The fallacy of the autonomous celebrity activist in international politics: George Clooney and Mia Farrow in Darfur

Celebrities have been accused of oversimplifying the conflict in Darfur, of exaggerating the number of people killed and of cursorily labelling it the ‘first genocide of the 21st century’. Celebrity activists have also been criticized for advocating drastic measures like military intervention, and for aggressively pursuing the fulfilment of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court at the expense of quiet diplomacy and reconciliation, ultimately making matters worse. This article examines the role of two Hollywood celebrities—Mia Farrow and George Clooney—in Sudan's ‘messy war’. It claims that most proponents and critics of celebrity activism overestimate the role that these two individuals played. Clooney and Farrow did not act alone but were latecomer adherents to a transnational advocacy network (the Save Darfur Coalition) and their role was more in strengthening than in altering messages.     

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING: (RE)CONSIDERING THE EXCELLENCE OF ACTIVISM IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest changes organisations in South Africa experienced through the country's democratisation is the introduction of ‘legitimate’ activism in organisational settings. Organisational communication literature – specifically as manifest in the excellence theory – compounded this through views on the potentially positive impact activism could have on organisations by ‘pushing’ them beyond equilibrium to a state of dynamic equilibrium – mediated through strategic and effectual communication. This view, however, is somewhat fouled by occurrences such as those at Marikana, and concomitant strikes in the country's platinum industry, which have held the economy ‘captive’ in various ways. Organisations – especially the mining industry – need to ask ‘How much activism is too much activism?’ and organisational communication practitioners need to introspectively consider whether this theoretical contribution should not perhaps have come with greater guidance in terms of the chary (if not restrained) implementation of this potentially positive, yet almost insidiously dangerous, communicative feature. this article aims to explore activism in the mining industry of South Africa, specifically from the vantage points of industry heads, as it concerns the changed communicative landscape in this industry post-marikana. to this end, the article will report on seven qualitative, semi- structured interviews – along with existing literature on the topic – as it offers up six considerations in applying the aspect of excellence and ‘positive activism’ within organisations in South Africa's mining industry.     

Changing Turkish foreign policy towards Iraq: new tools of engagement

This article proposes that Turkey's foreign policy towards Iraq changed radically after 2007, in response to external challenges and domestic developments. The article analyses how Turkey's role in Iraq has changed on two different levels: firstly, in terms of increased activism and diplomatic engagement, and secondly, in terms of its increased economic involvement, using trade and foreign direct investment as foreign policy tools. These two different modes of engagement have transformed Turkey into a visible player in Iraq.     

Three Theories of Religious Activism and Violence: Social Movements,Fundamentalists, and Apocalyptic Warriors

Numerous scholars have investigated religiously motivated violence, particularly in the wake of September 11, including discussions on the role of modernity in triggering religious violence, the increasing presence of religion in politics, the violence-prone nature of certain religions, and religion's correlation with ethnicity and other conflict-intensifying variables. However, religious activism and violence are not new phenomena. Few theories have been advanced that move across time and space and, broadly, seek to explain the conditions under which religion becomes involved in activism and violence. This article argues that three broad causal arguments for religious activism—social movements, fundamentalism, and apocalyptic warriors—help explain the conditions under which religiously motivated violence occurs across time and space. These three causal arguments offer a spectrum of goals within religious activism, ranging from challenging social practices and government policies, to defending specific interpretations and practices of the faith, to hastening the apocalypse. Furthermore, each of these theories proposes different ways that religion becomes involved in social, political, and religious activism and the conditions under which groups use violence to further their goals. The article concludes by suggesting countermeasures for each type of religious activism.     

