Cause lawyers maintain primary commitments to causes and pursue political and moral objectives that go well beyond the traditional lawyering objective of client service, which is the goal of most conventional lawyers. In this research I conduct in-depth interviews with cause lawyers involved in efforts for social change in post-Katrina New Orleans to develop a richer understanding of their roles within social movements and how they conceive of and negotiate the core tensions in their work. I investigate the lawyers' roles within social movements situated in legal, political and social climates that are overwhelmingly inhospitable to their ultimate goals. Ultimately, this research presents a portrait of cause lawyers who develop alternative modes of practice that are more commonly associated with movement organizers and more closely aligned with movement goals of individual and community empowerment than are traditional models of lawyering.

Ce travail de thèse entend étudier les rassemblements de personnes. Plutôt que le terme de « foule», trop lié à la psychologie des foules, c‘est le terme de rassemblement, théorisé par Georges Lefebvre qui sera utilisé. Il est défini comme un agrégat intentionnel d‘acteurs sociaux, qui interagissent, communiquent et agissent ensemble.Contrairement aux conclusions de la psychologie des foules, les rassemblements de personnes sont conçus comme un lieu d‘intense construction sociale. Ceux-ci sont des objets sociaux normés. Ils sont le lieu de nombreuses stratégies intentionnelles de la part des acteurs sociaux qui y participent.Dans le cadre de cette étude, ce sont les fins des participants, les mécanismes de mobilisation, leur répertoire d‘action, qui sont au centre de la compréhension de notre objet. Elle passe aussi l‘étude des interactions entre participants, ainsi que des mécanismes de communication qui rendent possible ces interactions. Enfin, ce sont les dynamiques de maintien de l‘ordre et d‘exercice de pouvoir par les participants qui sont au centre de notre attention.Ces problématiques ont été confrontées au terrain par une étude comparative entre manifestations, rassemblements sportifs et rassemblements festifs. Elle a permis de dégager les points communs, mais aussi les différences entre ces évènements. / This dissertation is about crowd gatherings. Rather than the term ―crowd‖, methodologically linked to the psychology of crowds, we will use the term ―gathering‖, theorized by Georges Lefebvre. It is defined as an intentional aggregate of social actors who interact, communicate and act together.Unlike the psychology of crowds, gatherings of people are considered as a place of intense social construction. Those objects are understandable by the social norms that they adopt. They are also a place of numerous intentional strategies put into place by the social actors involved.In this study, the objectives of the participants as well as mechanisms of mobilization and repertories of action, are central to the understanding of our subject . It will also involve the study of interactions between participants as well the communication mechanisms within the gathering. Finally, we will focus on crowd control, law enforcement and the empowerment of the participants.These issues have been confronted to the social field by a comparative case study between demonstrations, sports gatherings and festive gatherings. It identifies the common points but also differences between these events.

