This thesis presents an inductive, qualitative approach to exploring the connection between entrepreneurship and social movement theory in the context of the fitness movement. This was achieved by applying the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation which looks at how changes to the macro environment, such as sociocultural shifts, enable entrepreneurial processes by activating mechanisms on the venture level (Davidsson et al., 2020). A loop derived from social movement literature is implemented as a contribution to the framework that presents a perspective in which ventures not only are influenced by the social movement but also contribute to the movement's momentum. The loop was found to occur as ventures enlarge the scope of the social movement and thus change its characteristics. This insight provides two theoretical contributions. Firstly, the loop originating from social movement theory is better defined and explained. Secondly, the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation has been connected to the loop, which provides a more nuanced view of how social movements and ventures interrelate. This is deemed important since it helps us understand how social movements can grow with the influence of ventures and how this leads to the continuous enablement of new ventures.

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Environmental citizenship is positioned as a platform where the rights of social and environmental justice converge with civic engagement and responsibility. As industrialized economies continue to exhaust the limits of finite natural resources and exacerbate conditions of global climate change, scholars have questioned if environmental citizenship models offer a method for deepening obligations to a sustainable movement. In the material culture enjoyed by Western civilizations, existing research supports that an individual’s purchases are seen as an indicator of their values and identities. Consequently the commitment to responsible buying behavior or sustainable consumption is in a sense an expression of eco-citizenship. My thesis offers a critical perspective of Andrew Dobson’s ecological citizenship theory, by asking how sustainable consumption can be conceptualized in the existing political and economic infrastructures. Using a thorough case study of globally traded fish provisions, I investigate the existing barriers for eco-citizens attempting to realize their obligations to sustainable consumption. This analysis allows me to draw conclusions on how these barriers may inhibit ecocitizenship theories and ultimately a sustainable social movement. The structure of this thesis is broken into three parts. First, I define existing theories of ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption, including the theoretical propositions, requirements, and limitations. Secondly, I rely on Dobson’s conception of ecological citizenship and an instrumental case study of Pacific Salmon provisions to illustrate the barriers eco-citizens encounter in the current market and regulatory system. Finally, this paper concludes by proposing individual and institutional changes that will assist in fostering an eco-citizen community and the contribution my findings may have on existing green citizenship research.

The gay rights movement has been very active on social media throughout the years. Using a trend analysis this study aimed to answer how social media is being used during a social movement, how a social movement evolves on social media, and how social media is being used by organizations as a public relations strategy to create change in social movements. Overall, the findings revealed 11 different ways social media is being used during a social movement, which shows how important opinion leaders are in helping a social movement gain traction and create the desired impact.

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Studien syftar till att undersöka ekologismen i den sociala rörelsen We Are What We Do, som försöker förverkliga samhälleliga förändringar genom kollektiva små handlingar. Genom en kvalitativ fallstudie analyserar författaren rörelsens strategier som ska inspirera och motivera människor att agera, hur den utnyttjar märke och marknadsföring för att mobilisera kollektiva handlingar och bygga en gemenskap, och rörelsens visioner i det subpolitiska sammanhaget. Studien har slutsatsen att We Are What We Do är ett uttryck av den reflexiva ekologismen, eftersom den utvecklar politik utanför den traditionella politiska arenan, samt syftar till att engagera nya aktörer och omfamnar självorganiserande och avcentraliserade utvecklingar. / This study aims to examine the environmentalism of We Are What We Do, a social change movement which aspires to making social impacts through aggregated individual actions. Through a qualitative single case study, the author analyses the movement’s strategies at inspiring and motivating people to take small actions, how it uses branding to mobilise collective actions and build a community, and the movement’s visions in the context of subpolitics. The study concludes that the We Are What Do embodies a reflexive form of environmentalism, as it chooses to deploy politics outside the conventional political arena, aims to engage new political agents and embraces self-organising and decentralised developments.

Yes / The concept of ‘fairness’ has been used to frame political struggles by politicians and activists across the political spectrum. This article looks at its use in the US State of Wisconsin during the ‘Uprising’ – a series of occupations, protests, recall elections and militant direct action that began in 2011. These events were a response to a ‘budget repair bill’ that sought to strip public sector union members of their collective bargaining rights and to apply severe austerity measures within the State. This article suggests that although ‘fairness’ has a certain broad-based and intuitive appeal, its mutability means that it is unlikely to be successful in framing a structural critique that can build and sustain social action. Instead, it argues that framing this conflict as an uprising suggested a more explicit form of resistance that enabled a wider mobilization, and this can best be understood as an example of social (movement) unionism – the extension of traditional work place rights approaches to include broader agendas of social justice, civil rights, immigrant rights and economic justice for non-unionized workers.

Kindness movements toward a kinder more compassionate world are proliferating worldwide. One of the key challenges facing these movements is attracting and sustaining members. This research identified a range of dispositional, motivational, and contextual factors significantly related to participation in a kindness movement initiated on the Virginia Tech campus after the tragic shootings on April 16, 2007: the AC4P Movement. Strongly resembling existing research on motivational functions served by volunteerism, the present research identified five motives for participation in kindness movements: social action, gratitude expression, social enhancement, impression management, and protective. Additionally, regression analysis identified a model with five significant predictors of participation: required participation, history of traumatic experience, belief that society is in danger, extroversion, and social action motivation. Findings are integrated within the context of Geller's (2016) model of empowerment. / Ph. D.

Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary Japanese society, despite people’s struggles in the recession. Our social relationships become entangled, and we can no longer clearly identify our interest in politics. The search for the outside of stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous imaginary for social change, such as war and death. The imaginary of disaster was actualised in March 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which triggered the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. Based on the author’s fieldwork on the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements in Tokyo, this thesis investigates how the disaster impacted people’s sense of agency and ethics, and ultimately explores the new political imaginary in postmodernity. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The thesis argues that their regret about their past indifference to politics motivated the protesters into social commitment without any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. They also found an ambiguity of the self, which is insufficient to know what should be done. Hence, they mobilise their bodies on to the streets, encountering others, and forcing themselves to feel and think. This is an ethical attitude, yet it simultaneously stems from the desire of each individual to make a difference to the self and society. The thesis concludes that the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements signify a new way of doing politics as endless experiments by collectively responding to an unexpected force from an outside in a creative way.

This study examines collective identity, a concept that is used in social movement theory to understand why people are motivated to participate in social movements and social movement groups. Collective identity is a social-psychological process that links the individual to the group through a series of group interactions that revolve around social movement activity. This is a qualitative study that examines collective identity in an online social movement group and an offline social movement group. Reports from the two groups are compared to see what variation exists between these two different groups. This research is one of the first examinations of collective identity outside of conventional face-to-face group settings. The research presented in this thesis demonstrates the difficulty a social movement group that exists online might have in generating a collective identity because of an absence of face-to-face interaction. / Master of Science