This thesis draws upon anarchist communist theory in order to provide a historical account of the New Left and the anarchist movement in New Zealand from 1956 to the early 1980s. This account explains, describes and evaluates critically these movements. The praxis of the New Left and the anarchist movement can be explained by a variety of social, economic, political, cultural and psychological factors. However, overall, it is argued that these movements were largely shaped by the underlying antagonisms of global capitalism. Because the New Left emerged during a lull in working-class self-activity, the politics of the early New Left and the anarchist movement from 1956 to the late 1960s were generally reformist and quietist. The later New Left emerged during a global resurgence in class-struggle from 1968 to the early to mid 1970s. Consequently, the demeanour of the later New Left and anarchism during this period was boisterous and ebullient. The New Left in New Zealand was unique in that, compared with the New Left overseas, its major organisations were neither campus-based nor dominated by students. It consisted of young workers and students who jointly established numerous small affinity groups. The early New Left was less action-oriented than the later New Left. It was formed by dissidents from the Old Left and was closely associated with anti-nuclear protest. The later New Left issued from the more confrontational wing of the anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid movements, and then dispersed into various new social movements from the early 1970s onwards. The anarchist movement of the 1960s and 1970s was intimately interrelated with the New Left, and hence shared most of its characteristics. This work employs anarchist communism as a theoretical tool to evaluate critically the innovations and limitations of the New Left and the anarchist movement. In particular, the class-based "non-market" anarchist communist theory of Peter Kropotkin is utilised. The main criterion used for judging the New Left and anarchist movement is their emancipatory capacity to spark a process whereby the underlying social relations of capitalism are fundamentally transformed. The key strengths of the New Left and the anarchist movement were their sweepingly broad anti-authoritarianism, their festive politics and their focus upon everyday life. The primary weakness of these movements was their isolation from the working-class. The New Left concentrated on supporting nationalist struggles overseas and mostly overlooked domestic class-struggle. Numerous New Leftists and anarchists championed self-management yet did not question the market and the wage-system. This thesis highlights the complexities of the New Left. For instance, the later New Left was genuinely anti-disciplinarian yet often supported totalitarian Stalinist regimes overseas. As a result, it is argued that the New Left was paradoxically both anti-authoritarian and authoritarian. It is claimed that an updated anarchist communism, integrating the best qualities of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s with classical anarchist communism, is highly relevant today because of the rise of neo-liberalism and the anti-capitalist movement, and the demise of Stalinism and social democracy.

<p>In 1991, women from Dubagunta, Nellore District in the state of Andhra Pradesh forced the liquor traders to leave the area. This incident is believed to have been the origin of the Anti-Liquor Movement, which finally led to alcoholic beverages being prohibited in the state. The main participants in the early struggle were unprivileged, rural low-caste women. They were supported by voluntary organisations and later by politicians from the opposition parties.</p><p>The study presents an analysis of the process whereby the political and private endeavours of individuals were integrated into a broader social movement. It discusses discourses on gender and household relations in rural Andhra Pradesh and the involvement of urban activists as organisers, leaders and translators of the struggle. The attention is on how politicians, representatives of the state administration, and liquor traders either sided with the temperance movement or worked against it, and on the blurred boundary between 'friend' and 'foe'. It demonstrates how the media coverage and the gathering of participants in collective activities - such as demonstrations, meetings, sit-ins, and protest travelling - were vital for the formation of an 'imagined community' of protest.</p><p>The Anti-Liquor Movement of Andhra Pradesh is shaped by global processes. The Indian economy opened up to global market forces in the 1980s and at the same time local activists became involved in transnational debates on feminism, Gandhianism, and Marxism. Even so, as the study reveals, the movement as such was mainly confined to Andhra Pradesh.</p>

Social movements in various parts of the world have been attempting to challenge the forces of neoliberal globalization and the social problems caused by this economic trend. Many such movements have been advancing the idea of global civil society in order to counter 'globalization from above'. Despite the efforts of these movements to democratize social relations, the domination of these powerful forces persist and result in further oppression of marginalized people. This study attempts to discover the reasons why these social movements and civil society, despite popular support, fail to challenge effectively the power of such social forces. In particular, this study analyzes, through in-depth interviews with activists, and archival and observational data, the world-view of civil society activists in a movement against Coca-Cola initiated by the marginalized people in Kerala, India. While this struggle, popularly called the 'Plachimada movement', managed to effect the temporary closure of a Coca-Cola plant, whose operation reportedly affected the ground water in the region, the local people felt that it failed to address their conditions of marginality. The analysis of the movement's processes finds that hegemony, or indirect forms of domination, often stands in the way of such efforts at democratic social change. The study concludes with suggestions for rethinking civil society as an arena of reflexive collective action that is counter-hegemonic.

In 1991, women from Dubagunta, Nellore District in the state of Andhra Pradesh forced the liquor traders to leave the area. This incident is believed to have been the origin of the Anti-Liquor Movement, which finally led to alcoholic beverages being prohibited in the state. The main participants in the early struggle were unprivileged, rural low-caste women. They were supported by voluntary organisations and later by politicians from the opposition parties. The study presents an analysis of the process whereby the political and private endeavours of individuals were integrated into a broader social movement. It discusses discourses on gender and household relations in rural Andhra Pradesh and the involvement of urban activists as organisers, leaders and translators of the struggle. The attention is on how politicians, representatives of the state administration, and liquor traders either sided with the temperance movement or worked against it, and on the blurred boundary between 'friend' and 'foe'. It demonstrates how the media coverage and the gathering of participants in collective activities - such as demonstrations, meetings, sit-ins, and protest travelling - were vital for the formation of an 'imagined community' of protest. The Anti-Liquor Movement of Andhra Pradesh is shaped by global processes. The Indian economy opened up to global market forces in the 1980s and at the same time local activists became involved in transnational debates on feminism, Gandhianism, and Marxism. Even so, as the study reveals, the movement as such was mainly confined to Andhra Pradesh.

