Sociology Commons^™

Major Political Events From The 1960s To The 2020s: An Analytical Perspective, Yun Song

Multicultural Center Publications

This research paper provides a comprehensive analysis of major political events in the United States from the 1960s to the 2020s. It examines key presidential elections and significant political incidents, exploring their impact on the political landscape and their contributions to the evolution of American governance and society. The study delves into the interplay between media, social movements, economic conditions, and political strategies, highlighting how these factors have shaped electoral outcomes and policy decisions over the decades.

Climate Protest Scarcity In East Asia: Cross-Country Analysis Using Resource Mobilization Theory, Hikaru Komatsu, Yi-Huan Hsieh

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

Climate protests have been recognized as a catalyst for social transformation. Previous studies focused on protests in Western countries where protests were abundant. Few studies paid attention to regions where protests were scarce. As a first step towards understanding the reasons for climate protest scarcity in East Asia, we used Resource Mobilization Theory and explored factors correlated with climate protest significance among different countries. In addition to confirming factors already identified in previous studies (e.g., the density of non-governmental organizations), we uncovered two novel factors: working hours and trust in strangers. By examining these correlations, we discuss potential mechanisms underlying …

How Spirituality Intensifies Sustainability: A Case Study Of Ananda Valley In Northern Portugal, Mia Handler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The religious affiliations of citizens in the West are currently shifting away from the fundamentalist, traditional structures of the past towards more alternative spiritualities. Furthermore, as a result of the climate crisis, ecovillages are becoming increasingly popular. Ecovillages are intentional, “sustainable” communities that seek to reduce consumption, live in harmony with nature, and create strong social bonds. They are characterized by varying levels of spiritual involvement (Greenberg, 2014, p. 274). As such, the objective of this paper is to study the relationship between spirituality and environmentally-friendly practices and attitudes, using the ecovillage Ananda Valley – an Ananda Marga Master Unit …

Understanding The Relationship Between Resources In Institutional Characteristics And Student Mobilization In Higher Education Institutions, Michael R. Carhart

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In 2015, a national student organization called the Black Liberation Collective, composed of local student organizations at multiple institutions, initiated, led protests, and issued demands to institutions across the United States. The student organizations that mobilized occurred at institutions with more resources including higher endowments, tuition, and faculty wages. This study used cross-sectional data on 4-year public and private not-for-profit institutions from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to investigate the institutional characteristics that predict student organizations that protested. Evidence indicates that institutions that are more selective and have larger enrollment sizes with higher percentages of undergraduate Black students and …

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

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 …

The Political Imagination: Introduction To American Government, Peter Kolozi, James E. Freeman

Open Educational Resources

The Political Imagination: Introduction to American Government provides realistic, critical analysis as well as a hopeful, engagement-oriented narrative that encourages students to understand the important role they can play in the political system and in crafting a society in which they want to live. The Political Imagination draws on social and political theory and history offering an analytical as well as normative framework to think about the substance of politics, the procedures and institutions of government, and a dynamic, socially contingent definition of political power.

Building The Fat Girl Table: Excavating Cultural Memory Of Queer Fat Activism In The ‘90s, Rose Gelfand

Scripps Senior Theses

When we recount the histories of social movements, there is a tendency to imagine either a steady, linear march towards progress or a slow descent from radical ideas into complacency. The feminist movement gets painted in waves, progressing from white to intersectional, while in the LGBTQ+ rights movement the contrast of the Stonewall Riots & ACT UP with late 2010s focus on gay marriage and the corporatization of Pride is understood as a watering down and betrayal of the movement’s origins. Cultural memory is a constant process of construction and revision, and of course the truth of movements’ trajectories are …

Present And Passionate: A Critical Analysis Of Asian American Involvement In The United States Environmental Justice Movement, Emily M. Ng

Pitzer Senior Theses

Communities of color are disproportionately exposed to toxins and pollution. The environmental justice movement addresses the greater health and environmental risks experienced by minority groups. Although Asian Americans are the fastest growing population in the United States, there is little known about their involvement in the movement. In this thesis, I further observe Asian American involvement in the United States environmental justice movement. By analyzing community case studies, I identify Asian American-specific mobilization challenges and strategies. Interviews with prominent Asian American environmental justice activists reveal activism and collective identity are connected, but vary greatly according to individualized Asian American experiences. …

How Can Human Rights Activism Help Tackle Economic Inequality? Lessons From Mining Affected Communities In South Africa, Allison Corkery

