New social movements and social change
These extracts from Wikipedia will be familiar territory to many readers of this blog, but I thought they could be a useful reminder of the connection between ‘new social movements’ theory and the pursuit of social change. The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora … Read more
Anonymous and the Digital Antinomians
By Dan McQuillan How are we to understand the political implications of Anonymous? How do we explicate the digitally mediated ‘atmosphere of dissent’ that links the Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement? I suggest we look to the forgotten history of antinomian movements, especially the radicals of the English Civil War. Anonymous itself resists … Read more
Beautiful balloon: The digital divide and the charisma of new media in India
By William Mazzarella via Academia.edu It was a truly millennial idea. Around 1999–2000, the shiny amalgam of ideas, projects, and hyperventilation known as ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development) seemed to be taking over the world. Nowhere was its promise more intensely cultivated than in India because nowhere else were its two main aims … Read more
Morozov vs.Tufekci on the Internet and political change
By Ethan Zuckerman via My heart’s in Accra (13 April 2011) Evgeny Morozov has emerged as one of the leading critics of the idea that the internet is a useful tool for social change, suggesting in his provocative book “The Net Delusion” that the internet can be more useful for dictators than for activists. He’s … Read more
Digital change in emerging economies: no global convergence (1)
The growing strength and influence of the world’s ‘emerging economies’ is one of the more significant global developments of the past decade. At a time of crisis in developed economies such as the United States, Britain and Japan, the so-called BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India and China) recovered swiftly from the 2008 financial crisis and … Read more
CFP: Theorising Media and Social Change workshop, EASA 2012, Nanterre, 10-13 July 2012
We are currently organising a Media Anthropology Network workshop on the theme of “Theorising Media and Social Change” for the EASA 2012 Conference in Nanterre, near Paris, 10-13 July 2012. We seek proposals consisting of a paper title, a (very) short abstract of 300 characters, and an abstract of 250 words. See details below. All … Read more
CFP: Mediatization in transcultural and transnational perspectives
via Meccsa discussion list Call for Papers: “Mediatization in transcultural and transnational perspectives”, a workshop of the ECREA TWG “Mediatization”, Goldsmiths, University of London, to be held 30th to 31st March 2012. The aim of this workshop is to discuss whether mediatization constitutes a global process of change, and, if yes, where the inequalities and … Read more
The unevenness of social change
By John Postill* In his 1958 monograph Politics in an Urban African Community, the Manchester School anthropologist A.L. Epstein, a student of Max Gluckman, discusses the emergence of a political and administrative system in a mining town located in the Copperbelt region of Northern Rhodesia, in what today is Zambia. This work still has much to offer the student of … Read more
Studying technologically enabled dissent
By Sirpa Tenhunen In my article on the appropriation of mobile technology in rural India (JRAI 2008/14), I tried to come to grips with the conflicting views of social change among the villagers and the academic community. Whereas villagers did not hesitate to emphasize how they experience and value changes, many colleagues to whom I … Read more
A social media revolution?
Guest Author: Annabelle Sreberny (via OECD Insights, 28 March 2011) So the joke goes that Mubarak dies and meets Nasser and Sadat in the afterlife. They ask him, “were you poisoned or shot?” Mubarak shrugs and answers “Facebook!” Actually, an Egyptian family did recently name their newborn daughter Facebook. There is no doubt that we’re … Read more
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