Persistent activism has mostly been discussed in the context of Western socio-political and religious movements, where it is attributed to organizational and inter-personal networks and the development of identities and solidarities. Studies of persistent environmental activism are rare in countries that lack durable mobilizing structures. This study explores, for the first time, persistent anti-littering activism in an infrequently studied social and political setting, Iran. This allows us to assess the applicability of social movement findings from western cases to a non-western context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with eighteen persistent Iranian anti-littering activists we find that cosmopolitanism, which de-naturalizes pollution and littering, is a key motivating factor. Persistent anti-littering activism involves overcoming the difficulties of participation by finding pleasures in together to generate a pragmatic identity.

Britain’s unemployed benefit claimants can now be ‘sanctioned’ for not applying for a job specified by their ‘Work Coach’, and the new ‘Way to Work’ scheme compels them to broaden their job search less than a month after their claim starts. Some advocates of such toughened conditionality, including Conservative Ministers, have suggested that a significant proportion of unemployed people lack sufficient employment commitment. When opposing this suggestion, academics have tended not to present quantitative evidence, and (perhaps for ideological reasons) they have paid little attention to the extent that unemployed benefit claimants are unwilling to undertake the less attractive jobs. This article uses British Social Attitudes and NCDS58 / BCS70 survey data and finds that unemployed people are significantly less likely than employed people to favour work-related conditionality. Favouring being jobless over taking / keeping a job with a negative characteristic associates significantly with being unemployed, even when models control for other relevant variables. People’s political views are linked to whether they believe such evidence provides a justification for the increased conditionality, and there is arguably a need for more of the writers on welfare conditionality to differentiate between their evidential and ideological objections to current policies.

Research on gender and politics has primarily focused on women’s participation in women’s movements and institutional politics separately. Our article is innovative in multiple respects: first, employing a comparative perspective we analyse what impact gender regimes have on participation in street protests. Second, we study the relationship between participation in electoral and protest politics and how this relationship is gendered. Third, we compare the participation of men and women in social movements. We are able to do this by drawing on nuanced survey data of five street demonstrations in the UK and Sweden. Our comparative research demonstrates that involvement in protest and institutional politics varies by gender, country and context. Our findings have important implications for gender equality in terms of social inclusion and political representation and contribute to political sociology, sociology of gender and social movement research.

Peaks in climate change newspaper coverage have been attributed to key events, such as major international climate change summits, on the basis that these are reported. This approach overlooks the possibility that unreported events have capacity to focus journalists’ and editors’ attention on climate change. This study considers the extent to which meteorological and political events – derived externally from what is reported in the media itself (some reported, some not) – coincide with attention to climate change in four UK newspapers. We call these events ‘news prompts’ since they are potential rather than actual news pegs: some are translated into news stories, others are not. The study brings together literatures on agenda-setting, newsroom practices, and the political economy and ideologies of newspapers. We find that the four newspapers we analyse have responded differently to climate-change related events including international policy events and extreme weather. In recent years, the Mail, the Telegraph and the Times have been relatively insensitive to climate change news prompts in comparison to the more left-leaning Guardian. As climate change coverage increases, so does sensitivity to climate news prompts. This suggests that the ideology of newspapers and the political economy of media outlets may drive climate coverage as much as routine newsgathering practices.

Environmental conflicts are often framed by an assumption that there are clear divisions between interested parties. As a result, there is a tendency to polarise debates, simplify arguments and miss opportunities for constructive engagement. While these conflicts are rarely amenable to resolution through direct dialogue, diplomacy may offer a means to generate possible political settlements. In this paper, we seek to identify the scope for such diplomacy in the seemingly entrenched conflict that surrounds the case of bovine tuberculosis and badger culling in England. First, we use Q methodological techniques to map prevailing views among concerned publics about this highly contentious and apparently intractable issue. Second, we combine this method with diplomatic theory in order to identify areas in which diplomatic modes of engagement may be constructive. Our results show that there are predictable conflictual elements within two positions organised around opposition to, and support for, the culling of badgers. These positions, which we label ‘ethical empiricist’ and ‘nostalgic autonomist’, respectively, are not always straightforwardly oppositional. Their points of contact, as well as intersections with a third, alternative, subject position, which we label ‘liberal pragmatist’, suggest starting-points for diplomacy.

