Bossnapping:situating repertoires of industrial action in national and global contexts

French industrial relations were shaken in the spring of 2009 by a series of labour struggles which featured the forcible detention of company managers and threats to commit major acts of sabotage. In this article I focus on the first of these two types of action, placing industrial sequestration in the context of the pattern of collective negotiation processes in France, and comparing it with previous cycles of the same phenomenon, particularly in the post-1968 period. I argue that the current cycle of sequestrations needs to be understood as a response to the deterritorialisation processes of neo-liberal globalisation, and is the product of asymmetries of power between the fixity of labour and the fluidity of global capital. I conclude by arguing that sequestration is a public melodrama of protest which might point to the development of a resistant politics of corporeality in France, in common with struggles in other social and economic sectors

Regimes of austerity

This article discusses the European wave of contention catalysed by the financial market crash of 2008/9 and the subsequent imposition of austerity measures by governments across the continent. It develops two central arguments. First, it argues that we need a clearer and more sharply differentiated understanding of the operation of austerity as a social and political phenomenon than can be accounted for by reading the crisis of austerity as a solely material set of grievances. Second, it dissociates austerity into a series of interconnected regimes, which are fiscal, ideological, political and civic. In so doing, I show how the material aspects of austerity are intimately tied to the ideational, institutional and spatial enclosures they create, enabling us to see more clearly how the practice of austerity is intimately tied to the progressive dismantling of collective democratic space. The transformative potential of anti-austerity mobilizations accordingly lies in their capacity to develop an alternative moral economy grounded in new forms of solidarity and sociability, whether in workplaces or in the civic squares

The French Environmental Movement in the Era of Climate Change : The Case of Notre Dame des Landes

International audienceOur paper discusses the effect of climate change on the development of the environmental movement in France. Today, the French Green movement appears as strong as it has ever done, particularly in the predominantly institutionalised terms of its recent development. But what of protest? Despite successes and visibility on a number of issues, on climate change – the defining environmental problematic of our age – there is relatively little to report. Focusing on movement responses (mobilisation, discourses, policy, strategies) to three infrastructure projects (EPR nuclear reactor, Flamanville; Notre Dame des Landes airport, Nantes; 450MW gas power station, Guipavas, Brest), we argue that institutional and identitarian movement dynamics have constrained the movement’s ability to mobilise effectively on climate change. We discuss: 1. the development of consultative decentralised structures modifying the relationship between civil society and the state; 2. the institutional development of the Greens, placing them (as movement allies) in power-sharing agreements with traditional left parties committed to liberal economic growth strategies; 3. the media ‘capture’ of the nuclear thematic by Greenpeace France, and its effects on developing a mass movement; 4. the importance of the anti-nuclear struggles of the 1970s as lieux de mémoire for the movement We explore to what extent these dynamics, taken together, constrain the development of new movement positions over energy, and effective movement mobilisation over both nuclear power and climate change. Finally, we discuss whether the recent development of climate camps represents a potential way out of this impasse

Having your day in court:judicial opportunity and tactical choice in Anti-GMO campaigns in France and the United Kingdom

Investigating the recent direct action campaigns against genetically modified crops in France and the United Kingdom, the authors set out to understand how contrasting judicial systems and cultures affect the way that activists choose to commit ostensibly illegal actions and how they negotiate the trade-offs between effectiveness and public accountability. The authors find evidence that prosecution outcomes across different judicial systems are consistent and relatively predictable and consequently argue that the concept of a “judicial opportunity structure” is useful for developing scholars’ understanding of social movement trajectories. The authors also find that these differential judicial opportunities cannot adequately account for the tactical choices made by activists with respect to the staging of covert or overt direct action; rather, explanations of tactical choice are better accounted for by movement ideas, cultures, and traditions

Tactics, traditions, and opportunities:British and French crop-trashing actions in comparative perspective

