kevingillan.info — — — > Articles & Papers

Article to be published in Information, Communication and Society.

Abstract:This article uses interviews with committed anti-war and peace activists to offer an overview of both the benefits and challenges that social movements derive from new communication technologies. It shows contemporary political activism to be intensely informational; dependent on the sensitive adoption of a wide range of communication technologies. A hyperlink analysis is then employed to map the UK anti-war movement as it appears online. Through comparing these two sets of data it becomes possible to contrast the online practices of the UK anti-war movement with its offline ‘reality’. When encountered away from the Web recent anti-war contention is grounded in national-level political realities and internally divided by its political diversity but to the extent that experience of the movement is mediated online, it routinely transcends national and political boundaries.

An electronic preprint of this article is available here: Anti-War Movement Online, Preprint. The authoritative final version will be available online at: Taylor and Francis, ICS.

With Jenny Pickerill, published in Australian Journal of Political Science 43:1, pp. 59-78.

Abstract: The upsurge in activism opposing wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to represent a significant process of transnational collective action. Using data collected through participant observation, interviews and website analysis this paper explores the role of the Internet in facilitating transnational activism between Australia, Britain and the United States. This research confirms Tarrow’s (2005a) assertion of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ – a primary commitment to locally contextualised action combined with a desire for transnational support. The Internet is used primarily for gathering news and for sharing symbolic expressions of solidarity. In Australia in particular, with fewer domestic anti-war resources online, international networking proves particularly useful. To an extent, online networks reach across both political diversity and geographical boundaries. However, online resources do not appear to enable the more personal connections required to build stable, working coalitions across borders.

An electronic preprint of the article is available for download here: Transnational Anti-war Activism Preprint. The published version is available from the Australian Journal of Political Science 43(1).

Paper presented to the 8th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Glasgow, September 2007.

Abstract: Significant activist groups see information and communication technologies (ICTs) as offering substantial potential in empowering social movements in organisation, mobilisation, and communication of their critiques and demands. Academic studies have begun to demonstrate some of the creative and technologically sophisticated uses to which activists have put new media. However, emphasis on the novel tends to overshadow the degree to which activists’ everyday lives are structured by interaction with new communications media. This paper analyses informational practices among UK anti-war and peace activists, demonstrating a far more complex picture of the value of new media to campaigning organisations. On the one hand, we see informational practices that utilise the manifest functionalities of new technologies as absolutely pervasive in contemporary activism. On the other hand, we see some activist groups discovering the latent functionalities of ICTs through stringing together multiple modes of communication or combining technologies with the social and political networks in which they interact. Through such practices activists produce relatively novel communication structures that potentially offer new ways of exerting the power of collective action.

This paper may be downloaded in pdf format from this link: Anti-War Activism and New Media.

Paper presented to 57th Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Bath, April 2007.

At the heart of social movements lie structures of beliefs and values that guide critical action and aid activists’ understandings. These are worthy of interrogation, not least because they contain points of articulation with ideational formations found in both mainstream politics and academia. They offer an alternative view of society, economy and polity that is grounded in protagonists’ experience and struggle. However, the ideational content of social movements is often obscured by a focus on particular, immediate goals; by their orientation to certain forms of action; and by the mediated, simplified nature of their communication. Additionally, recent social movements display a tendency to coalitional action, bringing a diverse set of political understandings in concert on highly specific campaigns.

This conceptual paper seeks an approach to identifying the messages within social movements that remains sensitive to their complexity, dynamism and heterogeneity. Through a critique of the concept of ‘interpretative frames’ as developed in social movement studies, I describe the novel concept ‘orientational frame’. In contrast to social movement scholars’ tendency to focus on instrumental claim-making by movement organisations, I emphasise deeply held, relatively stable sets of ideas that allow activists to justify contentious political action. Through an engagement with Michael Freeden’s morphological approach to understanding ideologies I attempt to draw frame analysis away from the positivistic attempt to delineate general processes into a hermeneutic endeavour more suitable to understanding the context dependent, specifically realised ideas of particular social movements.

