(PSM3a) Political Sociology and Social Movements I: Dynamics of Activism

This panel brings together fascinating analyses of the dynamics of social movements/political mobilizations by focusing on a wide range of issues such as environmental mobilization, LGBT activism, institutional activism, and populist mobilization. The papers present empirical cases from Canada, China, and Africa, and examine structural and cultural factors shaping pro-environmental actions, marginalized activists’ negotiating power and capacities in a political context characterized by conservative-leaning nationalism, the strategic responses of higher education institutions to social movement demands vis-à-vis equity, diversity, and inclusion, and postcolonial political mobilization igniting racial and ethnic divide. Tags: Politics, Social Movements

Organizers: Marie-Lise Drapeau-Bisson, Carleton University, Omar Faruque, University of New Brunswick Fredericton; Chair: Rezvaneh Erfani, University of Alberta

Presentations

Rachel McLay, Dalhousie University

Climate deniers ride the bus, too: Making sense of pro-environmental action in polarized times

Climate change and environmental issues are major sites of polarized political discourse in Canada. My research considers the linkages between such discourse and pro-environmental actions in Atlantic Canada. Pro-environmental actions are often framed by researchers as products of environmental knowledge, awareness, or concern—outcomes of a multi-stage pipeline model comparable to social movement recruitment from uninvolved bystander to movement supporter, then to full-fledged activist. But such a model should not be applied uncritically to pro-environmental actions, not least because it upholds the primacy of individual action and frames the unconverted as environmentally destructive, or as a key threat to environmental progress. This paper challenges approaches that imply a mostly one-way causal relationship from environmentally supportive attitudes or beliefs to pro-environmental action on several grounds. First, I consider the ways in which environmental habitus structures both attitudes and actions; furthermore, I address potential causes of pro-environmental action beyond expressed attitudes. While attitudes and actions are undeniably connected in many ways, a key insight here is that polarization is a political phenomenon, so its meanings are primarily of consequence within the political field. Thus, anti-environmental political stances affect people’s political actions to a greater extent than their environmental actions. This is demonstrated using survey data on Atlantic Canadians’ attitudes toward climate change and pro-environmental behaviour. This paper also weighs in on the normative problem underlying a great deal of research on pro-environmental behaviour: if environmental action is taken as a high priority by researchers or policymakers, focusing on structural affordances and leveraging broadly shared cultural meanings is crucial, as opposed to upholding only those meanings most salient to a particular social class.

Jian Fu, Memorial University

Dancing with filial nationalism: strategic deployment of family values and parental authority in LGBT activism in Chin

This research explores how LGBT activists negotiate sexual rights within the context of nationalism. While existing scholarship has documented the deployment of sexual nationalism by conservative and authoritarian forces, there is a dearth of studies examining how progressive actors, such as LGBT activists, interact with conservative-leaning nationalism. Addressing this gap, this study examines the strategic utilization of filial nationalism in the discourses and strategies of NGO X, a grassroots organization in China, in response to the exclusion of sexual minorities in the nation-building process by the patriarchal state. By framing its discourse within the framework of family values and mobilizing actions under the guise of parental authority, NGO X ensures its survival amidst state repression. Specifically, by portraying its familial coming-out services as contributions to social stability, NGO X bridges the gap between homosexual children and the state through the narrative of "family values." Through the strategic use of parental authority, NGO X mitigates the risk of direct repression in its advocacy activities. However, this strategic engagement with official ideology in rightful resistance creates a fragile and volatile relationship with the state, as the state may both affirm NGO Xs advocacy for the sake of social stability and crackdown on it to compel changes in the organizations name and operations. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the intersectionality of nationalism and sexuality in rightful resistance, shedding light on the praxis of LGBT activism in challenging circumstances.

Yena Lee, McMaster University

EDI as a Form of Institutional Activism: Canadian Universities' Fight Against Inequality and Discrimination.

The question of eradicating inequalities has been at the centre of socio-political issues from varying aspects of our society in the last few decades. In the recent years, universities have been at the centre of eradicating inequalities as they tend to uphold an image of institutions that are progressive and leading changes. Following this trend, Canadian universities have adopted the notion of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) more rigorously in the last few years, especially in the wake of the proliferation of protest actions in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #StopAsianHate. As universities began to show support for these social movements by providing official statements to the public, as well as introducing policies that undermine barriers to racism and gender equality, these maneuvers should be examined to see whether they hold meaningful values. In the process of institutionalizing social changes, organizations like universities respond to contexts, but create constraints as well. As institutions operate within a long history of racism and colonialism in settings like Canada, there are unspoken rules and established status quo that play a significant role in shaping policies and practices. Therefore, in this research, I will be using examples of higher education to analyze responses to the 2020 social movements against racism by top Canadian universities by focusing on English speaking U15 universities. In this research, data driven from online publications by universities as well as interviews with the heads of EDI offices will be examined to provide better understanding of the topic. Overall, this research will contribute to the literature within the fields of social movement theory and the sociology of education. This will be done through the examination of the potential for social movements to produce social change within higher education by examining the strategic responses to the opportunities produced by social movement activity and the constraints within institutions that prevent social change.

Christi van der Westhuizen, Nelson Mandela University

Afrophobia and Populism in South Africa

Africa is largely absent from analyses of radical right populism, despite decades of authoritarianism, at times fuelled by populism. In the 2000s, anti-democratic populism is again a political feature in Africa, but the literature on African populism remains notably scant. How to understand postcolonial political mobilizations that sharpen racial and ethnic divisions, including through what has been termed Afrophobic politics directed at migrants from other African states? Particularly, how should the rise of populist Afrophobia in South Africa be understood? Since the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994, tens of thousands of Africans have been killed, injured, intimidated, displaced and robbed because they were stigmatized as foreign migrants. Thousands have fled South Africa. On the face of it, against the background of persistently high socio-economic inequality, the clamour of a section of South Africans for greater inclusion has taken a xenophobic form, that is, their inclusion seems reliant on the violent excision of another group of socio-economically excluded people on the grounds of the latter’s ‘foreignness’. However, what complicates matters, is that the language of xenophobia is also used to ethnically and racially mark certain South Africans as different to ‘locals’. Nationality, ethnicity and race are converged through what emerges as Afrophobic othering in which a discource about migrancy is applied to both foreigners and certain South Africans to signal outsider status. The article pursues the following questions: Is this populist xenophobia/Afrophobia a creation of political elites, effectively pitching poor sections of the population against one another with an autochthonous framing of certain black people as ‘not belonging’ and hence abject? Or is it the other way around, in which mass-driven populist xenophobia/Afrophobia is a bottom-up version of burgeoning patronage-clientelist relations in which otherwise excluded poor sections of the population access resources through claims of indigeneity that political elites meet, based on an Afrophobic convergence between the led and the leader? Lastly, can populist Afrophobia be read as rightwing or even as radical right?