In this dissertation, I examine the internal divisions in LGBT/Q communities. I illustrate how the notion of a single, unified community is not only fictive, but counter to the goals of liberation. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I examine cultural artifacts of the contemporary gay rights movement to determine who has the power to shape domestic and international gay rights discourse. I analyze the role of gay citizenship through the same-sex marriage debates, the creation of the homonational soldier, and how gay rights is employed in international conflicts to strategically promote some countries as progressive, while denouncing others as backwards. I argue that the gay rights movement does not address the needs of all members of LGBT/Q communities, but rather, focuses on the wants of the elite and privileged. Despite recent advances, the gay rights movement has been stunted by a limited and marginalizing focus on normalization. Lastly, I present a queer perspective on gay rights and reimagine a movement that is more courageous and inclusive.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Robert K. Schaeffer / Street and DiMaggio (2011) argue that the national Tea Party movement is an extension of the Republican Party in the United States, claiming that it’s an “ugly, authoritarian, and fake-populist pseudo movement directed from above and early on by and for elite Republican and business interests” (p.9). On the other hand, Skocpol and Williams (2012) argue that “the Tea Party is neither a top-down creation nor a bottom-up explosion” (p.12). I argue that the North Carolina movement, at the local level, represents a group of grassroots activists who were first mobilized on December 2nd, 2005, according to the “Triangle Conservatives Unite!” website. Because of the South’s history with race relations and Ku Klux Klan violence in North Carolina around the issue of public education, for the purposes of this study I want to pose the following questions: How is Tea Party “craziness” functional for the local 9/12 project group, “Triangle Conservatives Unite!”? How is symbolic racism used as a framing device by the Tea Party, as a social movement, around public education in North Carolina? In order to capture Tea Party member and civil society attitudes toward the Wake County Board of Education decision to scrap the old, nationally-recognized socioeconomic diversity policy in favor of one that much resembled the 1960s neighborhood/community schools policy, I use a case study approach to look at how the Tea Party Social Movement deals with race, with regard to the Wake County School Board decision to go back to neighborhood/community schools. When analyzing popular news sources, I draw on Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) theory of Color-Blind Racism. I also draw on Tilly’s (1978) Resource Mobilization Theory to explain how the Tea Party Movement came to power in North Carolina, affecting the Wake County School Board Decision to go back to neighborhood schools. Major findings suggest that sometime after 2005, the group began to adopt the goals and mission statement of the national 9/12 project group, led by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. I also find mixed support for Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) theory of Color-Blind Racism as well as support for Tilly’s (1978) Resource Mobilization Theory in my study.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the US prison system was expanding at an unprecedented rate. This research charts how prisoners at the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly referred to as Angola, founded the Angola Special Civics Project to collectively organize for prison reform. Using a combination of oral history and archival research, this thesis argues that the Angola Special Civics Project emerged during an era of political opportunity created by the coupling of political openings and contractions. Unlike outside advocates who focused their reform efforts on internal conditions, the Angola Special Civics Project centering of prisoners’ experiential knowledge led them to organize for an end to life sentencing through a combination of research, political education, electoral organizing, and coalition building. This thesis further asserts that their organizing should be conceptualized as a form of prison abolitionist reforms.

This dissertation research focuses on the development of South Korea’s democracy movement from 1979 to 1987, a time that was marked by two waves of sustained protest: one of which was brutally repressed while the other led to a transition to democracy. This dissertation examines the cultural processes at work during the period between these two waves. This study builds a dataset drawing on archival data in the form of memoirs, diaries, leaflets and brochures, minutes, statements, and testimonies of activists and activist organizations as well as newspaper reports and government documents. Using the dataset, this study advances scholarship on contentious politics and democratization by revising and expanding three theoretical concepts: threat, memory work, and framing.

