Between Mao and Gandhi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ches Thurber
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Relational Theory ◽  
New Wave ◽  
National Data ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonviolent Action ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Ability And Willingness ◽  
Cross National

From Eastern Europe to South Africa to the Arab Spring, nonviolent action has proven capable of overthrowing autocratic regimes and bringing about revolutionary political change. How do dissidents come to embrace a nonviolent strategy in the first place? Why do others rule it out in favor of taking up arms? Despite a new wave of attention to the effectiveness and global impact of nonviolent movements, our understanding of their origins and trajectories remains limited. Drawing on cases from Nepal, Syria, India and South Africa, as well as global cross-national data, this book details the processes through which challenger organizations come to embrace or reject civil resistance as a means of capturing state power. It develops a relational theory, showing how the social ties that underpin challenger organizations shape their ability and willingness to attempt regime change using nonviolent means alone.

scholarly journals Survey Research in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (03) ◽  
pp. 535-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay J. Benstead
Keyword(s):  
Survey Research ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arab Country ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
National Data ◽  
Data Collection Process ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Cross National

ABSTRACTSurvey research has expanded in the Arab world since the 1980s. The Arab Spring marked a watershed when surveying became possible in Tunisia and Libya, and researchers added additional questions needed to answer theoretical and policy questions. Almost every Arab country now is included in the Arab Barometer or World Values Survey. Yet, some scholars express the view that the Arab survey context is more challenging than that of other regions or that respondents will not answer honestly, due to authoritarianism. I argue that this position reflects biases that assume “Arab exceptionalism” more than fair and objective assessments of data quality. Based on cross-national data analysis, I found evidence of systematically missing data in all regions and political regimes globally. These challenges and the increasing openness of some Arab countries to survey research should spur studies on the data-collection process in the Middle East and beyond.

scholarly journals On extending the truncated parameters of transformation in higher education in South Africa into a language of democratic engagement and justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuraan Davids
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Engagement ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Real Challenge ◽  
Do So

Universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are by their constitution expected to both symbolise and enact transformation. While institutions of higher education in South Africa have been terrains of protest and reform – whether during apartheid or post-apartheid – the intense multiplex roles which these institutions assume have metaphorically come home to roost in the past 2 years. Not unlike the social-media-infused rumblings, coined as the ‘Arab Spring’, the recent cascades of #mustfall campaigns have brought to the fore the serious dearth of transformation in higher education and have raised more critical questions about conceptions of transformation, and how these translate into, or reflect, the social and political reform that continues to dangle out of the reach of the majority of South Africans. What, then, does transformation mean and imply? How does an institution reach a transformed state? How does one know when such a state is reached? These are a few of the concerns this article seeks to address. But it hopes to do so by moving beyond the thus far truncated parameters of transformation – which have largely been seeped in the oppositional politics of historical advantage and disadvantage, and which, in turn, have ensured that conceptions of transformation have remained trapped in discourses of race and racism. Instead, this article argues that the real challenge facing higher education is not so much about transformation, as it is about enacting democracy through equipping students to live and think differently in a pluralist society.

The Social Terrain of Rebel Held Territory

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272095185
Author(s):  
Jori Breslawski
Keyword(s):  
Local Order ◽  
National Data ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Cohesion ◽  
The Social ◽  
Territorial Control ◽  
Governing Institutions ◽  
Cross National

The extent of local order varies widely in rebel held areas, from total chaos to well-run governing institutions. When these institutions exist, why do some include civilian input in local affairs, while others exclude civilians from governance? I argue that rebels choose different governing strategies that maximize their utility of territorial control, based on certain characteristics of civilian inhabitants populating the territory. Rebels’ constituency determines whether rebels seek to govern civilians or control them solely with coercive violence, and community cohesion (or lack thereof) then determines the type of institutions that rebels develop. I focus on three different outcomes for communities under rebel control—no institutions, exclusive institutions, and inclusive institutions. I test my argument using historical, statistical, and case evidence, leveraging original cross-national data on local order in rebel held territory as well as interviews with village heads, ex-combatants, and community members in Aceh, Indonesia.

Decolonizing Civil Resistance*

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Chabot ◽  
Stellan Vinthagen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Nonviolent Action ◽  
The Many ◽  
Blind Spots

Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve public contention with unjust states to expand political rights and civil liberties. We argue that this perspective is an example of Eurocentric universalism, which has three blind spots: it tends to ignore struggles seeking to subvert rather than join the liberal world system, as well as coloniality's effects on nonviolent action, and emerging subjugated knowledges. We propose going beyond these limitations by learning from social movements focusing on human dignity, material self-sufficiency, and local autonomy, especially in the Global South. Our essay examines two classic decolonizing thinkers (Gandhi and Fanon) and two contemporary decolonizing struggles (the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Abahlali in South Africa). Each emphasizes coloniality, constructive over contentious resistance, transformations in political subjectivity, and emancipatory visions that go beyond Western ideals. We call for further research on the many different stories of civil resistance across the worldwide coloniality line.

