Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Dana Cloud. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Nottingham Trent University, 2001. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-242) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Nottingham Trent University, 2001. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-242) and index.

The thesis is a sociological study of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. It addresses the question of how it is possible for women to act collectively to promote social change: primarily, to resist and transform relations of male domination and female subordination, and, secondarily, to resist the forces of militarism. It highlights the importance for feminist sociology of theoretical and substantive attention to women's agency. The thesis offers an analysis of the origins of Greenham, thereby developing a critique of the gender-ignorance of previous theoretical work on social movements and arguing the importance of attention to macro-, ineso- and micro-level processes in the studying of the creation of collective politA.cal action. The particular character and ethos of Greenham as a form of feminist politics is explored, both in terms of the internal workings of the movement and in its actions confronting the outside world. The responses of the forces which were challenged by Greenham are analyzed, in order to assess its impact. Finally, the transformations in consciousness and identity experienced by women who had been involved with Greenham are discussed, contributing both theoretically and substantively to feminist understandings of women's consciousness and identity.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Nottingham Trent University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-242) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 290-302). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Nottingham Trent University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-242) and index.

The general focus of the study is a shanty town (población) on the outskirts of Santiago in Chile during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet. The military coup of 11th September 1973 was the beginning of seventeen years of repression and violence. The specific focus of the research is the development of resistance against Pinochet amongst the people (pobladores) of that shanty town. The research is based on a six year period in the población where the candidate, being also a Catholic priest, had unique access through his role to the social and cultural life of the people. The implications of this role in terms of retrospective anthropology are examined in detail. The experience is studied in terms of the developments of attitudes and behaviour within a particular group especially in their movement from tentative protest and the creative use of ambiguity, to the use of barricades as the focus for direct confrontation with the authorities. The passing beyond the barricade is explored in terms of the expansion of the people's capacity to develop political agency. The thesis is a case study of Liberation Theology and its role in the development of resistance to the military regime. The street becomes a central focus as space of protest. A comparison is made between the private space of the house as refuge and the public space of the street as place of conflict and danger. It is suggested that the barricade may be understood as a dynamic boundary being partly constituted by the bodies of the protesters themselves. It is also didactic, insofar as the re-appropriation of physical space - the streets, the bridge upon which the key barricade is built, and by extension the entire población, parallel the occupation of the internal space in the minds of the protesters. The transformations of meaning being etched into the 'landscape' were being correspondingly etched into the 'inscapes' of the imagination. If space can be taken as analogous to language and the movement of bodies through the población understood, therefore, as an articulation of an alternative discourse, then the boundary/barricade can be seen as the focus for such a counter-discourse against the attempt by Pinochet to militarise civilian life. Liberation theology and the Basic Christian Community are explored in terms of the development of the potential of resistance to the military regime. It is suggested that these functioned by legitimating new public discourses, promoting new styles of leadership and empowering individuals and organisations. Here politics becomes part of the road to 'salvation' and religion becomes politics by other means. Finally the question of popular education is addressed in the context of an invasion of the University by the pobladores. A project of popular education is explored in its attempt to go beyond the question of protest against the Regime to addressing how political power is operated through appropriation of discourse. Power and knowledge are intricately intertwined. The focus moves to consider political violence as being exercised not just in military might but also through institutional structures. The conclusion recapitulates the main themes in the context of wider aspects of anthropology.

Why after almost a decade of silence and "successful" crackdowns of contention during the 1980s has Iran witnessed once again waves of increasing popular protest? What are the processes and mechanisms behind the routinization of collective actions in Iran since the early 1990s, which continue despite state repression? Why and under what circumstances does a strong authoritarian state that has previously marginalized its contenders tolerate some forms of contention despite the state's continued repressive capacity? And finally, to what extent are available social movement theories capable of explaining the Iranian case? In "State, Dissidents, and Contention: Iran, 1979-2010" I engage theories of social movements and contentious politics in order to examine the emergence, development, and likely outcomes of popular contention in contemporary Iran. My study is the first project of its kind to focus on elite factionalism and its impact on popular mobilization in contemporary Iran. Although other scholars have extensively written on elite factionalism in postrevolutionary Iran, they have not analyzed the implications of the inter-elite conflict for the emergence and development of social protests against the Islamic Republic. While this study primarily utilizes political process and resource mobilization models, it acknowledges the importance of economic, ideological, and breakdown approaches for the interpretation of the emergence and development of popular mobilization in contemporary Iran. Drawing on data gathered from census figures, public policies, state and oppositional newspapers, and interviews with dissidents and state officials, this study shows that collective actions against the Islamic Republic emerged gradually due to institutional changes, limited electorate competition, social and educational expansion, and, more importantly, the intellectual transformation of a significant segment of the elites and their action-intended discourse. I demonstrate that the political opportunity structure is not a unitary national opportunity but rather varies by social groups, demands, and contexts. I make this argument by exploring the political environment for collective mobilization in contemporary Iran in four key contexts: 1. the period of consolidation, war, and repression (1979-1988, the Khomeini era); 2. the period of postwar reconstruction and economic liberalization (1989-1997, the tenure of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani); 3. the era of reform and political opening (1997-2005, the tenure of President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami); and 4. the period of mobilization in the context of increasingly violent repression (2005-present, the tenure of President Mahmood Ahmadinejad). By examining social protests within these different contexts, I conclude that regimes that use force to restrict political rights after a long and sustained period of opening risk eliciting resistance from dissidents who have already gained organizational resources to challenge the state's violent closing.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62).