Abstract
Social movement organisations (SMOs) remain under-examined in the burgeoning accounts of collective memory’s transnational movements. There is also an analytical neglect of the difficulties of making memories move and the constraints characterising emergent political fields enabled by the entanglement of remembering and digital media. Bisht addresses this neglected dimension through an examination of SMOs working for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster in India. The chapter focuses specifically on how SMO websites were mobilised for the development of a transnationally framed memory narrative of the disaster and the territorialisation of this online narrative in two specific ‘local’ contexts: Bhopal and London. Building upon Chadwick’s (The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013) framework of the ‘hybrid media system’, the chapter demonstrates the value of ‘hybridity’ as an analytical lens to examine the specific contexts and complexities of SMO memory work: combining online and offline strategies, communicating within the movement and to wider publics, and balancing local and transnational aims.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Other survivor groups, including the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (Bhopal Gas Affected Women Workers’ Campaign), have been a part of the ICJB but their participation has been limited and sporadic. The groups identified here have been a part of the coalition most consistently over the period of its existence and continue to operate as part of it at the time of writing. Mac Sheoin (2014) provides a comprehensive historical account of the dynamics of coalition building involving local organisations in Bhopal and transnational advocacy networks. The specific histories of local organisations working in Bhopal (including the constituents of the ICJB) can be accessed in Bhopal Survivors Speak (Bhopal Survivors Movement Study, 2009).
- 2.
It also carries some resources and communications relevant to its student supporters in the US. The key point of difference relevant to the discussion in the chapter, however, is the lack of materials directed at the local membership in Bhopal, a consequence of their inability to access online materials.
- 3.
The Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 was created by the Greater London Authority to act as an independent committee to monitor the sustainability plans, objectives and progress of the organisations responsible for building and delivering the London 2012 Games (see Botelho & Zavestoski, 2014, p. 180).
References
Adami, E. (2013). A social semiotic multimodal analysis framework for website interactivity. National Centre for Research Methods Working Paper. Retrieved from http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3074/4/website_interactivity_Adami.pdf
Baxi, U. (2010). Writing about impunity and environment: The ‘silver jubilee’ of the Bhopal catastrophe. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 1(2), 23–44.
BBC. (2012, January 26). London 2012: Olympic watchdog member quits over Dow links. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16721838
Bhopal Group for Information and Action. (1994). Bhopal Lives 84–94: Anniversary Notes, Pamphlet. Bhopal: Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
Bhopal Medical Appeal. (n.d.-a). Bhopal’s Second Poisoning. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.org/second-poisoning/bhopal-second-poisoning/
Bhopal Medical Appeal. (n.d.-b). Union Carbide’s Chemical Trail. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.org/second-poisoning/union-carbides-chemical-trail/
Bhopal Medical Appeal. (n.d.-c). Children of Dow’s Chemicals. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.org/second-poisoning/children-of-dows-chemicals/
Bhopal Survivors Movement Study. (2009). Bhopal Survivors Speak: Emergent Voices from a People’s Movement. Edinburgh: Word Power Books.
Bisht, P. (2013). The politics of cosmopolitan memory. Media, Culture & Society, 35(1), 13–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443712464553
Bisht, P. (2018). Social movements and the scaling of memory and justice in Bhopal. Contemporary South Asia, 26(1), 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2018.1425673
Botelho, B., & Zavestoski, S. (2014). All the world’s a stage: The Bhopal movement’s transnational organizing strategies at the 2012 Olympic Games. Social Justice, 41(1), 169–185.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chadwick, A. (2013). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. New York: Oxford University Press.
Conway, B. (2008). Local conditions, global environment and transnational discourses in memory work: The case of Bloody Sunday (1972). Memory Studies, 1(2), 187–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698007088385
Conway, B. (2010). Commemoration and Bloody Sunday: Pathways of Memory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Costanza-Chock, S. (2014). Out of the Shadows, into the Streets!: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Daphi, P. (2017). Becoming a Movement: Identity, Narratives and Memory in the European Global Justice Movement. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Das, V. (1995). Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
De Cesari, C., & Rigney, A. (2014). Introduction. In C. De Cesari & A. Rigney (Eds.), Transnational Memory. Circulation, Articulation, Scales (pp. 1–23). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Drop Dow Now. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120702173539/http://dropdownow.org/about/
Flesher Fominaya, C. (2016). Unintended consequences: The negative impact of e-mail use on participation and collective identity in two “horizontal” social movement groups. European Political Science Review, 8, 95–122.