Apresenta-se um estudo sobre o pensamento ecológico e movimentos sociais contemporâneos, desenvolvido junto à Rede de Educação Cidadã (Recid), gestada no ano de 2003 de forma interligada ao Programa Fome Zero, durante o primeiro mandato do governo Lula. A rede aglutinou membros de diversos movimentos sociais brasileiros em um amplo programa de educação popular. O estudo buscou identificar quais ideais e valores ambientalistas expressavam-se nos discursos e práticas de militantes participantes da rede e, assim, avaliar a penetração de pautas ambientais junto a esses movimentos. Partindo da premissa de que o movimento ambientalista possui enorme apelo junto à opinião pública, e que ainda é raro observarmos a efetivação de políticas públicas ambientais, partimos da hipótese de que a reduzida eficácia política do pensamento ecológico se deve ao fato de que o ambientalismo ganha penetração nas pautas políticas na mesma proporção em que perde sua radicalidade. A metodologia adotada foi o estudo de caso. Os dados foram coletados através de: observação participante, análise documental; questionários e entrevistas e examinados pelo método da análise de conteúdo. Os principais resultados organizam-se em três categorias: articulações, práticas e percepções dos membros participantes da Recid sobre temáticas ambientais. Considerando o viés das articulações entre o ambientalismo e as demandas sociais presentes na Recid, destacam-se as questões agrárias, como propriedade, distribuição de terras e uso do solo e o fomento a modelos de agricultura agroecológica, familiar, camponesa e urbana. Destaca-se também a aproximação do ambientalismo com movimentos em defesa da segurança alimentar e nutricional e soberania alimentar, em especial contra os agrotóxicos; bem como a aproximação do ambientalismo com iniciativas de economia solidária e geração de emprego e renda, enfatizando o reaproveitamento de materiais recicláveis e gestão de resíduos sólidos, envolvendo cooperativas e catadores. As práticas de cunho ambientalista estudadas apresentam forte presença de atividades focadas na educação para preservação ambiental como: debates sobre a importância da preservação da natureza, criação e manutenção de hortas comunitárias, artesanato com resíduos recicláveis. Finalmente, nas percepções dos entrevistados evidencia-se a crítica à banalização do conceito de sustentabilidade socioambiental e dos valores do ambientalismo e a responsabilização do modelo de desenvolvimento capitalista como principal culpado pela crise ambiental. Observa-se intencionalidade em politizar as questões ambientais ao transversalizá-las nas diversas frentes das lutas sociais, em especial pelo interesse dos membros da Recid em fomentar e monitorar políticas públicas voltadas ao meio ambiente. Para estes atores, o ambientalismo busca construir uma visão de mundo alternativa, que valoriza conhecimentos tradicionais e populares, concebe as relações entre ambiente e sociedade sob uma perspectiva holística pautada por uma ética de cuidado com avida, defende uma organização social coletivista e considera a natureza como sujeito de direitos. Ficou claro que os elementos mais críticos do pensamento ecológico atingiram penetração nas políticas públicas durante o período no qual a Recid se manteve institucionalizada, e a suposta perda de radicalidade e flexibilização dos ideais do movimento apresentou-se mais como reflexo das disputas conceituais intrínsecas ao momento histórico, e não decorrente de uma fragilidade do Pensamento Ecológico. / It presents a study on ecological thinking and contemporary social movements, developed with the Citizen Education Network (Recid), created in 2003 in an interconnected way with the Zero Hunger Program, during the first term of the Lula government. The network agglutinated members of diverse Brazilian social movements in an ample program of popular education. The study wanted to identify which environmental ideals and values were expressed in the discourses and practices of militants participating in the network and, thus, evaluate the penetration of environmental guidelines along these movements. Based on the premise that the environmental movement has a great appeal to public opinion, and that it is still rare to observe the implementation of environmental public policies, we assume that the reduced political efficacy of ecological thinking is due to the fact that environmentalism gains penetration in the political guidelines in the same proportion in which it loses its radicalism. The methodology adopted was the case study. Data were collected through: participant observation, document analysis; questionnaires and interviews and examined by the content analysis method. The main results are organized into three categories: articulations, practices and perceptions of members participating in Recid on environmental issues. Considering the bias of the articulations between environmentalism and the social demands present in Recid, the agrarian issues, such as property, land distribution and land use, and the promotion of models of agro ecological, family, peasant and urban agriculture stand out. It is also worth highlighting the approach of environmentalism with movements in defense of food and nutritional security and food sovereignty, especially against agrochemicals; as well as the approximation of environmentalism with initiatives of solidarity economy and generation of employment and income, emphasizing the reuse of recyclable materials and management of solid waste, involving cooperatives and waste pickers. The environmental practices studied have a strong presence of activities focused on environmental preservation education, such as: debates about the importance of nature preservation, creation and maintenance of community gardens, handicrafts with recyclable waste. Finally, in the interviewees\' perceptions the criticism of the trivialization of the concept of socio-environmental sustainability and of the values of environmentalism and the responsibility of the capitalist development model as the main culprit for the environmental crisis is evident. There is an intentionality in politicizing environmental issues by mainstreaming them on the various fronts of social struggles, in particular by Recid members\' interest in promoting and monitoring public policies focused on the environment. For these actors, environmentalism seeks to construct an alternative worldview, which values traditional and popular knowledge, conceives the relations between environment and society under a holistic perspective guided by an ethic of care for life, defends a collectivist social organization and considers the nature as subject of rights. It was clear that the most critical elements of ecological thinking reached a penetration in public policies during the period in which Recid remained institutionalized, and the supposed loss of radicalism and flexibility of the ideals of the movement was more a reflection of the conceptual disputes intrinsic to the moment historical, and not due to a fragility of Ecological Thinking.

