[P2P-F] How Grass Roots activism is developing in a different way - apols for X posts

[Michel Bauwens]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Mark Petz <ravenwyn at gmail.com> wrote:

> *Frm Global Transition in Action by Les Squires
>
> Introduction:*
>
> Over the last decade widespread debate about environmental issues and
> ethical consumer behavior has fostered the development of new grassroots
> organizations. These organizations represent a departure from the more
> hierarchical and institutionalized social movement organizations
> (SMOs) operating within similar sectors.
>
>
>
> *Objective:*
>
> Investigating how new grassroots organizations differ from traditional SMOs
> and how their diffusion is currently taking place are the broad goals of
> this research. In particular, we want to show that these new social
> movements are not primarily concerned with persuading the state to change
> policies but with engaging individuals to adopt new lifestyles. Such
> lifestyle changes will create new identities that will diffuse from the
> market to the broader society. The internet is used for coordinating
> individual changes into a collective action and for making possible the
> recruitment of new people.
>
>
> *Methods:*
>
> * *We used an online survey to collect data on the users of the following
> website: http://transitionus.ning.com (now http://transitioninaction.com).
> Data were collected from October 2009 to March 2010. Overall, 387
> respondents began the survey, and 243 completed it.
>
>
> *Findings:*
>
> The survey showed respondents to be politically active, educated, white
> adults, with women making up 58% of the sample. More than half of the
> respondents have ever belonged to an environmental group or political/civic
> organization, and over 80% have attended a political/civic event. However,
> their responses to survey questions indicate that they are dissatisfied with
> traditional means of political participation, such as street rallies and
> letter writing, and that non‐contentious collective actions are preferred
> (examples: food and gardening activities, energy saving activities, etc.).
> Respondents perceive community organizing to be the most effective way to
> bring about social change, deprioritizing connections to local government.
> They generally distrust business corporations and political parties,
> and explain their withdrawal from political/civic organizations as the
> result of the failure of institutional organizations and means to effect
> change.
>
>
> Respondents are web‐savvy, using the internet for email, work, reading the
> news, social networking, online discussions, and blogging. Cross tabulations
> indicate that respondents that started a local chapter of Transition US,
> i.e. the initiators, are slightly more likely to have first heard about the
> movement from strong ties, such as close friends and relatives, while
> joiners are slightly more likely to have first heard about the movement from
> the internet and other weak ties, such as acquaintances or from flyers.
> Indeed, joiners tend to continue to stay up to date with Transition via the
> web while initiators tend to stay up to
> date via local meetings. Furthermore, initiators spend more time with
> people involved with Transition than people not involved, while joiners
> spend more time with people not involved with Transition.
>
>
>
> These findings have implications for tactical shifts in the use of the
> internet for organization and mobilization efforts on the parts of similar
> lifestyle movement organizations. *The theoretical and practical aspects
> of these implications will be the topic of a workshop on “The Mobilization
> ofIdentities” held on February 15, 2011 at Stanford University.  *More
> information about this workshop will be made available closer to the date.
>
>
> http://transitioninaction.com/forum/topics/stanford-transition-us-social
>



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