This non-traditional dissertation surfaces how youth activists and their adult accomplices build intergenerational solidarity and challenge age-based power dynamics in their social movement collectives. These questions are investigated from the perspective of 10 youth organizers involved in counterhegemonic organizing movements in the United States, as well as 10 of their chosen adult accomplices. Through semistructured interviews and participatory multimodal methods, youth and adult organizers demonstrate that their solidarity relationships are forged through establishing trust and safety and processes of demonstrating mutuality and reciprocity. Furthermore, youth and adults navigate and attend to adultism in their organizing by participating in processes of naming power dynamics, checking for consent, and co-creation. This research contributes to a bottom-up understanding of youth organizing praxis in relation to larger cultural discourses and adultist systems, while identifying practical implications for intergenerational support.

In recent years, hunting and agrarian communities have increasingly risen in opposition to nature conservation policy that is perceived to infringe on their traditional ways of life. They charge ‘conservationists’ with having a disproportionate influence on policy and maintain that the state system now disenfranchises their needs and interests. In this paper, we suggest this particular brand of resistance can be illuminated by neo-Marxist social movement framework (Cox and Nilsen, 2014) on the dialectic of movements-from-below and movements-from-above, competing for hegemony in the context of an organic crisis of the system. Our paper examines the role of Swedish hunters’ activation of a counter-hegemonic ‘good sense’ to oppose the hegemonic common sense established by wolf conservationists in the state system. The case of Swedish hunters rising in resistance toward the newfound hegemony of wolf conservation is hence resolved as the rise of a right-wing movement from below, mobilized on the basis of defensive, conservative and agrarian values. The novel contribution of this paper lies in its examination of the (often) self-professed limits of hunters’ distinctively agrarian good sense, in light of their own reluctance as an oppositional social movement from below. Not only do hunters exhibit considerable reluctance in regard to their own ‘movement’ identity and ambivalence in regard to hegemony. But we argue that from a conceptual perspective the empowerment of a counter-hegemonic good sense as in traditional resistance studies can, at best, result in a dialectical reversal of movement positions with conservationists, without appropriate mediation or compromise. This leads us to some brief recommendations from democratic theory to mediate between the below and above movements of hunters and conservationists.

This dissertation examines the factors that shape political participation and perceptions about political choice during and after conflict. Societies that experience civil war, and particularly ethnic civil war, are vulnerable to the “conflict trap,” meaning that they are likely to experience second or third wars based on tensions exacerbated by conflict. Existing literature on group mobilization in post-conflict societies and related scholarship predicts that factors like ethnic identity, income, and education best explain participation in political violence and likelihood of recurrence of civil war. However, countries often defy these predictors, and gaps remain in our understanding of how citizens participate in politics during conflict. This dissertation therefore seeks to answer the question: What explains citizens’ choices about political participation as they experience the turmoil conflict and post-conflict periods? To answer this question, this study draws upon the case of Burundi, a country that has hovered between post-conflict and conflict statuses since the conclusion of its recent civil war. I conduct qualitative analysis of 113 in-depth interviews collected across four provinces in Burundi, examining the variety of choices made in relation to political participation both during and after the war. I find that citizens’ choices about political participation are fluid, and heavily contingent upon their interpersonal connections, with specific contributions in three main areas. First, rebel and political groups’ identities hinge upon the values associated with narratives they use to garner legitimacy, more so than the division itself (be it political, ethnic, or otherwise). Second, interactions that take place between generations and within key social networks heavily influence patterns of political participation. These interactions explain the wide array of relationships to politics observed within subgroups (like youth and women), and provide a better understanding of how they take action. Last, in the post-conflict era, non-state actors influence the potential for conflict, simultaneously creating space for wider political participation and challenging state actors still interested in maintaining legitimacy. These findings challenge currently weak predictors of cyclical violence and the assumed mechanisms driving them, highlighting the prominence of social ties and roles that shape mobilization and political choice.

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The mainstream abortion rights debate in the United States, its opposing factions popularly identified as pro-choice and pro-life, is reliant upon identifiable narratives of abortion's value to women and society and, alternately, its harms. This dissertation traces more than one hundred years of evolution of popular rhetoric surrounding the practice of elective termination of pregnancy in the U.S. and identifies the understandings of abortion and the women who have them which are most prominent in our culture today. This dissertation examines the ways in which women who have had abortions invoke the rhetoric of "sympathetic abortion" in making sense of their own experiences. For the pro-choice movement, young, childless women accomplish sympathetic abortions in light of factors like responsible birth control use and the pursuit of empowering life goals, while factors like existing children, previous abortions, and bad clinic experiences contradict this template. The women interviewed for this research discuss ways in which the circumstances surrounding their abortions and their individual approaches to their procedures align their reproductive choices with the sympathetic template or else point to ways in which their experiences fail this standard. Women occasionally transcend the templates of "good" and "bad" abortions and offer new meanings. This dissertation closes with a discussion of the role of women's stories in social movements and the consequences of discourse which ignores abortion experiences that fall short of the contemporary formula story.

The modern-day phenomenon house-squatting is typically performed by social movements. Social movements can be assumed to be multifaceted and straggly. The individuals meet different needs and incentives. They find inspiration from circumstances in everyday life, as well as globally, the focus lies on information/communication rather than distribution of material resources. This thesis aims to map the individual as well as the collective attributes among the participants in the women’s house-squatting in Umeå 1983, using a theoretical framework representing social movement characteristics. The results show that the political and social aims to some extent outweighed the symbolic participation. Inspiration predominantly stems from everyday circumstances but is often related to the global ditto. Information and communication play a prominent role, although material resources should not be rejected entirely. In addition, it can be concluded that the participants show contradictory behaviors, because of the movement’s multifaceted and straggly composition.