Words like pirates and anti-pirates are becoming common features in the cultural political debate of today, and the file-sharing phenomenon has become a more and more delicate and disputed subject. The fact that people are organizing in networks to swap computerfiles with each other has, among other things, led film and music companies from all over the world to initiate a number of anti-piracy organizations, assigned to protect the right to culture and information. The industrial organization Antipiratbyrån (the Anti-pirate Bureau) and the network Piratbyrån (the Pirate Bureau) have on several occasions been used to represent the prevailing conflict in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to apply a sociological perspective to the collective act of file sharing. Additionally, the purpose is to argue that the activity can be understood as a social movement, although it is rarely referred to as such. By focusing on the distinctly organized part of the file-sharing movement, the goal has principally been to answer how the collective action and the conveyance of knowledge, that is taking place within the movement, can be understood and which the fundamental ideas are. The study has its starting point in theories about the cognitive praxis – or core identity – of social movements. Among the methods used, interviews with representatives from Piratbyrån were valuable tools, but also other sources, like the Piratbyrån website and forum along with their participation in the media, have been the basis of the analysis. This led to a few conclusions worth considering. The most important result of the study is that it is relevant to talk about a new social movement. This movement is above all characterized by individual autonomy, expressed in a fundametal belief in the individual and some kind of “egoistic” solidarity. Closely connected to this is the everyday practice that makes the existence of the movement possible. The conclusion of the study is that the use of the technology is experienced as a political act, associated by the activists to a decentralization of power and control. Therefore, any restraint of the technology is also experienced as a restraint of man’s autonomy.

Understanding how these networks and opportunities formed and the effect of these relationships on social movements and global politics is crucial for the future of the dam resistance movement. I hypothesize that the formation of networks and the larger role of civil society in decision-making has altered institutional decision-making, thus allowing for the development of new counter-hegemonic ideas of development and methods of organizing. Through a broad analysis of the dam resistance movement and specific dam resistance campaigns, this thesis examines how and under what circumstances transnational networks provide new opportunities for participation and greater influence over national policy and multilateral institutions. I will seek to answer the questions - how do anti-dam advocacy networks affect national and international policy and under what conditions are these networks successful?

This thesis employs Karl Polanyi’s concept of the double-movement of capitalism to trace the trajectory of a social movement that arose in response to capitalist transformation in the fishery of Kanyakumari district, south India. Beginning in the 1980s, this counter-movement militantly asserted community control over marine resources, arguing that intensified production for new markets should be subordinated to the social imperatives of subsistence and equity. Two decades later, the ambition of “embedding” the market within the community had yielded instead to an adaptation to the market in the language of “professionalization,” self-help, and caste uplift. Polanyi is useful for identifying the constituency for a counter-movement against the market, but tells us little about the social or political complexities of constructing such a movement. To locate the reasons for the decline of the counter-movement in Kanyakumari, I turn therefore to an empirical observation of the civil society within which the counter-movement arose. In doing this, I argue against Partha Chatterjee’s influential view that civil society as a conceptual category does not apply to “popular politics in most of the world,” and is not useful for tracing non-European, post-colonial, and subaltern modernities. By contrast, my case shows the presence of civil society – as a sphere of autonomous and routinized association and publicity – among subaltern groups in rural India. I argue that it is precisely by locating the counter-movement of fishworkers within civil society that one can map the multiple negotiations that take place as subaltern classes are integrated into the market, and into liberal democracy, and explain the difficulties of extending and sustaining the counter-movement itself.

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-31 11:45:32.468

Using qualitative interviews, this thesis examines bicycle and car politics in Toronto, Canada to understand: i) how automobility affects those engaged in contesting and supporting cycling initiatives; ii) why the installation of cycling infrastructure has been politicized; and iii) whether strategies used by cycling activists are effective. The paper concludes that contemporary cultural and economic values surrounding automobility are visible in those engaged in bicycle and car politics. Findings suggest that the politicization of efforts to install cycling infrastructure arise due to how these values manifest themselves in the political realm, and the interrelationship between a lack of coherent transportation policy, the institutionalization of automobiles in planning and a ward-based decision-making system that entrenches suburban and urban biases. Activist strategies could be more effective by moving away from a focus on cycling lanes to address cultural norms associated with automobiles and bicycles and by focusing on a ‘complete streets’ approach.

Using qualitative interviews, this thesis examines bicycle and car politics in Toronto, Canada to understand: i) how automobility affects those engaged in contesting and supporting cycling initiatives; ii) why the installation of cycling infrastructure has been politicized; and iii) whether strategies used by cycling activists are effective. The paper concludes that contemporary cultural and economic values surrounding automobility are visible in those engaged in bicycle and car politics. Findings suggest that the politicization of efforts to install cycling infrastructure arise due to how these values manifest themselves in the political realm, and the interrelationship between a lack of coherent transportation policy, the institutionalization of automobiles in planning and a ward-based decision-making system that entrenches suburban and urban biases. Activist strategies could be more effective by moving away from a focus on cycling lanes to address cultural norms associated with automobiles and bicycles and by focusing on a ‘complete streets’ approach.