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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Demonstrations & protest movements
"Nonviolent Social Movements" is the first book to offer a truly
global overview of the dramatic growth of popular nonviolent
struggles in recent years. From the civil rights movement in the
United States, and the 'People Power' movement in the Philippines,
to the pro-democracy movements of Asia, Latin America, and Europe,
nonviolent action has emerged as a key element of political change
in recent decades. Despite its widespread diffusion as a conscious movement around the world, we still understand little about nonviolence as a technique for social change. This volume seeks to provide an understanding of the extent to which organized nonviolent action can be used to replace violent struggle and the conditions under which it can succeed. "Nonviolent Social Movements" brings together case studies from around the world to demonstrate how nonviolent action works and what possibilities and limitations it holds for achieving social change and deterring aggressors.
Jihadist movements have claimed that they are merely vehicles for the application of God's word, distancing themselves from politics, which they call dirty and manmade. Yet on closer examination, jihadist movements are immersed in politics, negotiating political relationships not just with the forces surrounding them, but also within their own ranks. Drawing on case studies from North Africa and the Sahel - including Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania - this study examines jihadist movements from the inside, uncovering their activities and internal struggles over the past three decades. Highlighting the calculations that jihadist field commanders and clerics make, Alexander Thurston shows how leaders improvise, both politically and religiously, as they adjust to fast-moving conflicts. Featuring critical analysis of Arabic-language jihadist statements, this book offers unique insights into the inner workings of jihadist organisations and sheds new light on the phenomenon of mass-based jihadist movements and proto-states.
This revised and expanded edition analyses the factors conducive to holding independence and secession referendums, to winning these votes and to their status in domestic and international law. Taking into account the votes in Catalonia and Scotland, the book shows that votes on secession and independence are not a passing phenomenon but an important part of international politics. The book includes an overview of the history of referendums on independence and a summary of the legal issues involved in doing so, as well as a chapter on referendums in unrecognised states and case study chapters exploring referendums in Kosovo, Cyprus, Kurdistan and Somaliland amongst others. By considering the ethical arguments for secession and recognition, the legal norms governing the process, and the positive and political science theory of when would-be states succeed in becoming recognized by the international community, it shows the role of referendums in the process of establishing new states, and, as a corollary, their role (if any) winning international recognition for these states. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of political science, law and even philosophy.
The politics of urban development is one of the most enduring, central themes of urban politics. In Resisting Redevelopment, Eleonora Pasotti explores the forces that enable residents of 'aspiring global cities,' or economically competitive cities, to mobilize against gentrification and other forms of displacement, as well as what makes mobilizations successful. Scholars and activists alike will benefit from this one-of-a-kind comparative study. Impressive in its scope, this book examines twenty-nine protest campaigns over a decade in ten major cities across five continents, from Santiago to Seoul to Los Angeles. Pasotti sheds light on an approach that is both understudied and remarkably effective - the practice of successful organizers deploying 'experiential tools,' or events, social archives, neighborhood tours, and performances designed to attract participants and transform the protest site into the place to be. With this book, Pasotti promises to provide a creative and novel contribution to the literature of contentious politics.
Since its founding in 1945, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has enjoyed decades of almost continuous parliamentary presence and state acceptance in Jordan, participating in elections, organising events and even establishing a hospital. In this detailed account of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological and behavioural development in Jordan, Joas Wagemakers focusses on the group's long history and complex relationship with the state, its parliament and society. It shows how age-old concepts derived from classical Islam and the writings of global Islamist scholars have been used and reused by modern-day Jordanian Islamists to shape their beliefs in the context of the present-day nation-state. Far from its reputation as a two-faced global conspiracy bent on conquering the West, the Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply divided group that has nevertheless maintained a fascinating internal ideological consistency in its use of similar religious concepts. As such, it is part of, and continues to build on, trends in Muslim thought that go back hundreds of years.
