Political Invisibility And Mobilization

Political Invisibility and Mobilization explores the unseen opportunities available to those considered irrelevant and disregarded during periods of violent repression. In a comparative study of three women’s peace movements, in Argentina, the former Yugoslavia, and Liberia, the concept of political invisibility is developed to identify the unexpected beneficial effects of marginalization in the face of regime violence and civil war. Each chapter details the unique ways these movements avoided being targeted as threats to regime power and how they utilized free spaces to mobilize for peace. Their organizing efforts among international networks are described as a form of field-shifting that gained them the authority to expand their work at home to bring an end to war and rebuild society. The robust conceptual framework developed herein offers new ways to analyze the variations and nuances of how social status interacts with opportunities for effective activism. This book presents a sophisticated theory of political invisibility with historical detail from three remarkable stories of courage in the face of atrocity. With relevance for political sociology, social movement studies, women’s studies, and peace and conflict studies, it contributes to scholarly understanding of mobilization in repressive states while also offering strategic insight to movement practitioners. Winner of the ASA Peace, War and Social Conflict Section's 2021 Outstanding Book Award.

Introduction: repression and mobilization : insights from political science and sociology / Christian Davenport -- Protest mobilization, protest repression, and their interaction / Clark McPhail and John D. McCarthy -- Precarious regimes and matchup problems in the explanation of repressive policy / Vince Boudreau -- The dictator's dilemma / Ronald A. Francisco -- When activists ask for trouble : state-dissident interactions and the New Left cycle of resistance in the United States and Japan / Gilda Zwerman and Patricia Steinhoff -- Talking the walk : speech acts and resistance in authoritarian regimes / Hank Johnston -- Soft repression : ridicule, stigma, and silencing in gender-based movements / Myra Marx Ferree -- Repression and the public sphere : discursive opportunities for repression against the extreme right in Germany in the 1990s / Ruud Koopmans -- On the quantification of horror : notes from the field / Patrick Ball -- Repression, mobilization, and explanation / Charles Tilly -- How to organize your mechanisms : research programs, stylized facts, and historical narratives / Mark Lichbach.

This innovative collection emphasises the contribution of women to the resolution of conflicts through the means of nonviolent tools. It discusses their achievements and their tactics, bringing together international scholars to draw on intersectionality as an important methodological tool in the analysis of the work of many outstanding women from diverse countries such as Yemen, Nigeria, Russia, India and the USA. The focus of this volume is the impact of women successfully building peace though nonviolent means. It also provides a study of how, and why, gender matters in the contemporary world, and will serve the needs of students and scholars in peace and conflict resolution studies, women’s studies, international development, political science, history and sociology.

This book began as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1991 then evolved more into a historical sociology of national formation and its cultural mindset. Cultural nationalism is a widely debated but poorly understood process. Contrary to prevailing perceptions, the Cold War may have given way to a more progressive open society, but the politicization of ethnicity hardened a more deeply entrenched cultural frame of mind. Instead of liberating an indigenous reality, Taiwanese consciousness has ironically polarized the political dead ends of reunification and independence. In the final analysis, the ethnography can serve as a paradigmatic case study for critical cultural studies. There are clear ramifications also for a comparative study of the cultural politics of other Chinese speaking or Asian societies and their histories.

Migrants fleeing economic hardship or violence are entitled to a range of protections and rights under domestic and international law, yet they are often denied such protections in practice. In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, migrant acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaining politically and socially invisible. These unwritten expectations, which Jeffrey D. Pugh calls the "invisibility bargain", produce a precarious status in which migrants' visible differences or overt political demands on the state may be met with hostile backlash from the host society. In this context, governance networks of state and non-state actors form an institutional web that can provide indirect access to rights, resources, and protection, but simultaneously help migrants avoid negative backlash against visible political activism. The Invisibility Bargain seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in receiving societies and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Specifically, the book examines Ecuador, the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America, and assesses how it achieved migrant human security gains despite weak state presence in peripheral areas. Pugh deploys evidence from 15 months of fieldwork spanning ten years in Ecuador, including 170 interviews, an original survey of Colombian migrants in six provinces, network analysis, and discourse analysis of hundreds of presidential speeches and news media articles. He argues that localities with more dense networks composed of more diverse actors tend to produce greater human security for migrants and their neighbors. The book challenges the conventional understanding of migration and security, providing a new approach to the negotiation of authority between state and society. By examining the informal pathways to human security, Pugh dismantles the false dichotomy between international and national politics, and exposes the micro politics of institutional innovation.

Examining how marginalized groups use their identities, resources, cultural traditions, violence and non-violence to assert power and exert pressure, this volume shines a light on the interaction of these groups with governments, international organizations, businesses and universities.

Examines Israel's decision to legalize the status of some undocumented non-Jewish Latino migrant families on the basis of their children's cultural assimilation and identification with the State, and argues that this decision signifies a recognition of the importance of practical belonging for understanding citizenship and national identity.

Nonviolence is celebrated and practiced around the world, as a universal 'method for all human conflict.' This Element describes how nonviolence has evolved into a global repertoire, a patterned form of contentious political performance that has spread as an international movement of movements, systematizing and institutionalizing particular forms of protest as best claims-making practice. It explains how the formal organizational efforts of social movement emissaries and favorable and corresponding global models of state and civic participation have enabled the globalization of nonviolence. The Element discusses a historical perspective of this process to illuminate how understanding nonviolence as a contentious performance can explain the repertoire's successes and failures across contexts and over time. The Element underscores the dynamics of contention among global repertoires and suggests future research more closely examines the challenges posed by institutionalization.