Browsing by Subject "Social Movements"
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Item Bordered Resistance: Immigrant Health Justice, Biocitizenship, and the Racialized Criminalization of Health Care(2019-06) Hoekstra, ErinBridging critical health and migration studies, this dissertation examines the health effects of racialized processes of immigrant criminalization, focusing on the organizations that provide medical care in an informal, often underground, health system. Governed by a "biopolitics of disposability" (Giroux 2006), immigrant ineligibility for health care contributes to undocumented migrants' experience as distinctly vulnerable, exploitable, and ultimately disposable. Whereas health institutions are usually figured as solutions to the violence embodied in unequal health outcomes, this dissertation argues that spaces of health are also perpetrators of structural violence. Clinics operate as de facto border checkpoints, leaving migrant patients susceptible to deportation for accessing emergency medical services. In the face of the violence of the mainstream health system, a network of humanitarian organizations provide health care to uninsured, undocumented migrants, while resisting the collusion between health and immigration enforcement. In contrast to medical humanitarianism's focus on constructions of migrant "deservingness," this dissertation argues that the concept of biocitizenship, a medicalized belonging based on common humanity, transcends dichotomies of deserving and undeserving, "good" or "bad" migrants. Biocitizenship also critiques the disentitlement and dehumanization of a biopolitics of disposability. Drawing from twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork with free clinics and humanitarian organizations across Arizona, this dissertation examines immigrant health justice (IHJ) organizations' use of humanitarianism as both a discursive strategy and a field of action. In the borderlands, IHJ organizations frame their politically-contentious work as apolitical medical care and fight for the recognition of the patient status of migrants in need of emergency first aid. In the interior, the IHJ turns its critique toward "health" itself. Employing a rights-based humanitarian discourse, activists castigate the for-profit health system as complicit with immigration enforcement, indicting it for mass structural violence. Centrally, this dissertation argues that these related but distinct discourses across the borderlands and interior amount to an insurgent humanitarianism that exposes the fatal consequences of immigrant criminalization. By claiming various biocitizenships on behalf of their patients, IHJ organizations and activists use medicalized language as the basis of a politics of visibility, highlighting the health needs and fatalities of migrants across the country.Item Brokering Identity: Exploring The Construction Of Lgbt Political Identity And Interests In U.S. Politics, 1968-2001(2016-08) Murib, ZeinThis study introduces a theoretical framework grounded in intersectionality to the study of identity-based groups in politics, raising and addressing the following questions: how within group marginalization develops, why within group marginalization occurs, and to what effect? By focusing on the construction of the LGBT group and through discourse analysis of three bodies of archival evidence from 1968 through 2001 – the institutional records of several national LGBT interest groups and social movements, a variety of LGBT publications, and transcripts of germane debates from the Congressional Record – this study shows how political actors framed the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities as a cohesive and unified coalition by presenting LGBT people as a minority group defined along a single axis of identity: sexuality. The unity of this new LGBT minority group – organized exclusively around sexuality – was achieved by foregrounding the political interests of gender-normative lesbians and gay men, particularly those who are white, middle-class, able bodied, and gender normative. Consequently, issues such as marriage and second-parent adoption were elevated as the predominant political interests on behalf of the LGBT group, while others, such as the passage of gender-inclusive employment anti-discrimination legislation or political mobilizations to end the documentation of sex on state documents, were deprioritized. Throughout this study, attention is drawn to the ways in which this projection of LGBT group unity obscured intersecting identifications, such as race, gender, class, nation, ability, and immigration status, with significant political and material consequences for the most marginalized members of the LGBT minority group: people of color, people who are transgender, lesbians, people who are gender nonconforming, people who are poor or homeless, people with disabilities, and people who are undocumented.Item Cindy Sheehan and the peace movement: networks of care and rhetorical exploits.