Olin Library: Sociology: Protest Movements

Political repression often paradoxically fuels popular movements rather than undermining resistance. When authorities respond to strategic nonviolent action with intimidation, coercion, and violence, they often undercut their own legitimacy, precipitating significant reforms or even governmental overthrow. Brutal repression of a movement is often a turning point in its history: Bloody Sunday in the March to Selma led to the passage of civil rights legislation by the US Congress, and the Amritsar Massacre in India showed the world the injustice of the British Empire's use of force in maintaining control over its colonies. Activists in a wide range of movements have engaged in nonviolent strategies of repression management that can raise the likelihood that repression will cost those who use it. The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements brings scholars and activists together to address multiple dimensions and significant cases of this phenomenon, including the relational nature of nonviolent struggle and the cultural terrain on which it takes place, the psychological costs for agents of repression, and the importance of participation, creativity, and overcoming fear, whether in the streets or online.

Defends confrontational modes of citizenship as a means to reinvigorate democratic participation and regime accountability.

Recent history has documented a phenomenal surge in global unrest. From Missouri to the Middle East, the world has watched waves of momentum build, peak, and dip around events such as the shooting of Michael Brown and the acquittal of Hosni Mubarak. There have been waves of mass protests of resistance, vivid expressions of human agency through the use of technology and social media, and the clear search for finding voice in spaces where the culture of silence has been the norm for decades. This quest for humanization has led, in some cases, to macro-level changes such as the fall of governments, the collapse of economic stability, and the production of immense refugee populations. It has also led to micro-level changes within individuals' decisions to no longer be silenced or accept the status quo. Although separated by vast geographic space, this book serves to link these struggles through developing understandings of common patterns within and interconnections across oppressive societal structures. While these dynamic forms of human agency can be studied from multiple perspectives, this book is guided through the powerful ideological frameworks of culture and social reproduction and looks specifically to the role of schooling as a vehicle for catalysing change.

Space Invaders argues for the importance of a radical geographic perspective in enabling us to make sense of protests and social movements around the world. Under conditions of increasing global economic inequalities, we are witnessing the flourishing of grassroots people's movements fighting for improved rights. Whether it be the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the turn of the century, the flurry of Occupy protests, or the current wave of anti-austerity mobilisations taking place, there is a geographical logic to all forms of protest whether that be through transforming landscapes, occupying enemy territory or developing solidarity and communication networks.Paul Routledge takes a primarily auto-ethnographical perspective, drawing upon his extensive experience over the past thirty years working with various forms of protest in Europe, Asia and Latin America, to provide an account of how a radical geographical imagination can inform our understanding and the prosecution of protest.

From ending the feudal order to struggling against colonial rule; from revolts against slavery to the Bolshevik, Chinese and Cuban revolutions; and from ending foreign occupations to civil wars to overthrow dictators, violent means are seen to justify the non-violent ends. 'Necessary violence' was taken for granted by revolutionaries inspired by Marx, Lenin, Mao and Castro, and countless others. Nick Hewlett places the objectives of non-violence and peace centre-stage to give you a new understanding of violence in revolt. He argues that making the goal of a wholly peaceful society explicit makes an important difference to how we approach and understand violence in pursuit of emancipation.

Explores how political activism, art, and popular culture challenge the discrimination and injustice faced by "illegal" and displaced peoples.

The onset of global concerns about environmental risks, climate change and threats to the planet from industry have focused the minds of a generation. Throughout the world, new movements are emerging in an attempt to challenge those who would put profits before the planet. This volume brings together global contributions that represent the cutting edge of research in the area of global environmental movements. Contributions include chapters on the spatial impacts of environmental groups in Israel, the work of Greenpeace in Brazil, environmental activism in Ireland, animal rights and anti-hunt activism in Malta, the global de-growth movement, environmental movement mobilization in China, and anti-pollution activism in India. The scope and breath of this research indicates the emergence of both a global grassroots environmental mobilization in addition to analysis and documentation of these responses by researchers world-wide. With increased threats from climatic change and ecological degradation being highlighted as a threat to much of the world's population in the coming century, this activism and ensuing research becomes all the more significant.

