protest

The devastation of Hurricane Florence is not limited to the loss of human lives. It is estimated that millions of chickens and thousands of pigs died in North Carolina from the flooding. Vegan social movements have pointed to this major loss of animal life as one of the many reasons to reduce our reliance on meat and the consumption of other animal products. However, these groups face a difficult path ahead as factory farming is a massive U.S. industry. A recent article in The Atlantic highlights research by sociologists Corey Wrenn, Nina Gheihman, and Elizabeth Cherry on the many obstacles that can thwart veganism from blossoming into a large-scale social movement.

According to Wrenn, one of the main barriers to mobilization of any social movement is that they allow “free-riders”, or individuals who may identify with the movement but do not change their behavior. In the case of veganism, including “flexitarians” — people who are interested in vegetarianism or veganism but still eat meat and other animal products — waters down the cause’s overall message. Wrenn argues that including flexitarians “maintain[s] the illusion of mass support, [while] real power is reserved for core members.” Wrenn suggests that smoking cessation campaigns provide a key example of how an “all or nothing” approach can bring about meaningful change in consumption behaviors.

In the same article, Elizabeth Cherry and Nina Gheihman push back against Wrenn’s claims, advocating that incrementalism and inclusion of those who aren’t strictly vegan may lead to more success for vegan social movements. Cherry, who has a book comparing animal rights activism in France and the United States, argues that vegan social movements promoting meat reduction rather than complete elimination parallels the often incremental shift by many vegans into a plant-based diet. Gheihman agrees with Wrenn that flexitarianism may damage vegan social movements in the long-term, but also believes that including those at the margins of the movement accounts for the multiple motivations people may have for going vegan. Gheihman expands further,

“I do believe that flexitarianism as an initial approach is worthwhile, as there are many people who are not willing to adopt the ideological stance of the animal-rights movement within a society that does not yet embrace it. As well, they may have alternate motivations for following a plant-based diet, including health and environmentalism, and I believe these motivations are as valid as that of animal rights.”

The White House recently published a press release decrying the violent behavior of MS-13 members, referring to the group as “animals” 10 times throughout the short post. In response, researchers Aliza Luft and Daniel Solomon wrote a Washington Post article discussing how dehumanizing language can enable violence. They draw upon historical examples, referencing animalistic rhetoric used in Nazi Germany and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. As Luft and Solomon explain, dehumanizing language alone cannot directly incite violence:

“Recent research suggests that promoting negative views of others can go only so far in motivating people to kill. In Rwanda, for example, Hutu militants issued calls on the radio to exterminate inyenzi, the Kinyarwanda word for ‘cockroach.’ But some Hutus refused to kill, saved Tutsis, or shifted stances from killing to not killing neighbors. This suggests that the decision to commit murder and other violence was difficult for Hutu civilians. Dehumanizing propaganda alone didn’t persuade Hutus to suddenly turn on their Tutsi peers.”

However, the researchers describe a number of ways dehumanizing language can, in fact, heighten tensions or lessen the cost of violent behavior:

“Language is not innocent. Dehumanizing propaganda helps to normalize extreme perspectives on how to address social problems. It grants legitimacy to those who do believe that certain others are inherently threatening, dangerous and ought to be eliminated from the community…Dehumanizing propaganda alters norms of what is and isn’t perceived as acceptable views or behavior. Even when people don’t believe what they hear on the radio or on TV, dehumanizing propaganda might make them hesitate more to speak out against it.”

In closing, Luft and Solomon argue that public action can counter the negative potential of dehumanizing language. They note, for example, that protest by Catholic leaders in Nazi Germany mobilized otherwise complacent members of the public into resistance. In an American context where communities of color face daily systemic violence, protest against dehumanizing language may serve a protective function.

Recent mobilization around gun control — epitomized through the recent March for Our Lives protests across the country — is largely associated with youth and liberal political ideologies. But sociologist Dana R. Fisher, who has been studying large-scale protests since Trump’s inauguration, challenges this assumption. In a recent article in the Washington Post, she discusses research she and her team conducted during the March for Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C. Fisher explains,

“Only about 10 percent of the participants were under 18. The average age of the adults in the crowd was just under 49 years old, which is older than participants at the other marches I’ve surveyed but similar to the age of the average participant at the Million Moms March in 2000, which was also about gun control.”

Further, Fisher found that fewer protesters were driven by politically liberal values than we might think:

“Only 12 percent of the people who were new to protesting reported that they were motivated to join the march because of the gun-control issue…Instead, new protesters reported being motivated by the issues of peace (56 percent) and Trump (42 percent), who has been a galvanizing force for many protests. Protesters were also more likely to identify as ideologically moderate. About 16 percent did so, higher than at any other protest event since the inauguration.”

While the media might have us believe differently, March for Our Lives successfully mobilized a wide crowd — both in age and political ideology. 

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the presence of social movements and protests has grown substantially. Most notable among this phenomenon have been large marches, such as the Women’s March and the March for Science. And according to an article in the Washington Post, these movements are showing no signs of slowing.    