[pt] Desde o final do século XV, com as grandes navegações, os países europeus expandiram seu domínio para outros continentes, muitas vezes impondo a outros povos e nações o modo de vida ocidental, sua forma de organização social e territorial. Sempre houve, durante a história, diferentes formas de resistência. Desde povos nativos que lutaram contra a dominação imposta com a chegada das nações europeias, aos movimentos de independência e movimentos contemporâneos de caráter social e resgate cultural. A pesquisa realizada resgata os movimentos sociais de resistência à lógica cultural e territorial dominante ao longo da história, com foco nos movimentos contemporâneos. O estudo de caso trata de uma aldeia indígena Guarani, M´byo, que se localiza em uma praia, que hoje é ocupada por casas de classe média alta, no bairro de Camboinhas, Niterói, desde 2008. Para isso foi feito um resgate da tradição e história do povo guarani, e da ocupação do local escolhido pela tribo. Foram realizadas entrevistas com diferentes atores sociais que fazem parte do conflito, para perceber os valores que o envolvem, vistos sobre diferentes ângulos. Muitos desses grupos, que sofreram uma forte desterritorialização tanto física quanto simbólica ao longo da história, buscam construir uma nova territorialidade onde possam ser inseridos de forma digna dentro da sociedade, sem perder sua identidade. O estudo de Caso é um movimento de resistência que apesar de ter características bastante singulares, principalmente pelo fato dos índios construírem uma aldeia num bairro de classe média alta numa área urbana, reflete o caminho percorrido na formação dos valores que permitiram aos índios contestarem a lógica territorial imposta a eles, e os valores presentes na sociedade, que são reproduzidos ao longo da história mundial de ocupação territorial e imposição cultural. Esses valores estão implícitos nas entrevistas. / [en] Since the end of the fifteenth century, with the great navigations, European countries have expanded their dominions over other continents, often imposing on other peoples and nations the western lifestyle, its territorial and social organization. There has always been, throughout history, different forms of resistance. Ranging from native people who fought the domination imposed with the arrival of European nations, to independence movements and contemporary movements for social and cultural revival. This research recovers the social movements of resistance to dominant cultural and territorial logic throughout history, focusing on contemporary movements. The case study is about a Guarani native village, M´bvo, located on a beach, now occupied by houses of upper middle class, in the neighborhood of Camboinhas, Niteroi, since 2008. In this regard, was done a recovery of tradition and history of the Guarani people and the occupation of the site chosen by the tribe. Interviews were conducted with different social actors that are part of the conflict, to understand the values that involve it, viewed by different angles. Many of these groups, who have suffered a strong deterritorialization both physical and symbolic throughout history, seek to build a new territoriality in which they can be inserted in a dignified manner within society, without losing theirs identity. The case study is a resistance movement that, despite having quite unique characteristics, mainly because of the fact that the Indians have built a village in a upper middle class neighborhood inside an urban area, reflects the path taken in the formation of values that allowed the Indians to challenge the territorial logic imposed on them and the values present inside society which are reproduced throughout world history of occupation and cultural imposition. These values are implicit in the interviews.