(2010-07) Pason, AmyCindy Sheehan became the "face" of the peace movement during the Iraq War by camping outside of President Bush's Crawford Ranch in August 2005. This project explores the possibilities for resistance in the first US war of the Internet Age, specifically analyzing Sheehan's rhetorical acts (an open letter, camping, and her autobiography). Utilizing Galloway's and Thacker's network theory as social ontology and heuristic, resistance is defined through the concept of exploit, where, like computer viruses, movements use rhetorical forms to exploit norms of dominant systems to gain access, "recode" norms, or disrupt systems. Movements, employing distributed structures, work to "write code" or build new systems through a politics of the act. Sheehan's work is an extension of other women's peace movements that have employed networks and rhetorical acts to exploit otherwise exclusionary publics or build new systems. Tracing historical practices of rhetorical forms for their exploitive possibilities, Sheehan's rhetoric is analyzed against State constituted norms post-9/11, and following Butler and Faludi, I argue dominant discourse constructed norms of heightened patriotism, traditional gender (mother) roles, and fear after 9/11. Although Sheehan's open letter on the internet did not constitute a public tribunal as other women's letters, Sheehan's Camp Casey, initiated by the question of "What noble cause?," spoke through post-9/11 norms while developing a peace movement network constituted through an ethics of care. Camp Casey posed a threat to State order by building a new system operating under care protocols that shifted power away from the State. Resistance and possibility for social change are rooted in changing affective relations, and Sheehan was attacked by Right-wing networks to question her motives and undermine care protocols. Sheehan uses her autobiography to combat the netwar waged by the Right in an attempt to maintain the peace movement. The current peace movement was strongest during Camp Casey where it fully utilized a distributed form, was constituted through an ethics of care, and gained popular support against a sovereign unable to respond or care for the public. Movements should consciously employ network logics, and understand affective dimensions of social change.Item College Student Environmental Activism: How Experiences and Identities Influence Environmental Activism Approaches(2016-05) King, LauraCollege student environmental activism is one way students civically engage in addressing social issues. This study explores the environmental activism of twelve college students and how their experiences outside of college and in college influenced their activism. In addition, how students’ identities influenced their approach to activism was considered. Each participant approached environmental activism in their own unique way. The way in which students engaged with environmental activism was shaped by their childhood experiences, their worldview, and experiences in College both in and out of the classroom. The identities of participants influenced how they were involved and why they were involved in the current social movement. Students conceptualized the environmental movement and their role in it in different ways. The current movement focused less on saving wilderness and more on addressing climate change and related social issues. The activities participants engaged in fell on a continuum from volunteerism to advocating for social change. Students’ environmental activism was supported by family, peers, K-12 education, and spending time in nature as children. In college, students emphasized the importance of peer networks, interactions with faculty members, and experiences in classes. Students’ identities intersected in unique ways and influenced why they were involved in and how they approached environmental activism. Students discussed the way in which their identities of gender, race, and class shaped their involvement. In addition, some students viewed their sexuality, spirituality, and being a young person as key influencers. Students said their biographic availability enabled them to be involved in environmental activism. Student environmental activists were concerned about oppression and privilege related to how the environmental movement addresses social change.Item Compassion, Community, Capital, and Crisis: Neoliberalism and the Non-Profitization of Queer Social Movements(2014-11) Beam, MyrlThis dissertation examines the expansion of the non-profit system in the US and its impact on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) social movement. In 1960 there were 3,000 501c non-profits in the US. By 2000, that number had leapt to 1,569,572. By 2011, total assets held by non-profits grew to $6.3 trillion, increasing by 106% in the past decade, far outpacing both state and business sector growth. One feature of this explosion has been the literal incorporation of social movements into non-profits. This dissertation analyzes this proliferation, exploring non-profits as key sites from which to understand contemporary capitalism and the changing role of social movements in it. The growth of the non-profit system coincides with and illustrates a profound shift in how the material needs of people living in poverty are - or are not - met. It offers a window into the demise of the social welfare state in the US and the rise of neoliberalism: the dominant political economic