This thesis aims to provide an understanding of the phenomenon of citizen censorship in India and its implications for free speech. It is especially concerned with public protests where groups of citizens demand government action in order to ban or censor controversial material. These groups tend to invoke feelings of offense or hurt religious sentiments as a justification for restriction. The point of departure of this thesis is research on social movement outcomes and the history of Indian censorship. A quantitative approach is adopted, which includes data of protest events from 2010 to 2015. The author will demonstrate that restrictions on free speech coincide with protest events in three out of ten cases. A shorter case study of the controversy surrounding the film Vishwaroopam provides a concrete example of the dynamics of citizen censorship and aims to highlight some aspects that might have affected protest outcomes. Ultimately, the author concludes that protests are likely to be influential for restrictions on free speech, and that the role of the citizen as censor should not be ignored.

This project examines social movements in Guåhan (Guam) and activism within this unincorporated territory of U.S. Two assumptions guide this work. First, Guåhan is the site of rhetorical struggle over identity, indigeneity, and Americanness. Second, indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) struggles must be examined within the historical context of colonial projects, which have established a political economy of stratification. Thus, the complexities of social movement organizing might be better understood when historicized with political and economic realities. To get a more complete understanding of how indigenous social movements and activism in contemporary Guåhan are shaped by understandings of national identity, colonization, and military buildup, I analyze three sets of artifacts: (1) testimonies at United Nations from 2005-2012; (2) the texts and activities of the group We Are Guåhan and its legal action against the Department of Defense (DOD) regarding the U.S. military buildup; and (3) interviews with social movement members and organizers regarding activism in Guåhan and contending with American influence. The project argues that resistance takes place through social movement efforts centered on the issues of ancestral land, language and cultural revitalization, and self-determination for Chamorus; and these moments occur primarily through actions that both depend upon and reinforce communicative channels directed against the U.S. nation-state. This phenomenon is articulated through the rhetoric of both/neither that demonstrates complex and contradictory identities positioned as both part of the U.S. while simultaneously remaining exterior to it. / text

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The emergence of supranational organizations like the European Union (EU) raises questions fundamental to the sociological study of regions and nation-states. Hypothetically, the EU could provide regions within nation-states most of the governmental services that they currently receive from the state. For regions with strong ethnic and cultural identities that have sought to break away from the nation-state over time, decreased political and economic dependency may provide the autonomy that they have been seeking. On the other hand, if the emergence of supranational organizations like the EU represents state-building at the global level, then the EU can pose a threat to regional groups seeking autonomy from the nation-state. At issue is how the growing influence of supranational organizations like the EU is affecting the demand for autonomy within ethnically, politically, and culturally distinct regions. This dissertation attempts to answer these questions by examining variations in nationalism over time for three regions in Spain (Basque Country, Galicia, Catalonia) from 1977-2002. In order to begin to answer this question, I created a new dataset of protest events in Spain in order to assess variations in demands for autonomy over time. The protest event counts were incorporated into a comparative historical analysis that seeks to explain the effects of the influence of the evolving European Union (EU) on contentious demands for autonomy within those three regions; the variations in the protest event counts over time were analyzed against additional economic and political data collected from archival materials. I find that, while nationalism declined overall over time, it did not disappear but rather took on a different character. The classical manifestations of nationalism transformed into distinct movements centered on human rights. I argue that this transformation took place as a result of three interrelated factors: 1) Forced cooperation between the regions and the central Spanish government; 2) Elite abandonment of the nationalist movement; and 3) The state of the regional economies. In contrast to what extant theory might predict, my results indicate that nationalism continues to exist for the following reasons: 1) The EU has not rendered the nation-state irrelevant, but rather has altered their competencies; 2) The EU has not resolved the tensions between the nation-state and regions, but rather has created new ones; and 3) The EU has not leveled the economic playing-field between regions, but rather has opened them up to new forms of competition. In conclusion, this dissertation argues that supranational organizations like the EU have altered the relationship between regions and nation-states, thus transforming - but not solving - the nationalist question.