Sociologist Dana Fisher, Director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland, investigates what has motivated people to more actively participate in democracy.  In the article, she explains that this shift to more collective and vocal action is to ensure people are heard, especially in light of the current administration.  According to Fisher,

“Most people used to be content to vote every four years and then disengage from politics … but many Americans no longer feel like their concerns are being heard just by voting.”

The protests have also been more ethnically diverse than is typical, and Fisher’s research shows that the rates of bachelor’s degrees among the protesters is higher than the general US population. Perhaps the most significant shift is the variety of issues in which participants are protesting. At the Women’s March, 60 percent said they were protesting for women’s rights, 36 percent indicated they were there for the environment, and 35 percent for racial justice. Fisher explains,  

“Since the inauguration … the resistance has become the umbrella for a suite of issues that used to have their own individual movements … They are not just coming out for the one issue that is their big issue. They have a much more intersectional sense of an identity as an activist.”

A few weeks ago, Pepsi released an advertisement with Kendall Jenner wherein the young celebrity takes a stroll through a crowded protest, sodas in hand. The commercial received a lot of criticism and was taken off the air almost immediately. In an article in The Ubyssey, University of British Columbia sociologist Rimal Wilkes describes some of the issues with the commercial, particularly how it misrepresents the nature of protests.

To begin with, the commercial sports a diverse set of protesters, but that makes it difficult to imagine what exactly they’re protesting — Racial inequality? Environmental issues? Furthermore, the crowd in the ad looks like people who are quite privileged, which goes against what protest is about. As Wilkes explains, Kendall Jenner—as a famous fashion persona—is unlikely to share in the same risks or dangers associated with protesting or the issues which drive it. Wilkes explains, 

“It’s too overtly politically correct. The diversity doesn’t look right … This ad is about protest as a way of expressing coolness. Those aren’t the people we should be celebrating. We should celebrate the people who are putting in so much work and whose lives are on the line.”

Further, an advertisement like Pepsi’s glorifies a pro-capitalist corporation and ethos, which also goes against most protest and resistance mentalities. Wilkes argues,

“I can’t think of too many [protest] movements that are pro-capitalist. Real young people in a real protest simply wouldn’t rally around a product like the way they do in this ad. Pepsi’s goal, then, is about branding. They want you to think, ‘I’m like these people! I’m young and good looking and cool!’ … This kind of insidious branding is everywhere. This commercial is getting picked on, but there’s an element of randomness to that. This isn’t the first commercial to have problematic representation.”

Social science can help us make sense of activism and the dynamics behind it and within it as protests break out at schools across the country. One article by Dave Zirin in The Nation borrows concepts from sport sociology to discuss Mizzou’s football player protests in particular.

As described in the article, University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned after weeks of racial tension on campus, including a hunger strike and protest, was met with institutional denial of lived realities. The pivotal moment came when the school’s football team refused to practice until Wolfe was gone. It’s estimated that their refusal to play could have cost the school up to a million dollars. Zirin highlights how often student athletes are characterized as powerless or exploited, and so their capability for activism can be overlooked. At Missouri, however, the players showed their power to affect change as agents rather than mere actors for change.

Zirin’s article draws on research from UC-Berkeley emeritus professor Harry Edwards, a pivotal name in sport sociology, on the racial dynamics of college football, in which teams are often much more black than their fan bases. As #BlackLivesMatter and similar initiatives continue, Zirin believes we can expect more activism in such sites, where institutional racism is stark.

As the nation’s gaze is set on Baltimore, sociologists have begun to talk to the press about the massive peaceful protests, outbreaks of rioting and violence, and media depictions of the city as it mourns the death of Freddie Gray (as of today, Friday, May 1, ruled a homicide and under investigation). Much of the emerging public criticism is aimed at media sources and public officials depicting protests as nothing but violent, unfounded riots led by “thugs.” Stefanie DeLuca sees these language choices as important, telling the Washington Post,

I thought the governor calling Baltimore a “state of emergency” was a colossal fail. These framings don’t help us—they take away from the humanity of the people here who have grievances. It takes away from the incredible potential of a city that has been struggling and fighting for everything it has.

Paul Bagguley, whose work focuses on race and social movements, also spoke to the Washington Post, contributing to a piece on looting during riots. He focused specifically on how small outbreaks of crime can happen once large-scale, otherwise civil protests become riots:

During riots, the normal rules of behavior are suspended—participants often describe a sense of freedom—so that normal respect for private property is suspended. In addition, contemporary societies are consumer societies where one’s status and participation in society is defined by consumer goods, hence those excluded from consumption—the poor—are during riot conditions able to obtain valued items.

Other sociologists spoke more broadly to the systemic inequalities that have long divided Baltimore and put men like Freddie Gray in increasingly subjugated, vulnerable positions. In a recent article at Mother Jones, Peter J. Cookson explained how it’s not just physical segregation that creates and reifies inequalities in health, wealth, education, and incarceration, but also disparities in housing safety, extracurricular activities, and educational programs in schools.

