Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pfohl / The Gezi Park protests, which started in May 2013 in Istanbul, rapidly turned into a movement for democracy across the country. Through in-depth interviews with protestors in Turkey, observation and content analysis, my research examines the role digital technologies played in the protests. These technologies, especially social networking tools, were used by protestors to construct personalized frameworks and forms of action. I show that this process depended on the individuals’ interpretations of their current political and cultural context, their alternative frameworks of reality. By expressing these frameworks individuals, first and foremost, challenged the politico-cultural adjustment of the society by various powerful actors. Moreover, as individuals got together in protest, alternative frameworks of reality interacted, leading to the emergence of empathy and dialogue among the protestors for long-term movement success. Digital technologies provided the necessary alternative sources for news and other information for the reconstruction of these frameworks. Moreover, they became the primary space for the production and circulation of jokes in various forms, as protestors used humor and creativity as central strategies to voice their dissent. Affective and humorous creations challenged the discipline of the political authority, hacked its presentations of reality and contributed to the formation of a carnivalesque society, where empathy and dialogue were maintained through collective effervescence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Jennie Purnell / The Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacint of the Zapatista platform. It will demonstrate that external conditions have influenced and frustrated realistic improvements in Zapatista gender relations. Finally, this thesis will assess the future of female participation within the Zapatista movement, and illustrate the limited social and political changes in indigenous communities. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: William A. Gamson / In 2006, Mariane Valverde announced the birth of what she called, “a new type in the history of sexuality” (155), the Respectable Same-Sex Couple. This work analyzes newspaper coverage of same-sex couples during the Massachusetts campaign for marriage equality to explore the content of and contours around that new socio-sexual category. The processes involved in the incorporation of lesbians and gay men into the governing relations of American society are used to explain the development of this type, and its replacement of the pathological Homosexual. The manufacture of respectability by movement activists is explored via the selection of “public face couples” as a framing strategy that links the lives of these couples to marriage itself and the hardships they suffer due to their inability to marry. The respectability of these couples and their incorporation as economic citizens is also linked to representations of professional status, upward mobility, economic success, and the creation of identity-based markets through entrepreneurial and consumptive practices. Boundaries around this respectability are evident in stories of failure, either to remain together as couples or to act in accordance with marital normative standards, while the boundaries between Heterosexuality and Homosexuality, and among and between same-sex and different-sex couples, are also being re-drawn as marriage becomes available. The broader historical transformation of lesbian and gay life is discusses in the development of new life-scripts becoming available. While these transformations have led to greater possibilities for the living of gay and lesbian lives, the absorption of these lives into governing relations also erases and expels other queer life practices and reinforces other forms of social inequality and injustice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / This work addresses an important phenomenon in the contemporary philosophy of narrative and coins it as a term. Trigger-narratives denote myth-like stories that ignite certain mass social participation. Juxtapose to five well-established philosophical concepts of narrative this work demonstrates that while trigger-narratives share formal characteristics with all, they fail to be meaningfully and comprehensively subsumed under any. I use three protagonists as comparative case studies to illustrate trigger-narratives: Rosa Parks (US), Mouhammed Bouazizi (Tunisia) and Daphne Leef (Israel). The sociopolitical reaction to trigger-narratives exceeds them in content and in size. Yet, these protagonists continue to serve as catalysts and perennial symbols of the transformative events that follow their protesting acts. Trigger-narratives are not lived-narratives. They do not disclose what Arendt’s refers to as a unique who or MacIntyre’s unity of a human life. They do not answer the ownmost rhythm of Heidegger’s Being-toward-death or operate like Ricoeur’s or Kearney’s concepts of testimony. The protagonist perspective is rarely heard or seriously considered. Unlike historical narratives trigger-narratives are not the product of research. They form quickly and in their aftermath they resist change. Trigger-narrative protagonists draw their power from being portrayed as context-less, weak and uncalculated while historical leaders draw power from descriptions of authority, skill, and deliberation. Trigger-narratives have the effect and/or aspiration of metanarratives. They aim at a new order. However, they spring from articulated singular accounts rather than form an all-encompassing tacit sub-current narrative. Adding a sixth sociological concept of narrative I refer to issue-narratives. Trigger-narratives congeal around an issue. But they instill a far greater expectation for change. I conclude that: 1. trigger narratives are closest to fiction 2. They operate through a condensation of Ricoeur’s mimetic cycle configuring and refiguring reality in a rapid rotation that ossifies them into a mobilizing form, and that 3. Interpreting trigger-narratives through the perspective of world-creating myths illuminates many of their typical characteristics in a unifying, comprehensive manner. The study points to two new research directions: 1. trigger-narratives’ aftermath operations (specifically rituals and newly erected institutions).2. Further interdisciplinary cooperation between contemporary political philosophy of narrative and the sociological methodology of frame-analysis. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: William A. Gamson / In this dissertation, I examine the strategic evolution of the US anti-sweatshop movement, particularly United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). While scholars of social movements have analyzed individual tactics used by movements, they have only recently begun to look at the larger question of strategy--how movements make choices about which tactics to use when and how they link these tactics together into a larger plan to alter macro-level power relations in society. This dissertation is one of the first empirical examinations of the processes by which particular groups have developed their strategy. I look at how ideology and values, a sophisticated analysis of the structure of the apparel industry, strategic models for action handed down from past movements, and the movement's decision-making structures interacted in the deliberations of anti-sweatshop activists to produce innovative strategies. I also focus on how the larger social environment, especially the structure of the apparel industry, has shaped the actions of the movement. In seeking to bring about change, the anti-sweatshop movement had to alter the policies of major apparel corporations, decision-making arenas typically closed to outside, grassroots influence. They did so by finding various points of leverage--structural vulnerabilities--that they could use against apparel companies. One of the most important was USAS's successful campaign to get a number of colleges and universities to implement pro-labor codes of conduct for the apparel companies who had lucrative licensing contracts with these schools. In USAS's campaigns to support workers at particular sweatshops fighting for their rights, they could then use the threat of a suspension or revocations of these contracts--and therefore a loss of substantial profits--as a means to pressure apparel companies to protect the workers' rights. This combination of strategic innovation and access to points of leverage has allowed the US anti-sweatshop movement to win some victories against much more powerful foes. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / While the Tea Party’s rise in 2009 prompted enormous media attention and subsequent academic inquiry, scholarship that investigates Tea Party ideology is scant. While not a social movement in the traditional sense, the Tea Party had an undeniable influence on the 2010 midterms, especially at the state level. This paper features New Hampshire, a perennial swing state and home to one of the largest legislative shifts to Republican control in recent memory. By exploring four broad issue areas, Constitutionalism, the economy, social issues, and race, the project seeks a clearer understanding of what Tea Partiers believe and what their sympathetic state legislators espouse. The first level of analysis uses opinion polling to demonstrate that while those respondents who back the Tea Party have conservative views on perceptual questions, a plurality agree with most Americans on specific policy positions. The second level of analysis compares opinion poll responses to interviews of New Hampshire state legislators, finding that the latter group is much more rigidly conservative on tangible policies, but lacks Tea Party voters’ distinctive fears of a changing America. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

The U.S. food system is afflicted by a variety of social, ecological, and economic predicaments including hunger, food access inequalities, soil and water degradation, and lack of community control over food. Scholars and activists agree that in order for U.S. food movement actors to affect significant system-wide change, players must bridge a multitude of issue areas and ideological differences. Despite thorough analyses of local and regional food systems, little research has been conducted on either national level advocacy perspectives or the ties that bind and divide food advocacy coalitions. This dissertation's central research question examines how the U.S food advocacy movement works to resist the hegemonic domination of the national food system by state and corporate actors. To answer this question, this project develops a social network analysis of 71 national-level food advocacy actors, compiles web-based issue and tax data, and conducts 36 semi-structured interviews with senior food activist staff. Social movement literature and Antonio Gramsci's concepts of counter-hegemonic movements and wars of position inform the findings and reveal the national food movement's nascent propensity to unite cultural and class struggles to create significant pressure for systematic change in the U.S. food system. Additionally, this research tests existing theoretical work related to the food advocacy network and distinctions between interest group and social movement type organizations. This dissertation reveals that despite most activists' conviction that a constellation of agri-business and state policies dominate the U.S. food system, significant network rifts, framing dilemmas, strategic conflicts, and resource complexities prevent national food activists from generating a robust challenge to hegemonic food system actors.

