Tracing the development of an inclusive political subjectivity through decades of political upheaval leading up to and since the revolution, Iranian society has been regularly wracked by intense political upheavals that challenge state authority and the status quo of established powers and institutions. Most of these protest movements have seemed to fail and have often been followed by a period of apparent quietism. Yet by consistently expanding the participatory claims of an active citizenry, these movements have furthered the democratic potentials of Iranian society. Reconsidering the achievements of the 1999 university protests, the women’s movement (in both its secular and Islamist forms), the 2009 Green Movement, and the 2022–2023 Women, Life, Freedom movement, this chapter argues that Iranians have been actively creating themselves and recognizing each other as fully developed citizens. Drawing on the accounts of women of different generations involved in separate movements and protests, this chapter considers evolving changes in consciousness and practices as women struggle for full acceptance and equal participation as Iranian citizens.

How should a constitutional state – one that respects subjects’ basic rights – treat civil disobedients? This chapter presents and critically engages with some of the most prominent answers legal scholars, political theorists, and philosophers have given to this question. On what I call punitive approaches, which I present in section 1, civil disobedience is first and foremost an act of resistance that threatens the constitutional order, and thus a public wrong worthy of punishment. Theorists of civil disobedience have challenged this approach since the 1960s, especially by conceiving of civil disobedience as a kind of dissent, which liberal democratic societies ought to and can ‘make room’ for. Sections 2 and 3 examine these ‘constitutionalizing’ approaches, with section 2 focusing on the case for leniency, and section 3 on the case for broad accommodation. Section 4 examines the costs of constitutionalizing approaches and reclaims the understanding of civil disobedience as a kind of resistance, alongside its uncivil counterparts, that is sometimes justified and even necessary in constitutional democracies.

UNIDOS was the center of the youth movement in support of MAS, and their takeover of the TUSD school board meeting (4/26/11) made national headlines. The students engaged in civil disobedience because the state found TUSD out of compliance and the school board was going to take the first steps toward eliminating the program without substantive public input. This chapter details those events from a firsthand account, the massive militarization of subsequent school board meetings (e.g., 150 armed officers, many in riot gear, at a meeting of 500 people), and the subsequent conspiracy theories that rose to prominence (e.g., that former Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill orchestrated the whole thing).

This chapter by Jennifer Uchendu and Elizabeth Haase is dedicated to children and youth-led activism, with a focus on Jennifer’s journey as a youth climate activist leading work at SustyVibes in Nigeria. SustyVibes is a youth-led and youth-focused organization making sustainability actionable and relatable for young people through community-led projects. The chapter chronicles aspects of Jennifer’s journey that may be significant for young people and researchers of youth activism. We also discuss the main types of activism and highlight principles that have been adopted by youth climate activist groups to help them be most inclusive and effective, preventing burnout and group devolution. Drawing from Jennifer’s experience with eco-anxiety and related stress, we review the literature on the risks and benefits of activism – for youth mental health and for youth climate activists in particular – in hopes that her story can be generalizable and empowering to others.

In The Action Image of Society: On Cultural Politicisation (1970), Alfred Willener defined the uprisings of 1968 as a “process” that unites jazz musicians, poets, painters and political dissenters, each expressing “a revolutionary desire for social emancipation … the emancipation of the non-formal.” This chapter takes off from Willener’s observations to explore how propositions emerging across mid-century American avant-gardes might potentialize new models of community. It focuses upon Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz (1960), as a means of framing performativity as the subject of study and its means, standing as both metaphor and enactment. Such aesthetic experimentation implicitly swarms outward to underscore the techniques of the 1968 uprisings, which are removed from established Third International forms of resistance. Its participants, as a consequence, are positioned on the edge of becoming otherwise, threatening the stability of given social codes and producing vital new modes of sociability and encounter.

In 1885, the Conservative Party/pro-slavery countermovement took power and closed the institutional agenda to abolition. Besides, the government started to repress abolitionist acts in the public space. The new Prime Minister, the Baron of Cotegipe, rolled out a repressive program, using legal measures, and allowed the pro-slavery countermovement to relying on extra-legal methods. The harassing, persecuting, and arresting of abolitionists increased. The movement then shifted from public demonstrations to civil disobedience, and clandestine activities. Based on the North-American underground railway strategy, abolitionists set up assisted collective runaway routes to get slaves to “free soil”. Abolitionists also declared in their newspapers their willingness to take up arms to defend their activists and liberate slaves. This radicalization made it impracticable to maintain slavery without the use of force. This was a phase of confrontation since the government counted on military repression and the pro-slavery countermovement´s militias to face the abolitionists' strategy.

Physician approval or condemnation, advocacy or opposition, to abortion have often determined whether women can avoid the complications of unsafe abortion and, sometimes, early death.In the USA organized medicine’s early opposition to abortion outlawed it.A century later, obstetricians recognized the importance of abortion to public health.They fought to end restrictions, eventually making abortion legal in several states. At first, individual physicians violated restrictive laws, risking jail and their medical licenses.Colleagues soon supported this “civil disobedience” and influenced their professional organizations, first the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists then the American Medical Association, to take political action in support of abortion law reform.In many other nations, physicians advocated locally and through global organizations like WHO and FIGO for safe abortion to reduce maternal mortality.At medical schools, students insisted that their curriculums include contraception and abortion founding Medical Students for Choice to support advocacy for safe abortion despite official opposition at some schools.Those who planned careers in women’s health sought post graduate residency training that included abortion and became political adversaries of abortion bans in conservative states.

Success with the climate energy challenge requires more citizens who strategically focus on a few key actions and a few key policies, and on identifying, electing, and supporting climate–sincere politicians who make this happen. Coal–fired power must be phased out quickly in developed countries and supported by carbon tariffs to make this happen globally. Likewise, gasoline and diesel must be phased out in transportation. Flexible regulations and perhaps carbon pricing will be the lead policies. Climate-sincere politicians will focus on these sectors and these policies. Climate–concerned citizens must be willing to adopt a wide range of strategies, including the personal discomfort of civil disobedience if necessary.

Climate–sincere citizens are frustrated with three decades of global and national failures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and this makes them increasingly receptive to other agendas that people present as essential for success with the climate–energy challenge. Examples include the argument that humans cannot succeed without radical lifestyle change or global equity or car-free cities or universal vegetarianism or stopping economic growth or abolishing capitalism. This chapter focuses on the argument of Naomi Klein in her book, This Changes Everything, that we must dismantle capitalism for climate success, showing that her arguments are inconsistent with considerable evidence from jurisdictions that are decarbonizing without abolishing capitalism, such as Scandinavia and California. Attaching non-essential, but extremely ambitious agendas reduces our chances of success.

For many practitioners and scholars of International Relations, security is the number one issue in global politics. The need to secure survival trumps all other imperatives where a ‘state of nature’ is said to prevail among nations. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin our enquiry into the contribution of Green politics to global politics with this central concern. Despite the absolute centrality given to the politics of survival in orthodox representations of IR noted above, ecological questions are largely neglected. This is inspite of a now vast literature on environmental security and environmental conflicts. Here I explore Green critiques of militarism targeting the sources of violence and conflict, as well as the ecological impacts of war, before articulating visions of a Green security and considering strategies for achieving it through ecologising security, multilateralism and democratc defence.