Organizing At The Margins

This edited volume presents complex issues surrounding economic and cultural injustices in the global South and the social imaginaries articulated by vulnerable communities in these extractive zones. These organizations of struggle by disenfranchised members in the global South bring forth a collective of knowledge to decolonize organizational theory and think of organizing a more just world. The essays in this volume critique and connect meanings of “organizations” in relation to neoliberalism, coloniality, and social justice. More specifically, scholars engage with ideas of resistance such as invisible histories in management theory, hybrid collective action, self-determination and indigenous sovereignty, and decolonizing institutions. The chapters also cover a wide range of locations including feminist movements in Latin America, the struggles of Palestinians in self-exile to connect with their homeland, and reproductive labor in Sri Lanka to the decolonial potential of Black Lives Matter in the US and insights into organizing resistance in parts of Asia and Africa. For scholars and policymakers, this book presents emancipatory essays that interrogate the cultural, social, political, and historical issues pertaining to organizations in the context of the neoliberal economy.

The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

This volume addresses teaching and research across disciplines, communication and identity development, and the centrality of communication in our quickly changing world. Contributors convey the social and global need, value, and responsibility of communication instruction across disciplines.

The world is wrought with risks that may harm people and cost lives. The news is riddled with reports of natural disasters (wildfires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes), industrial disasters (chemical spills, water and air pollution), and health pandemics (e.g., SARS, H1NI, COVID19). Effective risk communication is critical to mitigating harms. The body of research in this handbook reveals the challenges of communicating such messages, affirms the need for dialogue, embraces the role of instruction in proactively communicating risk, acknowledges the function of competing risk messages, investigates the growing influence of new media, and constantly reconsiders the ethical imperative for communicating recommendations for enhanced safety.

This book brings together a team of renowned social scientists to ask not why climate change is happening, but how we might learn from its human dimensions to raise public and political will to fight against the climate crisis. Despite efforts for mitigation, global emission levels continue to increase annually and the world’s wealthiest nations, including all of the G20 countries, have failed to meet their Paris Climate Goals. In the absence of political will, many have called for individuals to act on climate change by mitigating their own carbon footprint through having fewer children, driving less, using LED lightbulbs, or by becoming vegetarians. While compelling, individual lifestyle changes on this scale are unlikely to prevent climate disaster. Resolving the Climate Crisis presents informed solutions for social change that center human behavior and emotions, political systems, and societal structures. Across a series of concise and accessible chapters, authors explore potential solutions to climate change, addressing topics including Indigenous ecologies, LGBTQ+ community engagement, renewable energy technologies, and climate justice. Their expert engagement with the social and behavioural sciences makes this book not only an essential handbook of climate change solutions but also an innovative model for public-facing social science scholarship. Resolving the Climate Crisis will be an essential resource for students and researchers of climate change, as well as policy makers working to develop meaningful strategies for combatting the climate crisis.

The essays in this collection start with the premise that although race, like class and gender, is socially constructed, all three categories have been shaped profoundly by their context in a capitalist society. Race, in other words, is a historical category that develops not only in dialectical relation to class and gender but also in relation to the material conditions in which all three are forged. In addition to discussing and analyzing various dimensions of the African American experience, contributors also consider the ways in which race plays itself out in the experience of Asian Americans and in the very different geopolitical environments of the British Empire and postcolonial Africa. Contributors are Pedro Caban, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, David Crockett, Theodore Koditschek, Scott Kurashige, Clarence Lang, Minkah Makalani, Helen A. Neville, Ibitola O. Pearce, David Roediger, Monica M. White, and Jeffrey Williams.

Women have experienced decades of economic and political repression across Latin America, where many nations are built upon patriarchal systems of power. However, a recent confluence of political, economic, and historical factors has allowed for the emergence of civil society organizations (CSOs) that afford women a voice throughout the region. Leadership from the Margins describes and analyzes the unique leadership styles and challenges facing the women leaders of CSOs in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. Based on ethnographic research, Serena Cosgrove's analysis offers a nuanced account of the distinct struggles facing women, and how differences of class, political ideology, and ethnicity have informed their outlook and organizing strategies. Using a gendered lens, she reveals the power and potential of women's leadership to impact the direction of local, regional, and global development agendas.