Ph.D.--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012 / The Kenyan political landscape has, since the 1990’s, been tumultuous and characterised by multiple political and social struggles centred on embedding a new constitutional order. This thesis is a qualitative case study of the Ufungamano Initiative, a powerful movement involved in these struggles between 1999 and 2005. Emerging in an environment of deep societal divisions and multiple sites of struggle, the Ufungamano Initiative is a remarkable story of how and why previously disjointed and disparate individuals and groups came together in a ‘movement of movements’ to become a critical contender in Kenyan constitutional reforms. The movement utilised direct citizens’ actions and was directly in competition with the Moi/KANU state for control of the Constitution Reform Process. This direct competition and challenge, posed a legitimacy crisis on the state led process forcing an autocratic and intolerant regime to capitulate and open up space for democratic engagement of citizens in the Constitution Reform Process. But the Ufungamano Initiative is also a story of the limits of social movements. While holding so much power and promise, movements are limited in their ability to effect fundamental changes in society. Even after substantial gains in challenging the state, the Ufungamano Initiative was vulnerable and agreed to enter a ‘coerced’ merger with the state-led process in 2001. The merger dissipated the Ufungamano Initiative’s energy. This study therefore speaks to the power and limits of social movements in effecting fundamental changes in society. Applying a socio-historical approach, the study locates the Ufungamano Initiative within the broader social, economic and political struggles to argue that contemporary constitutional reform struggles in Kenya were, in Polanyi’s (1944) terms, double movement type of societal counter-movements to protect itself from an avaricious economic and political elites. Engaging the political process model, this thesis analyses seventy in-depth interviews and secondary data to explain the dynamics in the rise, operations, achievements and decline of the Ufungamano Initiative as illustrative of how movements emerge, take on a life of their own and sometimes metamorphose into phenomenal forces of change, or just fizzle out.

This dissertation offers a unique examination of new cultures and forms of social movement organizing that include horizontal networking, non-hierarchical decision-making and governance combined with the importance of public visual art. Based on 23 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze how processes of neoliberalism and globalization have influenced youth organizing and shaped experiences of historical marginalization. What makes youth activism in Southern Mexico unique from that occurring elsewhere (i.e. Occupy Movements in U.S. and Europe) is the incorporation of indigenous organizing practices and identities with urban subcultures. At the same time, the movements I study share important characteristics with other social movements, including their reliance on direct-action tactics such as occupations of public space and sit-ins, as well as their creative use of digital media technologies (i.e. Arab Spring). This research contributes to the study of social movements and popular politics, globalization, culture and resistance, and the politics of space by examining how youth activists combine everyday practices and traditional social movement actions to sustain autonomous political projects that subvert institutional and spatial hierarchies. They do so through decentralized activist networks that resist cooptation by the state and traditional opposition parties, while at the same time contesting the spatial exclusion of marginalized communities from the city center. This research contributes a critical analysis of the limits of traditional models of social change through electoral politics and traditional opposition groups, such as labor unions, by challenging us to take seriously the innovative models of politics, culture and governance that Mexican youth are offering us. At a larger level, my work suggests the importance of genuinely engaging with alternative epistemologies that come from places we may not expect- in this case urban, indigenous, and marginalized youth. / 2015-10-03

Although rarely included in environmental sociology, settler colonialism significantly structures eco-social relations within the United States. This work considers the range of environmental practices and epistemologies influenced by settler colonial impositions in law, culture and discourse. In this dissertation I also introduce the term colonial ecological violence as a framework for considering the outcomes of this structuring in terms of the disproportionate impacts on Indigenous peoples and communities. / 2020-09-06

