being during this time.

The kommuna impulse: collective mechanisms and commune-ists in the early Soviet State

This study examines the creation of the urban kommuna (commune) and the ideals that stimulated this social phenomenon – the kommuna impulse of the nascent Soviet state. Collective idealism affected Soviet housing, architecture and even urban planning, but little is known of social experiments in commune‐ism. As a result, these collective cells have been dismissed as utopian anomalies or the product of a housing shortage. Here it is argued that these discursive assessments are unsatisfactory and isolated from the historical narrative. While utopian ideals and domestic necessity were central to the formation of collective living, the kommuna was also involved in an active discourse with collectivism and socialist ideology. The kommuna cell was a dynamic entity that required considerable formative planning. The activists who forged these cells – the self‐identified ‘communards’ – turned their everyday domestic life into a socialist battleground, in which they struggled with the key debates of the early Soviet state. This article examines the communard as a social activist in order to better understand this phenomenon. It clarifies the coexistence of ideological and idealist trends among Soviet youth with practical contingencies for socialism. Furthermore, it reveals the process by which the kommuna impulse and these contingencies developed throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

Librarians as Advocates for Social Media Privacy

Librarians must continue their traditional roles as privacy rights activists and intellectual freedom upholders into the digital age, and across electronic information sources, including social media fora. Social media is quickly becoming a major source of information and center for information seeking, and librarians have an opportunity to promote and help shape social media policies that protect users’ privacy and assure that users can seek information without inhibition. One way librarians can be involved in the promotion of online privacy is by joining the social media user rights movement and advocating terms of use agreements that protect information seekers that follow the "Privacy by Design" model created by Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D.

Framväxten av sociala rörelsers globala politik

The emergence of social movements’ global politics Globalization not only transforms capital, media and technology, but also creates conditions for global politics, beyond ”international politics”. New transnational public arenas emerge, where a broad range of actors articulate demands and interests. A globalized political infrastructure arise from the combination of the (1) internal transnational mobilization within two opposing global networks: movements’ World Social Forum and political economy elites’ World Economic Forum; and a global connection with (2) regular dramatic street protests during multilateral regime summits; and (3) a permanent and virtual network of information communication technology that enables new forms of action, organization and mobilization. Together these arenas make participatory and global politics possible for social movements. Regime confrontations are formed by the new global media of ICT in a way that transforms the struggle into a political drama, where activists’ diversity of tactics – The Majority Drama, The Carnival, and The David-Goliath Drama – creates both competition and collaboration. These arenas are only emerging and this new form of global political structure creates both possibilities and problems. Still, a unique potential to democratize politics is created.

Publikdragande namn eller aktivistermed drag i? : Om symboliskt kapital som maktresurs i den globala rättviserörelsens lokala organiseringsarbete

Crowd-pulling names or energetic activists? On symbolic capital as a power resource in the local organizational work within the global justice movement The article explores the global emergence of local Social Forums by means of an ethnographic study of the organization of the Stockholm Social Forum. In international academic debate, the forums are often discussed as a “globalization from below” and a new deliberative democratic process. However, empirical research on the organizational process, and its power relations, has been very limited. The theoretical concept symbolic capital (Bourdieu) and concepts from conversation analysis (CA) are used to analyze how power in terms of priority of interpretation is constructed in conversations between activists with differing political backgrounds. A detailed empirical analysis is based on the case of an internal discussion about inviting keynote speakers to the local forum. The results show how transnational networks and specific knowledge about the global social forum process became symbolic capital in the organizational process. Holders of this specific form of symbolic capital gained priority of interpretation in the internal discussions. This had an impact on the practical outcome of the organizational process in terms of the symbolic framing of the Social Forum. It is argued that the social forum process produces specific forms of cultural distinctions, social hierarchies and patterns of exclusion.

Utmaningen från andra berättelser : En studie om moraliskt omdöme, utvidgat tänkande och kritiskt reflekterande berättelser i dialogbaserad feministisk etik

The present study has a threefold aim: First, the theoretical aim is to give a contribution to refinement of the theory of dialogue based feminist ethics, concerning the understanding of judgment and narration within such an ethics.  The study also has an empirical aim, defined as to clarify what kind of knowledge, relevant to the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor, can be received from dialogical interpretation and analysis of a limited selection of critically reflecting life stories. Third, a methodological aim is defined as to develop an approach to interpretation and analysis of reflecting life stories, which renders the storyteller visible as a reflecting moral subject, and makes the story accessible as a source of knowledge for the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor. The thesis combines philosophical reflection and argumentation, with a narrative-hermeneutic method for interpretation of life stories, relating the two to each other in a hermeneutic process.  The theoretical reflection draws on Seyla Benhabibs theory of communicative ethics. A dialogue based model for moral justification and a likewise dialogue based model for political legitimacy are at the heart of this universalistic theory, although in combination with a conception of a narratively and hermeneutically constituted context sensitive moral judgment, based on Hannah Arendt’s concept “enlarged thought”. In the reflection, this model is related to other feminist theorizing within the tradition of dialogue based feminist ethics, as found in the works of Iris M. Young, Georgia Warnke and Shari Stone-Mediatore. The empirical study draws on three critically reflecting life stories from Israeli-Palestinian women activists for a just peace. The methodology for interpretation and analysis that is worked out combines dialogical interpretation as presented in Arthur W. Frank’s socio-narratology with a method for structural analysis derived from Shari Stone-Mediatores theory of storytelling as an expression of political resistance struggle. The results show that some stories drawing on marginalized experiences have a potential­ to stimulate further public debate through their capacity to enable a stereoscopic seeing, elucidating a tension between ideologically structured discourse and non-linguistic experience; implying that narrative-hermeneutic competence should be considered crucial for public debate.  