framework in the US that champions privatization, deregulation, and so-called "free" enterprise. Under this system, key social welfare provisions have been transferred from the state onto the non-profit sector, and consequently, more people must rely on non-profits in order to meet their most basic needs. This dissertation examines the impact of "non-profitization" on LGBT social movements. In the context of the shifts detailed above, the modern LGBT movement has taken its present shape: a vast network of community centers, rights organizations, social service agencies, and other non-profits explicitly working in and for LGBT communities. This new array of institutions reflects a profound change in LGBT movement politics, from a critique of sexual norms and state regulation that reflected the radical politics of the 1960s and 1970s, to a fairly limited push for formal legal inclusion. Compassion, Community, Capital, and Crisis connects the rise of assimilationist queer politics focused on formal legal equality to the institutional location from which that politics is articulated: LGBT non-profits. The institutional form of queer social movements, I argue, structures the politics articulated from within them.Item Constituent space: re-theorizing the geographies of contestation and control.(2011-01) Clough, Nathan L.This dissertation analyzes contemporary contentious politics through a qualitative study of the mobilization against the 2008 Republican National Convention (2008 RNC) that was held in St. Paul, Minnesota from September 1-4, 2008. Empirically this study contributes to the emerging literatures in geography on social movements and social control. At the theoretical level this dissertation is an attempt to expound on recent incitements that neoliberal capitalism should be studied through its articulation with the myriad contestations that constantly emerge in reaction to, in relation with, or alongside of it. I contribute to this project through an engagement with some theoretical concepts that have been developed within the trajectory of Autonomous Marxism, including constituent and Constituted forms of power, biopolitics, and governmentalities and counter-conducts, as well as developing a geographical theory of constituent space.Item Dilemmas of political representation: antipoverty advocacy in the Post-Civil Rights Era(2014-04) Forrest, Michael DavidDilemmas of Political Representation examines how urban antipoverty organizations in particular and advocacy organizations in general work as alternative sites of representation for marginalized interests. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it raises and addresses two interrelated sets of questions about these organizations' efforts, both of which also index broader concerns about the practice of democratic representation. The first set of questions is about how advocates use their representational efforts to articulate and disseminate different constructions of their constituents' interests: What are the different types of constructions that they use? How do they actually fashion these constructions? And how, in the process, do they construct themselves as legitimate representatives of the resulting interests? The second set of questions is about the challenges that advocates face as they represent and construct their constituents' interests: What are the sources and contours of these challenges? How do advocates negotiate them? And how, in the process, do their efforts aid and/or limit the struggle for equality in the post-civil rights United States? The dissertation traces how and with what consequences advocates organize their efforts and respond to their challenges through organizing meetings, internal communications, and public actions. In doing so, it advances theoretical discussions about the promise and dilemmas of democratic representation and advocacy on behalf of the urban poor and other marginalized groups.Item Enhancing activist commitment through frame alignment and the amplification of collective identity: how the Tea Party unites its divergent membership(2013-05) Haltinner, KristinThe TEA Party Patriots arose in 2010 following a series of socio-political events: the housing crises, the passage of the Affordable Health Care For America Act, and an increasing public outcry from right-wing pundits on network news stations. After a "call" for a Chicago TEA Party by reporter Rick Santelli of CNBC, the TEA Party was launched. In 2013, the organization consisted of over 600 chapters nationwide. This dissertation uses the case study of the TEA Party Patriots to examine sentiment pools, framing, identity, and commitment in a social movement organization. As a large, geographically expansive organization, the TEA Party is host to five distinct activist types, which can be thought of as sentiment pools internal to an organization: the Christian Conservative, the Constitutionalist, the Reformed Liberal, the Libertarian, and the Conspiracy Theorist. All five of these sentiment pools have distinct understandings of the role of the state and the rights of citizenship. They also have divergent explanations for social problems such as racial inequality. The TEA Party organization, then, employs frame alignment strategies to