Reducing global emissions will require a global cosmopolitan culture built from detailed attention to conflicting national climate change frames (interpretations) in media discourse. The authors analyze the global field of media climate change discourse using 17 diverse cases and 131 frames. They find four main conflicting dimensions of difference: validity of climate science, scale of ecological risk, scale of climate politics, and support for mitigation policy. These dimensions yield four clusters of cases producing a fractured global field. Positive values on the dimensions show modest association with emissions reductions. Data-mining media research is needed to determine trends in this global field.

© 2015 Z. Over the last decade we have seen the growth and development of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations, which seek to encourage members of the public to reduce their personal energy use and carbon emissions. As a first step to assess the transformational potential of such organisations, this paper examines the ways in which they frame their activities. This reveals an important challenge they face: in addressing the broader public, do they promote 'transformative' behaviours or do they limit themselves to encouraging 'easy changes' to maintain their appeal? We find evidence that many organisations within this movement avoid 'transformative' frames. The main reasons for this are organisers' perceptions that transformational frames lack resonance with broader audiences, as well as wider cultural contexts that caution against behavioural intervention. The analysis draws on interviews with key actors in the low carbon lifestyle movement and combines insights from the literatures on collective action framing and lifestyle movements.

Current research on the behavioural impacts of social movements tends to focus on their influence on those most intensely involved. Consequently it overlooks the impacts that social movement organisations might have on those outside the activist ghetto. To begin to address this gap in the literature, this article examines the relationship between contact with environmental organisations and public attitudes and behaviour. Monitoring the electricity use of 72 households has facilitated analysis of its association with their environmental attitudes and contact with environmental organisations. Although standard statistical approaches fail to uncover a relationship between contact with environmental organisations and attitudes and behaviour, a deductive blockmodelling approach tells a different story. Low household electricity use is associated with households sharing pro-environmental attitudes and contact with environmental organisations. High energy use is associated with households not sharing any of these; and moderate energy use is associated with a moderate degree of sharing. Our findings reveal the need for systematic studies of environmental movement organisations' impact on the public's pro-environmental behaviours. © 2014 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

It is well known that the Web, as with any communications technology, has brought new opportunities for citizens around the world to transcend the physical borders of their states. Global Justice activism seeks to challenge dominant socio-political power systems and promote fairer, free and environmentally friendly political discourse on a global scale. The nature of Global Justice activism has meant that it has historically maintained a close relationship with the Web and is influenced by new Web tools and technologies. Social media in particular has been lauded as opening up a new era for Global Justice activism, providing activists with means to network and organise horizontally, circumventing hierarchical power dynamics. However, these tools and technologies are becoming ever more ubiquitous in the everyday socio-political landscape, they are not the radical tools they once were. This poster presents the findings from a week of participation in the "Stop G8" demonstrations in London in June 2013, a week of meetings, lectures and direct action designed to raise awareness regarding the contention of some citizens to dominant capitalist, neoliberal and globalising socio-economic systems. Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Current research on the behavioural impacts of social movements tends to focus on their influence on those most intensely involved. Consequently it overlooks the impacts that social movement organisations might have on those outside the activist ghetto. To begin to address this gap in the literature, this article examines the relationship between contact with environmental organisations and public attitudes and behaviour. Monitoring the electricity use of 72 households has facilitated analysis of its association with their environmental attitudes and contact with environmental organisations. Although standard statistical approaches fail to uncover a relationship between contact with environmental organisations and attitudes and behaviour, a deductive blockmodeling approach tells a different story. Low household electricity use is associated with households sharing pro-environmental attitudes and contact with environmental organisations. High energy use is associated with households not sharing any of these; and moderate energy use is associated with a moderate degree of sharing. Our findings reveal the need for systematic studies of environmental movement organisations’ impact on the public’s pro-environmental behaviours.

Since the new millennium, scholars have acclaimed a vigorous global justice movement
(GJM). Many accounts have stressed the tolerant identities of those involved in this
movement, and/or the movement’s horizontal decision-making structure. Consequently,
formal organizations are often excluded from analysis, precluding the chance to
systematically assess whether they are involved in social movement modes of coordination.
The article uses deductive block modelling and inferential statistics on
survey data of a broad sample of 208 Western European global justice organizations to
uncover their modes of coordination. I find that many organizations commonly
considered integral to the GJM demonstrate organizational and coalitional modes of
coordination, while formal organizations often engage in coalitional work.
Organizations most densely networked, including some formal organizations, do have
social movement modes of coordination: they identify with the GJM, display continuity
in attendance at international protests/events, and have contentious relations with
political institutions. In addition, I raise methodological considerations for future studies
of social movement modes of coordination.

