Yes

In recent years, living wage movements have developed around the United States. In addition to advocating for living wage ordinances and laws in cities, living wage movements have developed to advocate for living wage policies at universities across the country. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine living wage movements at two universities to understand how they use communication to frame the wage issue and to push for the implementation of living wage policies. To develop an understanding of these living wage movements, two cases, Texas A&M University and Georgetown University, were selected for this study to examine through the lens of the social movement framing perspective. Data for the cases included interviews with activists and administrators, media reports, video documentaries, and internal documents. Results showed that the living wage campaign in each case prioritized the components of collective action frames, diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing, differently. The Texas A&M living wage campaign focused heavily on developing the problem at an emotional level and offering a clear solution to the problem. The Georgetown living wage campaign focused heavily on laying blame for the problem. Each case also exhibited elements of master framing which linked its campaign to preexisting values. Most notably, in both cases, the existing university values and culture were used as a basis for master framing. The results also showed that the campaign targeted different constituencies, with the Texas A&M campaign attempting to gain popular support and the Georgetown campaign focusing on the university?s administration. This, along with the degree to which each campaign was willing to accept compromise, had a large impact on the campaigns? overall strategies. Overall, the results of this study show how communication related to an issue affects the course of a social movement and how a social movement approach can be used to create organizational change.

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Membership in a social movement organization (SMO) and membership discourse provide space for participants to name and reconstitute their experiences, bodies, and self-images through an embodiment of organizational frames. This reconstitution is especially affirmed in the interaction of marginalized groups, such as individuals with disabilities, whom make up disability focused organizations and social movements. As a group with multiple intersectionalities, as well as an even smaller subsection of various marginalized populations, individuals with blindness face unique barriers when consideration of participants' identities and self-understandings is central in understanding entry as well as ongoing participation in organizations. Disability based organizations, represented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), must carefully frame the organizational membership of certain individuals whom could threaten cohesion through differing understanding of identities, not revolving around disability. This thesis is an examination of the organizational discourse and the "membership meetness" of participating persons in the NFB. Goffman’s notion of “breaking frame” theoretically informs this analysis of organizational discourse produced by the 'collective blind' in one of the oldest American disability social movement organizations to date. The NFB’s attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by the incorporation of members whom are not seemingly suitable and do not self identify as blind, into an overwhelmingly blindness based enterprise is to strategically mend existing frames to reinterpret extant social norms. The purpose of this thesis is to use a grounded theory approach, to tease out how membership is framed. In the NFB, frame alignment is accomplished by: framing blindness through allies transformed as friends, framing blindness as a characteristic, framing blindness as respectability, and framing blindness through rhetorical humor in narrative. The above four frames to disability based social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to integrate into their activities members who lack “membership meetness” while simultaneously garnering support and advancing interests within the larger movement. / text

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Despite the wealth of interest in South Mexico’s Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN), few studies have attempted to deconstruct the discourse of the Zapatistas according to its component parts. Most scholars have so far addressed the Zapatistas from the standpoint of political theory, international relations or anthropology, and in so doing have tended to engage primarily with broader polemical agendas. Furthermore, in their determination to typologise the Zapatistas as ‘this’ or ‘that’ sort of movement, scholars have overlooked the nuances and shades of meaning that exist within the Zapatista discourse, as well as the evolution of those meanings over time. As a result, the content and ongoing construction of the Zapatistas’ message has been eclipsed by a more encompassing, contested, and ultimately chimeric quest to reify the movement’s ‘essence’ or ‘truth’. This thesis represents an empirical analysis of the EZLN’s collective discourse that focuses on the content and constructed nature of their collective action frames. Combining three strands of social movement frame analysis, it avers to draw-out the ever-changing detail of the EZLN’s discursive output and so add value to the debates that surround the Zapatistas. It also makes several theoretical contributions to social movement frame analysis.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Lisa Melander / Okinawa, Japan has a long history of struggle with Japan and the United States of America. Okinawa was annexed by the Japanese during the Shogunate, mistreated by Imperial Japan during World War II, destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa, and occupied by U.S. military. Okinawa hosts some of the largest U.S. military bases outside of the Continental United States. Since Okinawa has been occupied by the U.S. military since World War II, it also has a history of contentious politics and protests against the occupation. Okinawa’s economy and cultural identity within the domestic and international spheres with the U.S. military and the Government of Japan has shaped its political protest identities. The “Okinawan Struggle” has evolved and into a new form, but often seen as a long lasting and unified struggle. This thesis explores Okinawa’s different protest episodes during different governing administrations and different economic structures.

