Category: activism

Please find details of a CFP for a Special Issue in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy which we hope is of interest and relevance to the group:––-

CFP: Protest and Activism With(out) Organisation

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 The economic, political, social, cultural and environmental crises of our time continue to provoke and inspire a remarkable range of social movements into existence. These multiple forms of protest and activism express and embody a politics of hope – captured both in alternative narratives that envisage new post-crisis possibilities, and through the physicality of collective and popular resistance. In this context, the Special Issue of The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy is particularly intend on interrogating the socio-spatial forms of ‘organisation’ that underpin protest and activism. When taking a closer look at the organisational nature across these activist landscapes for example, it becomes apparent that resistance led through membership-based, co-ordinated hierarchical organisations (e.g. Trade Unions, NGOs) still retains an important visibility and influence in agitating for change. However, in addition perhaps, and in some meaningful waybeyond, these more traditional forms of organised resistance, there exists important diverse and spontaneous forms of everyday activism, one, perhaps, consistent with a more horizontal and anarchistic praxis of self-organisation.

Questioning the relationship between activism with – and without – organisation throws up some interesting and important inter-disciplinary questions. At the most fundamental level it gives us cause to interrogate the very idea of activism: where does activism begin and end? Who gets to be an activist? Seeking to engage a more nuanced understanding of the differences between organized and unorganized forms of activism, provokes the question of how informal experiences of activism, encourage engagement with more organised forms of activism (and vice versa). Is the relationship between the two antagonistic, competitive or complementary to each other? How are organisational forms of activism dictated to by specific social and spatial temporalities, particularly at a time of crisis? Indeed in these (post)modern times is it meaningful to frame the organisation of activism within a binary relationship (either formal or informal)? Rather should we be encouraged to consider them on an organisational spectrum of difference (more formal, less formal and so on)? If desirable, how can a more informed complex understanding of the organisational natures of activism allow us to better recognise, value, strengthen and link up different types of patterns of activism and resistance?

To these ends we welcome papers of up to 8000 words addressing empirical or theoretical aspects focused on organisation of activism and protest, past and present, situated in any part of the world and at any scale.

Deadlines:

 Please send 250-300 word abstracts directly to the Guest Editors, Richard White(richard.white@shu.ac.uk)  and Tricia Wood (pwood@yorku.ca ) by 15 August 2015.

Full papers – between 5,000 to 8,000 words – must be submitted on-line to the IJSSP journal by 01 December 2015.

More information about The Journal for International Sociology and Social Policy can be found here: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=ijssp.