Hezbollah: Islamist Resistance Comes of Age

The Iranian revolution—the political realization of the "Great Refusal" of Western modernization—was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced by the Turkish nation state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western dominance.
Now, history is turning again. Iran has been seized by violent turmoil as it seeks to reconcile democracy and religious rule. Secular Turkey is governed by an Islamist-rooted party. As they struggle to regain their balance, the global economic meltdown threatens a convergence against globalization that joins the Islamist resistance with populist backlashes elsewhere.
Two legendary intelligence agents, a Hezbollah leader, an Iranian dissident philosopher and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, examine this historical turn.     

Imperialism and Resistance: Canadian mining companies in Latin America

David Harvey's concept of accumulation by dispossession is a useful framework for understanding the predatory activities of Canadian mining companies in Latin America. Capitalist imperialism is rooted in the logic of a socioeconomic system that is driven by the competitive pursuit of profit based on the exploitation of labour, and which is prone to over-accumulation. Capital, backed by state power, pursues a spatial fix to resolve the systematic crisis of over-accumulation. The creation of new spaces of accumulation is not an innocuous process; it inevitably involves the forceful and violent reorganisation of peoples' lives as they are subordinated to the whims of capital. Strategies of accumulation by dispossession by capital therefore commonly spawn popular resistance from the affected communities. The Canadian mining industry is the largest in the world, and much of its outward investment targets Latin America. The Canadian company share of the larger company exploration market in Latin America (and the Caribbean) has grown steadily since the early 1990s, up to 35% by 2004, the largest by far among all its competitors, with seven Canadian companies among the top 20 mineral exploration investors in the region from 1989 to 2001. This paper charts these trends of Canadian mining expansion in Latin America and then focuses on the community, environmental and worker resistance it is generating in the cases of Chile and Colombia.     

Reconstructing the History of Early Communism and Armed Resistance in Romania

This article examines the role played by the armed resistance in Romania during the period of Sovietisation and Stalinisation (1944–1962) and its significance within the politics of memory and justice after 1989. One conclusion of the analysis is that opposing interpretations by political actors each in search of legitimacy correspond to attempts to manufacture plausible narratives of the specific historical discontinuity posed by the revolutionary break of 1989. A second conclusion reveals how memory and identity conflicts at group and individual levels can easily result in the translation of historical myths into enduring historical facts.     

Queer Coalitions: An Examination of Political Resistance to the Russian Migration Law

Abstract

Migration policy in Russia is implemented by a variety of actors, such as state officials, market actors, and social activists. In the implementation of migration policy, they inevitably interact with one another. Having examined the categories used by the people involved in the implementation of migration policy, I explore the potential of coalition-building in this process. In order to scrutinise these fluid political forms, I make use of the concept of ‘queer coalitions’. This concept draws on literature in queer theory, which I argue is also productive for the analysis of current political actions in the migration domain.     

Caste System and Resistance: The Case of Untouchable Hindu Sweepers in Bangladesh

This paper studies Hindu untouchable sweepers of Bangladesh, using a case study of two sweeper communities in Dhaka city. Due to their untouchability, Hindu sweepers in Bangladesh have historically been subjected to discrimination and marginalisation, and are deprived of choices such as free selection of occupation, access to housing, education and other benefits. Contending with the conventional notion that Hinduism maintains social order by caste hierarchies and divisions of labour, this shows how the sweepers of Dhaka city respond to the notion of untouchability and show resistance to caste discrimination. This paper also argues that it is not only a Hindu religious ideology but also historical, colonial, economic, political and social aspects of caste-based discrimination that can explain construction of the notion of Dalit and the marginalisation and resistance of Bangladeshi sweepers.     

Charity as Resistance: Connections between Charity,Contentious Politics,and Terror

This article explores two ways of conceptualizing ties between charity, contentious politics, political violence, and terrorism. The first half of the article discusses how social and political exclusion serve as motivations for within-group philanthropy, political activism, and political violence. Using this conceptualization, charity and terrorism can be seen as two activities among a range of possible actions that address grievance and exclusion. The second half of the article discusses how terrorist organizations and political insurgents use charity as a tool to move community members along a “continuum of community support” toward greater acceptance of and participation in violent activities.     

From Exclusion to Resistance: Migrant Domestic Workers and the Evolution of Agency in Lebanon

In addition to hosting a large population of refugees and displaced persons, Lebanon is home to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 migrant domestic workers. Under Lebanese law, domestic workers fall under the kafala, or sponsorship, system. Existing literature has focused on the legality of the kafala system and the ensuing human rights violations resulting from workers' exclusion from Lebanese labor law. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2016, this article argues that migrant domestic workers in Lebanon have defied their spatial, social, and legal exclusion by organizing collective resistance, triggered in part by the July 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.     

Leaderless Resistance and the Truly Leaderless: A Case Study Test of the Literature-Based Findings

The literature on leaderless resistance is conceptually cloudy. Nevertheless, such literature has bounded the theoretical framework of leaderless resistance around four criteria. These criteria are leaderless resistors cannot be members of organizations they represent; leaderless resistance is a tactical manifestation of an organization; the goal of leaderless resistance is to insulate members and leaders from prosecution; and leaderless resistance arises from organizational failure. Using a case study of the Phineas Priesthood, this work tests these boundaries via a directed content analysis of the Priesthood's ideological manifesto. This research finds that leaderless resistance is theoretically problematic and too often lone wolves and leader resistors are viewed equivalent when they are theoretically different. Scholars must theoretically differentiate between individuals who ascribe to leaderless concepts, organizations, or groups versus those who develop an ideological framework and exist outside a concept, organization, or group.