The full paper may be downloaded here: A Hermeneutic Methodology for Frame Analysis

This lecture presented a personal view of the judicial review process to law students at Queen’s University, Belfast. In 2003 I was subject to a stop and search by police, while on my way to a demonstration. The police used powers conferred on them by the Terrorism Act 2000. Ever since I have been involved with a case that has tested that piece of legislation, and the ways in which it has been used by the police. Essentially, our argument is on two levels. First, the legislation itself is not in keeping with the weight and tradition of British law and is in conflict with aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights (referred to as the Convention throughout), so the ultimate solution would be to rewrite it. Second, the way the legislation is being used by the police is not as Parliament intended, so the solution would be limitations on use to the police.

European Court of Human Rights, original photo by keepthebyte on flickr

The lecture explains sections 44-47 of the Terrorism Act and gives an overview of the judicial review process. I then look at three issues brought up by the case. First, the relationship between the judiciary and the state in the context of national security is examined. I argue that we see a complex and shifting relationship that belies any simple view of the ’separation of powers’. Second, I look at the degree to which the judiciary takes a role in governing use of discretionary powers by the police. I argue that the judicial review process contains a blind spot where the complaint is systematic, but informal misuse of exceptional police powers whether that be against peaceful protesters or against people on the basis of race or religion. Third I run through some aspects of human rights legislation, to the degree that they are relevant to our case.

The full lecture may be downloaded here: The Terrorism Act and the Judicial Review Process.
The accompanying powerpoint slides may be downloaded here: Judicial Review Process Slideshow.

A Paper Presented to the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference, at Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2006

This study utilises a theoretical framework developed from the interpretive frames approach. I will offer a hermeneutic conception of ‘orientational frames’ that has a number of advantages over the more usual, largely positivist, application of the approach. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork within the Sheffield Social Forum (SSF) from the inception of the group, through its involvement in a UK network of local social forums, to the attendance of members of the SSF at the 2004 edition of the European Social Forum. As such, it relates to processes at a number of levels: the creation of a local organisation; the networking of local organisations nationally; and their involvement in an international event. Data will be drawn from each of these levels in order to argue that despite important ideational continuities the SF movement contains substantially shifted emphases, and the development of novel connections between familiar ideas that signal a new politics of the social forums.

Please download a .pdf version of this paper from this link: Another Ideology?

From late 2005 to early 2006 I worked with a group of Somali refugees and asylum seekers in Sheffield. The group had emerged around concerns about Somali children’s achievement in school and hoped to find out what sorts of particular problems their children might face. Together we designed a survey based on a bilingual questionnaire; the survey was carried out by Somali volunteers and the group worked together to interpret the results.

The final report was presented at a large meeting of policy makers, service providers and service users at Sheffield Town Hall in March 2006. The report includes data about the Somali community’s concerns about education; about the culture gap between youth and parents; and about the kinds of solutions that Somalis hope to see. A number of best practice solutions are described, most strikingly the highly successful efforts of Somali link workers in Tower Hamlets.

The Somali group Link Action is currently working with the Northern Refugee Centre to bring about some of the potential solutions described in the report.

You can use this link to download the report in .pdf format: Somalis in Sheffield (2.7MB). For a hardcopy version, please contact the Northern Refugee Centre.

A Paper Presented to the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference, at Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2005

The first aim of this paper is to explore the current state of knowledge represented by the framing approach to social movements. The second aim is to describe a particular approach to understanding the political significance of cycles of contention in terms of the way activists come to understand the world and their place in it. What I will term ‘relational frame analysis’ (RFA) is a conceptual structure that aims to develop that side of the framing approach that aims particularly at understanding the ideas and debates represented by movement activity. I hope to explain the merits of this approach in terms of its ability to pull together a number of key concepts for understanding movement culture, and to give a philosophically coherent understanding of the connections between various levels of analysis. (more…)

(From September 2002)

Amidst the propaganda build up to another seemingly inevitable Gulf War a peace protester finds moral certainty in the facts of modern warfare.

There many good reasons not to re-invade Iraq. Given that Saddam Hussain is an intelligent self-preservationist (albeit a vicious murdering one) why would he use weapons of mass destruction against anyone unless his own survival was already threatened, as it is now being? (more…)