Resistance, Revolution, and Social Movements

Authority, Decisions, and Power: Political Anthropology ANTH 2301 Resistance, Revolution, and Social Movements Any activity related to running a society's government is included in politics. We have so far concentrated on the structures and procedures of governance. However, politics take place in both governmental and non-governmental settings. As a matter of fact, comprehending a society's governance may depend even more on what occurs outside of its borders. People react to social and political circumstances outside of the government through social action, criticism, and commentary. To voice their opinions and seek social change, they organise into groups. We refer to these collectives as social movements. A wave of protests swept the Arab world in the early 2010s, starting in Tunisia and continuing to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and many other nations (Blakemore 2019). People demanded an end to their nations' repressive administrations and subpar living circumstances through marches, protests, and violent uprisings. This broad and varied pro-democracy social movement gained momentum with the rise of social media, and it was eventually dubbed the "Arab Spring." The political demand of more government engagement and the economic demand of more fair wealth distribution formed the core of the movement. Social movements are diverse in many ways. Resistance to the state of society is expressed in several social movements. When people get together to express their disapproval of government acts, such as the enactment of a legislation or the result of an election, they are not always recommending a particular course of action or remedy. Some social movements advocate for particular changes. Protesters may demand modifications to the regular procedures and training of local police forces in reaction to incidents of police shootings. Social movements that are demanding a revolution are perhaps more ambitious. When a social movement, using nonviolent or violent means, successfully modifies the political system's structure, a revolution takes place. Political economy is the foundation of many social movements, which aim to alter both the political and economic environments as well as the interaction between them. Political parties are social movements that have evolved into official political entities in democracies. In democratic democracies, political parties have a customary and regular function. In American culture, for example, the Republican Party regularly argues that the government should refrain from interfering in economic matters, whereas the Democratic Party consistently contends that the government should organise and regulate the economy. In democratic cultures, political parties are an integral aspect of the political system, influencing legislation, elections, public policy, and even the legal system. The opinions of certain groups or even the majority may not be adequately represented by political parties. The opinions of a highly rich minority of Americans have a significant impact on the laws that are approved in the US Congress. Political scientist Martin Gilens (2012) surveyed American groups representing the middle class, the affluent, and the destitute to gather public opinion. He then contrasted these groups' opinions to government policy decisions. Gilens discovered that when the affluent and the poor have different opinions on a certain topic, the government almost always takes the wealthy's side. Money plays a major role in American politics, since the rich actively try to influence government policy through donations to political campaigns and lobbying. So what can individuals do if their opinions are not represented by the official democratic mechanisms? Most social movements are informal organisations that participate in activities outside of the official political sphere; in other words, they are more like the Arab Spring than political parties. A specific occurrence or series of episodes, such as mass shootings, sexual assaults, police brutality, or natural catastrophes, frequently serves as the catalyst for social movements. People may take drastic measures to make the truth known and demand corrective action when they believe that government officials and the media are hiding, distorting, or hiding the facts about such situations. The term "parrhesia," coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault (2001), refers to the moral inspiration that motivates individuals to take risks in public speaking as a means of speaking truth to power. Following the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, many Americans started to worry about the financial industry's involvement in causing instability and economic inequality. A group of demonstrators gathered in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park in September 2011 to voice their opposition to growing inequality and corporate power in American politics. Over time, the Occupy Wall Street movement expanded to cities across the US and eventually the globe. Its participants outlined a platform of sociopolitical objectives, which included better job and working conditions, bank regulation, bankruptcy protection for student loan debt, and a moratorium on home foreclosures. In the park, protestors establish a participatory community and organise democratic consensus and working committees to establish a type of self-governance. While some demonstrators came to the park every day, others set up tents right there. About 200 individuals were arrested in a single day after police wearing riot gear forcibly evicted protestors from Zuccotti Park in November 2011. Extractive industries like mining and logging cause environmental harm in many nations, endangering the health and way of life for the local populace. Farmers and urban activists frequently band together to establish coalitions aiming at environmental reform when governments fail to step in. In 2015, anthropologist Fabiana Li studied the rise of protests in Peru against multinational mining companies. 10,000 peasants assembled in 2004 to oppose a mining project that would have destroyed Cerro Quilish Mountain. Urban activists and peasant leaders characterised the mountain as a holy sanctuary of spirits, using supernatural and sentient language, while business executives saw it as a barrier to mineral production. Li also examines how mining authorities react to public calls for transparency. Corporations frequently respond to local protests over the pollution and destruction of their lands with technological improvements that are portrayed as just answers. For example, the mining business in Peru responded to blood tests revealing high levels of lead in children living near a mine by arranging for the children to be bussed to a distant kindergarten, so lowering the amount of hours the children spent each day exposed to mining pollution. Many of the Indigenous peoples that are included in modern nation-states participate in social movements to defend their territories and cultures as well as to get official political recognition. A group of Native Americans, including the Standing Rock Sioux, started a campaign in 2016 to defend Native lands and cultures against the destructive impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a planned oil pipeline. The pipeline jeopardised both the water supply of Native Americans and several locations, both archaeological and otherwise, that Native communities revered. It passed beneath streams and through Native lands. Over several months, thousands of environmentalists and Native Americans congregated in several camps to oppose the pipeline's construction. The Trump administration approved the pipeline's construction in 2017 in spite of the demonstrations. However, a US Appeals court invalidated the Army Corps of Engineers' construction permit in January 2021 and ordered a thorough environmental assessment of the project. Most social movements integrate demonstrations against particular situations with broader goals pertaining to justice, equality, democracy, and political economics, as the aforementioned instances demonstrate. Social movements offer an alternative platform for political expression and potential impact in democratic societies when the power of money supersedes the conventional political institutions.