Dear Colleagues: Below I list the contents of the Mobilization’s latest issue, with short descriptions of the articles and contact information of the authors. This is an excellent issue. For submission information and inquiries, please contact Neal.Caren@unc.edu
FIELD EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF EMERGENT MOBILIZATION IN ONLINE COLLECTIVE ACTION
Gabriela Gonzalez Vaillant, Juhi Tyagi, Idil Afife Akin, Fernanda Page Poma, Michael Schwartz, and Arnout van de Rijt arnout.vanderijt@stonybrook.
When do online petitions succeed? By tracking signatures on change.org this article explores two opposing dynamics that help answer this question. The authors experimentally manipulate the number of signatures on certain petitions to demonstrate that adding just 12 signatures has a modest positive effect on the subsequent total number of signatures collected. By charting the number of signatures each petition gathers over a year, however, they are able to document that these rich-get-richer tendencies are dwarfed by other factors.
UNPACKING FRAME RESONANCE: PROFESSIONAL AND EXPERIENTIAL EXPERTISE IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS CONTENTION
Erica Morrell erica.c.morrell@gmail.com
Erica Morrell’s article makes an important contribution to framing theory. It analyzes the use of professional expertise—formal training and graduate degrees—and contrasts it with experiential expertise—defined as insight through lived experience. Focusing on contention between Northern agroindustrial corporations and small farmers in the global South over new crops and copyrights, Morrell shows how combining these two expertises created a highly resonant frame—one which overcame strong resource advantages of the large seed corporations in the policymaking process.
THE ORGANIZATION OF EXPERT ACTIVISM: SHADOW MOBILIZATION IN TWO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Scott Frickel, Rebekah Torcasso, and Annika Anderson Scott_Frickel@brown.edu
This is another article that tracks the increasing importance of expert activism, this time regarding its organization and deployment. Using an innovative methodology to uncover experts who often prefer to remain anonymous, the article compares two regional SMOs to trace the submerged networks by which the “shadow mobilization” of experts occurs. The findings about the structure of expert activism provide important empirical benchmarks to researchers about the organization of epistemic activism and knowledge politics.
GAINING A VOICE: STORYTELLING AND UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH ACTIVISM IN CHICAGO
Thomas Swerts Thomas.swerts@uantwerpen.be
This article is a fine-grained analysis of the DREAMERS movement. It documents the narrativity of activists’ coming-out stories, and how audience makeup and the narratives’ intent shape story structure. It shows how strong emotions motivate both speakers and audiences alike, mobilizing new members and legitimating the claims of the DREAMERS. The article findings are relevant to the role of narratives in other youth movements, notably, the black-lives-matter in the U.S. and los indignados in Europe.
PRECONFLICT MOBILIZATION STRATEGIES AND URBAN-RUAL TRANSITION: THE CASES OF THE PKK AND THE FLN/EZLN
Francis Patrick O’Connor and Leonidas Oikonomakis Leonidas.Oikonomakis@EUI.eu
Today we think of the PKK in Turkey and the EZLN in Mexico as ethnic armed resistance movements rooted in the countryside. Both movements, however, trace their origins to urban youth tied to university political settings. O’Connor and Oikonomakis examine how both movements were able to make massive geographic and constituency shifts during their pre-mobilization period. They highlight the importance of organization ideological flexibility and state repression strategies.
CONCEALED REPRESSIONS: LABOR ORGANIZING CAMPAIGNS AND ANTIUTION PRACTICES IN THE APPAREL INDUSTRY OF GUATEMALA
Quentin Delpech QuentDelpech@yahoo.fr
Antisweatshop mobilizations have transformed the apparel sector, but not always in ways that are beneficial to workers. Based on two years of fieldwork in the Guatemalan apparel sector, Delpech details how local factory managers have shifted their repressive repertoire. While overt repressive oppressive acts against union organizers have decline, there has been a in crease in “concealed strategies” of repression, including corporate restructuring, antiunion discrimination, ignoring targeting gang violence, and illicit relations with state officials.