This study is focus on Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS). The Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System was built by Mr. Lucifer Chu from 2004.This OOPS project recruit volunteer translators all over the world through internet to translate Opencourseware materials from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) into Chinese.This study is probing into the cause of the volunteers attend, indentity and contribution. This research is a qualitative case study, data sources were adopted include OOPS¡¦ archival information, volunteer¡¦s feedback, questionnaires from OOPS website. The study has the following conclusion after the ayalysis.OOPS offers a good way for the self-elarning person to get ride of the obestacle from English language in taiwan.At the same time it shows the indentity from the participator of OOPS. Keywords¡XMIT opencourseware,OOPS,Network Social Movement

This thesis asks ‘what does Europeanisation mean for the strategies and practices of grassroots green groups in Europe?’ and aims to identify the conditions under which these groups become ‘europeanised’. I identify three process of europeanisation: direct europeanisation – when an actor connects directly to the EU, indirect europeanisation – when an actor connects to a europeanised member state and passive europeanisation – when actors europeanise outside of state mechanisms. The grassroots green movement has largely evaded studies of europeanisation and so it is through examining europeanisation at this ‘base’ level, closest to the citizens, that this research makes an original contribution to our understanding of the variables that mediate the process of europeanisation and to our understanding of grassroots green activism in Europe. This thesis takes its analytical framework from social movement theory and uses political opportunity structures and frames as domains in which it looks for evidence of europeanisation. Within these domains I distinguish between European and europeanised activity, teasing out the role of the nation state in mediating europeanisation at a grassroots level. Two cases are examined: anti-road protest and anti-GM protest in Britain, France and Italy between the period 2007-2010. This thesis demonstrates that there is some evidence of europeanisation within grassroots green groups. It encourages a more nuanced understanding of europeanisation as a process that can occur outside the state and amongst actors who do not seek to impact the EU. It finds that both strategic and ideological considerations shape the political opportunity structures to which movements direct themselves. It also finds that the fit between the frames used in protest and the national masterframes is a powerful variable in explaining the extent of social movement europeanisation.

Cette thèse étudie l'évolution de la CFDT, depuis sa création en 1964 jusqu'en 1988, à la veille de la chute du mur de Berlin, sous l’angle international à travers les choix effectués en matière de politique internationale. Les positions prises sur la scène extérieure, les manifestations de solidarité internationale, les relations entretenues avec les confédérations syndicales internationales et étrangères participent en effet à l’identification de la centrale au sein du mouvement syndical français en même temps qu’ils traduisent, voire explicitent, son cheminement idéologique. Cette thèse s’appuie sur les archives de la confédération, en particulier le dépouillement inédit de celles du secteur international et des sources orales collectées auprès des responsables en charge de cette politique, auxquelles ont été confrontées les archives des confédérations syndicales internationales auxquelles la CFDT est affiliée sur cette période, la CISC et la CES. Leurs études montrent l'insertion originale d'une confédération désireuse de s'ouvrir à l'ensemble du monde, n'hésitant pas à s'affranchir des barrières de son camp d'origine jusqu'à vouloir bouleverser le syndicalisme international. Peu à l'aise dans une CISC dont elle a pourtant inspiré la transformation, elle porte son regard autant vers les organisations du tiers-monde associées au mouvement des non-alignés que vers les puissantes centrales des pays industrialisés. L’action internationale nourrit ainsi l’ambition de la confédération en même qu’elle accroît sa légitimité sur la scène extérieure comme intérieure. / This thesis entends to analyse the evolution of the CFDT from its creation in 1964 until 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin's wall, though the choices made in term of international policy. Indeed positions taken in front of international events, manifestations of solidarity as relationships with foreigns trade unions and international confederations contribute to the identification of the CFDT. It reveals its development and sometimes allows a new lecture of its ideological path. This thesis is based on the archives of the confederation, in particurarly these of the international department and some interview of mens in charge of this policy. These archives had been faced to the archives of international confederations which the CFDT affiliate duringe this period, ICCTU and ETUC.The research reveals an original insertion of the confederation that wishes for opening its action across the world beyond the barriers of its original camp until to upset international syndicalism structures. The CFDT, feeling unconfortable in a ICCTU despite transformations inspired directly by its own evolution, demonstrates priorly its interest for organisations related with the Third World non-aligneted movement and powerful trade unions of industrialized countries. Therefore, the international policy of the CFDT develops its ambition and increases its legitimacy on the outdoor stage as the indoor one.