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Political Movements (political + movement)
Selected AbstractsHow should corporations deal with environmental scepticism?CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2006Peter Jacques Abstract Environmental scepticism, or the effort to ,debunk' environmental claims, is gaining visibility in world affairs. This complicates the position of corporations that are genuine in their efforts for conscientious productive work. This article explains some of the primary movements found in scepticism and argues that the truth of the sceptical claims is sufficiently contested that corporations should err on the side of caution and treat environmental scepticism as a political movement with a narrow support base, not as a scientific basis for policy. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Standardizing Knowledge in a Multicultural SocietyCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 1 2005CHRISTINE SLEETER ABSTRACT Across the United States, in an attempt to raise standards for student learning, states have developed curriculum standards that specify what students are to learn. Raising standards has become synonymous with standardizing curriculum. This study critically examines the reading/language arts and history-social science standards documents in California to explore how the standards movement has reconfigured codes of power, and in whose interests. To address this question, we used Bernstein's (1975) theory of codes of power in curriculum. Bernstein suggested that codes of power can be uncovered by examining how curriculum is classified and framed. Our analysis suggests that the state's curriculum standards fit within a political movement to reconfigure power relations among racial, ethnic, language, and social class groupings. This is not simply about trying to improve student learning, but more important, about reasserting who has a right to define what schools are for, whose knowledge has most legitimacy, and how the next generation should think about the social order and their place within it. [source] Evidence-based practice and health visiting: the need for theoretical underpinnings for evaluationJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 6 2000Ruth Elkan BA(Hons) Evidence-based practice and health visiting: the need for theoretical underpinnings for evaluation In this paper we argue that evidence-based practice, which is being introduced throughout the British National Health Service to make decisions about the allocation of limited resources, provides a welcome opportunity for health visitors to demonstrate their efficacy, skills and professionalism. However, the paper argues that to view health visiting as evidence-based is not to reduce health visiting merely to a technology through which scientific solutions are applied to social problems. Rather, health visiting needs to be viewed as a political movement, based on a particular model of society, which shapes the goals which health visitors pursue and influences the strategies they adopt to achieve their goals. The paper describes various models of health visiting as a way of showing how the goals of health visiting are always framed within a particular set of assumptions and causal explanations. The paper then turns to look at the issue of evaluating health visiting services. It is argued that evaluation should properly take account of the models which shape health visitors' goals and intervention strategies, and in turn, health visitors need to be explicit about the theoretical frameworks underpinning their interventions. Finally, it is argued that health visitors' knowledge and understanding of a range of models of society enables them to move between the various models to choose the most appropriate and effective means of intervention. Hence it is concluded that the emphasis on evidence-based practice provides health visitors with a valuable opportunity to show that their unique, professional skills and understanding are the preconditions for effective intervention. [source] Law, Struggle, and Political Transformation in Northern IrelandJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2000Kieran McEvoy This article analyses the role of law as an element of the Republican Movement's violent and political struggle during the Northern Ireland conflict. The trials and legal hearings of paramilitary defendants, the use of judicial reviews in the prisons, and the use of law in the political arena are chosen as three interconnected sites which highlight the complex interaction between law and other forms of struggle. The author argues that these three sites illustrate a number of themes in understanding the role of law in processes of struggle and political transformation. These include: law as a series of dialogical processes both inside and outside a political movement; law as an instrumental process of struggle designed to materially and symbolically ,resist'; and the constitutive effects of legal struggle upon a social and political movement. The article concludes with a discussion as to whether or not Republicans' emphasis upon ,rights and equality' and an end to armed struggle represents a ,sell out' of traditional Republican objectives. [source] Against the notion of a ,new racism'JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2005Colin Wayne Leach Abstract Despite the de jure equality achieved in the second half of the 20th century, racial discrimination and racist political movements persist. This has encouraged the orthodoxy that a ,new racism' serves as an ideological basis of contemporary white investment in racial inequality in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. It is argued that this ,new racism' is shown in more subtle and indirect formal expressions, such as a denial of societal discrimination, rather than the once popular expressions of ,old-fashioned' genetic inferiority and segregationism. In opposition to this conceptualization, I review quantitative and qualitative studies from social psychology, sociology and political science, as well as historical analyses, to show that the ,old-fashioned' formal expression of racism was not especially popular before de jure racial equality and is not especially unpopular now. I also show that there is nothing new about formal expressions that criticize cultural difference or deny societal discrimination. Thus, there is greater historical continuity in racism than the notion of a ,new racism' allows. This suggests that the first task of a critical social psychology of racism is a proper conceptualization of racism itself. