1,721,026 research outputs found
Contextualizing the biographical outcomes of Provisional IRA former activists: a structure-agency dynamic.
No full textThis chapter shows how, in the case of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998, also known as the ‘troubles’), the British counter-terrorist policies and reintegration programs have produced the external factors and forces that have in part shaped the post-armed activism lives of the Provisional IRA (henceforth PIRA) volunteers. The majority of activists did not follow British reintegration programmes in the way they were designed to function, that is, by integrating disengaged Republicans into state structures and/or transform them into obedient, passive citizens of the British state. Rather the large majority of former PIRA activists formed their post-armed activism lives with their own agency and previ- ous skills learned while in the armed group and in prison, and became involved in community activism
Institutional and Organizational Approaches. Social movement studies perspectives on political violence
No full textPolitical violence by non-state actors, whether in the form of clandestine groups, riots, violent insurgencies, or civil wars, o en emerges in the context of social movements, can shi back to non-violent methods of contentious collective action, and in many cases does not mark a new and separate phase of contention but proceeds in parallel with street protests, marches, boycotts, and strikes. At the same time, di erent forms of political violence are interlinked and are part of a continuum of repertoires of actions—rather than representing discrete and mutually exclusive types—and o en occur successively or simultaneously during processes of con ict escalation (when violence increases in scale, type, and scope) or de-escalation (when violence overall decreases).
In this chapter, “political violence” is preferred to the term “terrorism” because it allows us to capture continuities and shi s between di erent forms of violent and non-violent contention as well as variance within violent repertoires. Moreover, “terrorism,” because of its strong normative and political connotations, is much more contested, has doubtful heuristic value, and has o en been used to stigmatize rather than to explain the social phenomena under examination (Tilly 2003). Political violence, in this sense, involves a heterogeneous repertoire of actions oriented at in icting physical, psychological, and symbolic damage on individuals and/or property with the intention of in uencing various audiences for a ecting or resisting political, social, and/or cultural change
The consequences of social movements: taking stock and looking forward
No full textCitizens of both democratic and authoritarian countries seem to become less supportive of those in power and more willing to use non-conventional forms of collective action for putting pressure on authorities. This was the case, for example, during the past few years, with the major upsurges of protest, in Eastern Europe (Coloured Revolutions), in the Middle East (Arab Spring), in Southern Europe (the Indignados in Spain, the Agonaktismenoi in Greece), in the United States (Occupy Wall Street), in Chile (the Pinquinos), as well as anti-government protests in Hong Kong, Thailand, and South Africa. Such waves of mobilization, comparable in their size to those of the 1960s and 1970s, bring to the fore some important questions for social movement research and call for a deeper understanding of social and political change: When and how does mobilization make a difference? When and how do activists achieve their goals? Is protest a necessary and/or sufficient condition for producing social and political change? Do social movements have any long-term legacies on our societies? Do they change the life choices of those participating in protest activities? How does all this vary both across contexts and across different movements?
These and related questions are not new, but until the 1970s scholars paid little attention to the consequences of social movements as protest was mainly regarded as an irrational action with no instrumental goals (Buechler 2004). Since then, also thanks to some pioneering works (Gamson 1990; Piven and Cloward 1979; Schumaker 1975), a new research field emerged slowly and allowed one of the present authors to note as late as in 1998 that “we still lack systematic empirical analyses that would add to our knowledge of the conditions under which movements produce certain effects” (Giugni 1998: 373). The field was revamped, amongst other things, also thanks to two edited collections entirely devoted to the study of different kinds of the effects of social movements (Giugni et al. 1998, 1999). This sudden focus on social movement outcomes could be related not only to the wave of democratization in the Eastern Europe and Latin America in the 1990s, but also to the fact that sufficient time had passed from the mobilization of the 1968 generation in Western Europe and civil rights mobilization in the United States
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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