This thesis examines the process of engagement in nonviolent collective action. It is a cross- cultural study - using the methods of life history interview, participant observation and archival research - of twelve individuals drawn from three anti-militarist movements that emerged in the 1980s. The movements were: in Britain, the Greenham Common women; in Poland, Wolnosc i Pokoj: and, in Guatemala, the Runujel Junam Council of Ethnic Communities. Its aim is to understand how individuals move from belief to collective action and how their values are incorporated into the movements in which they engage. My findings challenge the global model of protest behaviour that fails to separate non-violent collective action from other forms of protest. They also challenge the idea of a unitary explanatory model of commitment: in particular, both the psychopathological model - in which political engagement is a decontextualised, irrational process - and the hypothesis that engagement is simply a response to structural injustice. MY findings suggest that political engagement may be not only the result of psychological processes within the individual or merely a response to the external world, but, rather, a unique combination of the two: it is a particular individual's response to a particular set of historical circumstances that produces engagement. Three possible models are proposed: they involve both affective and cognitive processes and depend on the interplay of historical events with the individual's own life circumstances. There are cross-cultural continuities, but also significant differences in the role of fear which are crucial to understanding the timing of initial involvement. Finally, I examine the relationship between choice of method of action and the process of commitment. cuIture can have an overriding influence on the development of a particular moral perspective but no one moral perspective is especially associated with non-violence. Engagement in nonviolent action can foster awareness of the importance of connection and relationship. Moreover, moral perspective and thinking about the useful limits of non-violence appea~ to be related.

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Thesis--Marburg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. x-xx).

The aim of this thesis is to explore how Telegram is used as a tool for social media protests inRussia. The thesis will focus on the relationship between offline and online protests andmainly discuss the application Telegram in this context. It will analyze the positive andnegative attributes, as well as the effects and future of Telegram as a tool for social mediaprotests. It will do this by drawing on theory on political socialization, as well asmediatization, while also looking at various research that has been made on the subject. Theresult shows that Telegram is used as a tool for the Russian people to express their longingand wish for freedom, while it also shows that the Russian state is trying to prevent harm tothe Russian people, while still harming them differently, by censoring and blocking theirsocial media. The conclusion discusses these results and questions whether Telegram canuphold the image as a platform for freedom of speech for the Russian citizens.

This research aims to explore how Turkish business leaders tackle and navigate challenges in times of crisis. Recent Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, Turkey triggered a multilayered crisis. These protests lasted more than two months, having long-term effects on Turkey’s social, cultural and economic life. Therefore, this thesis considers these Gezi Park protests as a crisis for food sector business leaders in the neighbourhood. This research examines leaders’ processes of dealing with the protests, by drawing on interviews with 40 leaders in the food sector. First, it investigates how these leaders addressed the protests, as leaders’ responses affected their businesses. Secondly, it discusses challenges experience by leaders during the protests. Finally, it investigates leaders ‘coping mechanisms’ in the face of challenges. The thematic analysis of data suggests that those leaders who helped the protestors by opening their doors prioritised humanity before any ideology. These leaders put humane values first, such as acting with conscience, feeling empathy and feeling compassion despite having opposing political views. This behaviour is considered successful leadership behaviour. Conversely, those leaders who put their self-interests first by closing their doors to the protestors are considered unsuccessful leaders. It emerged that leaders faced emotional, physical, interpersonal and financial challenges during the protests. Leaders coped with challenges by remaining hopeful about the future, by being patient, by being supported by family and friends, by becoming accustomed to the challenges, and by adopting an exit strategy.

Thesis (M.M. (Security))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2013. / Soon after the ANC acquired the leadership of this country there has been a series of service delivery protests in most of the municipalities. Several studies have sought to explain the causes of these protests and many have come to the conclusion that they are caused by the slow pace of delivering houses, electricity water and sanitation to the local communities. Most of the existing work has discussed the problem from the point of view of politicians and members of the community. To date, no research has elected to focus on the view of the employees of the municipalities to which the grievances are mostly directed. Using a qualitative research that surveyed municipal managers, ordinary employees as well as community members in Bitou Municipality, this study argues that poor governance, structural reasons, social reasons, systematic reasons are some of the causes of service delivery protests in the municipalities. The research has also uncovered a litany of reasons that contribute to service delivery protests and government practice which fuel support or hinder service delivery.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The problem of this dissertation is psychological and sociological description and analysis of the appeals and activities of the John Birch Society as a movement of social protest of the radical right. The John Birch Society is one of the major organizations described in current journalistic treatments as radical right or as right-wing extremist. The Society came to public prominence in the spring of 1961 as awareness of its fairly widespread organizational accomplishments and of the more extreme opinions of its founder, Robert Welch, were brought to public attention by the press. The method included both library and field research. Library research, both before and after the field research, focused upon the provision of an adequate framework of psychological and sociological theory through which to perceive the setting, the leader, the organization and membership, and the ideology and activity of the John Birch Society. The primary data so perceived were those of many of the Birch Society publications, those provided by observers of local Birch Society conflicts in Gloucester, Little Rook, El Paso, Dallas, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Phoenix, and Wichita, and those provided by the participants on each side of these conflicts through interviews and, with many, through the administration of a questionnaire. Secondary data were provided by newspaper, newsmagazine, and personal correspondence descriptive of the leader, the organization, the membership, the ideology, and the local and national activities of the Birch Society. The conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: 1. The Birch Society functions as a fundamentalist reaction. 2. The top leadership of the Society is charismatic. 3. The organizational-leadership structure of the Society is an unstable mixture of both charismatic and rational-bureaucratic elements. 4. The stance of the Society as an aggressive sect is inherently unstable. 5. The activity and ideology of social protest represent the major appeal of the Society. 6. The conflict in which the Society engages is characteristically non-communal. 7. The ideology of the Society is substantively and formally logic-tight and, characteristically, those who affirm it are highly closed-minded. 8. Within our troubled setting, the ideology provides the social-psychological appeals of certainty, superiority, and self-righteousness and "justifies" aggression toward otherwise invulnerable objects of frustration. 9. As a fundamentalist reaction, the Society fails to serve its manifest function, none of its latent functions appear to be constructive, and some are latently dysfunctional even for its own existence. 10. The Society is well described as a movement of social protest of the radical right. These conclusions led the author to observe that the non-rational character of the Society tends to dominate and to obscure whatever fundwnental forces and issues may be in conflict. The implications of this observation, for the legitimated processes of the American democratic society, then led the author to the position that the only way to move conflicts with the Society into potentially constructive channels appears to be through insistence upon the norms of rational and communal conflict.

Spaces for protests, demonstrations, and activism are shifting under contemporary social, cultural, and governance structures. While particular conditions for physical space were once fairly unified in their ability to establish space for activism and dissent; social media and digital platforms have fundamentally changed the nature of those areas. This thesis aims to investigate frameworks of space-making that can potentially reposition spaces of activism as everyday events that represent the mood of the society. This in turn will also help in revisiting the terms of human engagement with the help of spaces that facilitate a deeper understanding of the people around us and conceive a sense of empathy within our social conversations.

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