The Sanctuary Movement began in 1981 as a collection of mostly church-related people deciding to help the wave of Central Americans migrating to the United States, and was transformed in the following years into a highly volatile church-state confrontation. The movement established an underground railroad to help Central Americans enter the US and then provided sanctuary within churches, where the US government was legally forbidden entry. In "God and Caesar at the Rio Grande", Hilary Cunningham offers an account of the history and growth of the Sanctuary Movement in the US, as she demonstrates how religion shapes and is shaped by political culture. Focusing on the Sanctuary located in Tucson, Arizona, Cunningham explores the movement primarily through the experiences of everyday participants, including interviews with Sanctuary workers and reproduction of letters from her stays in Arizona, Mexico, and Guatemala. She discusses and illustrates such diverse subjects as US church-state relations, the social construction of power, and international refugee policy. One of the few books to document the culture of the religious Left in the US, "God and Caesar at the Rio Grande" illustrates how a particular group of people used religious beliefs and practices to interpret and respond to State authority. This book should be of interest to individuals wishing to explore the relationship of religion to power and social change.
In the early twentieth century, women fought for the right to professional employment and political influence outside the home. Yet if liberation from household 'drudgery' meant employing another woman to do it, where did this leave domestic servants? Both inspired and frustrated by the growing feminist movement, servants began forming their own trade unions, demanding better conditions and rights at work. Feminism and the Servant Problem is the first ever history of how these militant maids and their mistresses joined forces in the struggle for the vote but also clashed over competing class interests. Laura Schwartz uncovers a forgotten history of domestic worker organising and early feminist thinking on reproductive labour, and offers a new perspective on the class politics of the suffrage movement, challenging traditional notions of who made up the British working-class.
While other writers contemplated the events of the 1968 Chicago riots from the safety of their hotel rooms, John Schultz was in the city streets, being threatened by police, choking on tear gas, and listening to all the rage, fear, and confusion around him. The result, "No One Was Killed," is his account of the contradictions and chaos of convention week, the adrenalin, the sense of drama and history, and how the mainstream press was getting it all wrong. "A more valuable factual record of events than the city's white paper, the Walker Report, and Theodore B. White's "Making of a President" combined."--"Book Week" "As a reporter making distinctions between Yippie, hippie, New Leftist, McCarthyite, police, and National Guard, Schultz is perceptive; he excels in describing such diverse personalities as Julian Bond and Eugene McCarthy."--"Library Journal" "High on my short list of true, lasting, inspired evocations of those whacked-out days when the country was fighting a phantasmagorical war (with real corpses), and police under orders were beating up demonstrators who looked at them funny."--Todd Gitlin, from the foreword
Long a recipient of migrants from its surrounding areas, the Arabian Peninsula today comprises a mosaic of communities of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious origins. For decades, while the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have housed and employed groups of migrants coming and going from Asia, Africa and the West, they have also served as home to the older, more settled communities that have come from neighbouring Arab states. Arab Migrant Communities in the GCC is a unique, original work of scholarship based on in-depth fieldwork shedding light on a topic both highly relevant and woefully understudied. It focuses on the earlier community of Arab immi-grants within the GCC, who are among the politically most significant and sensitive of migrant groups in the region.Through its multi-disciplinary lenses of social history, cultural studies, eco--nomics, and political science, the book presents original data and provides analyses of the settle--ment and continued evolution of migrant Arab communities across the GCC, their work in and assimilation within host societies and labour markets, and their political, economic, social and cul--tural significance both to the GCC region and to their countries of origin.
The politics of urban development is one of the most enduring, central themes of urban politics. In Resisting Redevelopment, Eleonora Pasotti explores the forces that enable residents of 'aspiring global cities,' or economically competitive cities, to mobilize against gentrification and other forms of displacement, as well as what makes mobilizations successful. Scholars and activists alike will benefit from this one-of-a-kind comparative study. Impressive in its scope, this book examines twenty-nine protest campaigns over a decade in ten major cities across five continents, from Santiago to Seoul to Los Angeles. Pasotti sheds light on an approach that is both understudied and remarkably effective - the practice of successful organizers deploying 'experiential tools,' or events, social archives, neighborhood tours, and performances designed to attract participants and transform the protest site into the place to be. With this book, Pasotti promises to provide a creative and novel contribution to the literature of contentious politics.
