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The Chicano movements of the 1960s transformed protest and unrest into significant gains in the status of young Mexican Americans. Deriving strength from the political climate of their times, the movements were driven largely by youth organized around the common identity paradigm of Chicanismo and agitating for fundamental change in socio-political discourses and hierarchies within the United States. Since the 1960s, however, collective youth action has rarely been evident in the historical record of Chicanismo, and globalization and transnationalism have influenced the terms of Mexican American experience, identification, and social action themselves. Tucson, Arizona, somewhat in the periphery of the original Chicano movements, finds itself at the epicenter of today's ideological and practical contests over the legacies of the movimiento. This city, located just sixty miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, until 2012 hosted one of the country's only public school departments of Mexican American Studies, which itself was home to one of the country's first formalized social-justice education curricula. In the first decade of the 21st century, precipitous increases in the number of graduates of these curricula converged with the collapse of world financial markets and resulting local crises in socio-political economy, which had intersecting, rippled effects on both side of the U.S.-Mexico border. In the ensuing climate of financial constriction and ideological transformation, subterranean questions about national belonging and legitimacy surfaced in local and national political challenges to Mexican immigration and "appropriate" schooling curriculum. Local Chicana/o youth responded to these local and larger contestations to their legitimacy as citizens and students by mobilizing some of the most significant public actions since the 1960s.This dissertation investigates the awakening into critical consciousness and pursuant social action of Mexican American high school students, youth "activists" and "organizers" in Tucson, Arizona. Building from ethnography conducted across nine years within youth actors' sites of activism and social justice engagement, this research reveals new complexities in our understanding of "activist" identity and enactments, and contends that understandings of both "activism" and "Chicanismo" must be revisited in the scholarship of youth movements, generally, and Chicana/o social action, specifically.

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Through uneven processes of planning by a multiplicity of participants, Edinburgh’s built environment continues to emerge as the product of many competing strategies and projects of development. The 2005 proposal of a dramatic new development intended for an area of the city’s Old Town represents one such project in which many powerful municipal and commercial institutions are invested. As one of the last remaining residential areas of the Old Town, the population of which has experienced in recent decades a gradual transformation towards transience, the Canongate became the focus of a heated campaign organised by remaining residents who sought to claim their rights to participation in the redevelopment of their neighbourhood. This thesis explores the efforts of these campaigners to accomplish a Deleuzian reterritorialisation of the Canongate, in the face of perceived threats to its community, territorial identity and built environment, represented by the development proposal named Caltongate. The remarkable success of the campaign in cultivating a sense of community belonging and mobilising residents in collaborative efforts at reimagining alternative futures for the Canongate was ultimately unable to affect Caltongate’s approval through formalised bureaucratic procedures. Through an innovative programme of community research and representation, however, the campaigners have impacted subsequent community-led planning efforts throughout the Old Town, which emphasise small-scale development that is accountable to both the residential community and the built heritage of the Old Town. The relationship between the Canongate neighbourhood and the proposed Caltongate development, which is currently suspended in the depressed economic climate, emerges in this thesis as mutually constructive, as well as principally opposed.

This study shows how political activists during the period from 2008 to 2013 worked toabolish the legal paragraph that demanded transgendered citizens to get a sterilization inSweden. By accounting for the themes of the medial debate, which for the most part aimedit’s criticism against society and it’s rulers for keeping the law intact, the study shows howsympathies for the transgendered group were framed. Most arguments that was put forth inthe news flow centered around the law being outdated, a discrimination againsttransgendered citizens and not correlating with Sweden self image of being a modern andcivilized country. This correlates with the activists view of what is problematic with the law,they considered it being a betrayal towards transgendered citizens, a dismissal of applyinghuman rights and their right to equal citizenship – through rejecting their reproductiverights. Their strategies involved appearing in media themselves, doing strategic processmanagement and meeting with government officials. This study shows that the law isconsidered by the activists to reinforce norms of heterosexuality and the societal belief thattransgendered people were not fit to uphold the role of a parent. The abolishing of the lawsymbolizes an inclusion of transgendered citizens in society and making them culturallyintelligible. The activists saw the abolishment of the law as a victory but also as aanticlimax, since it was decided by the court and not by politics in addition to experiencingthat the decision was formed too late, that the damaged was already done and the activistsfelt that more needs to be done to make transgendered citizens equal to others.

The past decade has seen an upsurge ofacademic and popular interest in the political activity undertaken by citizens. This thesis presents a predominantly qualitative analysis ofthe nature of voluntary political participation, and subsequently addresses a number of key concerns about the current state of democracy in Britain. It is argued that existing analysis of political participation tends to focus on quantitative questions such as the levels and socio-demographic composition of political activity, with little attention being given to the experiences of those citizens who engage with political organisations. The analysis utilises the theoretical work of JUrgen Habermas in order to consider the potential role of both state mechanisms of participation and structures of civil society within the development of rational and deliberative democracy. The primary research draws upon sixty interviews conducted within the British Labour Party, the British section of Amnesty International, two Tenants' Associations, one Residents' Association and an alternative lifestyle collective known as Exodus. Three main themes are addressed in the form of a comparative study. Firstly, the thesis considers the nature of the various organisations and their membership policies. Secondly, a typology ofpolitical participation and activism is presented. Finally, analysis is provided of the experiences ofthe respondents of the actual process ofparticipation. Addressing these themes enables the thesis to explore the nature of the discourse that occurs within spheres ofvoluntary political participation, and to provide some insight into the dialectical relationship that exists between structures of participation and the activity that develops within such contexts. It is concluded that a range of conflicting tensions currently inform voluntary political participation. These factors raise a number of serious questions about the role of civil society within processes of democratisation.

