#MeToo: A Case Of #sistabriefen

Department of Informatics and Media

Author(s): Miranda Andersson

Vol Master, Uppsala University2018, pp. 118

Arising out of the #MeToo movement in Sweden, #sistabriefen was created to represent women, non-binaries and trans-persons working within the communications industry. This study analyses the dynamics and identities of the #sistabriefen group members on their private social media platform through 23 interviews, and a qualitative content analysis over the course of five months. This research assesses how members are motivated to participate in the #sistabriefen group, how they identify themselves within the group, and how the nature of the group affects members’ involvement. The findings indicated that digital social movements have the potential to promote social change.

Timeline: The 52-year history of the Pilgrim nuclear plant

Author(s): Miriam Wasser

In: WBUR, 2019

Article and audio defining important moments of the history of the Pilgrim nuclear energy plant, located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, from 1967, when it was built by the Boston Edison Company, up to 2019, when it shut down thanks to year of anti-nuclear activism and legal fighting against re-licensing the plant.

See also https://medium.com/binj-reports/pilgrims-50-years-of-anti-nuclear-mass-an-oral-history-8ea2a4624610

Available online at:

https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/05/29/plymouth-nuclear-plant-history

Everyday Resistance on the Internet: The Palestinian Context

Author(s): Miriyam Aouragh

In: Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research, Vol 1, No 2 (Nov), 2008, pp. 109-130

Explores how internet links Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, creates a Palestine in cyberspace, and has an impact on manifestations of resistance, for example through street candle vigils and ‘lighting a candle’ on the internet.

Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed

Author(s): Misagh Parsa

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2016, pp. 406

An analysis of the theocratic regime installed in 1979 and the problems facing the country, including corruption and cronyism, deep economic inequality and a brain drain of professionals. The author discusses the potential of the Green Revolution and its suppression, considers whether there is any scope to reform the regime from within, and concludes that the best hope is another revolution.

See also: Boroumand, Ladan, 'Iran's Exclusionary Republic', Journal of Democracy, vol. 29 no. 2. (April 2018), pp. 406.

This review of the 2016 book Democracy in Iran (see below) begins by commenting on the mass demonstrations that broke out in late December 2017 across 72 cities, calling for regime change, and how they were suppressed (48 killed and 4,792 arrests). Boroumand asks how 'recurrent explosions of popular anger in the Islamic Republic can be explained, and how the most recent protests related to the strong majority vote for the moderate President Rouhani six months earlier. She then turns to the book as a helpful analysis of developments since 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.

Nepal: Democracy in Transition

Author(s): Mishra Navin

Authorspress, Delhi, 2006, pp. 295

Discusses historical background since 1951, the evolution of parliamentary democracy from 1991-2001 and examines in detail the royal takeover and war with the Maoists.

Opposition to war: An Encyclopedia Of U.S. Peace And Antiwar Movements

Two volumes

Editor(s): Mitchell Hall

ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA, 2018, pp. 846

Investigates this historical tradition of resistance to involvement in armed conflict. In particular, it discusses peacemaking efforts in the United States. It also examines the entirety of American history, from the colonial era to modern times and reveals the multiple religious and secular motivations of peace seekers in the US. Finally, it examines how war and those who oppose war have been portrayed in popular media over the centuries.

Anna Hazare and the Idea of Gandhi

Author(s): Mitu Sengupta

In: Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 71, No 3 (Aug), 2012, pp. 595-601

Originally published in Dissent.

Raises caveats about comparisons with Gandhi, discusses Hazare’s diagnosis and prescriptions for corruption and comments on the nature of the Hazare movement. Argues against claims that it is a pawn of the extreme right RSS and/or CIA, noting the extent of mass protests and the depth of anger about corruption.

Available online at:

https://intpolicydigest.org/2011/08/30/anna-hazare-and-the-idea-of-gandhi/

Mobilization

Editor(s): Mobilization

In: Mobilization, Vol 17, No 4 (December), 2012

contains an overview by Charles Kurzman. ‘The Arab Spring Uncoiled’, and articles on Egypt, Iran, and Syria.

