myResearchSpace

Refereed paper presented at the Australian Political Studies Association Conference, Sydney, 28th to 30th September. This paper explores the contributions that struggles over knowledge are making to theglobal justice movement, with a focus on the digital liberties movement and the Indianmovement against genetically modified crops. These ...

Earlier this month I went to a masterclass and colloquium at ECU on 'media participatory activism' with Geert Lovink from the Institute for Network Cultures. The holiday rush and preparing for travels preclude too extensive a post, but I wanted to at least post a few thoughts and questions. Some of these came from Geert, many from other ...

I've just got my second attempt at mapping the digital liberties movement back from Issue Crawler. It seems like a good tool - Tim recommended it to me when I was looking around for a way to map links between different organisations. In the chapter that I'm writing at the moment I'm arguing that this fuzzy thing, 'the digital liberties ...

In August, protesters in Denver faced pepper spray, tear-gas, rubber-bullets, concussion bombs, and mass arrests.I blogged earlier about protests against the Republican National Convention, so it seems only fair to mention the protests against the 2008 Democratic National Convention.These protests seem to have received less attention in the ...

This picture, from sgrah's flickr stream, was taken at the 2005 anti-WTO protest in Hong Kong. It's interesting for me because one of the things that I'm researching at the moment is the cross-over between more 'traditional' left-wing social movements (now incarnated as the Global Justice Movement) and movements emerging around 'information ...

With the Olympics fast approaching, attention continues to be focused on China's human rights record. I've been particularly struck by reports that protests will be allowed, but only within designated spaces and after applying for approval five days in advance. I've just started reading Luis Fernandez's Policing Dissent, in which he looks at ...

I'm just back from a couple of political science and international relations conferences, OCIS and APSA, wading through my inbox and keen to get on with my thesis. Looming deadlines mean that I don't feel I can do justice to the papers I went to, although I will mention a couple of my favourites. Ever since I read Freakonomics, I've been bothered ...

Non-state actors (NSAs) are increasingly coming under consideration within the field ofinternational relations, and transnational social movements, particularly the global justicemovement (GJM), are seen as having a role in pushing for progressive change. The emergence ofthe GJM has relied in large part on the growth and accessibility of various ...

* There are a plenty of definitions, descriptions, and categorisations of social movements out there, many of which are very useful. One of my favourites is Paul Byrne's description of them as unpredictable, irrational, unreasonable, and disorganised, in that they don't always arise where there is the greatest need for them, don't seem to fit ...