Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / This dissertation examines the climate movement as a social field where actors vie for position and capital. This competition strongly influences framing, tactics, and strategy, while it ultimately bears on the effectiveness of mobilization. I analyzed the climate activist field (CAF) through a case study of resistance against a gas pipeline project. In the first phase of resistance, I found there to be a divergence between local activists with little to no experience in the CAF and climate activists operating within it. In the second phase, after climate activists had taken over, there was a division among climate activists themselves. Here, climate activists carried themselves and made decisions based on what they thought was objectively the correct thing to do. However, activists’ practices (encompassing decisions around tactics and strategy but also their judgments and disposition) were structured through the competition for the rewards of the CAF—Climate Activist Capital (CAC), especially Symbolic CAC—and the associated increased status for activists. I used a mixed method approach involving a survey (N=146), participant observation (200 hours), and interviews (N=51). The survey collected data on activist background and preferences, as well as subjective assessments of their own participation and indicators of economic and cultural capital. Participant observation in a range of groups and social spaces allowed for analysis of activist practices in real, observable ways. Both the survey and participant observation informed a purposive interviewing strategy that collected data from the most heavily involved to more peripheral activists. The analysis sought to locate patterns in activist background, quantity and composition of capital, and practices. Differences in activist practices were hypothesized to be the outcome of the interrelation among: an actor’s background embedded in the habitus; an actor’s volume and composition of capital, as well as their social trajectory; and the competition for capital and position within the CAF (itself structured by actors, their backgrounds and practices, and influence from other fields). The hypothesis received mixed support in the data. Participants in the resistance were not conscious of how their preferences for tactics and strategy were guided by the competition to valorize Symbolic CAC inflected by activist orientation, relatively internal or external. Structured by the field that they help construct, climate activists’ practices and the overall effort to stop the pipeline project became increasingly internally oriented, situated antagonistically with the field of power. This resulted in an increased distance between climate activists and non-climate activists as well as a focus on civil disobedience to the exclusion of other tactics. The dissertation represents a novel approach to understanding dynamics within the climate movement and contributes to three areas of research. First, my research on resistance against fossil fuel infrastructure addresses a deficit of empirical scholarship on climate activism, especially at the local level. Second, I contribute to the social movement scholarship on strategic choices by locating them between individual rational calculation and predetermined agency-less decisions by focusing on the effects of activist field position. Third, the research extends Bourdieusian scholarship by testing his theoretical schema built around social reproduction in a field that is organized around social change. In bringing a Bourdieusian approach to movement scholarship and the climate movement in particular, the research delivers an analysis that weaves together micro-level social processes—activists and their practices objectively positioned in the CAF—with an historically developed CAF at the macro-level. The analysis is pertinent not just to scholars but to climate activists and activists more broadly. Ultimately, I argue that the climate movement will be served best by drawing on the distinct advantages of both internal and external spaces in the CAF. This requires more reflexivity and introspection among climate activists so they may understand how their position informs their practices and how they can more consciously mediate the position-to-practices process and bend them in contextually appropriate ways, which will lead to more effective climate activists and enhanced climate movement efficacy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The purpose of this study is to investigate incels as a case of a social movement. Incels stands for involuntary celibacy and describes men who consider themselves to be unattractive and live a life without sexual relations. The group is homogenous and consists of outcast men who has created their own forums on the internet. Previous research has focused a lot on studying incels misogynic views, loneliness and violence, but yet the group has not been studied as a case of a social movement. By using netnographic hidden observations on the incelforum Incels.is, this study will answer our research questions concerning how the community is constructed on Incels.is and how they describe their exclusion from the society. The study’s theoretical framework is based on Melucci’s theory of collective identity and Goffman’s theory of stigma. To study incels as a social movement, we constructed an ideal type to help us understand what aspects of what a social movement consists of to investigate how incels community is constructed.  The results shows that the incels community is constructed by using their own language and symbols, different forms of emotional investments such as empathy and compassion to support each other, and their shared beliefs of what characterize an incel where the recognition creates an opportunity for them to feel united with the group. Another explanation for incels community is that the group are in a political conflict where their common societal goal is to change the prevailing social structure. Finally, the members of Incels.is believe that society has forced them into exclusion because of not fulfilling the norms and expectations that society has. Therefore, incels has consolidate a victim role in response to the negative perception of those around them.

