Safety in public spaces has become an issue of increased concern and attention in India, after incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women. The need for safe public spaces was formulated in the civil society in New Delhi and can be described as a social movement. Mobilization and mechanisms behind is studied in a theory-based analysis to learn more about social movements. Results can be of general importance in understanding the role social movements may play in work for safe public environments, not only in New Delhi, but elsewhere as well. The purpose of the thesis is to i) describe the work by social movement on safe public spaces among three central actors within the movement and ii) analyze the movement´s success in its mobilizing efforts and highlight mechanisms of importance. The study is a qualitative case study in New Delhi. The empiric material was collected through a document study and semi-structured interviews. Frame theory was used in study design and data analysis. The analysis showed common problems perceived by the actors as overall fear, patriarchy and urbanization, while working methods and solutions differed. The main difference was a result of digitalization and activities on social media in a cycle of protest. Motivational frames portrayed vulnerabilities, challenges and opportunities for women getting attention and motivated to engage. It has resulted in a diverse movement, shaping new ways to reach out taking advantage of new technology.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between activism and well-being and the underlying mechanisms that make up this relationship. The study's hypothesis was that there is a relationship between activism and well-being and that this relationship is either moderated or mediated by optimism and locus of control. It means that we expected that locus of control and optimism would at least partly explain the association between activism and well-being. Data was collected using an online-survey and recruiting participants through social media. The survey included questionnaires that measured locus of control, optimism, activism, depression and anxiety, satisfaction with life and meaning in life. A total of 259 participants was included in the final sample. Correlation analyses were conducted and showed that there was a negative significant correlation between activism and locus of control/optimism. There was a positive correlation between locus of control/optimism and well-being. The correlation between activism and anxiety was positive and the correlation between activism and meaning in life was positive. No support for the moderation hypotheses was found. However, three mediation analysis were conducted and the results showed a significant mediation effect of optimism and locus of control on the relationship between activism and different dimensions of well-being. The results of mediation analysis indicated that activists experience less control and are less optimistic and in turn experience poorer well-being. It is concluded that optimism and locus of control could be underlying factors that explain the underlying mechanism behind the relationship between activism and well-being, but this relationship is complicated and future studies are needed in order to gain better understanding of possible underlying factors.

Israeli society is diverse and complex, with a great variety of religious worldviews, both with regard to the various religions that are present in the country, as well as within Judaism. This research is focused on the latter, the variety of Jewish worldviews, and the wealth of social movements that developed out of them. The spectrum is vast, and this has far reaching consequences for attitudes towards the political and social situation in Israel and the relationship with its neighbors. With this research, I aim to get insight into these widely diverging attitudes, especially when it comes to a vision of peace. We are often led to believe that peace is a singular thing, but the reality is that peace as a concept and an idea is as diverse as any idea, and can mean vastly different things to different people. In this research, I analyze what peace means to different groups of people, what it looks like, and how they think peace can and will be achieved in the world they are living in. I have a special interest in the role religious tradition plays in this and the ways in which religion has helped people to come to this perception. In a way, it is an exercise of creative thinking, because the goal is to overcome normative and theoretical ideas of peace, and to give meaning to peace beyond what is generally accepted. With this effort, I aim to open up a new avenue of thinking about peace, peacebuilding, and peace processes, and challenge academics and professionals to look beyond what they perceive as an acceptable peace.

In the last decade, social movements have demonstrated their power of bringing change to societies, often in terms of democratization. At the same time, the level of democracy in the world has been established as decreasing. It is therefore interesting to study whether the increase of social movements is related to the decline of democracy. The aim of this thesis was thus to explore the perception of democracy amongst activists in a social movement calling for democratization. This was done by conducting semi-structured interviews with activists of varying degrees of participation in the Hong Kong protests 2019 – 2020. The results of the study indicated that a majority of the activists regarded democracy from the perspective of liberal democracy, stressing the importance of elections and protection of human rights through a well-grounded constitution. Nevertheless, some of the respondents sought more than a fundamental description of democracy, incorporating elements of deliberation and participation as well. The Hong Kong protests 2019 – 2020 have not seen the end yet. Likewise, the existence of social movements will forever remain through variations of repertoires. The significance of what conception of democracy motivates activists to organise themselves through civil society movements remains to be academically covered in full. Thus, future studies of democratization should continue to shed light on the role of the civil society in democratization processes.

<p>My dissertation is divided into five relatively freestanding yet thematically linked essays, investigating a number of ways in which social norms and the question of racism are related. In these chapters, I aim to show the vital influence of social norms on our interpersonal relationships, going beyond the futile binary between individual (moral philosophy) and state (political philosophy), thereby affirming the primacy of the social over the political. Considering social norms can help us to see how individual agents are socially and culturally mediated, shaped, and distorted. In the dissertation, I discuss the racial contract (John Rawls and Charles Mills), racism as volitional states (Jorge Garcia), racism as ideology (Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger), and anti-racism through social movements (Elizabeth Anderson). By engaging them, I argue that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood in the context of broader social environments. My thesis is that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood as a manifestation in broad social environments where the mechanisms of social norms function structurally. In conclusion, I argue for the relevance of social critique instead of a narrow moral critique of racism. In this regard, my solution is not intended as a complete solution for the termination of all forms of racism, rather as certainly a needed viable approach both morally warranted and pragmatically efficacious.</p>

