<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE OF CONJUNCTIONS BEARS THE TITLE FEMINISM, GENDER, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND EVERYDAY RESISTANCE. THIS INTRODUCTION WILL ANALYSE CHOSEN RELATIONS BETWEEN THESE FOUR PHENOMENA, AMONGST OTHERS BY SHOWING HOW FEMINISM AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS HAVE MADE A SUBSTANTIAL IMPACT ON DIFFERENT SOCIETIES AND CULTURES ALL OVER THE WORLD AND HAVE INSPIRED THE PROTEST REPERTOIRES AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS OF BOTH SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND MORE INFORMAL FORMS OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE. THE INTRODUCTION INTRODUCES, EXPLORES AND LINKS THE INTERSECTIONAL TURN IN FEMINISM, DIFFERENT THEORIES OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AND THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN POLITICS AND RESISTANCE. AFTER MAPPING OUT THIS MORE GENERAL THEORETICAL LANDSCAPE OF GENDERED ACTIVISM, THE INTRODUCTION INTRODUCES AND REFLECTS ON A NUMBER OF THE RECURRING THEMES IN THE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE. THESE THEMES ARE ‘MEDIATISED ACTIVISM’, ‘MOBILISATION OF AFFECT’, ‘ONLINE MISOGYNY AND REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS OF THE FAR RIGHT’, ‘THE BODY AS A POLITICAL SITE’ AND ‘CITIZENSHIP AND THE RIGHTS TO HAVE RIGHTS’. BY SHOWING HOW FEMINISM AND FEMINIST THEORY HAVE DEVELOPED OVER TIME THROUGH DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS, ACTORS AND DIFFERENT FORMS OF ACTIVISM WORKING TO PROMOTE MORE EQUAL POLITICAL, CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL GENDERS, THE INTRODUCTION ALSO RAISES MORE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND ACTIVISM. AMONGST OTHERS IT SHOWS THAT THE WAY WE DEFINE AND UNDERSTAND POLITICS AND WHAT WE RECOGNISE AND ACKNOWLEDGES AS POLITICS IS IN ITSELF A POLITICAL ACT AND AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION.
</abstract>

Introduction

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
AS A POLITICIAN WHO BECAME FAMOUS FOR BEING ANOTHER POLITICIAN’S WIFE, HILLARY CLINTON HAS LONG BEEN A LIGHTNING ROD FOR AMERICAN FEARS (AND HOPES) ABOUT THE STATE OF GENDER. ALTHOUGH MOST COMMENTATORS AGREE THAT SHE HAS BEEN HATED UBIQUITOUSLY SINCE 1992, SCHOLARSHIP ON HILLARY-HATING ALMOST ALWAYS CONSIDERS IT A MALE IMPULSE. THIS PAPER ASKS WHY RIGHT-WING AMERICAN FEMINISTS HATE HILLARY CLINTON. THE AUTHOR STUDIED “WOMEN FOR TRUMP” FACEBOOK PAGES, FOCUSING ON MEMES THAT PRESENT THE PRO-CHOICE CLINTON AS A MONSTROUS (ANTI-)MOTHER. HATRED OF CLINTON IS NOT PRODUCED BY ‘REASONABLE’ PUBLIC DEBATE, THIS PAPER ARGUES; MORE IMPORTANT ARE THE POTENT AFFECTIVE CHARGES CLINTON’S IMAGE CARRIES. A ‘MEMETIC’ ANALYSIS IS USED TO LOOK AT THE AFFECTIVE OBJECT-NESS OF CLINTON’S IMAGE: WHERE IT TRAVELS, WITH WHAT IMPETUS, AND WHAT RESPONSES IT PROVOKES. AFFECT PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN BOTH SHARING MEMES ONLINE AND THE WORKINGS OF MISOGYNY AND RACISM IN RIGHT-WING WOMEN’S PURSUIT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.
</abstract>

Hillary-Hating

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
FATPHOBIA IS UBIQUITOUS. FATPHOBIA IS A STRUCTURE IN SOCIETY. AND IT AFFECTS THE LIVES OF FAT PEOPLE IN WAYS THAT ARE DAMAGING TO THEIR HEALTH AND CAN CAUSE MAJOR INEQUITIES. THIS ARTICLE MAPS OUT FATPHOBIA AS EVER PRESENT THROUGH THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CULTURE – NO TIME PERIOD EXCEPTIONS – AND IT EXAMINES A VERY IMPORTANT REPORT FROM THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) CONCERNING THE HEALTH HAZARD AND SOCIAL INEQUITIES CAUSED BY FATPHOBIA. SHAKESPEARE’S FATJOKES AND THE EVER PRESENCE OF SHAPEWEAR AND ALL THE PORTRAITS OF JESUS AS A THIN, WHITE MAN SHOW US 5,000 YEARS OF CULTIVATED FATMISIA. THAT IS WHY WHO HAS WRITTEN A REPORT URGING DOCTORS AND OTHER HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS TO TREAT FAT PATIENTS WITH EMPATHY AND SENSITIVITY LIKE THEY WOULD THIN PATIENTS. IN MAPPING OUT A STRUCTURE THAT DEHUMANISES PEOPLE OF SIZE, I BRING IN A FEW EXAMPLES FROM MY OWN LIFE AS A FAT PERSON AND AS A FATACTIVIST. EXISTING WHILE FAT IN A WORLD THAT HATES FATNESS IS HARD WORK.
</abstract>

