This study investigates Hizb'allah's successful but competing dual development as an extra-institutional Shi'a social movement and an institutional political party. Hizb'allah has traditionally been studied from the perspective of one of its many natures, such as a social movement, Islamic movement, resistance, or political party, each perspective bringing with it limitations and differing interpretations of its identity, motivations, and success. The motivation behind this research was to seek an interpretation of the movement's development and success that would encompass these multiple natures. Through an interpretation of social movement ‘life-cycles', a social movement ‘development model' is proposed that accounts for contradicting theories on the ‘success' of social movements, interpreting success instead as an ability to exhibit simultaneous institutional and extra-institutional natures. The hypothesis provided in this work is that it is an ability to simultaneously exhibit institutional and extra-institutional natures that can be a source of strength and success for a movement, drawing capital from both while avoiding accountability that typically accompanies institutional politics. This challenges traditional theoretical approaches in terms of linear life-cycles with few paths for the social movement to choose from. In turn, questions arise regarding notions of social movement life-cycles being uni-directional, continuously progressing towards ‘institutionalization' or demise. Ideas of an ‘end-date' or ‘inevitable outcome' of social movements are also confronted. This interdisciplinary study is conducted by means of media, archival, and empirical research (participant observation, interviews, and surveys), focusing on changing constituent perceptions of the movement between 1985 and 2013. It is also argued that Hizb'allah's strength is its ability to draw from both extra-institutional and institutional resources while simultaneously avoiding accountability. However, it was also found that, by forming the 2011 governing coalition, the movement upset this balance by subjecting itself to accountability inherent in governance, in turn leading to ‘schizophrenic behaviour' as Hizb'allah sought to serve conflicting constituent and state interests. The significance of this research is that it not only provides an explanation for Hizb'allah's success, but also provides an interpretation of social movement development that accounts for multi-natured movements.

America's growing concern about fatness during the twentieth century developed in parallel with a society that made it increasingly harder to live a healthy lifestyle. Since the 1970s, sweeping political, economic, cultural, and familial changes have occurred in the United States. Many researchers argue that these changes have created an "obesogenic" environment that has contributed to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in America by favoring inactivity and the over consumption of highly-processed, calorie-dense foods and beverages. As a result, the field of public health has increasingly begun to recognize obesity as a "societal disease." In 2001, The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity categorized the number of overweight and obese Americans as reaching "nationwide epidemic proportions." Since that time, America has waged an all-out "war on obesity." Instead of a broader emphasis on health promotion, some public health researchers have suggested that this heightened focus on obesity is 1) guided by America's historically-rooted social disdain for fatness and 2) insufficient to improve the healthy lifestyles of Americans. In searching for a solution to the so-called "obesity epidemic," a growing number of researchers have begun to look to models of social change. After an introductory chapter describing the scope of the problem, this dissertation provides an historical analysis of two, relevant social change models. The first historical case study is an examination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB social marketing campaign. The second study explores the model of social movements through the history of the aerobics "boom" of 1970s America. Based on these histories, this dissertation concludes by proposing a blended approach that harnesses the strengths of both models to organize and advance America's healthy living movement. / text

Magister Educationis - MEd / This research was motivated by my interest in the sport and the systems of provision of the education on Robben Island. The problem that gave rise to the study was to determine how political prisoners were able to organise prisoner education (political education and non-formal education) and participate in prison-sponsored education (formal education) and to find answers to the question of what impact education had on the sport that they agitated for.

The roots of international voluntary work can be said to stem back to the 19:th century missionary work. It is thus nothing new with westerners wanting to spread their knowledge or help the poor in other countries. However, relatively recently the international voluntary work or, as termed in this thesis, volunteer tourism have become more like an industry. Both the older phenomenon of non-profit organizers of volunteer travels and the newer, nowadays more visible, alternative of commercial companies are to choose from. Within this relatively new landscape of volunteer travels, this study seeks to understand the volunteers’ and the volunteer experience through a comparison of non-profit and profit organizers of volunteer travels. To do this, open-ended interviews were conducted with 14 former volunteers who had travelled with various organizers. The interviews took place in Stockholm, March-April 2015. The theoretical framework is based on critical theories, social movement theory and theories about (volunteer) tourism. The study showed that the experiences of and motivations for volunteering were quite similar between the groups. However, the volunteers’ who had travelled with non-profit organizers were in retrospect less focused on the aim of “helping” and they had to a larger extend revalued the aim and concept of volunteering. The most common least satisfactory part of the travel was the working situation. For all, the in general most valuable outcome of the travel was a cultural insight (exchange) rather than making a difference or helping, which is the common image marketed by many volunteer travel organizers.

This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. Combined, the articles create a counter-narrative that highlights how environmentally focused investigations fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting was employed by people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100 - 1300. A concomitant community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social atmosphere in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are revealed and that these fissures can demonstrate acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these conflicting religious and political practices to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200 - 1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.

Resource mobilization theory and political opportunity theory are often used to describe separate portions of social movements. This dissertation proposes a combined model of these two theoretical perspectives which describes how social movement organizations effectively engage in social marketing both online and offline. The field of social marketing highlights the utility of standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals. I argue that, while commercial marketing practices may benefit social movement organizations and are more cost effective given emerging technology, momentum for gathering resources, will be stifled unless a political opportunity presents itself. Guided by theory about the ways that political opportunities are translated into action by organizations, and momentum acquired through mobilizing resources, cycles of opportunity and resulting resource responses by housing social movement organizations are examined over time to present a case study for this theoretical model. The seemingly endless cycle of resource gathering underscores organizational mobilization of resources as a process rather than an outcome. My model outlines numerous forces that shape an organization’s ability to mobilize in two distinct ways, through resources deployed (online and offline) and resources gathered. Resources will be discussed in three categories: organizational characteristics, network structure/position, and media/Internet presence. The relative importance of these factors and this process are described at length in the review of theoretical literature and will be illustrated in the case study that I provide: the housing social movement. Data for this case study has been collected through hyperlink network analysis, general webometrics, and congressional archives. My research aims to provide suggestions for the strategic socio-technical networking and social marketing of social movement organizations.