Armed, unarmed and non-violent: the Sudanese resistance in Sudan’s 2018-2019 revolutionary uprising

Author(s): Mohammed Elnaiem

In: Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 43, Vol 43, No 2, 2019, pp. 5-26

This article argues that the movement that led to the imprisonment of Bashir can only be properly understood in terms of the grassroots struggle that defined it. Elnaiem also argues that it was a multi-layered struggle and discusses the composition of the broader resistance and the historical legacy it built upon, as well as the obstacles to further progress.

See also: Elnaiem, Mohammed, (2019) ‘Sudan’s uprising a ‘people revolution’, Green Left Weekly, Issue 1209, pp. 14-15.

See also: de Waal, Alex, ‘What’s Next for Sudan’s Revolution’, Foreign Affairs, 23 April 2019.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sudan/2019-04-23/whats-next-sudans-revolution

Analyses the Sudanese revolution with an emphasis on its non-violent forms of resistance.

Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

Author(s): Mohandas K. Gandhi

Editor(s): Shriman Narayan

6 volumes, Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1968

pp. 375, 379-794, 471, 464, 514, 555

Includes Satyagraha in South Africa (vol. 3), as well as Gandhi’s highly personal Autobiography, published 1927 (vols 1-2), important pamphlets such as his translation of Ruskin’s Unto This Last (vol. 4 – influential on Gandhi’s socio-economic thinking), letters on key issues (vol. 5) and speeches on historic occasions (vol. 6).

The political consequences of mobilization against resource extraction

Author(s): Moises Arce

In: Mobilization: An Internal Quarterly, Vol 21, No 4, 2016, pp. 469-483

Peru has had significant economic growth due to extraction of natural resources, but there have also been many protests about this extraction. Noting the weaknesses of many such environmental and indigenous protests, the author draws on fieldwork and interviews to outline the kind of mobilization likely to prevent extraction, and also to have positive social effects. He argues that the movement in Peru has significant implications for other developing countries relying on resource extraction.

Headscarves And Hymens. Why The Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution

Author(s): Mona Eltahawy

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2015, pp. 256

Human rights activist and journalist, Mona Eltahawy, contextualizes Middle Eastern women’s repression in a net of political, cultural and religious forces that undermine the possibility of a new Arab Spring emerging as an organic revolutionary process for the upholding of human rights in the MENA region.

Packing a Punch

Author(s): Mona Ghaedi

In: New Internationalist, 2019, pp. 50-52

Reports on how Yazidi women in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan are finding ‘a way to fight back’ through learning how to box, after the trauma they endured under ISIS. Illustrated by striking photographs of the ‘Boxing Sisters.’

Lebanon's Protest Movement is Just Getting Started

Author(s): Mona Khneisser

In: Jacobin Magazine, 2019

The author, a PhD student at a US university, examines the Lebanese movement in its fourth week. She summarizes its origins, immediately after fire destroyed over 3,000 acres of woodland in the country, as a reaction to new taxes on online calling apps, fuel, cigarettes and consumer goods,

and notes how it developed to challenge corruption and the nature of the regime. She argues the movement's scale (about 2 million protesters on Sunday October 20) its national spread, including to sectarian strongholds, and its inclusion of different religious and class groups, made the protests unprecedented in recent history.  As a result of demonstrations, strikes in schools and universities, and blockades the government abandoned its tax plans and the Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, announced his resignation on 29 October.   

Available online at:

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/lebanon-protest-movement-saad-hariri-arab-spring

Global feminist collaborations and the concept of violence against women in politics

Author(s): Mona Krook

In: Journal of International Affairs, Vol 72, No 2, 2019, pp. 77-94

Mona Krook argues that violence against women in politics is increasingly recognised around the world as a significant barrier to women’s political participation. This article maps how this analysis emerged globally. She notes that it has multiple, parallel origins, such as: efforts by locally elected women in Bolivia in the late 1990s to theorise their experiences as political harassment and violence against women; networking by elected women in Asia (with support from global actors) to map and condemn manifestations of violence against women in politics in the mid 2000s; and initiatives in Kenya to recognize and tackle electoral gender-based violence in the late 2000s.

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