This thesis explores processes of social movement organizing in response to the neoliberal restructuring of public services in South Africa. Through a case study of an alliance of municipal workers and community activists collaborating to contest public service commercialization in Cape Town, this thesis examines the limits and possibilities of contemporary efforts to build labour community alliances. In many parts of the world, particularly Latin America, broad coalitions including community organizations and labour unions have formed to defend public services and propose alternatives to market delivery. Despite widespread discontent, rising levels of poverty, increasing inequality and the success of anti-privatization coalitions elsewhere in the world, a sustained and successful movement has not emerged in South Africa. Situated in the debates within social geography on South African neoliberalism and those in the labour and social movement literature on labour-community alliances, this thesis argues that several factors serve to frustrate coalition formation in the present. These include the organizational and institutional complexities and heterogeneity of partner organizations, the fragmenting effect of a diverse and problematic socio-cultural context, and the disabling political economy of South Africa at the fore of which is the enduring hegemonic project of the ANC. Highly interrelated, these factors ultimately continue to thwart attempts to build a social movement to effectively challenge and move beyond the neoliberal restructuring of public services in Cape Town. However, this thesis argues that openings and spaces for the emergence of labour-community alliances and deep coalitions do exist, and concludes that the outlook for the emergence of transformative movements in Cape Town is not so bleak as the complexity and fragmentation of the present may suggest. / Thesis (Master, Global Development Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-21 15:52:00.612

Approved for public release, distribution unlimited / The Shiite ulama have become politically active in past decades, beginning in the 1960s-70s with the articulation of the new ideology that empowered the Iranian Revolution. Though a significant portion of the ulama retained their quietist tradition, enough felt motivated by wilayet e-faqih to become a major force in the political landscape. The ulama were particularly well suited to lead a successful social movement. Shiite tradition and symbology, once released from the bonds of quietism, were perfectly suited to motivate a struggle for justice. Despite the ulama's successful leadership, they are most influential when they are part of an underground opposition movement. The three case studies demonstrate that when movements reach a certain level of success, the ulama tend to retreat back to their studies. While many significant ulama continue to pay lip service to the wilayet e-faqih, many have also admitted that it is not practical in their country's particular circumstance. This is not to say that they are not influential, but that they prefer to let others perform daily political tasks. The scowling, turbaned 'alim is not necessarily the uncontrolled voice of radicalism bent upon founding an Islamic state.

This research will analyze the comprehensive organizational strategy of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA was dramatically transformed from a gun enthusiasts' group to one of the most powerful organizations in the US starting in the late 1970s. The key focus of the study will be on the political influences and victories the NRA has accomplished in the US over the past 30 years. The research will also focus on NRA senior leadership, NRA members, media sources and US politics as they relate to the current and future strategies of the organization. Furthermore, an in-depth look at the NRA's history will be examined followed by a broad focus on how the NRA has became, and remains, one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the US. Due to the fluid nature of the NRA, interviews were taken with senior NRA personnel at NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, and at the Washington D.C. field office. The positions used for this paper were with the Director of the Grassroots Division and the Director of Federal Affairs. The goal of these interviews was to give this research the most current, up to date information on future goals and trends in the NRA.

