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“Labor For Love, Labor To Heal:” Human Rights Activism As A Politics Of Refusal, Angela E. Fillingim Jan 2022

“Labor For Love, Labor To Heal:” Human Rights Activism As A Politics Of Refusal, Angela E. Fillingim

Societies Without Borders

The literature on social movements centers demands made on the state and theorizes collective action as rooted in specific times and the nation-state. I ague that this literature is analogous to “the veil,” a concept developed by W.E.B. Du Bois. Indigenous theorizations of a “politics of refusal” provides us with a foundation see beyond the veil. This paper brings together “Du Boisian Sociology,” Latina Feminisms, and indigenous theories of collective action to develop a robust theorization of human rights activism, and social movements more broadly. This paper asks: What can we gain from analyzing movements from beyond the veil by …


Social Contract Theory And Transitional Justice: A Philosophical Approach To A Problem Of Global Importance, Brendan Moriarty Jun 2020

Social Contract Theory And Transitional Justice: A Philosophical Approach To A Problem Of Global Importance, Brendan Moriarty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I seek to bring together two areas of scholarly work to see how each can inform the other: social contract theory and transitional justice. The social contract, as it exists and as it was theorized about by Rousseau, was born from the world-historic forces that spread capitalism across the globe, stirring up nationalism everywhere it went. In its wake, there was vast inequality and new legal regimes which protected the hoarded wealth of the capitalist class by enshrining the right of private property along with life and liberty. To examine the intricacies of transitional justice and its …


Thinking Globall, Acting Locally: Cedaw And Women's Human Rights In San Francisco, Susan Hagood Lee Phd Oct 2019

Thinking Globall, Acting Locally: Cedaw And Women's Human Rights In San Francisco, Susan Hagood Lee Phd

Societies Without Borders

While the United States has ratified many of the international human rights treaties, some have been left languishing in the Senate including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In response to Senate failure to ratify the women's treaty, the city of San Francisco passed its own CEDAW ordinance in 1998 to implement the principles of women's human rights in its jurisdiction. Several factors contributed to the successful passage of the CEDAW ordinance, including a sturdy base of feminist institutions developed over three decades of women's activism, determined leadership with the commitment, skills, and …


Millennial Generation College Students' Participation In Civil Rights Causes, Frances Vinell Jackson Jan 2019

Millennial Generation College Students' Participation In Civil Rights Causes, Frances Vinell Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Similar to other generations, millennials are attracted to organizations whose causes align with their interests, yet millennial college students' participation in nonprofit voluntary organizations is declining in the United States. Little academic literature explores the causes for the declines in participation, particularly related to civil rights organizations on college campuses. As a result, grassroots civil rights organizations are viewed as dying. Using Howe-Straus' generational theory as a foundation, this case study was to gain the perspective of 20 millennial generation students born between 1980 and 2000 on three college campuses and three civil rights organizations in the southeastern United States. …


Amplifying Lgbtqia+ Presence Through Queer Legal Worldmaking: The Role Of Affect In Renegotiating Value Hierarchies In Political Argument, Hilary Ann Rasmussen Dec 2017

Amplifying Lgbtqia+ Presence Through Queer Legal Worldmaking: The Role Of Affect In Renegotiating Value Hierarchies In Political Argument, Hilary Ann Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I propose to better explain the argumentative processes by which communities are constituted in political crisis moments and how, within those moments, social movement and legal rhetorics co-create the rhetorical possibilities for queer legal worldmaking. Specifically, I argue that affect functions as an important tool within argumentative loci of presence (magnitude, proximity, and severity) and is intimately connected to value-warrants in political argument. When the affective resonance of polices exclusive of LGBTQIA+ persons is made present, deeply held values can be reappropriated in order to enact political change. Queer legal worldmaking is less about the creation of …


Democracy, Education, And Free Speech: The Importance Of #Feesmustfall For Transnational Activism, Lindsey Peterson Ph.D, Kentse Radebe, Somya Mohanty Ph.D Nov 2016

Democracy, Education, And Free Speech: The Importance Of #Feesmustfall For Transnational Activism, Lindsey Peterson Ph.D, Kentse Radebe, Somya Mohanty Ph.D

Societies Without Borders

South African students across numerous university campuses joined together in the second half of 2015 to protest the rising cost of higher education. In addition to on-campus protesting, activists utilized Twitter to mobilize and communicate with each other, and, as the protests drew national attention, the hashtag #FeesMustFall began trending on Twitter. Then, what began as a localized movement against tuition increases became a global issue when a court interdict was granted by a South African court against the use of the #FeesMustFall hashtag. This paper traces that global spread of the #FeesMustFall hashtag on Twitter as a response to …