increase the movement organization's collective identity and subsequently foster activist commitment. This is primarily done through frame amplification, promoting the values that all five sentiment pools share: the belief that they are fatherly citizens dedicated to saving childlike Americans who are preyed upon by the villainous left, the three pillars of the organization, and racial colorblindnessItem Finitude after after finitude(2014-06) Frank, Jay AlexanderThis work represents my efforts to rethink the relationship between philosophical materialism and contemporary rhetorical studies along the lines of Quentin Meillassoux's speculative materialism. Cast as an allegory to Michael Calvin McGee's essay "A Materialist's Conception of Rhetoric," the first portion of this work examines the historical evolution of theories of materialist rhetoric as a response to an antecedent turn towards hermeneutics in rhetorical criticism. I claim that, although they represent complex institutional responses to the "hermeneutic" tradition in rhetoric, what have been called "materialist" theories of rhetoric do not fundamentally escape that tradition, and therefore have little to do with materialism. In part two, I examine Slavoj Zizek's speech at Zucotti Park on October 9, 2011. In doing so I uncover some analytical difficulties the "human microphone" poses for both "hermeneutic" and "materialist" rhetoric, and offer alternative connections to philosophy as new ways for rhetoricians to discuss proletarian organization.Item Fugitive life: race, gender, and the rise of the neoliberal-carceral state(2013-05) Dillon, StephenFugitive Life: Race, Gender, and the Rise of the Neoliberal-Carceral State examines the forms of knowledge produced by anti-racist and queer women activists in the 1970s as they contested the demise of the Keynesian-welfare state and the unprecedented expansion of the prison system in the United States. As economic policies based on deindustrialization, deregulation, and privatization left cities in ruins, mass incarceration emerged as a solution to the unrest produced by a new wave of racialized poverty. In short, the social state of the mid-twentieth century turned into a penal state by the mid-1980s. Although some scholars have analyzed this process at the level of social and economic policy, what remains unexamined are the intimate ways in which gender and sexuality have been integrated into, and affected by the entrenchment of racialized state power in the form of mass incarceration. Fugitive Life turns to culture--the memoirs, communiqués, literature, films, prison writing, and poetry of leftist women activists in the 1970s--to provide an analysis of the centrality of race, gender, and sexuality to a new mode of state power that I term "the neoliberal-carceral state." By contextualizing feminist, queer, and anti-racist activism within neoliberal economics and law and order politics, Fugitive Life offers a reinterpretation of post-1960s activism in relation to the emergence of neoliberalism and the rise of mass incarceration. Throughout the project, I document how leftist feminist and queer social movements theorized and challenged the ways that deindustrialization and privatization required incarceration. I argue that women activists in the 1970s anticipated and challenged the formation of the neoliberal-carceral state.Item How law matters to ecosystem restoration.(2012-02) Enzler, Sherry AnneThe 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported unprecedented degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide to human well being which, if allowed to continue, could adversely affect human health, security and welfare. Our environmental legal authorities and policies, however, are not well designed to protect the health of our nation's ecosystems focusing instead on clean air, clean land and clean water as single medium, often referred to as the silo approach to environmental protection. Protecting ecosystems requires that we move away from this silo approach to a multi systems approach to environment and ecosystem management in both policy and law. How can we motivate the necessary changes in our legal constructs and political systems? This is a question posed by a number of communities and states struggling with the concept of ecosystem protection. Applying a Modified Destabilization theory this research explores whether and under what conditions the strategic use of litigation by environmental social movements can destabilize established legal constructs to protect ecosystems. Using the Mono Lake and Everglades' restoration event histories the Modified Destabilization Model is used to examine the role law played in struggles to change the political and social systems necessary to protect, restore and rehabilitate ecosystems. This analysis increases our understanding of the elements necessary to move to change the political and social structures to achieve systems approach to ecosystem management and the ability of social movements to mobilize law and litigation to accomplish the political and social change necessary to protect ecosystem.Item Power and the Quest for Justice(2017-07) Snell, PaulThis dissertation asks how legal, political and social actors affect the