Thesis advisor: Willaim A. Gamson / What are the class culture differences among US progressive social movement groups? This mixed-methods study finds that activists speak and act differently depending on their class background, current class and upward, downward or steady class trajectory, confirming previous research on cultural capital and conditioned class predispositions. In 2007-8, 34 meetings of 25 groups in four movement traditions were observed in five states; 364 demographic surveys were collected; and 61 interviews were conducted. I compared activists' approaches to six frequently mentioned group problems. * Lifelong-working-class activists, usually drawn in through preexisting affiliations, relied on recruitment incentives such as food and one-on-one relationships. Both disempowered neophytes and experienced powerhouses believed in strength in numbers, had positive attitudes towards trustworthy leaders, and stressed loyalty and unity. * Lifelong-professional-middle-class (PMC) activists, usually individually committed to a cause prior to joining, relied on shared ideas to recruit. They focused more on internal organizational development and had negative attitudes towards leadership. Subsets of PMC activists behaved differently: lower professionals communicated tentatively and avoided conflict, while upper-middle-class people were more assertive and polished. * Upwardly mobile straddlers tended to promote their moral certainties within groups. A subset, uprooted from their working-class backgrounds but not assimilated into professional circles, sometimes pushed self-righteously and brought discord into groups. * Voluntarily downwardly mobile activists, mostly young white anarchists, drew the strongest ideological boundaries and had the most distinct movement culture. Mistrustful of new people and sometimes seeing persuasion as coercive, they had the weakest recruitment and group cohesion methods. Analysis of class speech differences found that working-class activists spoke more often but more briefly in meetings, preferred more concrete speech, and used more teasing and self-deprecating humor. The professional-middle-class (in background and/or current class) spoke longer but less often, preferred more abstract vocabulary, and used less negative humor. Group styles were formed by the interplay of members' predominant class trajectories and groups' movement traditions. Better understanding these class culture differences would enable activists to strengthen cross-class alliances to build more powerful social movements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The thesis focuses on the protracted tripartite conflict within and between local oilbearing communities of the Niger Delta on the one hand, and between them, the state and foreign oil multinationals in the region, on the other hand. The focus also centers around how this has attracted international attention and the impact of internationalization on the conflict itself. The series of crises have been underpinned by tortuous issues on the ground for over four decades. There was a new dimension to the struggle in the early 1990s, which redefined the focus of the crises, when organized pressure groups protested against the inhuman and environmental hazards in the region. The thesis therefore examines the interest(s) of the main actors involved in the crisis in the period between 1993 and 2003 in order to establish the issues that accounted for the involvement of the international civil societies. The thesis makes three significant arguments: one, that the differences in interests among the actors in relation to the issue of oil production and its impact on the local people laid the basis for the persistent struggle between the social movements/militant youths on one side and the state and oil multinationals operating in the region on the other. The second argument the thesis advances is that the age-long crisis in the region became an agenda for the international community in the 1990s because of the trend and impact of globalization This invariably allowed international Non-Governmental Organizations to intervene in exerting pressures on oil companies and the state to re-examine their policies in the region. Finally, the recent internationalization of the crisis has not impacted enough to significantly address the demands of the people with the locally based pressure and, later, INGOs. This approach is intended to establish a pattern of alliances in the Niger Delta crisis. It might be healthy to state, ab initio, that there was a convergence of interests between the state and MNOCs on the one hand and between the social movements, local NGOs and INGOs on the other hand. The thesis employed a multivariate form of data collection from primary sources like Multinational Oil Companies in the area especially, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), interviews with local people, NGOs and some government officials, with extensive use of secondary data on the Niger Delta. The study’s findings suggest that the internationalization of the crisis has engendered new approaches and attitudes on the part of the key actors in the Niger Delta. For its part, the state has adopted the agency approach in dealing with the issues confronting the region. Shell has increased its direct intervention efforts in addressing the demands of the local communities. However, these new approaches and attitudes have yielded minimal results in view of the militarization of the Niger Delta through the continuous deployment of troops by the state and the oil multinationals under the guise of security imperatives in response to the people’s agitations, which are poverty driven.