Orientador: Murilo Cesar Soares / Banca: Maximiliano Martin Vicente / Banca: Cicilia Maria Krofiling Peruzzo / Resumo: Este estudo tem como tema o papel dos eventos em movimentos sociais e, nesta perspectiva, analisou sua importância como estratégia de comunicação nas lutas da cidadania. Como corpus de análise, foi realizada uma pesquisa sobre a 5ª Parada da Diversidade de Bauru, evento realizado anualmente pela Associação Bauru pela Diversidade (ABD). O objetivo do trabalho foi analisar como o evento representa as lutas do movimento, considerando o caráter espetacular e festivo inerente às paradas. Para isso, foi desenvolvido um estado de caso, com a utilização de três métodos distintos: observação sistemática presencial, para que pudéssemos identificar os principais aspectos que sobressaíram no evento: análise das matérias jornalísticas impressas, para compreender como esses jornais representaram a Parada; e entrevistas com os organizadores, para compreender os propósitos da mobilização. Para isso, foram estabelecidos quatro categorias de análise: espetáculo, festa, argumentação e organização. Os resultados obtidos com cada um dos métodos contribuíram para responder as questões de pesquisa que nortearam este trabalho e, em seguida, foram comparados por meio de uma triangulação para identificar se houve uma convergência de evidências para se responder ao problema de pesquisa proposto. Diante disso, identificamos que há uma convergência parcial de evidências, uma vez que os organizadores ressaltaram os propósitos da mobilização, enquanto os jornais impressos enfatizaram os aspectos espetacular e festivo da parada. A observação sistemática presencial, por sua vez, nos permitiu inferir que o impacto visual promovido pelo espetáculo e pela participação do público se sobrepõe aos propósitos da mobilização, que ficam restritos a alguns momentos / Abstract: This paper has as its theme the role of events in social movements and, at this perspective, has analyzed its importance as a communication strategy at the citizenship fights. As corpus analysis, a survey about the 5th Diversity Parade of the city of Bauru was conducted. This event is annually organized by Bauru's Association for Diversity (ABD). The goal of this paper was to analyze how the event represents the fights of the movement, considering the spectacular and festive features of parades. For this, a study case with three distinct methods was developed: systematic observation in loco, so that the main aspects highlighted at the event can be identified; analysis of the printed news, in order to understand how these newspapers have described the parade; and interviews with the organizing committee, to understand the purposes of the mobilization. For this, four categories of analysis were established: spectacle, party, argumentation and organization. The results obtained with each one of the methods have contributed to answer the research questions which have guided this paper and, afterwards, were compared by triangulation to identify whether or not there was a convergence f evidences in order to have an answer to the proposed research problem. As a result, we have identified that there is a partial convergence of evidences, as the organizing commitee has highlighted the purposes of the mobilization, while the newspaper have emphasized the spectacular and festive aspects of the parade. The systematic observation in loco itself, allowed us to imply that the visual impact promoted by the spectacle and by the participation of the attendees overrides the purposes of the mobilization, that remain restrict just for a few moments / Mestre

This thesis intends to demonstrate the radical potential of rights. I argue that rights are capable, on the one hand, of challenging capitalist social relations and the liberal legal order which sustains those relations, and, on the other hand, of constituting a new political system. I argue that without reconceptualising rights in this manner, we are unable to comprehend certain social movements which employ the language of rights for challenging the existing systems and for articulating transformative visions of a new world. This thesis suggests that we need to rethink rights as political alliances and agreements and rights-claims as political proposals between co-citizens. Here, the content of rights is formulated through a political action of the rights-holders themselves, as opposed to being derived from the pre-political sphere. Furthermore, I argue that our understanding of the scope of these political proposals and, hence, our understanding of the nature of the new order that rights can potentially constitute, depends on the way we conceptualise the conflictual dimension of rights-claims. It is the notion of a rights-claim as a challenge to the constituted order, as opposed to a petition to be included within that order, which captures how rights inaugurate a radical discursive space where potentially transformative political proposals regarding the matters of collective life can be made. Throughout this thesis I refer to a transnational movement of peasants, La Via Campesina, which fights for a new socio-political arrangement where ‘feeding the world’ is the end in itself rather than a dictate of the capitalist market. Crucially, this movement makes extensive use of the language of rights and of ‘the right to food’ in particular. I argue that it is only the radical theory of social rights constructed in this thesis that allows us to analyse the transformative core of the movements like this one.

In recent years, the ‘right to the city’ has emerged as a key concept and practice amongst both academics and social movements around which to organise a response to the crisis of Fordist production and political representation. In Spain this response has taken to the streets, with millions of people coming together and shouting ‘They don’t represent us!’. As a key site of both neoliberal urban governance and political insurgency, Barcelona provides a powerful site through which to examine the relationships between urban social movements, urban governance and struggles around the right to the city. In this thesis I build a (partial and provisional) genealogy of the right to the city, examining the relevance of those struggles that have emerged inside and against neoliberal governmentality since the early 1980s in an effort to assemble the right to the city through the material combination of struggles around urban production and citizenship rights. To do this, I return to the relation between genesis and management as an uneven dialectic in the production of rights; drawing on and building new connections between post-colonial studies, autonomous marxist debates, critical studies of citizenship and urban studies to investigate how strangers, outsiders and the governed challenge European capitalism from inside and assert a different imagination of contemporary urban life. I also explore my own role in these dynamics. In contrast to an understanding of academic knowledge as analytical and objective representation, my position as both a militant and a researcher provides the ground upon which I analyse social movements as a factory of concepts and practices capable of assembling an instituent politics against neoliberal governmentality.