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / This dissertation examines the climate movement as a social field where actors vie for position and capital. This competition strongly influences framing, tactics, and strategy, while it ultimately bears on the effectiveness of mobilization. I analyzed the climate activist field (CAF) through a case study of resistance against a gas pipeline project. In the first phase of resistance, I found there to be a divergence between local activists with little to no experience in the CAF and climate activists operating within it. In the second phase, after climate activists had taken over, there was a division among climate activists themselves. Here, climate activists carried themselves and made decisions based on what they thought was objectively the correct thing to do. However, activists’ practices (encompassing decisions around tactics and strategy but also their judgments and disposition) were structured through the competition for the rewards of the CAF—Climate Activist Capital (CAC), especially Symbolic CAC—and the associated increased status for activists. I used a mixed method approach involving a survey (N=146), participant observation (200 hours), and interviews (N=51). The survey collected data on activist background and preferences, as well as subjective assessments of their own participation and indicators of economic and cultural capital. Participant observation in a range of groups and social spaces allowed for analysis of activist practices in real, observable ways. Both the survey and participant observation informed a purposive interviewing strategy that collected data from the most heavily involved to more peripheral activists. The analysis sought to locate patterns in activist background, quantity and composition of capital, and practices. Differences in activist practices were hypothesized to be the outcome of the interrelation among: an actor’s background embedded in the habitus; an actor’s volume and composition of capital, as well as their social trajectory; and the competition for capital and position within the CAF (itself structured by actors, their backgrounds and practices, and influence from other fields). The hypothesis received mixed support in the data. Participants in the resistance were not conscious of how their preferences for tactics and strategy were guided by the competition to valorize Symbolic CAC inflected by activist orientation, relatively internal or external. Structured by the field that they help construct, climate activists’ practices and the overall effort to stop the pipeline project became increasingly internally oriented, situated antagonistically with the field of power. This resulted in an increased distance between climate activists and non-climate activists as well as a focus on civil disobedience to the exclusion of other tactics. The dissertation represents a novel approach to understanding dynamics within the climate movement and contributes to three areas of research. First, my research on resistance against fossil fuel infrastructure addresses a deficit of empirical scholarship on climate activism, especially at the local level. Second, I contribute to the social movement scholarship on strategic choices by locating them between individual rational calculation and predetermined agency-less decisions by focusing on the effects of activist field position. Third, the research extends Bourdieusian scholarship by testing his theoretical schema built around social reproduction in a field that is organized around social change. In bringing a Bourdieusian approach to movement scholarship and the climate movement in particular, the research delivers an analysis that weaves together micro-level social processes—activists and their practices objectively positioned in the CAF—with an historically developed CAF at the macro-level. The analysis is pertinent not just to scholars but to climate activists and activists more broadly. Ultimately, I argue that the climate movement will be served best by drawing on the distinct advantages of both internal and external spaces in the CAF. This requires more reflexivity and introspection among climate activists so they may understand how their position informs their practices and how they can more consciously mediate the position-to-practices process and bend them in contextually appropriate ways, which will lead to more effective climate activists and enhanced climate movement efficacy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The purpose of this study is to investigate incels as a case of a social movement. Incels stands for involuntary celibacy and describes men who consider themselves to be unattractive and live a life without sexual relations. The group is homogenous and consists of outcast men who has created their own forums on the internet. Previous research has focused a lot on studying incels misogynic views, loneliness and violence, but yet the group has not been studied as a case of a social movement. By using netnographic hidden observations on the incelforum Incels.is, this study will answer our research questions concerning how the community is constructed on Incels.is and how they describe their exclusion from the society. The study’s theoretical framework is based on Melucci’s theory of collective identity and Goffman’s theory of stigma. To study incels as a social movement, we constructed an ideal type to help us understand what aspects of what a social movement consists of to investigate how incels community is constructed.  The results shows that the incels community is constructed by using their own language and symbols, different forms of emotional investments such as empathy and compassion to support each other, and their shared beliefs of what characterize an incel where the recognition creates an opportunity for them to feel united with the group. Another explanation for incels community is that the group are in a political conflict where their common societal goal is to change the prevailing social structure. Finally, the members of Incels.is believe that society has forced them into exclusion because of not fulfilling the norms and expectations that society has. Therefore, incels has consolidate a victim role in response to the negative perception of those around them.

The concern that democracy in the largest country in Latin America could drive toward fascism has surfaced as a point of departure for the creation of forms of resistance among Brazilians in the diaspora. This thesis addresses this development by bringing to light the narratives of FIBRA, a transnational social movement created in 2016 to denounce the coup in Brazil. By combining militant, translocal and online ethnography, this thesis explores how FIBRA has constructed its narratives surrounding the erosion of democracy in Brazil. It looks at the experience of Brazilian migrants involved in campaigning against the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the assassination of the activist Marielle Franco, and the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. Anthropological theories on social movement, democracy and narrative are revisited in order to investigate FIBRA’s role in shaping ideas and expectations towards democracy. This thesis also explores ways to bring the artistic practices in the field into the anthropological text. I use elements of Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater, Greek Tragedy and Carnival in my writing and employ these artistic languages as conceptual tools to develop a notion of democracy as a tragic carnivalesque hero. In the spirit of the Brazilian carnivalesque, this thesis celebrates the subversive dimension of the relation between the “playful”, the “political”, and the “academic”.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Using a case study approach, this thesis explores how ethnic minority groups living under authoritarian rule can utilize social bonds, create social capital, and eventually achieve democratic self-governance. Social movement literature is also utilized to examine how one of the case studies, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico should be examined as a social movement rather than a military insurgency. This thesis also examines the Kurds of Northern Iraq and then puts forward the Kurds of Northern Syria as a future case study. This thesis takes a historical analysis approach throughout as well as utilizing philanthropic studies literature.

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