Collective Action and Social Innovation in the Energy Sector: A Mobilization Model Perspective

This conceptual paper applies a mobilization model to Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) in the energy sector. The goal is to synthesize aspects of sustainable transition theories with social movement theory to gain insights into how CAIs mobilize to bring about niche-regime change in the context of the sustainable energy transition. First, we demonstrate how energy communities, as a representation of CAIs, relate to social innovation. We then discuss how CAIs in the energy sector are understood within both sustainability transition theory and institutional dynamics theory. While these theories are adept at describing the role energy CAIs have in the energy transition, they do not yet offer much insight concerning the underlying social dimensions for the formation and upscaling of energy CAIs. Therefore, we adapt and apply a mobilization model to gain insight into the dimensions of mobilization and upscaling of CAIs in the energy sector. By doing so we show that the expanding role of CAIs in the energy sector is a function of their power acquisition through mobilization processes. We conclude with a look at future opportunities and challenges of CAIs in the energy transition.This research was conducted under the COMETS (Collective action Models for Energy Transition and Social Innovation) project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Program of the European Commission, grant number 837722

A Strategic Evaluation of Public Interest Litigation in South Africa

Based on three case studies, discusses trends and challenges in public interest litigations in South Africa, the most effective combination of strategies in advancing social change, and the role of litigation in social mobilization

La movilización como comunicación: Una contribución latinoamericana al estudio de los movimientos sociales

Many scholars have noted the lack of interdisciplinary dialogue and research between the areas of social movements studies and that of media and communications. While social movement studies fail to fully analyse media practices and communicative processes in relation to mobilization, in media and communication the social and political aspects of mobilization are seldom taken into account when analysing communication in social movements. This apparent lack of dialogue is presented in the paper as a consequence of north-centred theorization in the fields of social movement studies and media and communication, which is addressed by spelling out the contribution of Latin American communication scholarship and a view of mobilization as anchored in communication.Muchos académicos han observado la ausencia de diálogo interdisciplinario entre los estudios de los movimientos sociales y de los medios y la comunicación. Mientras que los estudios de los movimientos sociales no analizan de manera integral las prácticas mediáticas y los procesos comunicacionales en relación con la movilización, los estudios de medios y comunicación raras veces toman en cuenta los aspectos socio-políticos cuando analizan la comunicación en los movimientos sociales. Este artículo plantea esa aparente falta de diálogo como una consecuencia de una teorización eurocéntrica, explica en detalle la contribución de los estudios latinoamericanos de la comunicación, y propone una visión de la movilización centrada en la comunicación

Fighting for their neighborhood: Urban policy and anti-state riots in France

Why does anti-state, violent rioting take place in advanced democracies? The paper investigates the role of the urban environment in shaping grievances expressed and mobilization/counter-mobilization processes observed during a riotous episode. In particular, I look at large social-housing estates as a propitious urban setting for the eruption and sustenance of anti-state violence. I identify three mechanisms (stigma amplification and inversion, failure of state intervention in the form of everyday administration and emergency policing, and advantages for network activation and resource mobilization among potential rioters) that complement standard explanations of rioting based on socioeconomic and ethno-cultural grievances. I test the theoretical model using a controlled case study of two neighboring suburbs in the North of Paris, with similar socioeconomic, demographic, and political characteristics but different violent outcomes in the 2005 nation-wide wave of French riots. The paper traces the source of local variation to the exogenous presence of large, concentrated social-housing estates in one, but not the other. The analysis here treats anti-state rioting as a form of urban protest and looks at state-society divisions rooted in urban geography and policy that have been overlooked in conventional scholarship on minority mobilization in Europe

Big social data to organize the mobilization of citizenship

The cities around the world are concentrating the social life around the world. Nowadays our manner of socialization is changing. The emergence of social networking sites, have enabled greater social connectivity, which in turn has allowed the distances between people to be reduced and interactive dynamics to be generated until recently unpublished. This social phenomenon generates large amounts of data, attracting the interest of researchers and academics and is called Big Social Data. Access to these massive amounts of data makes it possible to detect patterns of behavior that are not visible to the naked eye, simply because they can radiate unknown connections to the naked eye. In addition, it is a type of data that, being more or less accessible, in front of others, does not bother the citizens because they are captured without people feeling observed, granting a very important spontaneity in the collection of data. Despite the many expectations it generates, we must qualify that Big Data does not explain things by itself. The voices that warn that Big Data has a lack have been intensified: explain why, the reasons why users of services do what they do, the emotions, feelings and realities that determine their behaviors and attitudes. To cover this gap, Thick Data is needed, that is, the "dense description" of information as a method to analyze phenomena, cultures and relationships between people. In short, it is about understanding that Thick Data and Big Data are complementary tools that have to be used in a balanced way. In the present communication we will show different examples of research with Big Social Data made so far. In that sense, we have investigated the capacity of organization and mobilization that can help to face social emergencies as disasters and catastrophes. As example we will demonstrate how people organized to find victims facing a terrorism attack happened at Strasbourg (France).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Commentary to "Turning Virtual Public Spaces into Laboratories"

Evaluates a criticism based on privacy and other ethical grounds of Bond's study using 61 million persons on Facebook to determine whether political mobilization messages shared on social media can influence voting behavior

Social mobilization and institutional development approach and strategy

Institutional development, Water users associations, Training, Capacity building, Water resource management, Irrigated farming, Farm Management, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Community Repair Project: Strategic Social Skill Mobilization For Sustainable Fashion

As an effort towards sustainability, fashion needs to embrace repair as a designed feature for everyday clothes. Normally we think of repair as merely fixing a broken object, making it functional again. But repair can be so much more. It can be an update of function, an improvement of style, a sign of compassion, or even rebuilding of community. If sustainable fashion takes repair seriously, designers might be able to reengage communities in strategic collaborations for repair; using the broken object to mend the social fabric scattered by the status anxiety of fashion