Everyone Should Be Fatactivists or Fat-Allies

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
THIS EDITORIAL INTRODUCES A SPECIAL EDITION OF CONJUNCTIONS THAT EXPLORES HOW CULTURAL PARTICIPATION POLICIES, PROJECTS, AND PRACTICES COULD BE IMPROVED THROUGH RECOGNISING THE PERVASIVENESS OF PAST FAILURES. IT INTRODUCES CURRENT POLICY DEBATES ON CULTURAL PARTICIPATION AND POSITS THAT THE DOMINANT FOCUS ON ‘CULTURAL DEFICITS’ AND ‘NON-PARTICIPANTS’ RATHER THAN ON HOW ACTIVITIES ARE CURRENTLY FUNDED HAS RESULTED IN A FAILURE TO INCREASE THE NUMBER AND DIVERSITY OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN STATE SUBSIDISED CULTURAL ACTIVITIES. IT FURTHER SUGGESTS THAT A CULTURE OF EVALUATING SUCCESS, RATHER THAN CRITICALLY REFLECTING ON FAILURE, RESULTS IN CULTURAL PARTICIPATION POLICIES AND PROJECTS THAT REPLICATE PAST FAILURES AND MAINTAIN AN INEQUITABLE STATUS QUO.
THIS SPECIAL EDITION ATTEMPTS TO CHALLENGE EXISTING NARRATIVES OF UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS BY OFFERING ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES THAT CONSIDER FAILURE FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES AND AT DIFFERENT POINTS IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CULTURAL PARTICIPATION POLICIES AND PROJECTS. IN DOING SO IT HIGHLIGHTS THE EXTENT TO WHICH SUCCESS AND FAILURE COEXIST AND THE RICHNESS OF INSIGHT THAT COMES FROM CONSIDERING BOTH. THIS MATTERS BECAUSE IT IS ONLY SUCH OPEN AND HONEST CRITICAL REFLECTION THAT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO FACILITATE THE SOCIAL LEARNING NEEDED FOR THOSE WHO CAN EXERT THE MOST POWER IN THE CULTURAL SECTOR TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXTENT OF THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE REQUIRED FOR CULTURAL PARTICIPATION TO BE SUPPORTED MORE EQUITABLY.
</abstract>

Cultural Participation

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
THE EXPECTATION FOR PARTICIPATORY ARTS TO EFFECTIVELY ENGAGE TARGETED COMMUNITIES MIGHT LEAD TO THE CONCLUSION THAT NON-PARTICIPATION IS FAILURE. BUT IS IT NECESSARILY FAILURE? FOR ARTISTS NAVIGATING “ENTANGLED TERRITORIES” (HALVORSEN, 2017) AND “COMPETING NARRATIVES” (THOMPSON, 2009) IN THE MULTI-CULTURAL PARIS BANLIEUE, NON-PARTICIPATION OR REFUSAL IS AN INEVITABILITY THAT NEEDS TO BE EMBRACED. DRAWING ON THEORIES OF PARTICIPATION FROM THE FIELDS OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED PERFORMANCE, SOCIOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURAL STUDIES, THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THE VALUE AND NUANCES OF INVISIBLE, MINIMAL, PERIPHERAL OR CONDITIONAL PARTICIPATION ENCOUNTERED IN THE NARROW SPACES FOR MANOEUVRE BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS’ CONFLICTING AGENDAS. IT ARGUES THAT REFUSALS DO NOT NECESSARILY NEGATE THE WORK, AND THAT ATTENDING TO, AND REDEFINING, THESE MOMENTS MAY BE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING NOT ‘HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE BETTER’, BUT HOW TO PERCEIVE NON-PARTICIPATION AS AN ELOQUENT AFFIRMATION OF AGENCY AND A SIGNIFICANT PARTICIPATION IN SOMETHING ELSE.
</abstract>

Redefining Failure

Putting a Non-Essentialist Ontology to Work

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The paper examines the possibilities offered by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for supporting audience participation in the museum sector . DAOs, a type of digital infrastructure underpinned by blockchains and smart contracts, have been seen as informing a more autonomous, self-managing, transparent, and more efficient online organization, one capable of shaping how users participate and communicate with one another. At the same time significant questions have been raised over how DAO technologies complicate the human issues of democracy and shared authority. This paper explores and evaluates the impact of DAO structures in the context of museum participation, specifically viewing them through the lens of shared authority and democracy. It argues that these technologies are capable of offering evidence-based participation, but that this is contingent on access and trust.
</abstract>