On March 29, 2017, after ten years with a Presidential moratorium on metallic mining in the country, the Salvadoran legislature voted to permanently ban the practice. Based on semi-structured interviews with activists, academics, and journalists, this study builds on the literature explores the contributions of the Salvadoran diaspora in Canada to the passage of the moratorium, and ultimately the ban. I discuss numerous types of contributions: coalition building involving various allies, communication and education initiatives, taking a position as members of the diaspora, and engagements with politicians in both Canada and El Salvador. I provide further context to the case by discussing both contextual elements and mobilization strategies relating to the mining justice movement in El Salvador, contextual elements that help make sense of the engagements of the Salvadoran diaspora in Canada in the movement, and challenges Salvadoran Canadians encountered while engaging in the movement. I conduct my analysis in three parts. The first outlines contributions to the transnationalism literature, the second details the results of a discourse analysis of my interview transcripts, and the third sketches contributions to the framing literature.

The social and environmental impacts of consumer electronics and information communications technologies (CE/ICTs) reflect dynamics of a globalized and interdependent world. During the early 21st century the global consumption of CE/ICTs expanded greatly while the infrastructure behind CE/ICTs, especially the extraction and disassembly phases, became more integrated. This dissertation examines how messages about the social and environmental impacts of CE/ICTs changed during this period and explores the discursive power of actors involved in environmental justice campaigns surrounding the disposal and disassembly of electronic waste (e-waste). The dissertation reports the results of a mixed methods investigation of twelve years of media coverage of e-waste through quantitative content analysis and qualitative document analysis. The analysis examined almost 800 articles from eleven media outlets between 2002 – 2013 and explored differences between legacy media coverage (e.g. The New York Times, USA Today) and coverage from digital news outlets focused on technology (e.g. Ars Technica, CNET, Gizmodo). When the story of e-waste began to gain traction in media outlets, the haze of commodity fetishism cleared for a brief moment and the social relations of exploitation behind the wonders of technology were included in media narratives. While the media coverage about e-waste initially examined environmental justice issues of pollution and labor exploitation, the coverage evolved into focusing on the technical and business solutions to managing the environmental problems and the growth of a private sector profiting from mineral reclamation through electronics recycling.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo compreender o funcionamento de três associações comunitárias ligadas ao Movimento dos Sem Terra Leste I na construção de moradias populares em regime de mutirão e autogestão. O campo de forças que contribui para a configuração deste espaço coletivo passa pelo discurso do movimento, do qual as associações fazem parte, e sua estrutura interna, pelas formas como os técnicos do poder público vêem os mutirões e se relacionam com as associações, pelo funcionamento de outros movimentos, já que essas práticas também vão moldando a resposta estatal. Assim, buscamos compor o cenário em que se dão esses processos retomando o histórico dos movimentos sociais e dos programas de mutirões dentro da problemática estrutural da sociedade brasileira, os discursos que produziram e produzem estas práticas e os efeitos possíveis em sua dimensão micropolítica. O cotidiano de trabalho das famílias mutirantes, como se organizavam e discutiam as questões referentes à obra foram nossos principais interesses. Como resultado, apresentamos algumas discussões referentes à dinâmica das associações, à função das assembléias e das regras e o modo das tomadas de decisão tentando problematizar e apontar seus possíveis efeitos na produção de novas formas de organização. Como a pesquisa se deu intrinsecamente ligada ao trabalho como profissional, junto às associações de construção, o processo de pesquisa foi um transformar para conhecer e as descrições e problematizações que estão presentes nesta dissertação também são a sistematização do movimento constante de reflexão e atuação naquele processo de construção. / This work has the objective of understanding the functioning of three community associations linked to the Movimento dos Sem Terra Leste I [East I Landelss Moviment] in the construction of cooperative housing under the regime of self-building cooperative. The field of forces that contributes to the configuration of this collective space occurs upon the movements discourse of which the associations take part and their internal structure, upon the way in which public technicians see the self-building cooperatives and their relationship with the associations, and upon the functioning of other movements, once these practices also shape governmental response. Therefore, we intend to compose the scenario in which these processes occur, revisiting the history of social movements and self-building cooperative programs within the Brazilian cultural structure, as well as the discourses which those practices produced and continue to produce, and their possible effects in their micro-politics dimension. The daily works of cooperative families, the way they organized themselves and discussed the issues regarding the building process were our main interest. As a result we present some discussion over the dynamics of community associations, the functioning of community meetings and their rules, and decision making process, whilst questioning and pointing out their possible effects on the production of new forms of organization. Since the research had been undertaken while within the professional work among self-building cooperatives, the process of researching was a transforming-to-knowing experience. The description and questioning presented in this thesis are also a systematization of the constant movement of reflection and acting upon the process of building.