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Contrasting Burns and Bass: Does the transactional-transformational paradigm live up to Burns' philosophy of transforming leadership?JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Issue 3 2007Dmitry Khanin Both proponents and critics view the transactional-transformational paradigm (Bass, 1997, 1998) as the brainchild of Burns' (1978) philosophy of transforming leadership. However, Burns (2003) has criticized the paradigm's narrow managerialist orientation and the claim that it is uniformly applicable to any culture and organization. In this article, I first summarize and articulate Burns' (1978, 2003) and Bass' (1985, 1998) approaches toward leadership, then compare them by using a new four-dimensional framework. Extending previous research (Yukl, 2006), the framework represents a useful tool for detecting the commonalities and differences between leadership theories with respect to the core dimensions, categories, and aspects of leadership. My inspection indicates that Burns' and Bass' conceptions stem from disparate contexts and differ in their applicability. Thus, Burns' (1978) ideas stem from political movements ideally characterized by mutual quest for shared meaning and active collaboration between leaders and followers. Conversely, Bass' (1985) approach springs from military training in which leaders transfer existing knowledge to followers and stimulate their activity by using a variety of tools from inspirational motivation to individualized consideration. This study has important practical implications as it delineates the boundary conditions of the transactional-transformational paradigm and warns against its uncritical adoption in incongruent leadership contexts. [source] Myth and mobilisation: the triadic structure of nationalist rhetoricNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2001Matthew Levinger Drawing on the theory of collective action frames, this essay analyses the use of images of a primordial ,golden age' in the rhetoric of national mobilisation. Such idealised images of the past, juxtaposed with exaggerated depictions of a degraded present and a utopian future condition, constitute a rhetorical triad that is an effective instrument for motivating mass political movements. The model developed here emphasises the links between identity formation and political mobilisation, analysing how narratives of communal decline and redemption play a central role in defining the agendas of nationalist movements. [source] "Peace Is the Concern of Every Mother": Communist and Social Democratic Women's Antiwar Activism in British Columbia, 1948,1960PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 4 2010Brian T. Thorn This article discusses the antiwar activism of Canadian women within two left-wing political movements: the revolutionary Communist Party of Canada and the social democratic Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation. The piece focuses on the period from 1948 to 1960, which is often seen as a time of retreat for the feminist movement in North America. This article engages in a critical dialogue with the concept of "maternalism," the notion that women had a special responsibility to speak out against wars and international conflicts that threatened the lives of the world's children and the husbands, brothers, and sons who would be killed in future wars. Maternalist ideology represented a double-edged sword for these left-wing women and for feminism. On one hand, it offered them a route into radical protest against war and capitalism. On the other hand, in its portrayal of women as "natural" wives and mothers, maternalism, at least in the short term, failed to advance women's equality. Nonetheless, this article concludes that, given the conservative context of the time, maternalism was a useful strategy for the left as well as for feminism. [source] Ethnography, space and politics: interrogating the process of protest in the Tibetan Freedom MovementAREA, Issue 1 2009Andrew D Davies This paper examines the ability of ethnographic research methods to effectively study spatially extensive political activity. It argues that traditional ethnographic methods of sustained engagement with spatially bounded sites are not adequately suited to dealing with contemporary spatially extensive political movements. It argues that contemporary attempts to bridge this impasse have emphasised a dichotomy between global and local that ignores the connections, disconnections and process that occur between places. The paper argues for a critical ethnography that is based on a relational understanding of space emphasising Gillian Hart's conception of the interconnected nature of the ,site'. Taking a single demonstration against the Beijing 2008 Olympics conducted by UK-based Tibet supporters, it examines how the site of protest was closely linked to a variety of other places. Interrogating the processes of connection and disconnection brought about through the protest creates an ethnographic account that, while partial, develops an engagement with the heterogeneity of contemporary political action. [source] | ||||||||||