Tokenistic behavior? Exploring Blockchain and DAOs as a participatory practice in museums

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Participatory art turns the artwork into a process of engagement and co-creation, and it thus involves forms of time-based coordination that influence the experience of creating participatory art. In this paper I argue that participatory art is underscored by two contrasting temporal frameworks. One is the framework of long-term durational approaches that have been internalized among artists as an ethical and political obligation toward participants; the other is the short-term temporary framework that typically comes with project funding and steers the project toward delivery of target outcomes. To show the tensions to which these contrasting temporal frameworks can give rise, I analyze the development of a participatory art project in Copenhagen’s South Harbor. Specifically, the analysis emphasizes how tensions arose in respect to delimitations of project aspects such as who constitutes the creative team, what is the task before us, and what is our expected contribution to the community. By emphasizing the tensions arising from contrasting temporal frameworks, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the experience of creating participatory art, and to problematizing the question of time for participatory art.
</abstract>

Out of time: The experience of contrasting temporal frameworks in participatory art

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Recent outbursts of activist interventions in museums have put a spotlight on the difficult relationship of cultural spaces with activism as they aspire to be forums, sites for civil, social, and cultural participation (Black, 2005; Byrne, 2018; Janes &amp; Sandell, 2019; Pegno, 2021). On the one hand, museums want to be engaged and relevant, taking part in social dialogue as “agents of change” (Mouffe, 2016; Sandell, 2003). On the other, they often have complex relationships with the activists themselves, especially in the framework of participatory practices (Coffee, 2008; Lorente, 2015). This article focuses on the process of co-creation of an exhibition about the social history of AIDS at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (the Mucem) in Marseille, France, and explores how this participatory project involving activists can help us better understand the challenges of museum activism. The core question this article addresses is: how did activists experience the co-creation participatory process, and what can the museum learn from it to inform their practice of museum activism?
</abstract>

“Never enough, never perfect”: Participatory activist practice in the museum

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The article takes its point of departure in an experiment conducted at Randers Art Museum, Denmark, in which museum visitors were asked to comment on their experiences with artworks from the museum’s collection. Their comments that were subsequently shared by the museum in the exhibition space.
By examining dialogue as a form of participation, the author analyses and discusses how this particular participatory experiment created a dialogical and polyphonic museum experience in which the institutional voice was complemented and even challenged.
The article contributes to the field of research on participation by connecting theoretical and practical levels through an experimental methodological approach. It presents concrete recommendations for enhancing visitor-oriented and dialogical strategies in museum communication. Moreover, it demonstrates that the experimental approach can be very useful for both researchers and museum professionals, as long as they reflect on both the limitations and the possibilities of specific experiments like this one.
</abstract>

Visitor voices in the museum space: sharing art experiences as a dialogic mode in museum communication

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article critically reflects on the limitations and challenges of using Cards on the Table (COTT), a participatory research method used to evaluate experiences of participation in art projects. The focus of this article is on the application of COTT as part of our evaluation of BE PART, a four-year Creative Europe Program of the European Union that ran from 2019 to 2023. The COTT method is informed by community research and participation action research, but here we highlight the ambiguous and messy nature of researching with such a broad and varied network of communities. We illustrate the tension between our desire to research in a co-productive, community-led, and action-oriented way and the realities of conducting research with a vast network of participants and limited time and budget.
</abstract>

Cards on the Table: Critical reflections on a participatory research method

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Participation has regained a remarkable presence in academic debates within Communication and Media Studies, amongst other fields and disciplines. At the same time, the concept of participation has remained vague because of its frequent and diverse usages and its intrinsically political nature, which renders it difficult to use in an academic context. Conceptual clarity is generated through a combination of negative-relationist and interdisciplinary strategies. The former means that an argument is made in favour of a more focussed meaning of participation, on the basis of a comparison with two other concepts, access and interaction. The interdisciplinary strategy consists of a broad theoretical re-reading that focuses on the academic literature in which these distinctions are made, or where the independent nature of one of the three concepts is particularly emphasized. At the end of this text, the different meanings of access, interaction and participation are structured and integrated in a model, which is labelled the AIP model.</abstract>