Gongaware, T. B. (2009). Review essay: Struggling over origins: Explorations of the movement-memory nexus. Sociological Spectrum: Mid-South Sociological Association, 30(1), 128–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732170903340935
Hanna, B. (2007). Bhopal: Unending disaster, enduring resistance. In M. Feher (Ed.), Nongovernmental Politics (pp. 488–523). New York: Zone Books.
Hoskins, A. (2011). Anachronisms of media, anachronisms of memory: From collective memory to a new memory ecology. In M. Neiger, O. Meyers, & E. Zandberg (Eds.), On Media Memory (pp. 278–288). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
ICJB. (2011, March 22). Bhopal survivors express condolences to Japan. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.net/bhopal-survivors-express-condolences-to-japan/
ICJB. (n.d.-a). Setting the stage for tragedy: 1969–1984. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.net/what-happened/setting-the-stage-for-tragedy-1969-1984/
ICJB. (n.d.-b). Contamination & the ongoing disaster: 1969–Present. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.net/what-happened/contamination/
ICJB. (n.d.-c). For the media. Retrieved from https://www.bhopal.net/for-the-media/
Jabbar, A., Namdeo, B., & Bi, R. (1999). Memory Against Forgetting (Pamphlet). Bhopal.
Jansen, R. S. (2007). Resurrection and appropriation: Reputational trajectories, memory work, and the political use of historical figures. American Journal of Sociology, 112(4), 953–1007.
Keightley, E., Pickering, M., & Bisht, P. (2019). Interscalarity and the memory spectrum. In Communicating Memory & History (pp. 17–38). New York: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b14522
Kitch, C. (2002). Anniversary journalism, collective memory, and the cultural authority to tell the story of the American past. Journal of Popular Culture, 36(1), 44.
Kyriakidou, M. (2015). Remembering global disasters and the construction of cosmopolitan memories. Communication, Culture and Critique, 10(1), 93–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12142
Levy, D., & Sznaider, N. (2002). The Holocaust and the formation of cosmopolitan memory. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(1), 87–106.
Levy, D., & Sznaider, N. (2005). The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Levy, D., & Sznaider, N. (2010). Human Rights and Memory. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
Long, M. (2010, July 19). Dow Chemical’s new Olympic sponsorship exceeds all expectations. Retrieved from http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/dow_chemicals_new_olympic_sponsorship_exceeds_all_expectations
Mac Sheoin, T. (2012). Power imbalances and claiming credit in coalition campaigns: Greenpeace and Bhopal. Interface, 4(2), 490–511.
Mac Sheoin, T. (2014). Internationalising the struggle for justice in Bhopal: Balancing the local, national and transnational. Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements, 6(2), 103–129. Retrieved from http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Issue-6_2-Mac-Sheoin.pdf
Mac Sheoin, T. (2015). Justice for Bhopal! And No More Bhopals! Three decades of national and international campaigning. Process Safety and Environmental Protection. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2015.01.008.
Muralidhar, S. (2004). Unsettling truths, untold tales. International Environmental Law Research Centre Working Paper. Retrieved from http://www.ielrc.org/content/w0405.pdf
Olick, J. (2003). Introduction. In J. Olick (Ed.), States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection (pp. 1–16). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Pauwels, L. (2012). A multimodal framework for analyzing websites as cultural expressions. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(3), 247–265.
Rainey, V. (2012, July 11). Olympics-London Assembly says Dow sponsorship damages Games. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/oly-dow-sponsorship/olympics-london-assembly-says-dow-sponsorship-damages-games-idUSL6E8IBAZZ20120711
Reading, A. (2011). Memory and digital media: Six dynamics of the globital memory field. In M. Neiger, O. Meyers, & E. Zandberg (Eds.), On Media Memory (pp. 241–252). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Reading, A. (2016). Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sharma, S. (2014). Indian media and the struggle for justice in Bhopal. Social Justice, 41(1), 146–168.
Spillman, L. (2003). When do collective memories last? Founding moments in the United States and Australia. In J. K. Olick (Ed.), States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection (pp. 161–192). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sudhaman, A., & Holmes, P. (2012, January 25). The Top 10 crises of 2011. Retrieved from https://www.holmesreport.com/long-reads/article/the-top-10-crises-of-2011
Zamponi, L. (2013). Collective memory and social movements. In D. Snow, D. della Porta, & B. Klandermans (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (pp. 225–229). London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Zamponi, L. (2018). Social Movements, Memory and Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zavestoski, S. (2009). The struggle for justice in Bhopal. A new/old breed of transnational social movement. Global Social Policy, 9(3), 383–407.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bisht, P. (2020). In Between Old and New, Local and Transnational: Social Movements, Hybrid Media and the Challenges of Making Memories Move. In: Merrill, S., Keightley, E., Daphi, P. (eds) Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32827-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32827-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32826-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32827-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)