Wired Nation: How The Tea Party Drove An Anti-Immigrant Campaign, Louis Edgar Esparza, Judith Blau Jan 2012

Wired Nation: How The Tea Party Drove An Anti-Immigrant Campaign, Louis Edgar Esparza, Judith Blau

Societies Without Borders

Emails written by activists mobilized by organizations affiliated with the tea party and supporting anti-immigrant legislation illustrate two primary kinds of tea party activists. Most activists articulate economic grievances and employ paralogical argumentation that, for them, resolves real grievances with anti-immigrant state policy. A smaller set stands against illegal immigration, a priori. Surprisingly, we also find that this email mobilization attracted a significant number of counter-protest emails. We conclude that tea party activists have channeled energy originating from legitimate grievances into scapegoating immigrant groups in Arizona in the campaign to support SB 1070. On the tenth anniversary of SSF, we …


Primitive Accumulation And Enclosure Of The Commons: Genetically Engineered Seeds And Canadian Jurisprudence, Wilhelm Peekhaus Oct 2011

Primitive Accumulation And Enclosure Of The Commons: Genetically Engineered Seeds And Canadian Jurisprudence, Wilhelm Peekhaus

Wilhelm Peekhaus

This paper juxtaposes the legal decisions made in the case of Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement, against the attempt by the Organic Agriculture Protection Fund to obtain class certification in its efforts to sue Monsanto and Bayer for genetic contamination of organic canola. Together these two cases establish an unacceptable incongruity at common law between the rights enjoyed by intellectual property owners and any corresponding duties that might attach to their inventions. I suggest that Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation offers a suitable theoretical register for apprehending contemporary erosions of the commons through the enclosure …


The Male Neonatal Circumcision Debate: Social Movements,Sexual Citizenship, And Human Rights, Lauren M. Sardi Jan 2011

The Male Neonatal Circumcision Debate: Social Movements,Sexual Citizenship, And Human Rights, Lauren M. Sardi

Societies Without Borders

Male circumcision is known to be one of the oldest and perhaps one of the most controversial body modification procedures in the history of humanity (Darby 2005; Gollaher 1994, 2000; Grimes 1980). Such scholars and activists, especially those who self-identify as being against the routinized procedure of male neonatal circumcision, discuss circumcision as a human rights violation. However, what is notable about the anti-circumcision movement more broadly is how they implement a Western notion of human rights in which there are contradictions between the rights of children versus the concept of cultural rights, which are both religious and secular in …


Military Neoliberalism: Endless War And Humanitarian Crisis In The Twenty-First Century, Michael Schwartz Jan 2011

Military Neoliberalism: Endless War And Humanitarian Crisis In The Twenty-First Century, Michael Schwartz

Societies Without Borders

This article seeks to understand the dynamics of twenty-first century military intervention by the United States and its allies. Based on an analysis of Bush and Obama administration policy documents, we note that these wars are new departures from previous interventions, calling on the military to undertake post-conflict reconstruction in ways that was previously left to indigenous government or to the civilian aspects of the occupation. This military-primary reconstruction is harnessed to ambitious neoliberal economics aimed at transforming the host country’s political economy. Utilizing the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions as case studies, the study analyzes the dynamics set in motion …


Labor Struggles, New Social Movements, And America's Favorite Pastime: New York Workers Take On New Era Cap Company, Victoria Carty Jan 2006

Labor Struggles, New Social Movements, And America's Favorite Pastime: New York Workers Take On New Era Cap Company, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Contemporary economic globalization, which is driven and regulated primarily by multinational corporations, has a direct impact on workers' lives. Trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tend to be controlled by corporate interests in the wealthy, industrialized nations. Those countries set the agenda to protect the interests of foreign investors and facilitate the mobility of capital, but they do little to protect the interests of labor. In response, workers in both the global North and South have been forced to rely on their own individual efforts to protect themselves against unfair labor practices. This article presents …


Transnational Labor Mobilizing In Two Mexican Maquiladoras: The Struggle For Democratic Globalization, Victoria Carty Jan 2004

Transnational Labor Mobilizing In Two Mexican Maquiladoras: The Struggle For Democratic Globalization, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

The struggle to improve workers' rights in Mexican maquiladoras and export processing zones elsewhere in the world is central to the politics of global economic integration. State-centered development is increasingly compromised by supranational institutions and trade agreements. Meanwhile, multinational corporations are relocating at an unprecedented rate to overseas locations. Export processing zones are notorious for poor working conditions and result in a "race to the bottom." The maquila sector in Mexico is a prime example of this phenomenon. This article uses two case studies to examine ways in which grassroots organizing has successfully resisted low wages and poor working conditions …