beliefs and actions of public interest law organizations. In order to answer this question requires two conceptual prerequisites. The first is the concept of power. There are substantial limitation with current understandings of what it means to affect others . I conduct an ordinary language analysis to illustrate interest group scholars’ acceptance of one sense of power—as domination. In the process, I recover another sense of power— as influence—the ability to affect others through imperceptible and non-coercive means. The second conceptual prerequisite is what public law organizations do, and how these actions reinforce one another. I create the concept of triangular advocacy to explain how these groups try to change society through a combination of legal, political, and social advocacy. While legal advocacy is central to public law groups’ efforts, political and social advocacy complements their goals. With the concepts of power—as influence, and triangular advocacy, I examine the question that I posed at the outset: how key actors have power with public law groups. I find that legal and social advocacy are important ways for PILOs to overcome challenges that political actors and the broader public place in their way. If public law groups perceive themselves as having good relationships with political actors, however, then they can concentrate on insider forms of politics, and do not need to emphasize social change as strongly.Item Religious Activism and the Cultural Complexities of Progressive Politics(2018-06) Delehanty, JohnThis dissertation uses the case of ELIJAH, a large and diverse faith-based community organization, to advance social scientific understandings of the role of culture and emotions in social movements and progressive religious activism in twenty-first century U.S. political culture. Drawing on participant-observation and in-depth interviews, I document the ongoing construction of organizational culture and commitments to activism through a discursive practice that I call vulnerability talk. In the absence of a clear collective identity or a shared set of material interests, people in ELIJAH turn to emotions as the basis for fostering solidarity across racial and ethnic difference. This organizing paradigm shapes ELIJAH’s identity formation, narratives of action, and political strategy, and it counters dominant assumptions in the previous sociological literature on social movements, civic culture, and religion. I argue that ELIJAH’s ongoing construction of the cultural components of mobilization—collective identity, symbolic boundaries, narratives, and community bonds—produces not only activism in pursuit of social reform, but also new understandings of citizenship and religious responsibility. The importance of emotion work for managing the cultural complexities of multiracial organizing suggests that the most important question about progressive religious activism is not whether a new “Religious Left” will emerge to counter the Religious Right, but whether and how the culture being forged in progressive religious spaces can support ongoing action in the long term.Item Social movement self-governance: the contentious nature of the alternative service provision by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement(2014-05) Pahnke, Anthony RobertThis puzzle is at the core of my dissertation: the coexistence of movements demanding change and establishing a form of order. Contemporary scholars do not include "governance" in the definition of what social movements do, as they consensually define social movements and contentious politics as non-state actors engaging in activities that challenge existing forms of economic, political, and/or cultural order (McAdam: 1988; 1996; Tarrow: 1998; Aminzade, et al: 2001; McAdam, et al: 2001). These studies focus on how opportunity structures are relatively "open" or "closed," but cannot tell us the ways movements develop when they see an opening, nor the sorts of organizational or institutional forms a movement adopts upon pursuing an opening. They also, typically, focus on movements such as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement or Environmental Movement that sought inclusion for previously marginalized communities into the exercise of formal, official power relations. Discussions of social movement-led counter-orders and service administration would explain these developments as part of a revolutionary situation, dual power, or breakdown of state authority (Tilly: 1977; Sirianni: 1983). Yet movements that govern are not revolutionary, because they seek recognition by state authority in their right to administer services like education and security, normally the prerogative of their governments, but as they see fit. I demonstrate this new form of social movement resistance - what I call self-governmental - through a case study of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Brazilian Landless Workers Movement or MST) and their variable success in governing agrarian reform, educational, and economic policy. Besides postulating this alternative mode of resistance, I develop a new social movement theory to explain successful mobilization and institutionalization that is rooted in the concept of strategy.