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The dramatic rise in socioeconomic inequality produced by neoliberal globalisation has provoked a crisis of confidence in the human rights community and inspired a wave of debate about whether human rights have anything meaningful to offer in advancing economic justice. The pessimistic view argues human rights are inadequate for challenging socioeconomic inequality because they are too closely aligned to Western liberalism and too uncritical of the rise of capitalism. The more optimistic view does not dismiss these critiques entirely. It argues that they are only valid for particular (arguably dominant) types of human rights praxis, however. Failing to acknowledge this …

Networks Of Isolation: The Case Of Donald J. Trump, Facebook, And The Limits Of Social Movement Theory, Carol L. Stimmel

Sustainability and Social Justice

The 2016 election that catapulted Donald J. Trump to the U.S. presidency has raised questions for how Facebook may have enabled the emergence and coalescence of a social movement among traditionally improbable voters. The research in this paper engages with contemporary social movement theory, assessing its adequacy for explaining the role of Facebook as a primary method for facilitating a social movement among the civically-alienated, who are the most unlikely of all Americans to join an organized collective for change. From a methodological perspective, the exploration takes up the case as a strategy of inquiry to explore social movement theory …

Black Lives Matter: The Movement’S Relevance And Comparison To The 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Stacy Jenkins-Robinson

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The Black Lives Matter movement originated on social media after recent events that took place relating to the murders of unarmed Black men by civilian vigilantes or White policemen. This study examines the relevancy of the Black Lives Matter movement, while comparing it to the 1960s Civil Rights movement, specifically, concerning the differences in readily identifiable leadership. A Likert-scale survey was created to collect data from Old Dominion University students and affiliates who attended the event and students who were enrolled during the Spring 2016 semester, and distributed through the online survey platform Qualtrics.

Analysis of the survey responses showed …

The Medicalization Of Nonhuman Animal Rights: Frame Contestation And The Exploitation Of Disability, Corey Lee Wrenn, Joanne Clark, Maddie Judge, Katherine A. Gilchrist, Delanie Woodlock, Katherine Dotson, Riva Spanos, Jonothan Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

Nonhuman Animal rights activists are sometimes dismissed as ‘crazy’ or irrational by countermovements seeking to protect status quo social structures. Social movements themselves often utilize disability narratives in their claims-making as well. In this article, we argue that Nonhuman Animal exploitation and Nonhuman Animal rights activism are sometimes medicalized in frame disputes. The contestation over mental ability ultimately exploits humans with disabilities. The medicalization of Nonhuman Animal rights activism diminishes activists’ social justice claims, but the movement’s medicalization of Nonhuman Animal use unfairly otherizes its target population and treats disability identity as a pejorative. Utilizing a content analysis of major …

Resonance Of Moral Shocks In Abolitionist Animal Rights Advocacy: Overcoming Contextual Constraints, Corey Lee Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

Jasper and Poulsen (1995) have long argued that moral shocks are critical for recruitment in the nonhuman animal rights movement. Building on this, Decoux (2009) argues that the abolitionist faction of the nonhuman animal rights movement fails to recruit members because it does not effectively utilize descriptions of suffering. However, the effectiveness of moral shocks and subsequent emotional reactions has been questioned. This article reviews the literature surrounding the use of moral shocks in social movements. Based on this review, it is suggested that the exploitation of emotional reactions to depictions of suffering can sometimes prove beneficial to recruitment, but …

An Analysis Of Diversity In Nonhuman Animal Rights Media, Corey Lee Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

Lack of diversity in the ranks as well as a failure to resonate with disadvantaged groups and other anti-oppression movements has been cited as one important barrier to the American Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s success (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2013). It is possible that social movements are actively inhibiting diversity in the ranks and audience by producing literature that reflects a narrow activist identity. This article creates a platform from which these larger issues can be explored by investigating the actual demographic representations present in a small sample of popular media sources produced by the movement for other animals. A content …

Abolition Then And Now: Tactical Comparisons Between The Human Rights Movement And The Modern Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement In The United States, Corey Lee Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap between the two movements, specifically in the need to simultaneously address property status and oppressive ideology. Despite intentional appropriation of terminology and numerous similarities in mobilization efforts, there has been disappointingly little academic discussion on this relationship. There are significant contentions regarding mobilization and goal attainment in the human abolitionist …

The Role Of Professionalization Regarding Female Exploitation In The Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement, Corey Lee Wrenn

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

Adams (2004, The pornography of meat. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd), Deckha (2008, Disturbing images: PETA and the feminist ethics of animal advocacy. Ethics and the environment, 13(2), 35–76), Gaarder (2011, Women and the animal rights movement. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press), Glasser (2011, Tied oppressions: an analysis of how sexist imagery reinforces speciesist sentiment. The Brock review, 12(1), 51–68), and others have criticized People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for sexually exploiting young women in outreach and fundraising efforts. This article extends these critiques in addressing the problematic relationship between objectified volunteer female activists and …

