KASARINLAN: Call for Papers

Social Movements (Vol. 21, No. 2, 2006 and Vol. 22, No. 1, 2007)

Social movements have been usefully defined as collective efforts by relatively powerless groups of people to affect history and society. At the start of the twenty-first century the study of social movements has acquired greater significance as new forms and methods of struggles emerge that undeniably alter local and global social, economic, cultural and political terrains. These struggles both constitute and make possible the emergence of social movements. The time is opportune for a critical appraisal of different academic disciplines and how they have analyzed various social movements. In short, the aim is to understand how these engagements have transformed both the theory and praxis of social movements.

With this special issue, Kasarinlan seeks to examine this conjuncture of social movement emergence and transformation: to understand the conditions under which people make such efforts, the motives they bring to their participation, the strategies used to achieve their goals, the strategies used by others to control them, and the ways such efforts affect history and society. This can be achieved in two inter-related ways. The first step is to interrogate current theoretical tools—including strategy-oriented perspectives or the identity-oriented sociology—currently debated by scholars as a prelude to the systematic study of some very broad themes of social movements studies. These include the problems of actor formation, social coordination and political strategy.

Second, the conceptual and theoretical should be grounded in empirical case studies to demonstrate how the circumstances, motivations, dynamics and outcomes of these movements vary greatly with particular contexts. Of particular concern will be the issue of how social movements are becoming more transnational in scope and activity, as they offer transnational forms of resistance to the global expansion of capitalism or new sites of contestation in issues politics, such as the environment, development, gender and cultural identity. Employing critical and comparative approaches, the politics of protest—straddling the relative separation of institutional politics and social movements—will also be highlighted.

This issue of the journal will have three main sections: scholarly articles, shorter debate pieces, and reviews. There will be six refereed articles, selected for their relevance to the theoretical and empirical issues of the theme. The debate section will focus on a controversial policy issue—the politics of social movement contestation and collusion in the Philippines. The review section will contain reviews of books which are judged to have a particular importance for the concerns of the special issues as well as feature reviews which will focus on a particular debate.

Interested contributors can submit their articles directly to kasarinlan@up.edu.ph. The paper should at the least include: an abstract of between 250 and 300 words with keywords, a clear argument of the paper, theoretical background, and conclusion.