Chair’s Message

Chair’s Message

Tina Fetner, CBSM Section Chair, Professor of Sociology, McMaster University

  • from CriticalMass Bulletin, Volume 45(1) Spring 2020: The newsletter of the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, American Sociological Association

In the face of an ongoing global pandemic, the ASA 2020 annual meeting has been cancelled. What to do in its wake is an open question. The ASA has been contacting presenters with options to participate in an online meeting; I’m sure you have received their email. They encourage each of us to make our own choices about whether they have the capacity to develop and deliver a presentation. 

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The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act in India

The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act in India

by Mangala Subramaniam, Purdue University

  • from CriticalMass Bulletin, Volume 45(1) Spring 2020: The newsletter of the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, American Sociological Association

Past scholarship in social movements conceptualize democracies and dictatorships as a binary. This dichotomous view of political regimes limits our understanding of the ways in which states respond to challengers, and how democracies can adopt repressive measures that work to concentrate power within the government. India’s passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and its response to the resulting protests, shows the need to reconceptualize the state to consider how the concentration of power—even within multi-party democracies—can enable repression and violence of protestors.

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Chair’s Message

Chair’s Message

Tina Fetner, McMaster University

How are we supposed to teach our courses, complete our studies and write up our findings when so much collective action and social change is going on all around us? Impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives. Climate strikes mobilizing hundreds of thousands of demonstrators around the world. White nationalists and other right-wing extremists gathering strength in online forums. As scholars of collective behavior and social movements, we may have trouble catching our breath at times, but at least we will never be bored.

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Call for Submissions: CBSM at ASA 2020

Call for Submissions: CBSM at ASA 2020

Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtables

E. Colin Ruggero, Community College of Philadelphia; ecolinr@gmail.com

Current Scholarship on Activism, Contention, Social Movements

This session seeks scholarship on a broad range of scholarly questions regarding resistance, activism, contentious politics and social movements. Of particular interest are studies that cut across social movement cases to examine broad themes across social movement organizations and sectors.

Catherine Corrigall-Brown, University of British Columbia; corrigall.brown@ubc.ca

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Panel Summaries: CBSM at ASA 2019

Panel Summaries: CBSM at ASA 2019

ASA 2019: Thinking About Abeyance in the 21st Century

Nancy Whittier, Smith College and Jo Reger, Oakland University

This session, organized by Jo Reger and presided over by Nancy Whittier, aimed to examine how the foundational concept of social movement abeyance functions and is relevant in the 21st century. Articulated by Verta Taylor and Leila Rupp in their investigation of the “doldrums” of the women’s movement in the early 20th century, abeyance has been applied to multiple social movement contexts to illustrate how movements survive in period of low mobilization. The invited panel of Alison Dahl Crossley, Fabio Rojas, and Suzanne Staggenborg explored the transformation of the abeyance concept over time and considered its relevance in today’s context of rapid social movement mobilization. Their comments were followed by reflections and discussion from Rupp and Taylor and a lively discussion with audience members. Some of the panelists’ core points were as follows:

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Highlander’s Mission: Social Justice

by Aldon Morris, Northwestern University

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

The historically important Highlander Research and Education Center was deliberately attacked. On March 29, 2019, an early morning fire destroyed its executive office building along with historic documents, speeches, artifacts and memorabilia stored there. Although an investigation of the arson continues, all indications point to a white supremacy group as the perpetrator.

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How “More Cowbell, More Cowbell” Worked! Disruptive Tactics and the Outcome of the UIUC Labor Protest

by Amirhossein Teimouri, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

In late February 2018, I found myself joining fellow graduate students in a strike on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The strike at the UIUC was a rare opportunity for a student-led labor movement to rise against the corporatization of the public education. Although this was a campus-wide movement without nation-wide repercussions, participants and activists integrated the movement to a broader nation-wide public education unrest.

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Social Media in a Controversial Student Election: New Frontiers for Political Strife

by Anson Au, University of Toronto

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Carol (name changed to protect her identity) ran for student president at one of the largest universities in Canada. Her platform was dressed up in the usual rhetoric for campaigns in student elections: fighting for more resources for students, ensuring students’ voices were heard and represented, and so on. But Carol was also vocal in advocating for the freedom of an ethnic group in China, making the controversial claim that the territory should be politically autonomous and separated from China and that the cultural history of this ethnic group was so distinct that they deserved independence.

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Students vs. Tuition Hikes

by Didem Türkoğlu, UNC Chapel Hill

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

Students protest tuitions. Perhaps more so than ever. The photos from the protests in Chile, Canada, and South Africa come to mind quickly. Then there are less globally covered student protests in Germany and Turkey. What makes these student protests so significant? In a forthcoming special issue in Current Sociology, scholars focus on case studies from the global north and the global south to provide answers to this question.

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