Thesis advisor: Franziska Seraphim / This dissertation locates post-occupation Japan and U.S.-occupied Okinawa during the period between 1952 and 1972 within global and transnational histories of extraterritoriality. The subject of the historical inquiry is the politics surrounding the postwar U.S. policy of retaining extraterritorial jurisdiction over criminal cases involving its military personnel and locals in Japan and Okinawa. The primary objective is to historicize the U.S. Department of Defense’ seven-decades-long policy of maximizing national jurisdiction over its service members’ cases committed on foreign soil as well as contemporary Japanese attitudes toward ongoing public debates about Article 17 (criminal jurisdiction provision) of the 1960 Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement. Based on archival documents collected in Okinawa, Japan, and the United States, I demonstrate how the racialized notions of civilization rooted in nineteenth-century western—and particularly U.S.—supremacy drove the rationale for the postwar American military legal regime of exception and invoked varied reactions to it. This dissertation highlights vertical interactions between state policymaking and local/transnational grassroots responses in occupied Okinawa and post-occupation Japan in order to show how U.S. diplomacy manifested on the ground, and how it coped with various forms of resistance and made adjustments in response. Over the two decades beginning with Japan’s recovery of sovereignty in 1952 and ending with Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, the triangular relationship underwent a process of negotiation over each entity’s legal and political subjecthood. Japanese civil society mobilized a nationalist protest movement against the specter of postwar U.S. extraterritoriality in the immediate aftermath of the Allied occupation asserting the integrity of territorial sovereignty. The lingering tensions between U.S. exceptionalism and Japanese nationalism were defused in the late-1950s as the Eisenhower administration decided to reduce the colossal presence of U.S. armed forces on the Japanese archipelago. In U.S.-occupied Okinawa (1945-1972), the islanders’ resistance to “extraterritorial” military justice also generated popular fronts. Yet, in contrast to the Japanese resistance which by and large relied on the Euro-centric Westphalian principle of national sovereignty, Okinawans came to employ the egalitarian spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the mid-1950s to demand legal justice and proper compensation even under military rule. As most U.S. military bases in Japan were moved to tiny Okinawa resulting from Washington’s realignment of U.S. armed forces in Asia in the late 1950s and thereafter, Okinawans’ protest against U.S. military incidents evolved in parallel with their institutionalization of popular human rights activism, and the process invigorated the consolidation of political forces for reversion. My research finds that as Japanese, American, and Third World activists joined Okinawans in solidarity as they all protested the postwar American military legal regime of exception, a new meaning of “civilization” was born through collective appeals for the rule of law and universal human rights that had long-term consequences even as Okinawa was integrated into the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement in 1972. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Music has been an undeniable propelling force in social movements throughout history, including in those that occur in the United States. Based on historical analysis and discourse analysis, I explored music used in past U.S. social movements, with a focus on the abolitionist movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war/pro-labor movement, and the four waves of feminism. I used these movements’ music and their reception/discourse to contextualize music’s role in more modern movements, such as in the #MeToo movement. Music can reflect the cultural context of the era in which it was written and released, thus making it an essential piece of understanding history as it happens. Music can reflect politics, social movements, power dynamics, and the feeling of an era.The music created and shared throughout the #MeToo movement highlights the range of emotions that come with any healing journey: rage, despair, turmoil, hope, and peace. When artists and musicians share their own stories of sexual assault with the public, other survivors were empowered to come forward and share their journey – a sense of community begins to develop among people who are survivors of sexual assault. Aided by social media and the digital age, music in #MeToo was shared on a global scale at a faster rate than ever before. This virality helped popularize the #MeToo movement almost overnight. #MeToo’s legacy and music remain timeless and forever relevant, and this thesis intends to capture the role that music played in this historical moment. / Media Studies & Production

This dissertation examines the potential existential roots of contemporary American social movements. I extract an existential social movement theory from Albert Camus’s philosophy that can elucidate surprising similarities and tactical differences across ongoing movements. I then apply the theory to Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right which helps demonstrate that both movements express existential anxiety related to collective, racialized death. The social movement theory also clarifies the movements’ divergent political tactics as Black Lives Matter responds to existential anxiety by collectively acting to relieve immediate Black suffering and death which I argue is a Camusian rebellion. The Alt-Right conversely responds to existential anxiety by directing their energies towards achieving a teleological goal of racial homogeneity which I argue is a Camusian revolution. I use a variety of first-person sources including memoirs, interviews, and undercover exposés to support my thesis that Black Lives Matter and the Alt-Right are both responding to feelings of racialized existential anxiety, although they traverse disparate pathways.While the dissertation is primarily focused on racially motivated social movements, I argue that American environmental activists can learn from, and emulate Black Lives Matter’s tactics. Environmental activists argue that climate change is an existential crisis, and the anxiety of the death and devastation of climate catastrophe underlies much of today’s climate activism. Black Lives Matter has successfully transformed existential anxiety over state sanctioned Black death into meaningful and immediate reforms, without sacrificing its radical critiques of racial capitalism, mass incarceration, and white supremacy. I argue that environmental activists can likewise energize their existential anxieties into reforms that slow climate change, while continuing to challenge systemic degradation of the global environment. I conclude the dissertation by examining the 2020 Black Lives Matter activism in response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Ongoing and recent Black Lives Matter protests are rooted in the same collectively anxious response to Black death and have achieved even greater sociopolitical and cultural changes than the protests of years prior, providing further evidence for my thesis. / Political Science

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