The Social Lens: Insights on Institutions, Inequality, and Innovation

The consequences of social movements remain an area that has not been studied with sufficient methodological and systematic rigor. The existing scholarship in this domain is inadequate for fully understanding the impact of social movements and the processes or means employed to achieve their goals. This book focuses on the means-end analysis of social movements. It is divided into two parts: Types of Consequences and Comparative Perspectives . Comprising ten essays on different types of protest movements, the book seeks to establish the link between means and ends. Most of the essays take William A. Gamson’s 1975 work, Strategy of Social Protest , as a benchmark, critically examining the question of consequences through the theories and hypotheses presented in that work. The book begins with a historical account of past research, future challenges, and potential developments by Marco Giugni. He distinguishes between earlier studies on social movements, which primarily focused on thei...

Recently plebiscite was carried out in Crimea and it voted to join Russia and the world seemed to be divided into two poles again. The vicious and tensed memory of cold war again emerged in the minds of the people of whole world who have inclinations to see the international events. It was the part of same country which decided not to remain part of erstwhile USSR. The representation of nation-state in a homogeneous and undifferentiated monolith manner was questioned by the dominant narrative of the people of Ukraine. So, there is somewhere fragmented set of relationships between institutions with complex and uneven relationships, which is not represented in 'everyday' discourses by dominant narratives of state. These narratives are not only found in secessionist movement but also the people at periphery struggles to voice their discontent in dominant narratives be it gender, race or any other discriminated subjects. The problem emerged from the universalisation of discou...

Indian social system is influenced by Dharamshahstras, which call for the Chaturvarnashram system created by Brahmins and Kshhatriyas. Any social movements defines opposition classes or groups, generally exploiter and exploited but dalit movement is based against the classical notion of “purity and pollution” and the notion of purity and pollution comes from the individual’s birth in a family i.e., totally ascriptive in nature. Dalit movements challenge it as Periyar challenged the Brahminical hegemony in cultural, social, religious and political spheres. challenging the Brahminical notion of hierarchy was the first step in Dalit movements through Temple Entry Movement, social justice movement etc. These movements talked for the enforcement of freedom, justice, liberty in the place of ritualistic traditional system where humans are deprived of basic rights to live decent life. Therefore, these movements were giving the model for alternate society based on ‘modern’ and rational...

Maithili is the language of Mithila, a cultural region of two historical dynasties in the North-Eastern part of India but no longer a distinct political entity. According to Grierson, it lies to the north of the Ganges, to the east of the Gandak river, to the west of the Kosi river, and to the south of the Himalayas (thus falling primarily in the Indian state of Bihar but including some territory in Nepal). Harimohan Jha, known as renaissance man of Mithila, wrote the book “Khattar kakak tarang” in 1948 and discusses about many things from food behaviour to dharmashastra to veda to philosophy to character of various gods to various cultural idioms of mithilanachal. His view are also very diverse as feminism, scientific temper, rationality, class and caste etc are prevalent in his writings. In the preface, Harimohan Jha describes the protagonist of the book khttar kaka as being named neo-charvak by the local people.  Khattar kaka sees everything with a doubt and applies inqu...

Karl Marx and Engles postulates a nation-less society based upon pan-human communalism. The various divisions in the society like politics, religion, ethnicity etc prevent man from realising his species being, wherein his true fulfillment lies. The real destiny of man is to be free of the constraints imposed by these divisions and also by any social roles and at the same time some ‘hidden hand’ will automatically incorporate him in a harmonious universal community.  However, they did not elaborated about this hidden hand. Class is the key to understand the mechanics of human alienation and human liberation.(Why? obvious reasons). So it is both noxious and historically relevant. The other category which suffers from the double indignity of being both noxious and unimportant is proletariat and it will liberate mankind from the class endowed society altogether. The single most crucial and disastrous error in Marxist system is the supposition that communist societies will not ...

In Spain, Franco started Spanish league to deviate people’s attention from the autocratic polity of the state and he made it sure to have five matches in a week. In the last Cricket world Cup, all Indian offices were closed for the semifinal match between India and Pakistan. The modern nation-state tries to enforce a consciousness of “we-ness” among the people living in a demarcated territory. The passion attached to these events creates a shared consciousness which is beyond the reach of any traditional identity. These forms of consciousness can be very easily attached to a nation state. So, nation becomes the supra-consciousness among the people and all other consciousness sometimes merged into it or accommodated within it. But, despite having this kind of consciousness, why the same nation again engaged into different forms of violent action and why the professed “civil religion” disappears? is it a temporary consciousness or contested space? is the notion of nationalism is un...

By Henry A Giroux and Brad Evans , Truthout | Op-Ed   (http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/23998-disposable-futures) As more and more individuals and groups are now considered excess, consigned to zones of abandonment, surveillance and incarceration, dystopian politics has become mainstream politics and the practice of disposability has intensified. There  are  alternatives. The 20th Century is often termed the "Century of Violence." And rightly so, given the widespread devastation of an entire continent during the two Great Wars; the continued plunder and suppression of former colonial enclaves; the rebirth of extermination camps in the progressive heart of a modern Europe; the appalling experiments in human barbarism that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the torture and symbolic acts of disappearance so endemic in Latin America; the passivity in the face of ongoing acts of genocide; the wars and violence carried out in the name of some deceitf...