JP Reed

Abstract While EP Thompson recognizes the regressive potential of popular religion, his work also makes it possible to evaluate this cultural scheme as a vehicle of political resistance. This article seeks to make a case for the significance of popular religion in a politics of resistance through an unorthodox interpretation of The Making of the English Working Class. A close reading of the history of orthodox and sectarian Methodism presented in this work reveals popular religion as a contentious custom and a vehicle of political resistance.

Using interview data from Nicaragua, we propose the concept of “political cultures of opposition” for bringing culture and agency into the study of revolutions, and linking the subjective elements of experience and emotion with the social structural ones of organizations and networks. We use evidence from the Nicaraguan uprising of the 1970s to show how a repressive political structure was

Building on language as action perspectives and recent social movement research on speech acts, we explore
the role religious discourse plays in the maintenance of a collective identity we call revolutionary “we-ness.”
Using NVivo qualitative data analysis software we perform a content analysis of Volume 1 of The Gospel
in Solentiname (Cardenal 1976), a historical record of Biblestudy discussions in prerevolutionary Nicaragua.
Based on a framework of collective identity construction (boundary work, oppositional consciousness, identity
assertion) into which a taxonomy of speech acts (accusations, declarations, directives, exhortations, prescriptions,
and warnings) are organized, our content analysis illustrates how revolutionary we-ness is constituted, and how
the recursive employment of speech acts suggests a resonance of ideological motives in religious discourse. We
found the degree to which identity assertion, expressed in declarative speech acts, predominated over oppositional
consciousness, which in turn figured over boundary work in the constitution of revolutionary we-ness. Our speech
acts approach fills a void in framing theory and confirms religious discourse’s capacity to promote radical
self-understandings and commitment to revolutionary activism.

Abstract. Building on the social movement/revolutions and recent social movement emotions literature and using interviews and oral history from revolutionary Nicaragua,
I make a case for recognizing the significance of emotions when studying revolutions.  The essay aims for a contextual understanding of the role of emotions in the making of
revolution during the insurrectionary period in Nicaragua. These are examined from the vantage point of “revolutionary accelerators,” the conflictual event-contexts from which revolutionary actors emerge. Through the historical analysis of testimonies associated with a number of politically significant events that changed the course of political dynamics in 1970s Nicaragua, the piece illustrates: (1) how events function as
generators of revolutionary action and (2) how event-related emotions such as anger and fear, but primarily moral outrage and hope, contribute to a transformation in consciousness
that leads potential participants to define their circumstances as needing their revolutionary involvement. It also attempts to demonstrate how the latter two emotions – moral outrage and hope – are dominant under different event-contexts.  Lastly, the relationships between these emotions and how these are connected to revolutionary accelerators are similarly explored.

Abstract
Some recent positions on Antonio Gramsci portray him as a vanguardist who outright rejects common sense and popular culture as playing a role in counter-hegemony or political resistance.  This manuscript seeks to provide a corrective to these recent portrayals. It does so by accurately evaluating Gramsci’s position on the dialectical relationship subaltern (popular) beliefs have to counter-hegemony; by considering his bottom-up stance on the relationship organic intellectuals
have to the subaltern; by focusing on his cutting edge position on ideological articulation; and in light of his articulations regarding the role of subaltern passion and subaltern-centered pedagogy for counter-hegemony. As a way to illustrate the significance of the subaltern for counterhegemony,
the potential of popular religion for counter-hegemony is explored.