Unit 4 Overview Page: Social Movements and Resistance

Unit 4 Overview

Efforts at social change are tied to resistance in two major ways. First, social movements, particularly those we will examine today, resist dominant power (be that power from governments, institutions, organizations, etc.). Second, with that challenge of power, social movements face resistance from several fronts: from institutions, such as governments or corporations, seeking to maintain the status quo and hold on to the balance of power; and from others in society, who oppose their views, or sometimes, who want something similar but think it needs to be done differently.

This section addresses both of these resistance fronts.

You'll read an overview of institutional resistance to social movements as well as a bit about how movements push back.

This unit will follow the same format as units 2 & 3. First, I'll offer some more general material to ground us in the types of resistance. Next, we'll focus on what resistance looked like in two major social movements, The Arab Spring and Occupy Wallstreet.

Here is this unit's PowerPoint!

Unit Objectives

Understand resistance techniques used by social movements
Understand resistance techniques used by entities pushing back on social movements
Be able to identify both types of resistance in two specific social movements

Weekly Materials & Assignments

As you read and view these materials be thinking about what key terms are addressed and explained, and how the media pieces demonstrate (or counter) the more theoretical information found in the academic readings.

Week 9

Institutional Resistance

This week we'll be focusing both on the tactics social movements use to resist dominant power structures (some of this should sound familiar from prior units) as well as how institutions and governments push back.

Read & View

Raqib, J. (2016). "The Secret to Non-Violent Resistance" TED, July 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIpgrZ8yS-Q

Albert Einstein Insitution. (n.d.)"198 Methods of Non-Violent Protest and Persuasion" https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

Starks, G. (2022, March 29). Movements against Black Lives Matter can be explained by white perceptions of economic, social, and political deprivation. London School of Economics, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2022/03/29/movements-against-black-lives-matter-can-be-explained-by-white-perceptions-of-economic-social-and-political-deprivation/

Cagle, S. (2019). “Protesters as terrorists': Growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime.” The Guardian, July 8, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/wave-of-new-laws-aim-to-stifle-anti-pipeline-protests-activists-say

Potter, W. (2014). “The Shocking Move to Criminalize Nonviolent Protest,” TED Video. https://www.ted.com/talks/will_potter_the_shocking_move_to_criminalize_non_violent_protest?language=enNowThisNews

NowThis News. (2019) "COINTELPRO: Why did the FBI Target Black Activists Fighting for Equality?," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmuqmP50mRc

Borradaile, G. (2021). Part Two: Mechanisms of Movement Suppression. In Defend Dissent. This book is licensed under CCBYNC

Assignments

Reading Response #6:
- due Sunday
Weekly Discussion:
- initial post by Wednesday
- replies to peers on 2 days across Thurs - Sun

Week 10

Weekly Topic: The Arab Spring and Resistance

This week we'll be looking at The Arab Spring in light of tactics of resistance. First, take a look at this four-minute video overview of the Arab Spring.

History. (2019). Here's How the Arab Spring Started and How it Affected the World. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd5ZcxDys

Here is another video (7-minute run time) that overviews in a bit more detail the effects of the uprisings in various countries, 10 years after the protests.

Al Jazeera. (2021). What happened after the Arab Spring?. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToJhvgk79e8

Read & View

Harris, David. (2020). Social Media and Social Movements. University of California Berkeley. https://moveme.berkeley.edu/
Barakat, Z., & Fakih, A. (2021). Determinants of the Arab Spring Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya: What Have We Learned? Social Sciences, 10(8), 282. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/socsci10080282 This article is licensed under CCBY 4.0
Khamis, S. & Fowler, R. (2022). Taming the People: Comparing Protests and Populism in Arab and American Politics. Frontiers in Communication, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.780317 This article is licensed with CCBY 4.0

Assignments

choice of readings from week 10 Reading Response # 7
- due Sunday
Weekly Discussion:
- initial post by Wednesday
- replies to peers on 2 days across Thurs - Sun

Week 11

Resisting Progress

This week, our final week in unit 4, we'll be looking at Occupy Wallstreet and what types of resistance the movement used. For background, first, view this video on what started the movement.

The Guardian. (2013). Occupy Wallstreet: The story behind seven months of protest. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFOWci6yrSs

This week we're going light on reading so that you can use the time you'd normally use to read to review the final project description and complete your last unit assignment!

Read & View

Hauger, O., Rauf, Z., & Rivas, S. (n.d.). #Occupywallstreet. #moveme. This article is licensed under CCBY 4.0

Read 2 thoroughly, skim 1.

Ehrenberg, J. (2017). What can we learn from Occupy’s failure?. Palgrave Communications, 3. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.62. This article is licensed under CCBY 4.0
Wang, Z. and Caskey, K. (2016) #Occupywallstreet: An Analysis of Twitter Usage during a Protest Movement. Social Networking, 5, 101-117. https://doi.org/10.4236/sn.2016.54011
Mendel, R. (2020). The Occupy Wall Street Movement in the American Radical Tradition. USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, 3(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/9869
This article is licensed under CCBY 4.0

Assignments

Weekly Discussion: Proposal Sharing
- initial post by Wednesday
- replies to peers on 2 days across Thurs - Sun
UNIT ASSIGNMENT DUE
- due Sunday

Looking Ahead

We're entering our final unit, application/praxis!