After a two-month stand-off between Red Shirt protestors and the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, violence and arson scarred central Bangkok in mid-May 2010. This shocking turn of events underlined how poorly understood the deep divisions in the society and politics of Thailand remained, even five years into the country's prolonged crisis. This volume collects analysis and commentary on those divisions from an unusually large and prominent group of Thai and foreign scholars and observers of the country. Contributions examine socio-economic, political, diplomatic, historical, cultural, and ideological issues with rare frankness, clarity, and lack of jargon.
Why do some individuals participate in risky, anti-regime resistance whereas others abstain? The Revolution Within answers this question through an in-depth study of unarmed resistance against Israeli rule in the Palestinian Territories over more than a decade. Despite having strong anti-regime sentiment, Palestinians initially lacked the internal organizational strength often seen as necessary for protest. This book provides a foundation for understanding participation and mobilization under these difficult conditions. It argues that, under these conditions, integration into state institutions - schools, prisons and courts - paradoxically makes individuals more likely to resist against the state. Diverse evidence drawn from field research - including the first, large-scale survey of participants and non-participants in Palestinian resistance, Arabic language interviews, and archival sources - supports the argument. The book's findings explain how anti-regime resistance can occur even without the strong civil society organizations often regarded as necessary for protest and, thus, suggest new avenues for supporting civil resistance movements.
The tumultuous events that began in Egypt in 2011 have embraced revolution and counter-revolution. For Philip Marfleet, they are a complex and continuing process in which millions of people from a range of political formations and socio-economic and religious backgrounds became ‘agents of change’. Amidst a surge of publishing on the ‘Arab Spring’ this book aims to close a critical gap by examining the specific character and composition of the Egyptian struggle. The social and cultural initiatives that constituted ‘the carnival of the oppressed’ come alive in the testimonies of participants across the political spectrum, allowing us to explore activist engagements in the streets, workplaces, campuses and neighbourhoods, as well as in the formal political arena. Following the 2011 revolution was, the Ittihaiddya demonstrations, the anti-Mursi marches and countless smaller protests, rallies, mass meetings, community mobilisations and labour actions, which indicate that the revolutionary energy is undiminished. With this in mind, Marfleet asks what can be learned from the Egyptian case about political upheavals that continue to affect societies of the Global South. Five years after the start of the ‘Arab Spring', this offers one of the best participant-orientated accounts of the country's struggle.
The Shape of Populism examines socialist Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, which in the late 1980s witnessed popular mobilization and an emergence of a populist discourse that both constructed and celebrated 'the people.' Author Marko Grdesic uses quantitative and qualitative analyses to show how 'the people' emerge in the public sphere. This book examines over 300 protests and analyzes them in conjunction with elite events such as party sessions. It examines over 1,600 letters-to-the-editor and political cartoons to reveal the populist construction of 'the people.' Grdesic also relies on interviews with participants in populist rallies in the late 1980s to examine the long-term legacies of populism.
This book offers an innovative perspective on the ever-widening gap between the poor and the state in Latin American politics. It presents a comprehensive analysis of the main social movement that mobilized the poor and unemployed people of Argentina to end neoliberalism and to attain incorporation into a more inclusive and equal society. The piquetero (picketer) movement is the largest movement of unemployed people in the world. This movement has transformed Argentine politics to the extent of becoming part of the governing coalition for more than a decade. Rossi argues that the movement has been part of a long-term struggle by the poor for socio-political participation in the polity after having been excluded by authoritarian regimes and neoliberal reforms. He conceptualizes this process as a wave of incorporation, exploring the characteristics of this major redefinition of politics in Latin America.