Racism damages all of us. It degrades the lives of some, it diminishes the integrity of others, and it saps our resources and threatens our peace as a nation. Racism in the United States takes place on multiple levels: within and between individuals, in our cultural milieu, and in our social institutions. In this dissertation, I describe ways in which I have both encountered and perpetrated racism personally and professionally as an educator. I then explore ways in which racism can be unlearned by individuals and dismantled institutionally, particularly in the arena of education, so that our nation can be liberated from this most crippling disease. As a European American woman raised in affluence, my story is about unearned privilege on several levels, and my research asks the question of what I can responsibly do about that. However, my upbringing and the ongoing influences of mainstream America ask very different questions about dominant status; namely, what can one do with it? And how can one get more? This tension between power and responsibility forms the context for an examination of privilege in this scholarly personal narrative about unlearning racism.

This choreographic thesis describes the conceptual foundations underlying the development of the dance, Here. Here uses text and movement to explore the challenge of locating of locating oneself in this particular institution. It asks the questions: what happens when our personal needs conflict with the structure of this institution? How do we use our limited capacities to exist / resist / care for each other in this place? Reflections on Here describes the choreographic inquiries and discoveries that contributed to the development of Here. It includes research on desire and mourning, as well as reflections on the power of autobiographical dance. Reflections on Here analyzes the work of Bill T. Jones and Cynthia Oliver as a way of understanding how autobiographical dance and text may be used to support one another in performance. It examines how work in the studio as well as in performance can build a feeling of “compassionate power” onstage. This idea of “compassionate power” is used in this project to describe the somatic principles that may embody the loving action that takes place during collective organizing. These somatic principles include sensing and working with the weight of the body on the floor and working with momentum rather than forcing movements to take place. Reflections on Here analyzes how the idea of compassionate power infused the development of Here, and connects the work of choreographers who are concerned with showing personhood and their sociopolitical landscape onstage. Finally, Reflections on Here acknowledges the necessity for this choreographic project to be contextualized within – and connected to – the ongoing brave and compassionate organizing happening at Scripps College.

This work examines an art movement that was a direct outgrowth of a populist civil rights movement of the late 1960’s in the Southwest United States. This art, the Chicano Murals created as part of el Movimiento in San Diego, California was intended primarily as a didactic communication medium to reach into the barrios and marginalized neighborhoods for the primary purpose of carrying a resistance message to the semiliterate mestizo population within. Its secondary purpose was to bring a message from within these minority neighborhoods outward to the privileged elite, both Anglo and Hispanic, that within the confines of the barrio there exists a culture and heritage that has value. The Chicano Murals were ubiquitous throughout the southwest United States with concentration of the art in those areas adjacent to the Mexican border. This work examines some of the murals, and the politics associated with their creation principally in San Diego, California, and some activities in Los Angeles, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. This dissertation posits that it has been well established that art in public space is often a contentious matter and when it also carries a contra message, as did the Chicano murals, it may be considered intrusive and abrasive. The social environment into which these murals were insinuated--the public sphere, the intellectual territory of high art and the elite system of private and government cultural patronage, are examined in the context of their effect upon the mural content and conversely, the effects of these murals upon diversity in the high art and museology of the United States.

The boundaries of victimhood have received increasing attention in criminology, particularly considering the recent proliferation in 'trauma talk' or 'trauma creep'. Noting the connections between victims and trauma, there is now increasing recognition of the impact of victimisation, not only on individuals, but upon families, communities and cultures with its effects extending across time, place and person. Following David Garland's assertion of the 'return of the victim' 15 years ago, the interests of victims have moved to centre stage of the criminal justice system with the experiences of some taken to be representative of others. While this has encouraged an appreciation of the extent of suffering in victimisation, it is easy to understand how we might 'lose sight of the individual victim'. This research presents a qualitative study of the phenomenon of bereaved family activism. Findings presented in this thesis are based upon 15 in-depth interviews and participant observations with Mothers Against Violence: a Manchester-based charity that emerged in response to an intense period of gun violence and ensuing community outcry in the 1990s. The aim of this thesis was to explore how victims have confronted and mobilised their experiences of lethal violence to promote acknowledgment and prompt recognition. By refocusing on the individual and foregrounding the victim, this thesis asked how those involved understand, make sense of and give value to their experience in light of their role in Mothers Against Violence. Data collected was analysed through thematic analysis, remembering the embedded nature of such stories in cultural, historical and biographical contexts, communities and the research exchange. Findings are presented as a way of following the stories of individuals to the moment of collective action. The primary contributions of this thesis can be summarised under the following headings; firstly, applications of 'trauma' in victimology; secondly, understanding victim movements such as Mothers Against Violence as spaces for emotional, social and practical learning; thirdly, conceptualising victimisation as one moment in a series of 'turning points'; and fourthly, the role of stories in prompting recognition, encouraging identification and assembling communities.