Tagged: #Occupy

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Social Movements This Summer: Listen to the Echoes

Scholars of political protest continue to attempt translation of social movements that ostensibly took a new turn in the past few years. Inspired by the Arab Spring, this current wave of contention can be traced through the Indignados and other anti-austerity uprisings, and eventually into efforts to Occupy everywhere. These movements share some characteristics: they are less leader-led than many previous movements, and participants often call for democratization but lack a clear, unified set of demands. A common tactic is...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication

Occupy’s Mic Check: A Tactic to Disrupt Power, Not Free Speech

Author’s Note: This piece was originally posted to Sociology Lens on December 10th. On December 13th, the piece was temporarily removed and I was asked to make revisions to make more explicit the conventional sociological themes in this piece. This request was made as the result of pressure from a senior professor who deemed this piece too “polemical” and not “sociological.” While I and many others in the discipline have epistemological objections to very concept of value-free social science, and...