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Studien syftar till att undersöka ekologismen i den sociala rörelsen We Are What We Do, som försöker förverkliga samhälleliga förändringar genom kollektiva små handlingar. Genom en kvalitativ fallstudie analyserar författaren rörelsens strategier som ska inspirera och motivera människor att agera, hur den utnyttjar märke och marknadsföring för att mobilisera kollektiva handlingar och bygga en gemenskap, och rörelsens visioner i det subpolitiska sammanhaget. Studien har slutsatsen att We Are What We Do är ett uttryck av den reflexiva ekologismen, eftersom den utvecklar politik utanför den traditionella politiska arenan, samt syftar till att engagera nya aktörer och omfamnar självorganiserande och avcentraliserade utvecklingar. / This study aims to examine the environmentalism of We Are What We Do, a social change movement which aspires to making social impacts through aggregated individual actions. Through a qualitative single case study, the author analyses the movement’s strategies at inspiring and motivating people to take small actions, how it uses branding to mobilise collective actions and build a community, and the movement’s visions in the context of subpolitics. The study concludes that the We Are What Do embodies a reflexive form of environmentalism, as it chooses to deploy politics outside the conventional political arena, aims to engage new political agents and embraces self-organising and decentralised developments.

Yes / The concept of ‘fairness’ has been used to frame political struggles by politicians and activists across the political spectrum. This article looks at its use in the US State of Wisconsin during the ‘Uprising’ – a series of occupations, protests, recall elections and militant direct action that began in 2011. These events were a response to a ‘budget repair bill’ that sought to strip public sector union members of their collective bargaining rights and to apply severe austerity measures within the State. This article suggests that although ‘fairness’ has a certain broad-based and intuitive appeal, its mutability means that it is unlikely to be successful in framing a structural critique that can build and sustain social action. Instead, it argues that framing this conflict as an uprising suggested a more explicit form of resistance that enabled a wider mobilization, and this can best be understood as an example of social (movement) unionism – the extension of traditional work place rights approaches to include broader agendas of social justice, civil rights, immigrant rights and economic justice for non-unionized workers.

Kindness movements toward a kinder more compassionate world are proliferating worldwide. One of the key challenges facing these movements is attracting and sustaining members. This research identified a range of dispositional, motivational, and contextual factors significantly related to participation in a kindness movement initiated on the Virginia Tech campus after the tragic shootings on April 16, 2007: the AC4P Movement. Strongly resembling existing research on motivational functions served by volunteerism, the present research identified five motives for participation in kindness movements: social action, gratitude expression, social enhancement, impression management, and protective. Additionally, regression analysis identified a model with five significant predictors of participation: required participation, history of traumatic experience, belief that society is in danger, extroversion, and social action motivation. Findings are integrated within the context of Geller's (2016) model of empowerment. / Ph. D.

Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary Japanese society, despite people’s struggles in the recession. Our social relationships become entangled, and we can no longer clearly identify our interest in politics. The search for the outside of stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous imaginary for social change, such as war and death. The imaginary of disaster was actualised in March 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which triggered the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. Based on the author’s fieldwork on the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements in Tokyo, this thesis investigates how the disaster impacted people’s sense of agency and ethics, and ultimately explores the new political imaginary in postmodernity. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The thesis argues that their regret about their past indifference to politics motivated the protesters into social commitment without any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. They also found an ambiguity of the self, which is insufficient to know what should be done. Hence, they mobilise their bodies on to the streets, encountering others, and forcing themselves to feel and think. This is an ethical attitude, yet it simultaneously stems from the desire of each individual to make a difference to the self and society. The thesis concludes that the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements signify a new way of doing politics as endless experiments by collectively responding to an unexpected force from an outside in a creative way.