Orientador: Maria Orlanda Pinassi / Banca: Silvia Beatriz Adoue / Banca: Ricardo Luiz Coltro Antunes / Resumo: O desenvolvimento do capitalismo brasileiro vem se sustentando numa divisão social do trabalho capaz, cada vez mais, de produzir, à base da monocultura e do grande imóvel, bens agrícolas para o mercado externo. O setor sucroalcooleiro da região de Ribeirão Preto-SP desponta como um dos pólos mais sólidos dessa tendência. O elevado grau de produtividade econômica agrícola da região deu-se à custa de contradições sociais, dentre as quais se sobressai a superexploração do trabalho. Os critérios estipulados para aferir se um imóvel é produtivo ou improdutivo, baseiam-se em dados estatísticos de 1975/76 e até o hoje não foram atualizados, gerando mobilizações sociais de defesa da Reforma Agrária. As particularidades do desenvolvimento capitalista no Brasil levaram diversos setores da esquerda brasileira, a formularem teorias políticas de superação de nosso atraso econômico frente ao grande desenvolvimento das forças produtivas nos países capitalistas centrais. Este debate perpassa por diversas organizações de esquerda do Brasil, principalmente as ligadas ao campo (como o MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), isto o torna extremamente atual e necessário para compreendê-lo e superá-lo através do levantamento de desafios concernentes a esta problemática. A Reforma Agrária, no caso brasileiro, reclama para si uma tarefa muito além de atingir patamares de produtividade altíssimos, exigidos pelo padrão de produção e consumo de mercadorias exportáveis / Abstract: The development of Brazilian capitalism has been sustaining a social division of labor capable, increasingly, to produce, based monoculture and large property, agricultural goods to foreign markets. The sugarcane sector in the region of Ribeirão Preto-SP emerges as one of the poles stronger this tendency. The high degree of economic productivity of the agricultural region occurred at the expense of social contradictions, among which stands out the overexploitation of labor. The criteria established to assess whether a property is productive or unproductive, are based on statistics from 1975/76 and until today have not been updated, generating social mobilizations in defense of Agrarian Reform. The particularities of capitalist development in Brazil led various sectors of the Brazilian left, to formulate political theories of overcoming our economic backwardness forward to the great development of the productive forces in the core capitalist countries. This debate goes through several leftist organizations in Brazil, mainly related to the field (such as the MST - Movement of Landless Rural Workers), this makes it extremely current and necessary to understand it and overcome it by surveying challenges concerning to this issue. Agrarian Reform in the Brazilian case, claims for itself a task far beyond reach very high levels of productivity required by the pattern of production and consumption of exportable goods / Mestre

Orientador: Maria Orlanda Pinassi / Banca: Silvia Adoue / Banca: Ricardo Antunes / Resumo: Procuro investigar as implicações sociais da hegemonia do agronegócio no campo brasileiro e sua relação com a perspectiva da realização de um amplo programa de Reforma Agrária. Para tal, desenvolvo uma pesquisa sobre um caso específico: a luta das mulheres da Via Campesina contra o grupo Cosan, colocando em evidência as tensões existentes entre dois projetos antagônicos. Analiso a questão a partir de um referencial teórico, cujo eixo central, foi delimitado anteriormente no projeto de pesquisa. Problematizo como a modernização conservadora, desenvolvida no período da Ditadura Militar, efetivou-se como uma resposta à questão da Reforma Agrária, que havia sido muito fomentada no período anterior. Procuro demonstrar como a modernização conservadora foi fundamental para desenvolver as bases da hegemonia atual no campo brasileiro: o agronegócio. Nesse contexto, a questão da Reforma Agrária, como uma possibilidade de desenvolvimento do capitalismo no campo, foi sendo superada. Diante disso, a Reforma Agrária pode ficar como uma tarefa para traz ou pode ser resignificada, trazendo novo sentido para a sociedade. Ambos os caminhos estão se defrontando na atualidade. Para entender o movimento do capital na agricultura, analiso o setor sucroenergético e mais especificamente, o caso da fusão entre as empresas Cosan e Shell, que deu inicio a criação do grupo Raízen. Procuro o sentido da Reforma Agrária resignificada através das ações desenvolvidas pelas mulheres da Via Campesina no período do dia internacional das mulheres. Tais lutas vinculam a conquista da Reforma Agrária ao enfrentamento contundente ao capital / Abstract: Seeking to investigate the social implications of the hegemony of agribusiness in the Brazilian countryside and its relationship with the prospect of carrying out an extensive program of land reform. To this end, I develop a search on a specific case: the struggle of women of Via Campesina against the group Cosan, highlighting the tensions between two opposing designs. I analyze the issue from a theoretical framework whose central axis was defined previously in the research project. I discuss how the conservative modernization, developed during the military dictatorship, was accomplished as an answer to the question of land reform, which had been very encouraged in the previous period. Seeking to demonstrate how the conservative modernization was essential to develop the foundations of the current hegemony in the Brazilian countryside: agribusiness. In this context, the issue of land reform, as a possibility of development of capitalism in the countryside, was being overcome. Therefore, the Agrarian Reform can get a job as backwards or can be resignified, bringing new meaning to society. Both paths are facing today. To understand the movement of capital in agriculture, analyze the sugarcane industry and more specifically, the case of the merger between Cosan and Shell, who launched the creation of Raizen group. Seeking the meaning of Agrarian Reform resignified through the actions undertaken by the women of Via Campesina during the international day of women. Such struggles bind the conquest of Agrarian Reform to facing scathing capital / Mestre

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.