This article compares the tactic of trashing genetically modified crops in activist campaigns in Britain and France. In Britain, most crop trashing was carried out covertly, while in France most activists undertook open, public actions. In seeking an explanation for this, the article shows that the analysis of political opportunities, dominant in comparative studies of social movements, can only take us so far. While it helps explain the occurrence of direct action, it is much less useful in explaining the tactical differences between each country. It is argued that a fuller explanation requires an understanding of how action was shaped by different activist traditions. In France, action was staged as a demonstration of serious, responsible, collective Republican citizenship; in the United Kingdom, activists combined a sceptical view of legality developing from anarchist individualism with an explicitly non-threatening, playful, ethos. The article concludes that a focus on activist traditions can provide an effective bridge between structural and cultural approaches to understanding the determinants of social movement action

A New Climate Movement?:Extinction Rebellion’s Activists in Profile

Extinction Rebellion set out to mobilise a new generation of activists. As our data shows, they have in part succeeded: participants in Extinction Rebellion's two major actions in London in 2019 had notably little prior experience of protest action, and we encountered many first-time activists. At the same time, however, our socio-demographic profile of XR's activists in the UK reveals a broadly familiar kind of environmentalist: XR's activists are typically highly-educated and middle-class (and though our survey did not explicitly ask this, white); they identify politically on the Left; and they consciously adopt multiple pro-environmental behaviours in the course of their everyday lives. XR's strength has been to create a new public agency amongst people who are not 'natural' protesters, and perhaps even less so natural law-breakers, but who were already persuaded of the rightness of the climate cause, and frustrated with the inability of both 'politics as usual' and lifestyle environmentalism to bring about the kind of transformative political change that the climate emergency demands. Mobilising this group enabled XR to significantly expand the numbers of people willing to engage in environmental direct action, broadening its age profile, and bringing non-violent direct action on climate change into the centre of political life in the UK

Measuring patient satisfaction with urinary incontinence treatment

Background: A number of patient satisfaction measures were trialed in a cross-sectional survey of women who had treatment for urinary incontinence (N=187). The psychometric properties of these measures were examined and a short measure for patient satisfaction was developed. Methods: Participants completed a questionnaire comprising items covering incontinence status, treatment type and three generic patient satisfaction questionnaires: the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-18), the Consultation Satisfaction Questionnaire (Consult SQ), and the Patient Satisfaction Index (PSI). Donabedian\u27s model postulates that satisfaction is the patient\u27s judgment on the quality of care. The seven dimensions in this model provide the conceptual framework against which the measures were reviewed. Results: The instruments were examined by their descriptive systems, internal structures and responsiveness. The items from the instruments were examined through iterative Mokken and partial credit IRT analyses against Donabedian\u27s model. Seven items were selected which formed a Short Assessment of Patient Satisfaction (SAPS) scale. Its internal psychometric properties were excellent (α = 0.86) and it provided a patient satisfaction perspective that was most consistent with Donabedian\u27s model. In summary, the internal structures of the instruments suggested that all SAPS items were responsive, but some items on the other measures were insensitive. Also, all measures were shown to be unidimensional. Tests of response bias suggested that this was present in the CSQ-18 and the PSI. Redundancy was observed in the Consult SQ, CSQ-18 and PSI. Conclusions: This study has provided evidence that patient satisfaction can be assessed validly, reliably and sensitively using the much shorter SAPS instrument. This new short measure of patient satisfaction with treatment will be a useful tool for clinicians and evaluators as the population ages

Just ethnic matching? Racial and ethnic minority students and culturally appropriate mental health provision at British universities

The need for “culturally appropriate” support for racial and ethnic minority (REM) students has prompted several British universities to embrace targeted interventions such as “ethnic matching” to encourage professional help-seeking on campus (i.e., pairing REM students with ethnically similar practitioners). There remains, however, little clarity on what culturally appropriate support entails. This study explores how REM students define culturally appropriate support and the approaches they view to be effective in promoting help-seeking