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Social Activism in Post-Communist Countries and New Media: The Case of the Tent Camp Protest Action in Minsk, 2006

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Naumov V.

Polish Sociological Review

2014

vol. 187

issue 3

291-516

Social movements, along with political parties play a significant role in socio-political life of contemporary democracies. As distinct from political parties, they do not pretend to take part in the direct exercise of power (though many of them do demand to be included into the decision-making process), but realizing their specific aims and functions, they exert considerable influence on the political process. Existence in a given country of wide range of social movements, struggling for their own interests is widely considered an indicator of a strong civil society. But how do social movements pursue their goals in countries with underdeveloped institutes of civil society? Does the intervention of new ICTs have certain emancipatory potential, which could be used by social movements to facilitate the desired social transformations? Is it possible to speak about the generational change in social movements, meaning new collective actors, using ICTs and Internet, significantly differ from those that can be termed “old” collective actors? In this paper, I analyze the ways in which new ICTs change the scope, ideology and structure of contemporary social movements and illustrate these transformations with the example of peculiar Belarusian movement,-namely, the Tent Camp, emerged as a result of falsification of the presidential elections in March, 2006, on October Square in Minsk.

Transformative Adult Learning in New Social Movement – a Case Study from South Africa

67%

Čubajevaitė M.

International Journal of Area Studies

2015

vol. 10

issue 2

139-171

New social movements in South Africa could play a prominent role in mobilizing the communities to reflect critically and address the repercussions of the neo-liberal agenda which manifests itself in perpetual exclusion of under-educated adults and provision of poor quality education. Few studies especially from the perspective of the activists leave a potential research area of a very interesting phenomenon of how people learn while struggling for social justice. Therefore this article based on a single multi-site case study on a social movement cohering around literacy issues in Gauteng, South Africa, aims at answering, what forms of learning and education the social movement encompassed, how did the group conscientization occur and what are the individual transformations. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion were held with 13 learnersactivists and 2 adult educators. By applying Mezirow’s individual transformation and Freirean group conscientization models the analysis of primary and secondary data, revealed that the engagement in the social movement challenged and changed learnersactivists’ understanding of educational status within their respective communities. This in turn led to transformative action addressing the problems identified. On the individual level, some learners-activists became more tolerant and willing to cooperate with those of different political ideologies, able to tap into community resources. Finally, the potential of social movements as adult learning environments are outlined.

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1 International Journal of Area Studies

1 Polish Sociological Review

1 Naumov V.

1 Čubajevaitė M.

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Social Activism in Post-Communist Countries and New Media: The Case of the Tent Camp Protest Action in Minsk, 2006

Transformative Adult Learning in New Social Movement – a Case Study from South Africa