“A Masters for activists”: learning from each other’s struggles:

This teaching note discusses the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. This is a practitioner course in social movement practice, now in its fourth year of operation. The note explains the MA’s origins, discusses how it works in practice and explores some unresolved challenges. It concludes with some reflections on the role of such educational projects in relation to movements

“Hearts with one purpose alone”? Thinking personal sustainability in social movements

While attention is now being paid to emotions and personal sustainability in social movements, relatively little attention has been paid to difference between social movement situations or broader cultural contexts. This paper locates the question in the broader history of thinking about ordinary people’s political engagement since the French Revolution. It explores various literatures relating to the topic, arguing that emotional sustainability is only one aspect of personal sustainability in social movements. Using the example of WB Yeats’ response to the 1916 Easter Rising, it highlights the importance of locating this in place, time and culture. The paper offers a typological approach as a counter-strategy to the assumption of uniformity, focussing on difference in social situation, organising contexts and background cultures

Current debates: new religion(s) in Ireland ‘Alternative spiritualities, new religious movements and the New Age in Ireland’ conference report, NUI Maynooth, 30–31 October 2009

Recent decades have seen a sea change in the study of religion in Ireland. Numerically dominated by theology until very recently – to the extent that Ireland is one of only two European countries without an association for the non-confessional study of religion – the quantitative decline in academic theology, the generational change of staff, the merging of seminaries and the increasingly lay character of their students are all pointing towards a gradual transformation into departments of religious studies, following the experience of other Northern countries

Challenging toxic hegemony: repression and resistance in Rossport and the Niger Delta

Serious discussion about controlling the petroleum industry requires analysis of the balance of power between corporations, states and social movements. The article examines the “toxic hegemony” constructed by corporations and the state and explores two related movement alliances aimed at controlling the industry, in Ogoniland (Niger Delta) and Erris (NW Ireland). It asks how we can understand the relationship between states and petroleum interests and how movements can challenge this; examines the goals and operation of state repression and movement strategies to contain this repression; and concludes with a discussion of the wider chances of movement success beyond the local

What should the movement of movements do if we want to win?

Many people within the movement of movements, while outraged at the global state of affairs, and determined to bring about large-scale systemic change, are nevertheless reluctant to use the language of winning - that is, to consider what it means to bring about that change against determined and powerful opposition. In part this reflects a fear that to think strategically is to act like "the system", and is bound to lead to cynical instrumentalism and the attempt to replace one elite-led system with another. We start by outlining what is at stake and asking what "winning" means: what actually happens when a social movement project from below achieves its goal of constructing "another world"? We explore the step- by-step processes through which the movement of movements is currently developing the "insurgent architecture" involved in this construction, and noting how this presents a challenge for the powers that be. We then turn to the massive opposition that the movement has been meeting from above - from multinational institutions, states and corporations. We explore the nature of these responses and argue that while they have failed to defeat the movement, they have brought about something of a temporary stalemate. We ask how the movement can get beyond this stalemate, not by adopting the logic and methods of its opponents, but by taking qualitative steps forward in its own development, according to its own logic. The paper finishes with some brief discussion of the most important practical steps in constructing another world, and the nature of the moments of confrontation that lie ahead

Ken Saro-Wiwa in political context: Social movements in the Niger Delta

International solidarity between Africa and Ireland These remarkable letters, from their writing to their publication, trace a history of international solidarity. Their origin lies in the relationship between Ken Saro-Wiwa, the wider Ogoni movement and Majella McCarron’s solidarity work, well-documented in Helen Fallon’s piece above. The letters themselves show Saro-Wiwa in action, mobilizing international support for himself and his co-defendants

The multiple traditions of social movement research: theorising intellectual diversity

This paper reflects on the implications of the contemporary diversity of intellectual approaches to the study of social movements. Sketching some of the key dimensions of difference in the field, it explores the normative intellectual questions raised by /acknowledging this diversity as well as the intellectual history questions involved in explaining it. In a global perspective, the question of what a “social movement studies of the global South” might mean exemplifies the challenge involved. The paper draws on Aristotle’s typology of knowledge to suggest some ways of handling this situation, before concluding with some open questions

Review: Traditional Theravada meditation and its modern-era suppression. By Kate Crosby. Hong Kong: Buddha Dharma Centre of Hong Kong, 2013, xiv+194pp, ISBN 978-9881682024

There is no abstract for this review

Review: Robin Cohen and Shirin Rai, Global social movements.

Once upon a time, there was a debatable and mountainous territory on the borders of many kingdoms. The inhabitants were noted for their colourful dress and customs, not least of which were banditry, revolts and the terrorising of undesirables like tax- collectors, missionaries and prefects of police

Review: Amory Starr, Naming the enemy.

Amory Starr has written a book which I don't expect to see being pushed in special stands in main street bookstores (as *No Logo* is at present - though that in itself is a great, and hopeful, sight to see). It's perhaps a bit too much of a challenge to read, a bit too far away from journalism and too close to theory on the one hand and politics on the other, and it's hardly surprising that the only place it seems to be stocked in Dublin is in the back of the Communist Party's bookstore