<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Mark Petz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ravenwyn@gmail.com">ravenwyn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<b>Frm Global Transition in Action by Les Squires<br><br>Introduction:</b>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><b>Objective:</b></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><br> <b>Methods:</b></p>
<p><b> </b>We used an online survey to collect data on the users of the following website: <a href="http://transitionus.ning.com/" target="_blank">http://transitionus.ning.com</a> (now <a href="http://transitioninaction.com/" target="_blank">http://transitioninaction.com</a>). Data were collected from October 2009 to March 2010. Overall, 387 respondents began the survey, and 243 completed it.</p>
<p><br> <b>Findings:</b></p>
<p>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 <span style="font-size: 15.6px;">change.</span></p>
<p><br> 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<br> 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. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>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. <b>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. </b><span style="font-size: 15.6px;">More information about this workshop will be made available closer to the date.</span></p><p><br><span style="font-size: 15.6px;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15.6px;"><a href="http://transitioninaction.com/forum/topics/stanford-transition-us-social" target="_blank">http://transitioninaction.com/forum/topics/stanford-transition-us-social</a><br>
</span></p>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br>Connect: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.ning.com">http://p2pfoundation.ning.com</a>; Discuss: <a href="http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org">http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org</a><br>
<br>Updates: <a href="http://del.icio.us/mbauwens">http://del.icio.us/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens">http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br>
<br>Think tank: <a href="http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI">http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI</a><br><br><br><br><br>