Protest participation scholarship tends to focus on the special characteristics of novices and
the highly committed, underplaying the significance of those in between. In this article, we fill
a lacuna in the literature by refocusing attention on four different types of protesters: novices,
returners, repeaters, and stalwarts. Employing data from protest surveys of demonstrations
that took place in seven European countries (2009-2010), we test whether these types of protesters
are differentiated by biographical-structural availability and/or psychologicalattitudinal
engagement. Our results suggest that biographical availability distinguishes our
four groups, but not as a matter of degree. Few indicators of structural availability distinguish
between the groups of protesters, and emotional factors do not distinguish between them at
all. Some political engagement factors suggest similarity between novices and returners. This
confirms the need to avoid treating protesters as a homogenous group and reinforces the
importance of assessing the contributions of diverse factors to sustaining “protest politics.”

Data from in-depth interviews with participants in the 2008 Camp for Climate Action, participant observation and documents written by participants, are used to illustrate the tension that developed between reformists and radicals within the Climate Camp. Contrary to surface appearances and expectations derived from previous studies of environmental direct action groups, it is found that Climate Campers do not share a radical approach. The consequent drift towards reformism caused tension and contributed to the demise of Climate Camp as a national network. One way to avoid future tension might be for all participants to recognise the value of a multi-pronged approach to solving climate change. Allowing the Camp to act as a bridging organisation would reduce potential for fragmentation and collapse. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Key studies of social movement networks use block modelling to uncover movement network
structures. While it is promising to see mathematical sociology techniques applied here, there
are grounds for engendering an even closer connection between these two fields of study. The
mathematical sociology literature recommends, for example, that analyzed networks should be
complete and relatively dense, that some degree of deduction should be applied to select the
“best” model, that levels of equivalence and/or error scores should be specified, and that
reliable and appropriate algorithms and levels of equivalence should be carefully selected.
Some dilemmas involved in block modelling analysis are demonstrated through block
modelling analysis of interorganizational networking in Friends of the Earth International
(FoEI). This illustrates that, in the absence of the robust analytical procedures recommended
by mathematical sociologists, block models are unable to uncover the structure of social
movement networks.

Political opportunity structures are often used to explain differences in the characteristics of movements in different countries on the basis of the national polity in which they exist. However, the approach has a number of weaknesses that are outlined in this article. The article especially stresses the fact that such broad-brush approaches to political opportunity structures fail to account for the different characteristics of movement organisations within the same polity. The article therefore recommends using a more fine-tuned approach to political opportunities, taking into account that the strategies and status of organisations affect the real political opportunities they face. This fine-tuned approach is used to predict how the status and strategy of environmental organisations might influence the extent to which different types of environmental organisations in the UK network with one-another. We find that organisations that face an open polity - those with a moderate action repertoire and a constructive relationship with government institutions - tend not to cooperate with those with a radical action repertoire and negative relations with government institutions. On the other hand, those that vary their action repertoires, and which have variable status according to the issues involved or campaign targets, have a much broader range of network links with other types of organisations. Thus, there is much more diversity in types of environmental organisation in the UK than the broad-brush to political opportunity structures would account for. Nonetheless, it does seem that environmental organisations are aware of how their own behaviours might influence (non-structural) political opportunities, and that they mould their strategies and networking patterns around this awareness. © Sociological Research Online, 1996-2009.

After the Working Group on Climate Change and Development recognised the challenge that climate change poses to development, a number of environmental and aid, trade and development organisations formed a new politically active coalition, Stop Climate Chaos (SCC), to demand that stronger climate laws be adopted in the UK. The coalition now frames the issue of climate change as a 'global climate justice' one, emphasising the severity of the issue for people in poor countries, who will suffer the worst consequences, but have contributed least to it. The extent to which SCC member organisations address climate change as a global justice issue is explored through a content analysis of their websites, and a survey of participants in the SCC I-Count march, London, 3 November 2006. There is certainly evidence that environmental organisations are 'facing South', just as aid, trade and development organisations are 'turning green'.

It is frequently asserted that national environmental movement organisations (EMOs) have, as an unintended consequence of their public relations strategies, a tendency to ignore local activists. Using a variety of research methods - participant observation, semi-structured interviews, a survey and network analysis of national, regional and local EMOs in London - we explode that myth. Although national EMOs cooperate mostly with other national EMOs, they do not turn their backs on local campaigners. On the contrary, several highly influential national EMOs (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Campaign to Protect Rural England) seek to involve grassroots activists. Local campaigners make surprisingly few demands on national EMOs, understand that national EMOs have resource constraints, and do not generally feel marginalised.