Iranian student activism between authoritarianism and democratization: patterns of conflict and cooperation between the Office for the Strengthening of Unity and the regime

This article examines the role of student activism in enhancing or weakening democratization in authoritarian contexts, focusing on the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It contends that while numerous studies indicate that student activism has been crucial in processes of regime change, insufficient attention has been paid to the circumstances under which it contributes to strengthening authoritarian rule. The case of Iran demonstrates that there are two different ways in which this occurs. First, much like many other civil society actors, student activism can be co-opted and at times willingly so because of a coincidence of material and/or ideological interests. Second, even when student activism genuinely pushes for democratization and becomes independent and autonomous from political power, the authoritarian constraints in place can contribute to marginalize it and defeat it. The Iranian case highlights the problems student activism faces when it attempts to disengage from the dominant structures of authoritarian politics, and in line with Jamal's findings, demonstrates how authoritarian structural constraints can undermine the democratic aspirations of well-organised groups.     

Who Speaks for Women? Print Media Portrayals of Feminist and Conservative Women's Advocacy

Feminists have frequently accused media outlets of not giving them enough coverage and/or portraying them negatively. Conversely, conservative women have argued that media suffer from liberal biases. While some studies have addressed the larger question of media and ideological prejudices, none have examined how media report women's activism in comparative terms. Since feminist and conservative women's organizations vie with one another over who represents women's interests, how media portray them has implications for how well they achieve this goal. Using data gathered from four major national newspapers, this study analyzes how print journalists depict feminist and conservative women's activism over a 14-year span. In so doing, it provides information about frequency of media coverage, as well as how advocates are labeled, on which issues they are getting visibility, and whether or not media present feminist and conservative women's organizations as being in direct conflict with each other. Implications for understanding women's political efforts, broadly speaking, are also explored.     

Tailoring Strategies According to Ever-Changing Dynamics: The Evolving Image of the Kurdish Diaspora in Germany

Germany might be considered as the European country that has suffered the most from the spatial diffusion of Turkey's internal conflicts. It has received the highest number of Kurdish migrants in Europe and it became the core of Kurdish mobilization in transnational space. Germany's approach to the Kurdish Question on its own soil—combined with the strategies that the Kurdish activists used—determined the scope of opportunity structures for the mobilization of the Kurdish movement. This article explains how Kurdish activism has come to be perceived in Germany, and analyzes the German political environment by focusing on the criminalization and stigmatization of the Kurdish movement, especially during the 1990s. It then describes the discursive shift and change in framing strategies that the Kurdish diaspora experienced after the capture of the the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) leader in 1999. Lastly, it touches upon the recent developments in the Middle East, especially in Kobane, and their impact on the image of the Kurdish movement. The article is based on extensive fieldwork in Germany and includes testimonies of Kurdish diaspora activists, with a focus on their own perceptions about their situation and how they respond to securitization policies in the host country.     

In memoriam: Leonard J. Theberge

The study examines Pat Robertson's use of The 700 Club television program to establish and sustain celebrity status and in turn to promote partisan politics through seemingly objective news accounts. The findings indicate that The 700 Club news segments consistently rely on narrative techniques that mask Robertson's intensely partisan content and provide what Kenneth Burke terms symbolic medicine for his particular audience.     

The Place of Sociology in the Study of Political Communication

Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and “public images” that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.     

Vernacular Legal Discourse: Revisiting the Public Acceptance of the 'Right to Privacy' in the 1960s

This article provides an analysis of the legal and public discourse concerning the ''right of privacy'' in the 1960s. During that period the legal community had ambivalent feelings about recognizing the right of privacy, and scholars split on the question of whether legal formalism or legal realism should dominate American jurisprudence. This ambivalence created a situation where a wide range of public rhetors articulated a common appeal for expanding the right to privacy. When Justice Douglas and the rest of the United States Supreme Court eventually recognized the privacy right in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), many legal scholars worried that this was an exercise in judicial activism. Yet, the legal arguments that were used in defending the establishment of the ''right of privacy'' mirrored the public defenses of that right that appeared in the broader rhetorical culture.     