Previously, social movement theory has focused on constructs of identity, such as race/ethnicity, gender and sexual preference, for collective identity construction. Prochansky (1983:59) introduces the concept of place identity, situating it along with the other components of identity, such as the ones mentioned above. In addition, literature on Appalachia has shown land to be an important construct of Appalachian peoples identity. This paper analyzes, through content analysis, the collective identities of writers who wrote letters to the U.S. Forest Service in opposition to a proposed AEP power line. This power line was to run through lands in Appalachia, such as various private properties, the Jefferson and George Washington National Forests, and across the New River. Collective identities based on place-identity, specifically including land, were the main target of analysis, due to the importance of land for Appalachian people. This analysis suggests that land, as a type of place identity, does serve as a basis for collective identity. / Master of Science

This study examines collective identity, a concept that is used in social movement theory to understand why people are motivated to participate in social movements and social movement groups. Collective identity is a social-psychological process that links the individual to the group through a series of group interactions that revolve around social movement activity. This is a qualitative study that examines collective identity in an online social movement group and an offline social movement group. Reports from the two groups are compared to see what variation exists between these two different groups. This research is one of the first examinations of collective identity outside of conventional face-to-face group settings. The research presented in this thesis demonstrates the difficulty a social movement group that exists online might have in generating a collective identity because of an absence of face-to-face interaction. / Master of Science

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This study investigates Hizb'allah's successful but competing dual development as an extra-institutional Shi'a social movement and an institutional political party. Hizb'allah has traditionally been studied from the perspective of one of its many natures, such as a social movement, Islamic movement, resistance, or political party, each perspective bringing with it limitations and differing interpretations of its identity, motivations, and success. The motivation behind this research was to seek an interpretation of the movement's development and success that would encompass these multiple natures. Through an interpretation of social movement ‘life-cycles', a social movement ‘development model' is proposed that accounts for contradicting theories on the ‘success' of social movements, interpreting success instead as an ability to exhibit simultaneous institutional and extra-institutional natures. The hypothesis provided in this work is that it is an ability to simultaneously exhibit institutional and extra-institutional natures that can be a source of strength and success for a movement, drawing capital from both while avoiding accountability that typically accompanies institutional politics. This challenges traditional theoretical approaches in terms of linear life-cycles with few paths for the social movement to choose from. In turn, questions arise regarding notions of social movement life-cycles being uni-directional, continuously progressing towards ‘institutionalization' or demise. Ideas of an ‘end-date' or ‘inevitable outcome' of social movements are also confronted. This interdisciplinary study is conducted by means of media, archival, and empirical research (participant observation, interviews, and surveys), focusing on changing constituent perceptions of the movement between 1985 and 2013. It is also argued that Hizb'allah's strength is its ability to draw from both extra-institutional and institutional resources while simultaneously avoiding accountability. However, it was also found that, by forming the 2011 governing coalition, the movement upset this balance by subjecting itself to accountability inherent in governance, in turn leading to ‘schizophrenic behaviour' as Hizb'allah sought to serve conflicting constituent and state interests. The significance of this research is that it not only provides an explanation for Hizb'allah's success, but also provides an interpretation of social movement development that accounts for multi-natured movements.

America's growing concern about fatness during the twentieth century developed in parallel with a society that made it increasingly harder to live a healthy lifestyle. Since the 1970s, sweeping political, economic, cultural, and familial changes have occurred in the United States. Many researchers argue that these changes have created an "obesogenic" environment that has contributed to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in America by favoring inactivity and the over consumption of highly-processed, calorie-dense foods and beverages. As a result, the field of public health has increasingly begun to recognize obesity as a "societal disease." In 2001, The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity categorized the number of overweight and obese Americans as reaching "nationwide epidemic proportions." Since that time, America has waged an all-out "war on obesity." Instead of a broader emphasis on health promotion, some public health researchers have suggested that this heightened focus on obesity is 1) guided by America's historically-rooted social disdain for fatness and 2) insufficient to improve the healthy lifestyles of Americans. In searching for a solution to the so-called "obesity epidemic," a growing number of researchers have begun to look to models of social change. After an introductory chapter describing the scope of the problem, this dissertation provides an historical analysis of two, relevant social change models. The first historical case study is an examination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB social marketing campaign. The second study explores the model of social movements through the history of the aerobics "boom" of 1970s America. Based on these histories, this dissertation concludes by proposing a blended approach that harnesses the strengths of both models to organize and advance America's healthy living movement. / text