"We started the 2011 revolution and the rest of Egypt followed," say Egyptian workers with strong conviction. Egyptian independent workers' continuous claims of contention and repertoires of protest were one of several main factors leading to the January 25, 2011 uprising. After thirty-two years of a Mubarak-led authoritarian regime, massive protests began in January 2011 and forced President Mubarak to step down from his position. The first question of this research endeavor is: how did Egyptian workers challenge the regime and how they became one of the factors leading to the January 2011 uprising? These workers were organized into loose networks of different independent groups that had been protesting for a decade and longer prior to January 2011. However, their regular protests for over a decade before 2011 challenged the authoritarian regime. This dissertation examines the combative role of Egyptian independent workers' formal and informal organizations as a contentious social movement to challenge the regime. It will examine the evolving role of workers as socio-economic actors and then as political actors in political transitions. Social Movement Theory (SMT) and its mechanisms and Social Movement Unionism (SMU) will be the lenses through which this research will be presented. The methodology will be the comparative case studies of two different movements where workers who advocated for their rights for a decade prior to January 2011 experienced significantly differing outcomes. One case study showcases the municipal real estate tax collection workers who were able to establish a successful social movement and then create an independent trade union. The second case study examines an influential group of garment and textile workers, who also developed an effective social movement, yet were not able to take it to the next step to establish an independent union. I will explore within this research a second question: why one group of workers was able to establish an independent union while the other arguably more influential group of workers, the garment and textile workers, was not able to do so. This had an impact on the influence they were able to exercise over the regime in addition to their effectiveness as a social movement for change. / Ph. D.

No / The rise of networked social movements contesting neo-liberal globalization and protesting the summits of global finance and governance organizations has posed an analytical challenge to social movement theorists and called into question the applicability to this global milieu of the familiar concepts and heuristics utilized in social movement studies. In this article, we argue that the self-defining alter-globalization movement(s) might instead be engaged with as an expression and effect of global complexity, and we draw upon a `minor¿ literature in social movement studies that includes Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze and Alberto Melucci to illustrate our claims. This article uses a Deleuzian reading of complexity to describe the phase space of the `movement of movements¿, and its perturbation of global civil society through the iteration of sense-making processes (reflexive framing) and the exploration of singularities inhering in social movement `plateaux¿. Those transnational gatherings, protests and social forums facilitated by computer-mediated communications and the advent of unprecedented mobility which constitute a `shadow realm¿ that remains largely invisible to political exchange theories operating within the conceptual confines of the nation-state.

El propósito de este artículo es analizar cómo los activistas del movimiento español de protesta 15M conceptualizan las prácticas organizativas en relación con los objetivos del movimiento. Ubicamos el concepto ¿organización parcial¿ en el contexto de la política de prefiguración. Empíricamente, el trabajo se basa en la investigación de campo realizada en España durante tres años (2014-2016), que incluyó 36 entrevistas cualitativas y observaciones participantes. Los hallazgos indican que los activistas consideran, de un lado, a las prácticas organizacionales como medios cruciales para lograr el cambio social y, de otro lado, a las organizaciones como organizaciones parciales, específicamente, para lograr una membresía abierta y estructuras no jerárquicas. Al hacer esto para implementar las metas del movimiento de manera prefigurativa en sus prácticas organizativas diarias, son ampliamente aceptados los límites y restricciones de las prácticas de auto-organización. Al contribuir a una comprensión más profunda de la filosofía subyacente de organizaciones de movimientos sociales, este artículo debería ser útil para activistas y académicos del movimiento social.

Review of Encyclopedia of American Social Movements. Immanuel Ness M.E. Sharpe. 2003. 4v, 0765680459, $399.00

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-308).

Thesis (M. A. in Sociology)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2009. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-158). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR19677

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Petra Rethmann. Includes bibliographical references (p. 385-397).

Thesis (MA)--University of Montana, 2007. / Contents viewed on March 26, 2010. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Minnesota, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-307).