Over the last four decades national environmental groups have become an important means of political participation for many British citizens. Since the mid-1980s these organizations have established a number of local groups. There are still some gaps in our understanding of these groups, particularly relating to participation at the grass-roots level. This investigation examines the British environmental movement, focusing on those who become coordinators of local groups, and attempts to find the correlates of their environmental activism. The research reviews the existing empirical data relating to environmental activism, and theoretical accounts relating to participation. It also considers the significance of the emergence of postmaterial values, and looks at the theoretical framework that informs environmental activism. The hypothesis that the conservation and ecology movements are effectively sub-groups within the broader ecology movement is tested, and the thesis explores the possibility that those who participate in these movements have different socio-demographic and cognitive profiles, and methods of activism. The history and development of environmentalism in Britain is discussed, revealing the fundamental differences between the conservation and ecology movements. To test the hypothesis a national, internet based, questionnaire was conducted. In total, 380 activists were surveyed, all of whom were coordinators of local environmental groups that were affiliated to one of six nationally prominent environmental organisations. The findings of the research indicated that although many national environmental organizations seem to have become closer together in terms of their core beliefs and objectives. There are some notable differences between conservationists and ecologists at the grass-roots level, particularly in relation to sociopsychological variables, and means of participation.

The purpose of the thesis is to make a contribution to the development of an empirically informed theory of identity work in organisations on the basis of a gestalt paradigm. Since its emergence almost three quarters of a century ago, gestalt has been applied to therapy, personal development, leadership education and organisational consulting. Gestalt remains, however, fundamentally a paradigm, which preferentially projects onto and deals with complex and dynamic organisational phenomena at individual, dyadic or small group levels. It can be argued that, with its focus on phenomenology and awareness, the gestalt paradigm is predominantly methodological, with only ambiguous or weak links to explicitly articulated epistemology or ontology. A long-term professional, consulting relationship with a trade union branch enabled conducting action research in order to explore the constituents and dynamics of its organisational identity, prior to and following significant change. The subsequent dismantling and closure of the branch demanded an adjustment of research design. The new situation offered a unique opportunity to follow the existentially challenged organisation as its members reacted to and made sense of the closure. The research is contextualised in three analytical clusters: identity and identity work, gestalt paradigm, and trade unions as organisations, institutions and social movements. An ontology of the intersectional field is posited, and on this foundation, four statements, seen as fundamental conditions for identity work, are operationalised through six propositions explicating identity work in a gestalt paradigm perspective. Methodologically, the overall design is informed by a constructivist grounded theory approach, moving abductively - iteratively and even recursively - between inductive and deductive analysis and reflection. The empirical component of the thesis comprises participant observation, field notes, in-depth interviews during and subsequently two years after the closure, and memos. The data proved relevant and informative in terms of identity work in the organisation. The result of the research is a hypothesis about identity work in organisations, firmly anchored in and commensurate with a present-day revised gestalt paradigm, which contribute to a formal development of a gestalt organisational theory. The hypothesis states that: “Identity work in organisations is a dialectical positioning, both individual and collective, between the existential polar opposites of inclusion and exclusion. The processes through which identity work is enacted are cognitive, affective, and conative, instrumentally served by the contact boundary dynamics of egotisming, confluencing, projecting, retroflecting, introjecting, and deflecting. “ The empirical findings are considered robust, and the theory formulation meaningful. Acknowledging the specific circumstances of the study organisation and empirical design, however, a more general application of the hypothesis requires further research in diverse contexts for verification and possibly refinement of the gestalt theoretical concepts at the organisational level. The research results are of interest to gestalt practitioners who teach or work in or with organisations, and equally so for those interested in dynamic process perspectives in which attention shifts - whether at the level of the individual, group, or organisation - from static assessment of reified identity to real-time identity work; from structure to mutual interaction and influence, in order to balance the well-being of the human beings “in” and “profitability” of the organisation.

Contemporary feminist movements are mixed gendered but men’s participation in them remain low. Many sociological studies have neglected to study men’s role and participation in feminist movements and focused mainly on women’s position.  This thesis builds on social movement theories and previous research conducted within this field.  This study aims to reveal factors that motivate men’s participation and roles played by them in contemporary feminist movements. Qualitative interviews are used for data collection. The data indicate that men’s role in feminist movements is designated to support the movements. Factors that motivated them to participate in the movements include; rational, network and political motivations.

This dissertation is focused on research into and consideration of the relationship between a nascent form of Jewish feminism that arose in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, and the post-1967 Palestine solidarity movement-both of which took shape in the overlap of feminist and anti-imperialist movements of the late 20th century. While restoring an archive of social movement culture, this study reveals the impact of Zionism and anti-Zionism on US feminisms, with attention to the "Question of Palestine" as a site of division and alliance for feminist movements. Utilizing theories and methods from cultural studies, ethnic studies, feminist studies, and related interdisciplinary formations, I consider ideologies and practices of late 20th century feminist movements as they address gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nation through and against identity politics. With focus on the lesbian-led, politically leftist, grassroots sector of U.S. Jewish feminism and related feminist formations, I ask how the discourse of identity has been mobilized in contradictory ways, re-mapping feminist alliances and conflicts about race, nation, and colonialism.