Social Ties and the Strategy of Civil Resistance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ches Thurber
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Nonviolent Action ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines the impact of social ties on a challenger's ability to initiate a civil resistance campaign. Recent waves of nonviolent uprisings, from the color revolutions of Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring, have sparked renewed scholarly interest in civil resistance as a strategy in conflict. However, most research has focused on the effectiveness and outcomes of civil resistance, with less attention paid to when, why, and how challengers to regime power come to embrace a strategy of nonviolent action in the first place. Drawing upon a longitudinal analysis of challenger organizations and coalitions in Nepal, this article illustrates how social ties inform challengers’ assessments of the viability of civil resistance and consequently shape their strategic behavior. The findings complicate state-centric approaches to contentious politics by showing how diverse actors within the same state face different sets of political opportunities and constraints. They also highlight the indeterminate effects of ideology, as variation in challengers’ social ties drive Gandhians to take up arms and Maoists to lay them down.

Social Design for Services Framework

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie SARANTOU ◽  
Satu MIETTINEN
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Service Design ◽  
Social Design ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.

scholarly journals Assessing Short-Term Fertility Intentions and Their Realisation Using the Generations and Gender Survey: Pitfalls and Challenges

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Brzozowska ◽  
Eva Beaujouan
Keyword(s):  
Fertility Intentions ◽  
Fertility Intention ◽  
National Data ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Questionnaire Adaptation ◽  
Cross National

AbstractThe use of fertility intention questions to study individual childbearing behaviour has developed rapidly in recent decades. In Europe, the Generations and Gender Surveys are the main sources of cross-national data on fertility intentions and their realisation. This study investigates how an inconsistent implementation of a question about wanting a child now affects the cross-country comparability of intentions to have a child within the next three years and their realisation. We conduct our analysis separately for women and men at prime and late reproductive ages in Austria, France, Italy and Poland. The results show that the overall share of respondents intending to have a child at some point in their life is similar in all four analysed countries. However, once the time horizon and the degree of certainty of fertility intentions are included, substantial cross-country differences appear, particularly in terms of proceptive behaviour and, consequently, the realisation of fertility intentions. We conclude that the inconsistent questionnaire adaptation makes it very difficult to assess the role of country context in the realisation of childbearing intentions.

scholarly journals Boundaries of solidarity: a meta-ethnography of mask use during past epidemics to inform SARS-CoV-2 suppression

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. e004068
Author(s):  
Po Man Tsang ◽  
Audrey Prost
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Risk Perception ◽  
Healthcare Access ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Collective Levels ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Usa

BackgroundMany countries aiming to suppress SARS-CoV-2 recommend the use of face masks by the general public. The social meanings attached to masks may influence their use, but remain underinvestigated.MethodsWe systematically searched eight databases for studies containing qualitative data on public mask use during past epidemics, and used meta-ethnography to explore their social meanings. We compared key concepts within and across studies, then jointly wrote a critical synthesis.ResultsWe found nine studies from China (n=5), Japan (n=1), Mexico (n=1), South Africa (n=1) and the USA (n=1). All studies describing routine mask use during epidemics were from East Asia. Participants identified masks as symbols of solidarity, civic responsibility and an allegiance to science. This effect was amplified by heightened risk perception (eg, during SARS in 2003), and by seeing masks on political leaders and in outdoor public spaces. Masks also acted as containment devices to manage threats to identity at personal and collective levels. In China and Japan, public and corporate campaigns framed routine mask use as individual responsibility for disease prevention in return for state- or corporate-sponsored healthcare access. In most studies, mask use waned as risk perception fell. In contexts where masks were mostly worn by patients with specific diseases (eg, for patients with tuberculosis in South Africa), or when trust in government was low (eg, during H1N1 in Mexico), participants described masks as stigmatising, uncomfortable or oppressive.ConclusionFace masks can take on positive social meanings linked to solidarity and altruism during epidemics. Unfortunately, these positive meanings can fail to take hold when risk perception falls, rules are seen as complex or unfair, and trust in government is low. At such times, ensuring continued use is likely to require additional efforts to promote locally appropriate positive social meanings, simplifying rules for use and ensuring fair enforcement.

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