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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Communication, Class And Concentric Media Practices: Developing A Contemporary Rubric, Todd Wolfson, Peter N. Funke May 2014

Communication, Class And Concentric Media Practices: Developing A Contemporary Rubric, Todd Wolfson, Peter N. Funke

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

Understanding class as a process of self-making in relation to a particular, historical form of capitalism, in this article we argue that media and communication (from face-to-face and old mediums such as radio to internet-powered tools) must be conceptualized as an emerging structural dimension for class formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia, a community-based media and communications infrastructure and a network of organizations across the region, we develop a conceptual approach we call concentric practices, which provides us with a framework of how contemporary class formation is occurring through the use of media and …


Of Academic Embeddedness: Communities Of Choice And How To Make Sense Of Activism And Research Abroad, Bernd Reiter Jan 2014

Of Academic Embeddedness: Communities Of Choice And How To Make Sense Of Activism And Research Abroad, Bernd Reiter

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

Postmodernism has caught up with all of us in one way or another. We are all decentered to some degree. Advances in education and increased exposure to a globalized media have corroded traditions everywhere and challenged monistic worldviews and belief systems in the remotest corners of the globe. While we are becoming more and more aware of Others everywhere, we can rely less and less on those traditional values and guiding systems passed on to us from the past. Th e postmodern condition, as Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979) has argued, is one of uncertainty and of disconnection, as traditional bonds, both …


Class In-Formation: The Intersection Of Old And New Media In Contemporary Urban Social Movements, Peter N. Funke, Todd Wolfson Jan 2014

Class In-Formation: The Intersection Of Old And New Media In Contemporary Urban Social Movements, Peter N. Funke, Todd Wolfson

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

This starts out by distinguishing between communication and communication mediums when examining social movement-powered formations of collective identity and collective action. We then focus on communication mediums to examine the different ways that old and new media are utilized in urban social movements under neoliberal capitalism. Based on shifts in the political economy and correspondingly in the contemporary composition of the working class, we focus on the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia to argue that contemporary urban social movements and networks utilize a multi-media platform to further class-based politics. The respective use of old or new media depends on important …


Building Rhizomatic Social Movements? Movement-Building Relays During The Current Epoch Of Contention, Peter N. Funke Jan 2014

Building Rhizomatic Social Movements? Movement-Building Relays During The Current Epoch Of Contention, Peter N. Funke

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

This article investigates the movement building dynamics of contemporary social movement milieus (such as particular protests, social forums or occupations). It develops the concept of the “relay” to introduce four ideal-type movement building relays understood as distinct movement milieus: clustering relay, networking relay, organizing relay, and transforming relay. Each ideal-type captures different points on a continuum of increasing movement building and thus for generating commonalities, shared understandings and identities, mobilizations and strategies. Focusing on what I call the current “rhizomatic movement epoch,” which ranges from roughly the Zapatistas to the recent occupy-type protests, the relay framework can provide a larger …