The concern that democracy in the largest country in Latin America could drive toward fascism has surfaced as a point of departure for the creation of forms of resistance among Brazilians in the diaspora. This thesis addresses this development by bringing to light the narratives of FIBRA, a transnational social movement created in 2016 to denounce the coup in Brazil. By combining militant, translocal and online ethnography, this thesis explores how FIBRA has constructed its narratives surrounding the erosion of democracy in Brazil. It looks at the experience of Brazilian migrants involved in campaigning against the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the assassination of the activist Marielle Franco, and the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. Anthropological theories on social movement, democracy and narrative are revisited in order to investigate FIBRA’s role in shaping ideas and expectations towards democracy. This thesis also explores ways to bring the artistic practices in the field into the anthropological text. I use elements of Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater, Greek Tragedy and Carnival in my writing and employ these artistic languages as conceptual tools to develop a notion of democracy as a tragic carnivalesque hero. In the spirit of the Brazilian carnivalesque, this thesis celebrates the subversive dimension of the relation between the “playful”, the “political”, and the “academic”.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Using a case study approach, this thesis explores how ethnic minority groups living under authoritarian rule can utilize social bonds, create social capital, and eventually achieve democratic self-governance. Social movement literature is also utilized to examine how one of the case studies, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico should be examined as a social movement rather than a military insurgency. This thesis also examines the Kurds of Northern Iraq and then puts forward the Kurds of Northern Syria as a future case study. This thesis takes a historical analysis approach throughout as well as utilizing philanthropic studies literature.

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This thesis presents an inductive, qualitative approach to exploring the connection between entrepreneurship and social movement theory in the context of the fitness movement. This was achieved by applying the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation which looks at how changes to the macro environment, such as sociocultural shifts, enable entrepreneurial processes by activating mechanisms on the venture level (Davidsson et al., 2020). A loop derived from social movement literature is implemented as a contribution to the framework that presents a perspective in which ventures not only are influenced by the social movement but also contribute to the movement's momentum. The loop was found to occur as ventures enlarge the scope of the social movement and thus change its characteristics. This insight provides two theoretical contributions. Firstly, the loop originating from social movement theory is better defined and explained. Secondly, the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation has been connected to the loop, which provides a more nuanced view of how social movements and ventures interrelate. This is deemed important since it helps us understand how social movements can grow with the influence of ventures and how this leads to the continuous enablement of new ventures.

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Environmental citizenship is positioned as a platform where the rights of social and environmental justice converge with civic engagement and responsibility. As industrialized economies continue to exhaust the limits of finite natural resources and exacerbate conditions of global climate change, scholars have questioned if environmental citizenship models offer a method for deepening obligations to a sustainable movement. In the material culture enjoyed by Western civilizations, existing research supports that an individual’s purchases are seen as an indicator of their values and identities. Consequently the commitment to responsible buying behavior or sustainable consumption is in a sense an expression of eco-citizenship. My thesis offers a critical perspective of Andrew Dobson’s ecological citizenship theory, by asking how sustainable consumption can be conceptualized in the existing political and economic infrastructures. Using a thorough case study of globally traded fish provisions, I investigate the existing barriers for eco-citizens attempting to realize their obligations to sustainable consumption. This analysis allows me to draw conclusions on how these barriers may inhibit ecocitizenship theories and ultimately a sustainable social movement. The structure of this thesis is broken into three parts. First, I define existing theories of ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption, including the theoretical propositions, requirements, and limitations. Secondly, I rely on Dobson’s conception of ecological citizenship and an instrumental case study of Pacific Salmon provisions to illustrate the barriers eco-citizens encounter in the current market and regulatory system. Finally, this paper concludes by proposing individual and institutional changes that will assist in fostering an eco-citizen community and the contribution my findings may have on existing green citizenship research.

The gay rights movement has been very active on social media throughout the years. Using a trend analysis this study aimed to answer how social media is being used during a social movement, how a social movement evolves on social media, and how social media is being used by organizations as a public relations strategy to create change in social movements. Overall, the findings revealed 11 different ways social media is being used during a social movement, which shows how important opinion leaders are in helping a social movement gain traction and create the desired impact.

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