Tag Archives: social-movements

Black Lives Matter: A Reference Handbook

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Durham, Simone N and Angela Jones. 2025. Black Lives Matter: A Reference Handbook: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

This multifaceted reference work surveys the history, development, leadership, and priorities of Black Lives Matter (BLM), including the group’s efforts to raise public awareness of police violence in communities of color.

Beginning with the infamous incidents of police brutality that spurred the creation and growth of BLM, this book goes on to profile leading and influential activists and organizations, such as the NAACP, movement co-founder Alicia Garza, and civil rights activist and athlete Colin Kaepernick.

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Adopting Gender-Based-Violence Legislation, 1980–2015: The Role of Norm Cascades, Women’s Movements, and Level of Development

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Kimberly Seida, Candice Shaw, Jessica Kim, Sam Shirazi, Kathleen M. Fallon; Adopting Gender-Based-Violence Legislation, 1980–2015: The Role of Norm Cascades, Women’s Movements, and Level of Development. Sociology of Development 1 December 2025; 11 (4): 309–340. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2025.2607832

Research suggests that the global passage of gender-based-violence legislation (GBVL) is linked to transnational women’s movements, alongside CEDAW ratification and regional diffusion. Unfortunately, most studies are qualitative, limiting the number of case comparisons. The few existing quantitative studies incorporate both developed and developing countries and do not focus on broad factors further contributing to faster passage of specific kinds of GBVL. Also, both qualitative and quantitative studies tend to focus on the primary decade of women’s transnational activism, the 1990s. Using event history models, we build on the world society literature by exploring the effects of norm cascades and women’s movements on the passage of two types of GBVL (protections and criminalization) in two time periods (1980–2003 and 1980–2015) and across three tiers of developing countries (upper-middle income, lower-middle income, and low income). We find strong support that CEDAW and regional diffusion of GBVL facilitate policy adoption and limited support that women’s movements do so. While the effects of regional diffusion are robust across laws, time periods, and income levels, the effects of CEDAW vary by position in the global economy, and the effects of women’s movement are significant only in CEDAW-ratifying countries for protections legislation during the full time period.

Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico

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Morosin, A., & Hein, J. E. (2025). Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico. Globalizations, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2525034

How did movements defending the commons cope with a rise in direct State support for extractive capital during the COVID-19 pandemic? This article utilizes a mixed methods approach to explore how anti-mining organizations in southern Mexico shifted their frames and tactics at the onset of the pandemic. Content analysis of e-newsletters from two civil society organizations were combined with interviews with anti-mine activists. Electronic newsletters and other forms of communication engaged in frame extension by linking the pandemic to environmental injustice and to the State’s neglect of public health. In an effort to transcend a digital divide in rural areas impacted by neoliberal extractivism, some solidarity organizations increased their reliance on the internet, yet such digital tactics were not evenly embraced. Our findings clarify some limitations of the internet for mobilizing rural populations in mining zones, while reiterating the importance of traditional, face-to-face organizing tactics that directly challenge extractive industries.

Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement

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Stepan-Norris, Judith and Jasmine Kerrisse. 2023. Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement. Oxford University Press.

union booms and busts

The book is a comparative and historical analysis of the factors that helped or hindered workers in their attempts to build unions in the U.S.’s 11 basic industries, 1900-2015. For each industry, we analyze shifts in union power (union density), as affected by the state and macro context, replacement costs of workers, union and employer strategies, and the impact of employment, race, gender, and occupation.  

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Revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela: One Hope, Two Realities

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Pedraza, Silvia and Carlos A. Romero. 2023. Revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela: One Hope, Two Realities. University of Florida Press.

revolutions in cuba and venezuela

Revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela compares the sociopolitical processes behind two major revolutions-those of Cuba in 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power, and Venezuela in 1999, when Hugo Chávez won the presidential election. With special attention to the Cuba-Venezuela alliance, particularly in regards to foreign policy and the trade of doctors for oil, Silvia Pedraza and Carlos Romero show that the geopolitical theater where these events played out determined the dynamics and reach of the revolutions.
 
Updating and enriching the current understanding of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions, this study is unique in its focus on the massive exoduses they generated. Pedraza and Romero argue that this factor is crucial for comprehending a revolution’s capacity to succeed or fail. By externalizing dissent, refugees helped to consolidate the revolutions, but as the diasporas became significant political actors and the lifelines of each economy, they eventually served to undermine the social movements.
 
Using comparative historical analysis and data collected through fieldwork in Cuba and Venezuela, as well as from immigrant communities in the US, Pedraza and Romero discuss issues of politics, economics, migrations, authoritarianism, human rights, and democracy in two nations that hoped to make a better world through their revolutionary journeys.

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