A cidade de Osasco, que faz parte da Região da Grande São Paulo, possui uma superfície de 64,94 Km², uma população absoluta de 701.012 habitantes e 478.190 eleitores (IBGE, 2007). A origem da cidade de Osasco deve-se realmente a um italiano de nome Antônio Giuseppe di Pietro Agu, funcionáriol da Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana, que em 1893 comprou uma gleba de terra compreendida entre os córregos Bussocaba e Aguadinha, e tornou-se fornecedor da Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana, à qual vendia areia, telhas e tijolos. É cortada no sentido leste oeste pelo rio Tietê, cujo vale foi aproveitado para construir o traçado da Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana, responsável pelo nascimento da nossa cidade. A localização de Osasco, próxima à capital, mais as facilidades apresentadas por ser servida pela ferrovia, contribuíram para o desenvolvimento da região, pois esses fatores atraíram para cá grande número de empresários e trabalhadores, incentivando o progresso e o desenvolvimento. A cidade de Osasco se torna, cada vez mais, um espaço que se organiza para abrigar as grandes empresas, isso reduz os recursos públicos possíveis de serem destinaddos à população, agravando a crise social. Costuma-se considerar no Brasil a existência de dois principais tipos de poder local: o tradicional (coronelismo) e o moderno (dinâmica de lutas, com a participação da sociedade civil). O caso de Osasco, hoje, é o de um poder local moderno e complexo. O poder local, com os seus instrumentos básicos, que são a participação comunitária e o planejamento descentralizado, constitui, nesse sentido, um mecanismo de ordenamento político e econômico que já deu provas de eficiência nos países desenvolvidos. Ele é sem dúvida o grande recurso subutilizado na nossa cidade. / Osasco city, a part of São Paulo capital area, has a surface area of 64,94 km², a population of 701.012 habitants and 478.190 of people eligible to vote (according IBGE, 2007 ) The origin of the city is due to Italian named Antônio Giuseppe di Pietro Agú, a Sorocabna Railway employee, who in 1893 bought a an area of land between two small rivers , Bussocaba and Aguadinha. Some years later Antônio Agú became supplier of Sorocabana Railway, selling sand, brick and tile. Osasco is cut in east to west way by Tiete river, the valley formed by the river was used to draw the Sorocabana railway which is responsible by Osasco creation. Osasco fast development is due to facilities like São Paulo (state capital) proximity and the railway which made easier the population flow. The city becomes, each time more, a space that organize itself to receive big companies that fact reduces drastically possible public resources to be offered for community as a result the social crises is getting worse. Its a usual concern in Brazil the existence of 2 main types of local authority: the traditional (called coronelismo) and the modern (fights dynamic with civil society participation). Nowadays Osascos case is local modern and complex power. The local authority with all of basic instruments, which are community participation and an fragmented power , has been constituting in that sense for a mechanism of economical and political ordinance that already gave proves of efficiency in developed countries. Its no doubt a huge resource underused in Osasco city.