Contextualizing change in Turkish foreign policy: the promise of the ‘two-good’ theory

The level of activism in Turkey's foreign policy has reached unprecedented levels during the country's modern history. This increased activism contrasts starkly with Turkey's characteristically traditional status quo orientation evinced during the Cold War. This study aims to establish a theoretical foundation to explain this multifaceted change in Turkish foreign policy. In doing so, it contends that the ‘two-good’ theory of foreign policy renders considerable analytical leverage for contextualizing recent changes in Turkish foreign policy. The theory posits that change in a country's foreign policy is contingent upon its willingness and capability to actively promote its interests. Furthermore, the ‘two-good’ theory postulates the method a country might employ to implement its foreign policy is a function of these two factors as well. The theory leads to two testable hypotheses regarding Turkish foreign policy. This study supports these hypotheses with qualitative and quantitative evidence.     

Whither the withering democratic deficit? The impact of the Lisbon Treaty on the Area of Freedom,Security and Justice

This article examines how the Lisbon Treaty's changes to the European Union's (EU's) Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) have affected its ‘democratic deficit’. How this issue is perceived depends on one's conceptual understanding of democratic legitimacy. This article reviews key scholarly perspectives on this matter and organizes these according to Schmidt's concepts of ‘inputs’, ‘throughputs’ and ‘outputs’. The article then applies this framework to specific innovations of the Lisbon Treaty, including new roles for the European Parliament and Court of Justice in the AFSJ. The article concludes that the EU's latest treaty has improved its democratic deficit in some regards, but that many issues of democratic legitimacy remain.     

Research on women's health: Some methodological issues

This article is written from the perspective of a health activist engaged in research on women's health. It lays out a methodological framework for studying issues concerning women's health, and goes on to describe a range of tools for collecting qualitative and quantitative information from the field. The article ends with a call for activist involvement in research to generate information that genuinely reflects women's needs and concerns, and could facilitate women's informed involvement in changing the circumstances that contribute to their poor health status.     

Urban Irregular Warfare and Violence Against Civilians: Evidence From a Colombian City

Defining terrorism and explaining how it occurs remains a contentious issue. This article attempts to generate new understandings on these topics by applying the work of Ehud Sprinzak's delegitimatization model to the Sea Shepherds. Evidence presented in the article suggests that the Sea Shepherd's present level of political violence passed through gradual phases. In this respect, it is possible to suggest that Sprinzak's model has applicability for maritime organizations, as well as terrestrial based groups. However, we also note that on the one hand, it may be possible to argue that in some respects the Sea Shepherds may constitute either a “blind spot” in the literature on terrorism and political violence, because its actions could in some circumstances be considered activism, militant direct action, piracy, vigilantism, terrorism, or eco-defense, which makes it very difficult to classify. On the other hand, that both the Sea Shepherds and the whalers may both engage in illegal activities, but are not prosecuted, may indicate that states and the international community may have neither the will nor the means to enforce laws against them. Therefore, they may be turning a blind eye to their actions. Throughout the article we maintain that the Sea Shepherds constitute an example of a gray area phenomenon. Despite the ambiguity surrounding their legal status and academic interpretations of their actions, the results of nearly three decades of the organization's activities, including its 2007 campaign to disrupt Japanese Antarctic Whaling, suggest that the Sea Shepherds may be best categorized as a vigilante group, because they claim they are seeking to enforce a legal status quo because of states' and the international community's inabilities or unwillingness to do so.     

Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian's Reply to Terrorology: Response to Commentaries

The Lehi, a fringe Jewish paramilitary group created in 1940, conducted a concerted terrorist campaign against the British authorities in Palestine during and after World War II, proclaiming that its activities were undertaken in the name of national liberation. Lehi was founded and led by Avraham Stern, also known as “Yair.” Scholar, intellectual, and poet, Stern developed a fundamental ideology of national and messianic Jewish terrorism, which became the ideological basis not only for the work of the Lehi, but also for later Jewish terrorist activism. The present article examines the intellectual foundations of Lehi terrorism and how its intellectual and ideological principles influenced Lehi's most controversial activities—internal terrorism and the execution of its own members. In conclusion, the author traces the impact of Stern's intellectual legacy on later generations of Jewish terrorists.     