Written with a contemporary European context of economic, social and reproductive crisis in mind, this thesis presents research about, from and for social movements that struggle against precarity, austerity and capitalist accumulation. Based on accounts and analyses of feminist-autonomist militant practice and networks, this research project revolves around two terms: care and creativity. It maps out a historical-genealogical shift from a paradigm of creativity (reflected in neoliberal governance as well as in social movements of the decades before and after the millenium) to one oriented around care (reflected in the neo-communitarian policy as well as practices of commoning that arise with social and economic crisis in Europe). Structured into three broad sections on work, organisation and governance, the questions at stake here revolve around the possibilities and imaginaries of politics that affirm care and creativity in relation to one another. On the level of work, this means struggles within and against precarity, reproductive and illegalized work; on the level of organisation, it means relating the figure of the network to that of the care chain and the family, confronting new transnational forms of alliance and care; and on the level of governance, it is the relation between neoliberalism and its new communitarian forms that is in question. What the collectives, campaigns and networks constituting the ‘field’ of this research have in common is that they re-think the contemporary relations between autonomy and heteronomy, the global and the situated, as well as macro- and micropolitics. Dwelling on collective experiences and knowledges, this investigation takes care to articulate the dimensions of subjectivity, relation and association with those of economy and governance. Concerned and engaged with contexts of struggle and commoning in the face of crisis politics, precarity and dispersed sociality, a methodology of militant participatory-action research serves to map out contexts of practice in Spain, the UK and Argentina as of 2010-2013.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The problem of this dissertation is psychological and sociological description and analysis of the appeals and activities of the John Birch Society as a movement of social protest of the radical right. The John Birch Society is one of the major organizations described in current journalistic treatments as radical right or as right-wing extremist. The Society came to public prominence in the spring of 1961 as awareness of its fairly widespread organizational accomplishments and of the more extreme opinions of its founder, Robert Welch, were brought to public attention by the press. The method included both library and field research. Library research, both before and after the field research, focused upon the provision of an adequate framework of psychological and sociological theory through which to perceive the setting, the leader, the organization and membership, and the ideology and activity of the John Birch Society. The primary data so perceived were those of many of the Birch Society publications, those provided by observers of local Birch Society conflicts in Gloucester, Little Rook, El Paso, Dallas, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Phoenix, and Wichita, and those provided by the participants on each side of these conflicts through interviews and, with many, through the administration of a questionnaire. Secondary data were provided by newspaper, newsmagazine, and personal correspondence descriptive of the leader, the organization, the membership, the ideology, and the local and national activities of the Birch Society. The conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: 1. The Birch Society functions as a fundamentalist reaction. 2. The top leadership of the Society is charismatic. 3. The organizational-leadership structure of the Society is an unstable mixture of both charismatic and rational-bureaucratic elements. 4. The stance of the Society as an aggressive sect is inherently unstable. 5. The activity and ideology of social protest represent the major appeal of the Society. 6. The conflict in which the Society engages is characteristically non-communal. 7. The ideology of the Society is substantively and formally logic-tight and, characteristically, those who affirm it are highly closed-minded. 8. Within our troubled setting, the ideology provides the social-psychological appeals of certainty, superiority, and self-righteousness and "justifies" aggression toward otherwise invulnerable objects of frustration. 9. As a fundamentalist reaction, the Society fails to serve its manifest function, none of its latent functions appear to be constructive, and some are latently dysfunctional even for its own existence. 10. The Society is well described as a movement of social protest of the radical right. These conclusions led the author to observe that the non-rational character of the Society tends to dominate and to obscure whatever fundwnental forces and issues may be in conflict. The implications of this observation, for the legitimated processes of the American democratic society, then led the author to the position that the only way to move conflicts with the Society into potentially constructive channels appears to be through insistence upon the norms of rational and communal conflict.

Historically in the United States, after-action investigations have consistently accused the intelligence community of early warning in foreign policy and national security events. However, closer inspection shows that the intelligence community does provide timely and actionable estimates-when it is directed to do so. In some instances, the root cause of failure does not lie within the intelligence community. Rather, it is due to a malfunction in the Requirements and Priorities (R&P) process, a mechanism that integrates intelligence and policy communities. The R&P provides the "mandate" for the intelligence community- it delivers a ranking of intelligence priorities, and informs resource distribution, interagency cooperation, and operational authorisations for federal intelligence agencies. The R&P process has been highlighted consistently as a systemic weakness, has undergone numerous changes, and remains a source of tribulation. Yet it is rarely addressed, and absent from after-action investigations. The impact of the R&P becomes most visible when urgent, unexpected issues arise in low priority areas. These events force a "mandate shift" - a rapid escalation of the issue to a higher priority, commanding an immediate realignment of mandate-level functions. Faults in any component of the mechanism can delay or restrict critical actions, and often as manifest as errors of intelligence collection or analysis. These "symptoms" are often misdiagnosed as the root cause, leading to accusations of intelligence failure. This research sets forth a model to observe the impact of the R&P on the outcome of foreign policy and national security events, while simultaneously investigating core functions of the intelligence and policy communities. This R&P-centric model is applied to three cases of social movement escalation: el Bogotázo (1948), the Iranian Revolution (1979), and the Rwandan Genocide (1994). The cases trace the R&P structure at the time, to examine how faults in the R&P can impact the intelligence community's ability to provide early warning, and influence the overall outcome.