Contention

The articles in this issue cover a wide range of topics related to social movements, political resistance, nonviolence, and dissent. These five pieces offer a diverse array of case studies and theoretical reflections, exploring crucial aspects of contentious politics and social protest.

This article introduces a conceptual framework for understanding the lasting benefits of coalition participation for SMOs. Based on ethnographic research into protest linked to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, it traces how individual movement organizations were able to benefit from participation in an event coalition. Lasting benefits, or legacies, of coalition participation included organizational changes, enhanced mobilization potential, and achieving political objectives. However, these were not distributed evenly among the organizations studied, with some more able than others to effectively benefit from coalition participation than others, based on three factors: organizational structure, decision-making processes, and movement mission. This empirically grounded framework provides new avenues for the study of coalitions and how individual movement organizations are affected by coalition participation.

Based on ethnographic research on Palestinian solidarity activism in and around Jerusalem, this article argues that weirdness is a political feeling. Taking emotion as a form of “wordless knowledge” mediated through the Israeli national narrative, the feeling of weirdness emerges when the expectations of Israelis fail to accord with the practices of military occupation. This is not an intense or overwhelming affect, it does not drive us to fight or flight, or bring us to tears. However, repeated encounters with the failure of their knowledge systems have brought some Israelis to doubt the validity and logic of hegemonic Zionism. Doubt, Hannah Arendt believed, was the outcome of thinking, a human faculty that could condition men against evil-doing. In enabling and augmenting the emergence of doubt, weirdness is a political emotion and one that may play a significant role in the emergence of resistance to the vested interests of oppressive structures in societies everywhere.

This article examines the impact of framing strategies on the political outcomes of feminist legislative campaigns in South Korea. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I analyze the interactive effects of frame qualities and nonverbal framing activities. The research fills a gap in the literature by emphasizing the combined influence of frame articulateness and empirically credible frames on political success. It also highlights the significance of nonverbal strategies such as strategic silence and the use of a broader identity in framing. By considering both verbal and nonverbal framing elements, this article provides a comprehensive understanding of how framing contributes to the achievements of social movements.

In this article, I investigate the ways in which Jewish Israeli anti-occupation activists express reluctance to throwing stones during the regular Friday protests in various Palestinian villages. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I highlight their feelings of confusion and ambiguity regarding the issue of stone-throwing, which reflect the contradictory demands placed upon them as both Israelis and activists. I argue that the ambiguity they express cannot be analyzed in an ideological, social, or political vacuum; rather, it should be understood in relation to their hopes, expectations, and disappointments, which are situated within particular political imaginaries and projects, ideological prisms, and cultural topoi. This article aims to analyze the ways in which domination and power structures are both challenged and reinforced within the context of political protest.

Gallo-Cruz, Selina R. 2024. Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 88 pp. ISBN 978-1-009-48400-8 (hardback), $64.99; ISBN 978-1-009-48398-8 (paperback), $22.00.

Case, Benjamin S. 2022. Street Rebellion: Resistance beyond Violence and Nonviolence. Chico, CA: AK Press. 280 pp., index. ISBN 978-1-8493-5486-8 (paperback), $22.00; ISBN 978-1-8493-5487-5 (ebook) $21.99.