Emerging political narratives on Malawian digital spaces

Social media platforms are being considered new podiums for political transformation as political dictatorships supposedly convert to overnight democracies, and many more people are not only able to gain access to information, but also gather and disseminate news from their own perspective. When looking at the situation in several sub-Saharan African countries, it becomes clear there are various challenges restricting social media and its palpable yet considerably constrained ability to influence political and social changes. Access to the internet, or lack thereof, is a recognised social stratification causing a “digital divide” thanks to existing inequalities within African and several other societies throughout the world. This article reports on a study that analysed a popular Facebook page in Malawi using a discursive online ethnographic examination of interactions among social media participants seeking to determine the level of activism and democratic participation taking shape on the Malawian digital space. The study also examined potential bottlenecks restraining effective digital participation in Malawi. The article argues that while social media's potential to transform societies is palpable, keeping up with the pace of transformation is no easy task for both digital and non-digital citizens. The study demonstrated social media's potential but also highlighted the problems facing online activists in Malawi, including chief among them digital illiteracy. Therefore, the digital sphere is not a political podium for everyone in Malawi as shown by the analysis of digital narratives emerging from the country's online environment, which opens its doors to only a tiny fraction of the population.     

Political activism in Iran: strategies for survival,possibilities for resistance and authoritarianism

This article examines mobilizations and activism in authoritarian settings by considering the case of Iran. By focusing on the transformation of activism since the 1990s and the green movement, it advances an explanation of how oppositional political groups have been able to survive and produce forms of resistant subjectivity despite authoritarian constraints. In order to do so, the article brings together two scholarly traditions, namely Social Movement Theory (SMT) and the study of subjectivity and resistance as framed by Sari Hanafi. SMT explains how activists have been able to navigate repression and create opportunities for mobilization while shifting between formal and informal politics. The study of subjectivity helps conceptualize the type of subjects or political citizens that authoritarian environments generate. The article builds on field research with activists conducted in Iran and Turkey between 2007 and 2016. It argues that authoritarian constraints allow autonomous activism to flourish while emptying of meaning the regime-sanctioned political infrastructures.     

2016 Taiwan Elections: Significance and Implications

This year's Taiwan elections gave the Democratic Progressive Party a clear mandate to rule Taiwan again. Since 2014 Taiwanese millennials have played a decisive role in Taiwan's significant democratic change. The elections can be appreciated best in the context of the changing state-civil society relations of the preceding eight years of 2008-2015. The revival of civil society activism since 2008 and the explosive force of the Sunflower Movement in 2014 finally transmitted social activism into electoral politics. President Tsai responded to these changes in her inaugural address by placing cross-Strait relations in the context of regional peace and stability and making no mention of the“1992 Consensus.” Instead, she emphasized domestic development and reforms to safeguard Taiwan to be a democratic and free country.     

Democratization and the secularization of religious parties: the case of Mexico

Under what conditions does democratization erode religious political engagement? The dramatic democratic transitions in the Catholic world during the last quarter of the twentieth century have been accompanied by the widespread decline of Catholic political parties, but the interaction between democratizing reforms and the development of religious parties in the Catholic world remains poorly understood. This article analyses the crucial case of Mexico to explore if, how, and under what conditions electoral participation encourages the differentiation of religious and partisan activism. Relying on archival research and an original data set describing the religious linkages of 302 historic and contemporary leading members of the PAN, Mexico's largest Catholic-inspired party, this article shows that democratization is only indirectly linked to the secularization of religious parties, and its effects are conditional on the resources and opportunities available to religious activists.