In an Op-Ed for The Tennessean, Tony Brown suggests paying closer attention to the evidence of ongoing racism in everyday American life:

We must document the significance of race and racism before we can address it. Make it routine to collect evidence that allows us to address it. Otherwise, we are bound to run in circles debating whether a problem exists, while things get worse.

China is an expanding country, trying to find where it fits in the social and economic framework of powerful nations. Conversely, its people are trying to find where they fit in the Chinese social structure. As they prepare for a change in political leadership, China is also faced with they rise of the individual. In an article for Voice of America, Shannon Van Sant interviewed UC Irvine sociologist Wang Feng about this phenomenon.

Much like in many areas in the Middle East, Europe, and North America, parts of China have recently seen a surge of protests and “mass incidents.”  Feng describes this as “directly linked to the growth of China’s middle class.”  While incomes in China increase, Feng explains, the expectations Chinese citizens have of individual rights and pursuits grow too. Everything from land ownership to corruption and taxation is now a subject of contestation.

These protests put the Chinese government in an awkward predicament.  Once infamous for its stifling of public activism, the state must react to these protests with the eyes of the world upon them. So far, it has tried to clamp down on the instigators but, in some cases, have also given in to the protestor’s demands. According to Dr. Feng, Chinese society has already changed—the government will “need to come in to really implement these bold reforms. Otherwise, well, time is running out.”

We often hear how Facebook, Twitter, and other social media contribute to protests and demonstrations by allowing activists to express their views or coordinate their actions. Social media were a big part of Arab Spring, but they were also a large part of the Reformation, says an article from The Economist. Nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther went viral by circulating pamphlets, woodcuts, and other social media of that day in order to spread the message of religious reform.

The start of the Reformation is generally explained as a three-step process: 1. Martin Luther gets fed up with members of the Catholic Church asking for money to free souls, 2. Luther pins a list of 95 Theses (in Latin) to the Church door, and 3. The Reformation has begun. But, a closer look reveals Martin Luther spent more time thinking about social media:

The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation.

While it sounds pretty different (imagine communicating through woodcuts!), the media environment Luther circulated in shared some similarities with today. It was a decentralized system in which participants distributed messages through sharing—Luther passed the text of a pamphlet to a friendly printer, who could print the small text in a day or two.  Copies of this first edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, spread through the town they were printed in, being picked up by traveling merchants, preachers, or traders, and spread across the country. Local printers would then reprint their own editions, much like Facebook “shares” or Twitter “retweets.”

And, as with collective action in the 21st century, social media could  be dangerous during the Reformation:

In the early years of the Reformation expressing support for Luther’s views, through preaching, recommending a pamphlet or singing a news ballad directed at the pope, was dangerous. By stamping out isolated outbreaks of opposition swiftly, autocratic regimes discourage their opponents from speaking out and linking up. A collective-action problem thus arises when people are dissatisfied, but are unsure how widely their dissatisfaction is shared, as Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, has observed in connection with the Arab spring. The dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, she argues, survived for as long as they did because although many people deeply disliked those regimes, they could not be sure others felt the same way. Amid the outbreaks of unrest in early 2011, however, social-media websites enabled lots of people to signal their preferences en masse to their peers very quickly, in an “informational cascade” that created momentum for further action.

Something very similar happened in the Reformation. A1523-24 surge in reform-pamphlet popularity (including those written by Luther and many others) served as a collective signaling mechanism of Luther’s support. Luther had been declared a heretic, but, because of his supporters, he was able to escape execution, and the Reformation became established in much of Germany. The power of social media is anything but new.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are in full swing across the nation, and reporters are doing their best to navigate and explain the growing, and sometimes ambiguous, movement. Not surprisingly, sociologists are helping journalists make sense of the phenomenon for viewers and readers. To help shed light on the Occupy Boston protests, FOX 25 Boston turned to Tufts University sociology professor Sarah Sobieraj. In a relatively short TV interview, Sobieraj was asked to cover a lot of territory, including explaining reasons for the movement’s popularity, addressing the breadth of its message, and identifying connections to other famous American protests.

These are all topics Sobieraj should feel pretty comfortable speaking on—after all, she wrote the book on media and protest (Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism). However, she isn’t the only academic with something to say about the Occupy protests. For instance, CUNY professor Héctor Cordero-Guzmán was asked by OWS itself to analyze the characteristics of occupywallst.org visitors and saw his results picked up by The New Yorker’s Rational Irrationality blog, while Columbia’s Todd Gitlin wrote about the difference between Tea Party and OWS protests in the New York Times and discussed the movement with National Public Radio’s Marketplace. These scholars are working as ambassadors for the discipline and proving to the broader public that sociological research can be timely and relevant for parsing current events. Let us know if you spot any particularly edifying articles in your daily news review.