In 1946 many Jewish soldiers returned to their homes in England imagining that they had fought and defeated the forces of fascism in Europe. Yet in London they found a revived fascist movement inspired by Sir Oswald Mosley and stirring up agitation against Jews and communists. Many felt that the government, the police and even the Jewish Board of Deputies were ignoring the threat; so they had to take matters into their own hands, by any means necessary. Forty-three Jewish servicemen met together and set up a group that tirelessly organised, infiltrated meetings, and broke up street demonstrations to stop the rebirth of the far right. The group included returned war heroes; women who went undercover; and young Jews, such as hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, seeking adventure. From 1947, the 43 Group grew into a powerful troop that could muster hundreds of fighters turning meetings into mass street brawls at short notice. The history of the 43 Group is not just a gripping story of a forgotten moment in Britain's postwar history; it is also a timely lesson in how to confront fascism, and how to win.
Why has there been an increase in domestic, workplace, and community violence, and how can we prevent it? This book, one in a series sponsored by the National Mental Health Association, helps the reader explore, with the talented contributors, the foundations of violence as well as methods to reduce the incidence of violent behavior in families, workplaces, and communities. The first section provides an overview of this topic and covers: child abuse and neglect from an ecological perspective with a close look at those qualities that place some children at higher risk of abuse; the causes of spousal abuse and interventions to reduce the incidence of this behavior; workplace violence from a definitional, demographic, and theoretical perspective; and, ways to identify the causes of community violence using a public health model. The second section examines environmental factors for violence, including television violence and its impact on youth; stereotypes and its relationships to racial, ethnic, and religious hatred and violence; and, mental illness and violence, particularly how the mentally ill are more often the victim rather than the aggressor. The book concludes with a section that discusses efforts to reduce violent behavior in families, youth, and communities. This book will provide a useful resource to graduate students, to practitioners, and program developers who want a comprehensive overview of violent behavior and who want to identify programs that work to reduce violent behavior in specific settings from families to workplace to communities.
Why do vote-suppression efforts sometimes fail? Why does police repression of demonstrators sometimes turn localized protests into massive, national movements? How do politicians and activists manipulate people's emotions to get them involved? The authors of Why Bother? offer a new theory of why people take part in collective action in politics, and test it in the contexts of voting and protesting. They develop the idea that just as there are costs of participation in politics, there are also costs of abstention - intrinsic and psychological but no less real. That abstention can be psychically costly helps explain real-world patterns that are anomalies for existing theories, such as that sometimes increases in costs of participation are followed by more participation, not less. The book draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, Sweden, and Turkey.
In 2011, the world watched as dictators across the Arab world were toppled from power. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, ordinary Arab citizens mobilized across the region during the Arab Spring to reinvent the autocratic Arab world into one characterized by democracy, dignity, socioeconomic justice, and inviolable human rights. This unique comparative analysis of countries before, during and after the Arab Spring seeks to explain the divergent outcomes, disappointing and even harrowing results of efforts to overcome democratic consolidation challenges, from the tentative democracy in Tunisia to the emergence of the Islamic State, and civil war and authoritarian retrenchment everywhere else. Tracing the period of the Arab Spring from its background in long-term challenges to autocratic regimes, to the mass uprisings, authoritarian breakdown, and the future projections and requirements for a democratizing conclusion, Stephen J. King establishes a broad but focused history which refines the leading theory of democratization in comparative politics, and realigns the narrative of Arab Spring history by bringing its differing results to the fore.
This book reinterprets the Leveller authorships of John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn, and foregrounds the role of ordinary people in petitioning and protest during an era of civil war and revolution. The Levellers sought to restructure the state in 1647-49 around popular consent and liberty for conscience, especially in their Agreement of the People. Their following was not a 'movement' but largely a political response of the sects that had emerged in London's rapidly growing peripheral neighbourhoods and in other localities in the 1640s. This study argues that the Levellers did not emerge as a separate political faction before October 1647, that they did not succeed in establishing extensive political organisation, and that the troop revolt of spring 1649 was not really a Leveller phenomenon. Addressing the contested interpretations of the Levellers throughout, this book also introduces Leveller history to non-specialist readers.