A Critique Of Single-Issue Campaigning And The Importance Of Comprehensive Abolitionist Vegan Advocacy, Corey Lee Wrenn, Rob Johnson

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD

A popular tactic in the professional nonhuman animal rights movement is to utilize species-specific or issue-specific campaigns to increase public concern, motivate participation and extend movement support. This article challenges this traditional tactic of moderate nonhuman animal organizations in critiquing the issue-specific approaches to abolition advanced elsewhere and calls for a holistic abolitionist method that requires advocates to relinquish confusing piecemeal campaigns and instead challenge the underlying problem of speciesism in order to influence lasting and meaningful social change. The article applies Francione's radical theory of nonhuman animal rights, which recognizes the importance of vegan education in challenging this oppression. …

An Analysis Of Diversity In Nonhuman Animal Rights Media, Corey Lee Wrenn

Diversity and Social Movements Collection

Lack of diversity in the ranks as well as a failure to resonate with disadvantaged groups and other anti-oppression movements has been cited as one important barrier to the American Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s success (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2013). It is possible that social movements are actively inhibiting diversity in the ranks and audience by producing literature that reflects a narrow activist identity. This article creates a platform from which these larger issues can be explored by investigating the actual demographic representations present in a small sample of popular media sources produced by the movement for other animals. A content …

White Women Wanted? An Analysis Of Gender Diversity In Social Justice Magazines, Corey Lee Wrenn, Megan Lutz

Diversity and Social Movements Collection

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable …

The Medicalization Of Nonhuman Animal Rights: Frame Contestation And The Exploitation Of Disability, Corey Lee Wrenn, Joanne Clark, Maddie Judge, Katherine A. Gilchrist, Delanie Woodlock, Katherine Dotson, Riva Spanos, Jonothan Wrenn

Animal Rights Movement Collection

Nonhuman Animal rights activists are sometimes dismissed as ‘crazy’ or irrational by countermovements seeking to protect status quo social structures. Social movements themselves often utilize disability narratives in their claims-making as well. In this article, we argue that Nonhuman Animal exploitation and Nonhuman Animal rights activism are sometimes medicalized in frame disputes. The contestation over mental ability ultimately exploits humans with disabilities. The medicalization of Nonhuman Animal rights activism diminishes activists’ social justice claims, but the movement’s medicalization of Nonhuman Animal use unfairly otherizes its target population and treats disability identity as a pejorative. Utilizing a content analysis of major …

The Role Of Professionalization Regarding Female Exploitation In The Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement, Corey Lee Wrenn

Animal Rights Movement Collection

Adams (2004, The pornography of meat. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd), Deckha (2008, Disturbing images: PETA and the feminist ethics of animal advocacy. Ethics and the environment, 13(2), 35–76), Gaarder (2011, Women and the animal rights movement. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press), Glasser (2011, Tied oppressions: an analysis of how sexist imagery reinforces speciesist sentiment. The Brock review, 12(1), 51–68), and others have criticized People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for sexually exploiting young women in outreach and fundraising efforts. This article extends these critiques in addressing the problematic relationship between objectified volunteer female activists and …

African American Women Leaders In The Civil Rights Movement: A Narrative Inquiry, Janet Dewart Bell

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to give recognition to and lift up the voices of African American women leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. African American women were active leaders at all levels of the Civil Rights Movement, though the larger society, the civil rights establishment, and sometimes even the women themselves failed to acknowledge their significant leadership contributions. The recent and growing body of popular and nonacademic work on African American women leaders, which includes some leaders’ writings about their own experiences, often employs the terms “advocate” or “activist” rather than “leader.” In the academic literature, particularly on …

El Crecimiento De Narcotráfico En Rosario: Violencia Disciplinada Y La Resistencia Social Frente A Este Sistema / The Growth Of Narcotrafficking In Rosario: Disciplined Violence And The Social Resistance To Resist This System, Caitlyn Yates

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The theoretical framework behind drug trafficking has thus far failed to mention the relationship between the growth of narcotics trafficking and structural violence. Using Farmer’s structural violence and the Foucauldian concept of biopolitcs, this paper explains the recent growth of narcotics trafficking in Rosario, Argentina. A more holistic approach to the complexity of the drug trafficking phenomenon arises by analyzing the effects of governmental corruption, relaxed politics, the criminalization of the poor, and the recent economic boom. Though this phenomenon is rather recent, the governmental and civilian resistance has none the less mobilized. Taking the theories of Farmer and Galtung …

