The Rebirth of Civil Society

Sloat, Amanda

doi:10.1177/1350506805057100

Cited by 51 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The authoritarian nature of CEE governments may have been, to varying degrees, lifted, but the inertia of institutionalized settings for people with mental disabilities persisted (Tobis, 2000, p. 1). At the same time fledgling civil societies in these countries suddenly offered new freedoms through which activists could promote reform (Holland, 2008; Sloat, 2005). As a result of these social, economic, and political factors, the postcommunist period in CEE offered an historic case for understanding some of the broader forces that shape activism for people with mental disabilities.…”

Section: An Historic Time and Place For Mental Disability Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activism and human rights for people with mental disabilities in postcommunist Europe.

Holland¹

2019

American Psychologist

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Disability activists emerged as an important influence over the first decade of the new millennium in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe, a particularly critical time for progress in human rights and services for people with mental disabilities in that part of the world. An entrenched custodial institutional infrastructure existed for children and adults with mental disabilities in communist Central and Eastern Europe between the 1940s and the fall of communism in 1989. Activists who emerged in the subsequent postcommunist era faced multiple challenges and important new opportunities in their efforts to address human rights and quality of life for citizens with mental disabilities. Critical to their efforts were new civil society freedoms that allowed for the establishment of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which had previously been prohibited. Those activists and NGOs tended to represent one of two distinct missions: Either a focus on human rights protection with a watch-dog function, or an emphasis on service-provision and community-based support. Across both types of activism and NGO missions, the goal to reduce the imposition of custodial institutional life on people with mental disabilities was a priority. In addition to the history of mental disability activism in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe, this article addresses the implications for American psychologists involved in cross-cultural and international work in disability issues, and notes the challenges facing psychologists who are engaged in both activism and the profession.

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Section: An Historic Time and Place For Mental Disability Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activism and human rights for people with mental disabilities in postcommunist Europe.

Holland¹

2019

American Psychologist

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“…Seemingly nonpolitical digitally networked participatory acts-like tweeting, retweeting, thematic hashtags, uploading a video, sharing a post on Facebook -today often qualify for political participation, at least if they aim at "raising awareness or exerting any kind of political pressure for the solution of a social or political problem" (Yannis Theocharis 2015, 8). Internet memes-that is user-generated multimodal artifacts that usually come in groups, are remixed by countless participants and typically employ "satirical humour for public commentary"-, are similarly widely understood as bottom-up acts of public opinion-expressing, a kind of "lingua franca" of online political discourse (Ryan M. Milner 2013Milner , 2359An Xiao Mina 2014;Carrie A. Rentschler and Samantha C. Thrift 2015;Limor Shifman 2014). In today's complex media environments internet memes can be quickly produced, remixed, and shared on a large scale, move from one media platform to another, and even picked up by the mainstream media.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internet memes and a female “Arab Spring”: mobilising online for the criminalisation of domestic abuse in Hungary in 2012-13

Horvath

2021

Feminist Media Studies

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This paper analyses how social media and internet memes transformed public discourse on domestic abuse in Hungary during 2012-13, and how they have been used to mobilise protests and articulate a much wider social feeling against the issue than had previously been thought to exist. More closely, it discusses these anti-domestic abuse protests through Bennett and Segerberg's connective action analytical framework, and studies internet memes as acts of personalised bottom-up political opinionexpressing that enabled netizens to connect to a feminist movement goal, that of standing up to domestic abuse, in flexible ways, which was important in a country that had traditionally been seen as sharing strong negative sentiments about feminism. It also argues that feminist digital mobilisation and large-scale meme circulation, both articulated primarily through Facebook and against the existing governmental discourse on domestic abuse, worked in tandem as bottom-up pressure on the government to introduce a new policy tool, a law, against domestic abuse. The paper also discusses the contribution of these protests to rebooting various stages of the legislation process of Hungary's Law on Domestic Abuse, entering into force in July 2013.

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Feminist Movements (Central and Eastern Europe)

Ana¹

2022

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements

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After the fall of the socialist regimes, the development of feminist movements in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was subsumed into the general depiction of civil society in the region – as weak, nonparticipatory, and with a low capacity for mobilization, explained as a reaction to the former compulsory participation in collective action. The availability of funds during the democratization process supported an early institutionalization of social movements which engaged in transactional activism – favoring strategic networking and cooperative problem‐solving with policymakers, rather than mobilizing constituencies. While donors' support enhanced professionalization and consolidated the organizational capacity of social movement organizations (SMOs), financial dependence contributed to goal displacement and lowering the politicization of local issues. This rather hostile picture was supported by analyses undertaken under the transitology school of thought that consolidated tropes about postsocialist states – at the beginning of their institutional building pursuit, catching up with the West. Recent studies evoke a multiplicity of social movements that use various repertoires of action to address different audiences, while adapting to the diverse, sometimes contrasting, structures of political opportunity across countries.

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The Rebirth of Civil Society

Cited by 51 publications

References 11 publications

Activism and human rights for people with mental disabilities in postcommunist Europe.

Activism and human rights for people with mental disabilities in postcommunist Europe.

Internet memes and a female “Arab Spring”: mobilising online for the criminalisation of domestic abuse in Hungary in 2012-13

Feminist Movements (Central and Eastern Europe)

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