Streets in Korea rarely go quiet without first having a public demonstration and Korean citizens are known as seasoned protestors, charting the course of national politics. Between the Streets and the Assembly explores how protest movements have become the prominent mode of democratic politics in Korea, in contrast to political parties in the National Assembly that have lagged behind in partisan representation and accountability. To unpack this political dynamic, this book closely follows three groups of democracy activists who were born in their resistance to military dictatorships but who pursued different methods of democratic representation in postauthoritarian Korea (1987-2020). One group stayed in civil society and organized powerful protests outside formal institutions; another group chose to join existing parties with the aim of reforming legislative politics; and the third group was devoted to forming separate progressive parties to be the agent of transformative agenda. By analyzing the interactive evolution of these three modes of democratic representation, Yoonkyung Lee finds that social movement organizations have been more effective than activist-turned politicians in centrist or progressive parties in creating coordination infrastructures for collective action. Through the practice of organizing national solidarity networks, innovating the methods of mass street demonstrations, and drawing professional expertise to formulate policy alternatives, Korean civic groups have built the capacity to directly shape and alter the course of national politics, unlike activist-turned politicians who remained divided with no common political programs. This study asserts that social movement organizations and political parties develop variable capacities for democratic representation, depending on coevolutionary interactions with each other. The experience of Korean democracy shows social movement groups can be a powerful agent of national politics against the scholarly assumption that views civic associations as narrowly focused, transient organizations. Between the Streets and the Assembly suggests a different possibility of political process, one in which civic groups and participatory citizens, not political parties, are the primary drivers of democratic politics.
The wave of uprisings and revolutions that swept the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012 were most vividly transmitted throughout the world not by television or even social media, but in short videos produced by the participants themselves and circulated anonymously on the internet. In The People Are Not An Image, Snowdon explores this radical shift in revolutionary self-representation, showing that the political consequences of these videos cannot be located without reference to their aesthetic form. Looking at videos from Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, and Egypt, Snowdon attends closely to the circumstances of both their production and circulation, drawing on a wide range of historical and theoretical material, to discover what they can tell us about the potential for revolution in our time and the possibilities of video as a genuinely decentralized and vernacular medium.
This is a thoughtful and sensitive analysis of the history and significance of non-violent civil resistance in the Palestinian national movement. It shows how the thread of unarmed struggle has run through the history of Palestinian liberation, from the establishment of the Israeli state, through the Nakba and to the present day. Set in this historical context, the book draws upon personal conversations and living history in order to focus on the contemporary movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. By analysing this under-emphasised dimension of the Palestinian struggle, the authors argue that today, the popular resistance movement, especially in the West Bank, is the most significant form of struggle against the ongoing occupation. They also address the international dimensions of the struggle, focusing in particular on the BDS campaign, the role of Israeli and international solidarity activists, and the changing forms of engagement developed by international agencies seeking to work on the roots of the conflict.
The so-called Democratic Antifascist Youth Movement "Nashi" represents a crucial case of a post-Orange government-organised formation whose values have broad support in Russian society. Yet, at the same time, in view of the movement's public scandals, Nashi was also a phenomenon bringing to the fore public reluctance to accept all implications of Putin's new system. The Russian people's relatively widespread support for his patriotic policies and conservative values has been evident, but this support is not easily extended to political actors aligned to these values. Using discourse analysis, this book identifies socio-political factors that created obstacles to Nashi's communication strategies. The book understands Nashi as anticipating an "ideal youth" within the framework of official national identity politics and as an attempt to mobilise largely apolitical youngsters in support of the powers that be. It demonstrates how Nashi's ambivalent societal position was the result of a failed attempt to reconcile incompatible communicative demands of the authoritarian state and apolitical young.
Travelling from Madrid to The Valley of the Fallen, through Castile and Leon and across the fiercely contested region of Catalonia, Christopher Finnigan meets a remarkable cast of characters behind some of the biggest political events Spain has witnessed in decades. Whether it is the Indignados left-wing activists rethinking society, the everyday citizens sitting in parliament, or the Catalan separatists fighting for a new nation, The New Spanish Revolutions meets those struggling at the heart of historic change. Spain today finds itself in the grip of immense social upheaval, still shaken by the financial crash of 2008 and still struggling with its fascist past. Against a fragmented and polarised backdrop, Christopher Finnigan discovers how individuals and ideas that were once outside the mainstream are now shaping the nation's future. |
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