Abolition Then And Now: Tactical Comparisons Between The Human Rights Movement And The Modern Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement In The United States, Corey Lee Wrenn

Animal Rights Movement Collection

This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap between the two movements, specifically in the need to simultaneously address property status and oppressive ideology. Despite intentional appropriation of terminology and numerous similarities in mobilization efforts, there has been disappointingly little academic discussion on this relationship. There are significant contentions regarding mobilization and goal attainment in the human abolitionist …

A Critique Of Single-Issue Campaigning And The Importance Of Comprehensive Abolitionist Vegan Advocacy, Corey Lee Wrenn, Rob Johnson

Animal Rights Movement Collection

A popular tactic in the professional nonhuman animal rights movement is to utilize species-specific or issue-specific campaigns to increase public concern, motivate participation and extend movement support. This article challenges this traditional tactic of moderate nonhuman animal organizations in critiquing the issue-specific approaches to abolition advanced elsewhere and calls for a holistic abolitionist method that requires advocates to relinquish confusing piecemeal campaigns and instead challenge the underlying problem of speciesism in order to influence lasting and meaningful social change. The article applies Francione's radical theory of nonhuman animal rights, which recognizes the importance of vegan education in challenging this oppression. …

Resonance Of Moral Shocks In Abolitionist Animal Rights Advocacy: Overcoming Contextual Constraints, Corey Lee Wrenn

Animal Rights Movement Collection

Jasper and Poulsen (1995) have long argued that moral shocks are critical for recruitment in the nonhuman animal rights movement. Building on this, Decoux (2009) argues that the abolitionist faction of the nonhuman animal rights movement fails to recruit members because it does not effectively utilize descriptions of suffering. However, the effectiveness of moral shocks and subsequent emotional reactions has been questioned. This article reviews the literature surrounding the use of moral shocks in social movements. Based on this review, it is suggested that the exploitation of emotional reactions to depictions of suffering can sometimes prove beneficial to recruitment, but …

The New American Conservation Movement: New Strategies, Focus And Organizations For The 21st Century, Amy Deanna Northrup

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation provides evidence of the emergence of a new conservation movement in the United States. The strategic, tactical and organizational approaches of traditional conservation efforts, which began in the early 1900s, have shifted during the last two decades. Specifically, the new conservation movement is characterized by three distinct changes. First, many of the well-established conservation organizations, such as the Sierra Club and National Audubon Society, have largely abandoned their traditional focus on increasing the number of acres preserved; instead more defensive and fragmented forms of conservation now reign. The second change to the conservation movement involves a dramatic expansion …

Intentioned Network Convergence: How Social Media Is Redefining, Reorganizing, And Revitalizing Social Movements In The United States, Jesse Janice Klekamp

Scripps Senior Theses

This analysis seeks to understand the power of social media to create sustainable social movements. The 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were one of the first internet-supported acts of protest and illustrate the power of the Internet and social media to bring together diverse coalitions of actors and maintain decentralized power structures. Next, the analysis studies the non-profit advocacy organization Invisible Children and the recent media explosion of their Kony 2012 campaign to make sense of how uses of the Internet have expanded since 1999. The Kony 2012 case illustrates the power of committed networks in disseminating information …

Visual Interventions And The “Crises In Representation” In Environmental Anthropology: Researching Environmental Justice In A Hungarian Romani Neighborhood, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

Participatory visual research, or "visual interventions" (Pink 2007) allow environmental anthropologists to respond to three different “crises of representation”: 1) the critique of ethnographic representation presented by postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist anthropologists, 2) the constructivist critique of nature and the environment, and 3) the “environmental justice” critique demanding representation for the environmental concerns of communities of color. Participatory visual research integrates community members in the process of staking out a research agenda, conducting fieldwork and interpreting data, and communicating and applying research findings. Our project used the Photovoice methodology to generate knowledge and documentation related to environment injustices faced by …

Carpas, Cuentos, And Corridos: Chicano Arts And Community Building, Tanya Marina Mote

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study suggests that effective forms of participation are grounded in histories of opposition and resistance. The intermediate relationship provided by voluntary associations, unions, clubs and even bowling leagues might teach citizens to act democratically; that is, to participate in activities related to electing leaders, but their usefulness extends beyond conventional politics to efforts to expand public life and to promote democracy through a broader set of activities that combine intensely social and personal public engagement, resistance, protest, and opposition, with conventional efforts to influence leaders. The experiences of community based arts organizations provide a lens to examine both the …