From Egypt to India, and from Botswana to London, worker, youth and middle class rebellions have taken on the political and bureaucratic status quo and the privilege of small, wealthy and often corrupt elites at a time when the majority can no longer earn a decent wage. A remarkable feature of the protests from the Arab Spring onwards has been the salience of images, songs, videos, humour, satire and dramatic performances. This book explores the central role the aesthetic played in energising the mass mobilisations of young people, the disaffected, the middle classes, the apolitical silent majority, as well as enabling solidarities and alliances among democrats, workers, trade unions, civil rights activists and opposition parties. Comparing the North African and Middle Eastern uprisings with protest movements such as Occupy, the authors bring to bear an anthropological and sociological approach from a variety of perspectives, illuminating the debate by drawing on a wide array of disciplinary expertise. Case studies include > Protests about regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Russia > Corruption in India > The demise of the welfare state in Spain, Israel and Greece > The living wage in Botswana and Wisconsin >The financial crisis and corporate greed and the Occupy movement in British and American cities

Protesters and mass demonstrations by citizens of many democratic countries are increasingly daily occurrences reported in today's news media. These protests are often considered to be illegal or are charged with disrupting the peace, and even when they are non-violent assemblies they are attacked by police and riot squads called in to disperse the protesters. Through a careful review of opposition to injustice, this book demonstrates that most often these protests and demonstrations are in support of and defend moral and legal principles that their democratic governments have forgotten to uphold or have chosen to ignore. Much like the earlier Civil Rights Movement in the US, that was centered on issues of social justice and human dignity, Westra concludes that today's protesters and social movements rally to defend human rights and moral principles against the undue influence of corporate actors, and raise their voice in opposition to the resulting actions by and under the authority of their governments.

In this book, Bruno Boccara argues that complex and changing psychosocial issues, in particular those related to the societal unconscious, must be assessed and incorporated in public policy analysis through Socio-Analytic Dialogue, a psychosocial approach aimed at understanding and addressing emotional issues surrounding public policies worldwide through empathic dialogue. Taking into account societal level anxieties and defense mechanisms--at both the conscious and unconscious levels--when formulating and implementing policies increases the awareness and understanding of psychosocial issues, and decreases the need, and therefore the likelihood, of societies adopting regressive social defenses. Covering international topics including research from the United States; Tunisia and the Arab spring; discontent and riots in Chile, Israel, and the United Kingdom; and humiliation in Sub-Saharan Africa, the book identifies how country-level psychosocial dynamics impact public policies, and suggests that policies themselves can become social defenses. Two case studies, firstly on the World Bank and foreign aid, and secondly on Bolivia, illustrate how a deep understanding of psychosocial issues can provide new insights on the functioning of organizations (perverse dynamics) and on a country's policy choices and economic performance. Building upon recent work in sociology and psychoanalysis, the book demonstrates that Socio-Analytic Dialogue has the potential to make a significant contribution to understanding worldwide discontent and anxieties.

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics. In a series of fascinating essays, contributors to this timely volume focus on the processes and practices in which contemporary protesters engage when acting with and through media. Covering both online and offline contexts as well as mainstream and alternative media, they consider media environments around the world in all their complexity. They also provide a broad and comparative perspective on the ways that protest movements at local and transnational levels engage in mediation processes and develop media practices. Bridging the gap between social movement theory and media and communication studies, Mediation and Protest Movements will serve as an important reference for students and scholars of the media and social change.

Despite extensive theoretical debates over the utility of "political opportunities" as an explanation for the rise and success of social movements, there have been surprisingly few serious empirical tests. Contention in Context provides the most extensive effort to date to test the model, analyzing a range of important cases of revolutions and protest movements to identify the role of political opportunities in the rise of political contention.With evidence from more than fifty cases, this book explores the role of the state in protest, the frequent overemphasis on political opportunities in recent research, and the extent to which opportunity models ignore the cultural and emotional triggers for collective action. By examining new directions in the study of protest and contention, this book shows that although political opportunities can help explain the emergence of certain kinds of movements, a new strategic language can ultimately tell us far more.

2011 was a tumultuous year in terms of social protest movements. The Occupy movement spread across the globe with unprecedented support of an enormity not seen since 1968, while revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria and Libya caught the attention of the global media and brought the word revolution back into public discussions on social justice and governance. For many people worldwide, it appears that it is time for social, political and economic change. And it is precisely time, in all its forms, which cannot be ignored in this context. As something that surrounds us and affects every aspect of our lives, time is at once a tool for control, for order, for emancipation, for understanding the future and the past, and measuring degrees of freedom and quality of life in the present. This book brings together essays from fields such as politics, cultural studies and philosophy in order to reinterpret and reorient current thinking on the possibilities for new understandings of concepts of time to bring about social change. History as the passing of time, clock time, the exchange value of time, qualitative time, and alternative or marginal notions of temporality are analysed through the lens of various theoretical thinkers and applied to a multitude of political and social case studies. Breaking away from traditional notions of time as linear, and against common socially-constructed understandings of time, these essays suggest that new conceptions of time can have a major influence on creating a more just, tolerant world.

*Shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Prize, 2013*The exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the eco-activist movement revealed how the state monitors and undermines political activism. This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark documents how corporations are halting legitimate action and investigation by activists. Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Eveline Lubbers shows how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonalds use covert methods to evade accountability. She argues that corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to pro-active, with important implications for democracy itself.Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark will be vital reading for activists, investigative and citizen journalists, and all who care about freedom and democracy in the 21st century.

The New York Times-bestselling collection of essays on the power of ordinary people to effect lasting change--from the host and cofounder of Democracy Now!   Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan began writing a weekly column, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," for King Features Syndicate in 2006. This timely new sequel to Goodman's New York Times bestseller of the same name gives voice to the many ordinary people standing up to corporate and government power--and refusing to be silent.   The Silenced Majority pulls back the veil of corporate media reporting to dig deep into the politics of "climate apartheid," the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the movement to halt the execution of Troy Anthony Davis, and the globalization of dissent "from Tahrir Square to Liberty Plaza." Throughout, Goodman and Moynihan show the work of ordinary people to change their media--and change the world.   Praise for Amy Goodman   "Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights." --Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects   "Amy Goodman is not afraid to speak truth to power. She does it every day." --Susan Sarandon, activist and actress   "Crusading journalism at its best." --Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post   "A towering progressive freedom fighter in the media and the world." --Cornel West, author of Race Matters   "What journalism should be: beholden to the interests of people, not power and profit." --Arundhati Roy, author of The End of Imagination

Despite the frequency with which the word 'solidarity' is invoked the concept itself has rarely been subjected to close scrutiny. In this original and stereotype-busting work, David Featherstone helps redress this imbalance through an innovative combination of archival research, activist testimonies and first-hand involvement with political movements.Presenting a variety of case studies, from anti-slavery and anti-fascist organizing to climate change activism and the boycotts of Coca-Cola, Featherstone unearths international forms of solidarity that are all too often marginalized by nation-centred histories of the left and social movements.Timely and wide-ranging, this is a fascinating investigation of an increasingly vital subject.

The age of austerity has brought a new generation of protesters on to the streets across the world. As the economic crisis meets the environmental crisis, millions fear what the future will bring but also dare to dream of a different society. What We Are Fighting For tries to answer the question that the mainstream media loves to ask the protesters. The first radical, collective manifesto of the new decade, it brings together some of the key theorists and activists from the new networked and creative social movements. Contributors include Owen Jones, David Graeber, John Holloway, Nina Power, Mark Fisher, Franco Berardi Bifo and Marina Sitrin. Chapters outline the alternative vision that animates the new global movement - from 'new economics' and 'new governance' to 'new public' and 'new social imagination'. The book concludes by exploring 'new tactics of struggle'.

This volume addresses contemporary activist practices that aim to interrupt and reorient politics as well as culture. The specific tactics analyzed here are diverse, ranging from culture jamming, sousveillance, media hoaxing, adbusting, subvertising, street art, to hacktivism, billboard liberation, and urban guerilla, to name but a few. Though indebted to the artistic and political movements of the past, this form of activism brings a novel dimension to public protest with its insistence on humor, playfulness, and confusion. This book attempts to grasp both the old and new aspects of contemporary activist practices, as well as their common characteristics and internal varieties. It attempts to open up space for the acknowledgement of the ways in which contemporary capitalism affects all our lives, and for the reflection on possible modes of struggling with it. It focuses on the possibilities that different activist tactics enable, the ways in which those may be innovative or destructive, as well as on their complications and dilemmas.The encounter between the insights of political, social and critical theory on the one hand and activist visions and struggles on the other is urgent and appealing. The essays collected here all explore such a confrontational collaboration, testing its limits and productiveness, in theory as well as in practice. In a mutually beneficial relationship, theoretical concepts are rethought through activist practices, while those activist practices are developed with the help of the insights of critical theory. This volume brings scholars and activists together in the hope of establishing a productive dialogue between the theorizations of the intricacies of our times and the subversive practices that deal with them.

"The media has recently been abuzz with cases of citizens around the world using digital technologies to push for social and political change: from the use of Twitter to amplify protests in Iran and Moldova to the thousands of American non-profits creating Facebook accounts in the hopes of luring supporters. These stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, but have not yet been viewed holistically as a new field of human endeavor. We call this field "digital activism" and its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in this book."--Pub. desc.