Differentiating between access, interaction and participation

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
THIS ARTICLE ENGAGES WITH QUESTIONS OF FAILURE IN CULTURAL PARTICIPATION THROUGH A REFLECTION UPON MATTERS OF INTERPRETATION AND MEANING. THAT IS, RATHER THAN CONSIDERING THE WAYS OR EXTENT TO WHICH CULTURAL PARTICIPATION PROGRAMMES MIGHT ACHIEVE THEIR STATED GOALS, THE DISCUSSION CENTRES UPON THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF REPRESENTATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS IN RELATION TO QUESTIONS OF ‘FAILURE’/‘SUCCESS’. THE DISCUSSION CENTRES UPON ONE CASE STUDY INITIATIVE, ENGLAND'S VERSION OF THE VENEZUELAN EL SISTEMA PROGRAMME, IN HARMONY, AND EMPLOYS FRAME ANALYSIS TO EXPLORE THE WAYS PRESS COVERAGE AND RELEVANT POLICY DOCUMENTS CULTIVATE AN IMAGE OF PROGRAMME ‘SUCCESS’. IN ORDER TO HELP REVEAL SOME OF THE PROBLEMATIC ASSUMPTIONS EMBEDDED IN DOMINANT ACCOUNTS, THE ARTICLE ALSO DRAWS ON ORIGINAL INTERVIEW DATA IN EXPLORING THE MARGINALISED PERSPECTIVES OF PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS. THE FINDINGS WHICH EMERGE SUGGEST THE NEED FOR PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSIONS OF CULTURAL PARTICIPATION POLICIES IN RELATION TO QUESTIONS OF ‘FAILURE’/‘SUCCESS’.
</abstract>

Too Big to Fail?

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article explores community-driven participation in education beyond the institution. By reflecting on two MA courses at Aarhus University and including educatees’ reflections in the article, the concept of Participatory Academic Community is developed. The article discusses how an evolved understanding of participation in education can move educatees’ learning beyond institutions through focusing on educatees as researchers, participating in society, building a research community and obtaining academic citizenship. Further, the article discusses how a value-based, vision-driven approach to education and the use of ICT might nurture participation and construction of community within education. The article is genuinely transdisciplinary in its approach, applying different theoretical lenses to obtain a more holistic view on participation in education. The article creates a prismatic lens, illuminating participation in education from different viewpoints and positions. In conclusion, the article also reflects on some of the shadowy traits of participation in education when creating participatory academic communities.v</abstract>

Participatory Academic Communities

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The article presents a yet unexplored framework for analysing the multidimensionality and dis/connections of participatory processes and their outcomes by using the concept of the ‘assemblage’ (DeLanda, 2006). The case is an eight-month collaboration between a task force initiated by Central Denmark Region, the socio-economic company Sager der Samler, and citizens. The collaboration is aimed at bringing together and working across various institutional and user perspectives to act on a societal challenge. The analysis is theoretically based on a review of existing theories of participation and typologies for analysing and evaluating participation. In particular, the analysis focuses on the assemblage approach as a way of acknowledging the institutional, affective, material and power-related complexity of participatory processes. The assemblage approach helps to analytically stress that the process under investigation should be evaluated both with a more traditional focus on decision-making or power allocation, as well as taking into account the social, personal-affective and material benefits produced, and the potential for change in the relationship between public administration and citizens.</abstract>

Participation as assemblage

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
During Turkey’s Gezi Park Protests in the summer of 2013, millions of people became connected as fellow protesters. In the early days of the Gezi movement, the increase in participatory activism through social media made visible the police brutality exercised in the last days of May 2013 against a small group of environmentalists who were protecting Gezi Park from being demolished in order to build a shopping mall. Throughout Turkey’s political history, there has been no other example of this kind of spontaneous mass movement resisting the state apparatus with the large participation of diverse groups and self-convened protesters, without any dominant ideological appeal or leader affiliation. In this article, I will analyze the ways in which these patterns of contradictory interactions formed, evaluated, or triggered various types of social relationships, by critically examining the content of viral images, memes, and widely shared posts by Gezi protesters on social media. In the absence of internal cohesion or an ideological and organizational agenda, I argue that widely shared viral images, memes, and text messages provided the content to collaboratively construct and publicly frame the autonomous logic of the “Gezi spirit” by the Gezi protesters. I aim to analyze this new understanding of collective identity in autonomous logic processed through social media as a being-with (mit-sein), rather than a fusion of the individual to an enigmatic we-ness in order to represent “I”. I claim that this autonomous collectivity is driven by fluidarity as a public experience of the self in relation to the other without intermediary apparatuses and hence can be conceptualized as having built a new sociality.
</abstract>

The Construction of a New Sociality through Social Media: The Case of the Gezi Uprising in Turkey

Editorial statement, non-reviewed articles

Call for Papers - Academic participation, Conjunctions

Call for Papers - Experiencing Participation

Conjunctions

Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation

Conjunctions seeks to create an international and transdisciplinary forum for the investigation of user-generated cultural production, user-driven cultural participation and citizen involvement...

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Conjunctions seeks to create an international and transdisciplinary forum for the investigation of user-generated cultural production, user-driven cultural...