A national information infrastructure model for information warfare defence

Information infrastructures are an eclectic mix of open and closed networks, private and public systems, the Internet, and government, military, and civilian organisations. Significant efforts are required to provide infrastructure protection, increase cooperation between sectors, and identify points of responsibility. The threats to infrastructures are many and various, and are increasing daily: information warfare, hackers, terrorists, criminals, activists, and even competing organisations all pose significant threats that cannot be sufficiently dealt with using the current infrastructure model. We present a National Information Infrastructure model that is based on defence against threats such as information warfare.

Social movement unionism and networked technology

From a European perspective, the wide-ranging social, economic, and political effects of networked computers have generated tensions between 'new' social movements and the 'old' labour movement. From an American perspective on social movements, there is no such tension between old and new social movements. A study of social-movement unionism in Sweden offers a interesting means of testing this emerging American perspective against the European perspective because the labour movement has long been particularly effective and networked technology has been embraced whole-heartedly throughout all aspects of the society, the economy, and the polity. The paper introduces the contrasting European and American perspectives on social movements and presents examples of the practice of social-movement unionism among Swedish social democrats, unionists, and diverse local activists. These examples support conclusions that eschew utopian theories of 'cyberunionism' in favour of developing a theory of articulated unionism in which local unions branches articulate vertically with national and global union bodies, and articulate horizontally with social movements in other arenas of conflict.

Engaging with stakeholders or constructing them? Attitudes and assumptions in stakeholder software

New activists are engaging in a range of extra-parliamentary activities, including extensive use of the internet, to create political change at local, national and international levels. As new activists become more effective, more sophisticated and, above all, more organised, traditional public relations or ‘PR spin’ is increasingly exposed as not just ineffective, but also an unethical way to respond to criticisms. But growing numbers of state and business organisations are trying to create new relationships with stakeholders that are inclusive, sustainable and aligned with the principles of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A range of stakeholder communication software packages claim to guide and support organisations wishing to create such relationships. However, these software packages can do more than merely offer guidance and support. They can actively influence how an organisation engages with stakeholders by embodying particular discourses that construct stakeholders as adversaries. This article examines two stakeholder software packages, showing how each one’s rhetoric of inclusion accompanies discourses that recreate adversarial relationships between organisation and stakeholders. The article sets such developments against the broad backdrop of developing notions of CSR, arguing that the uncritical use of stakeholder communication packages can reduce CSR to ‘more PR spin’.

Fighting a tobacco rollback : a political analysis of the 1994 contraband crisis in Canada

We identify factors that led a regional government (Quebec, Canada) to opt for a reduction of its tobacco tax to combat tobacco smuggling. Then we explore the fallout of Quebec's tobacco-tax rollback on its tobacco control policy. We conducted qualitative research using a case-study design and multiple sources of data. We applied the Advocacy Coalition Framework in respect of data collection and analysis. Advocates of the tobacco-tax rollback framed the contraband problem in a way that won the support of an array of actors. However, anti-tobacco activists succeeded in convincing the government to invest more in tobacco control. The new resources were instrumental in enhancing the activists' ability to promote legislative measures. Our approach sheds light on the tobacco industry's strategy to have governments reducing their tobacco tax. Quebec offers an example of how tobacco control activists can transform defeat into the cornerstone of a comprehensive tobacco control policy.

A new relationship between planning and democracy? Urban activism in Melbourne 1965-1975

This paper is a reflective overview of urban social protest in the years 1965-1975 and its influence on post-war planning, especially on models of public participation in planning, and conceptions of effective local democracy. Drawing extensively on a major study of urban activism in Melbourne, Australia, the paper discusses the political and organisational strategies used by activists in Melbourne’s inner city areas to resist the large-scale planning/urban renewal projects especially of the Victorian state government. The paper focuses on Melbourne’s inner city Residents’ Action Groups and examines their motivations, strategies and rationales, placing them within an international context of urban protest movements demanding local democracy and consultation. The paper concludes that the Melbourne urban protest movements of the late 60s and early 70s deserve recognition for their contribution to inclusive, consultative processes in planning decision-making. This is done within a context of questioning contemporary academic discussion around the interpretative concept of gentrification, widely and indiscriminately applied to this and later periods of urban change.