This book analyses the aesthetic and utopian dimensions of various activist social movements in Western Europe since 1989. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates how dreams of a better society have manifested themselves in contexts of political confrontation, and how artistic forms have provided a language to express the collective desire for social change. The study begins with the 1993 occupation of Claremont Road in east London, an attempt to prevent the demolition of homes to make room for a new motorway. In a squatted row of houses, all available space was transformed and filled with elements that were both aesthetic and defensive - so when the authorities arrived to evict the protestors, sculptures were turned into barricades. At the end of the decade, this kind of performative celebration merged with the practices of the antiglobalisation movement, where activists staged spectacular parallel events alongside the global elite's international meetings. As this book shows, social movements try to erase the distance that separates reality and political desire, turning ordinary people into creators of utopias. Squatted houses, carnivalesque street parties, counter-summits, and camps in central squares, all create a physical place of these utopian visions

This book provides a lively account of the gilets jaunes, the yellow vest movement that has shaken France since 2018. Charles Devellennes assesses what lessons can be drawn from their activities and the impact for the contemporary relationship between state and citizen. Informed by a dialogue with past political theorists - from Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau to Rawls, Nozick and Diderot - and reflecting on the challenges posed by the yellow vest movement, the author rethinks the concept of the social contract for contemporary societies around the world. It proposes a new relationship between the state and the individual, and establishes the necessity of rethinking the modern democratic nature of our representative polities in order to provide a genuine process for the healing of social ills.

Civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act, contrary to law, carried out to communicate opposition to law and policy of government. This book presents a theory of civil disobedience that draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy. This book explores the ethics of civil disobedience in democratic societies. It revisits the theoretical literature on civil disobedience with a view to taking a fresh look at long-standing questions: When is civil disobedience a justified method of political protest? What role, if any, does it play in democratic politics? Is there a moral right to civil disobedience in a democratic society? And how should a democratic state respond to citizens who commit civil disobedience? The answers given to these questions add up to a coherent and distinctive theory of civil disobedience, which draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy to forge an account that improves upon prominent approaches to this subject. Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary political theory, political science, democratization studies, social movement studies, criminology, legal theory and moral philosophy.

The death of feminism is regularly proclaimed in the West. Yet at the same time feminism has never had such an extensive presence, whether in international norms and institutions, or online in blogs and social networking campaigns. This book argues that the women's movement is not over; but rather social movement theory has led us to look in the wrong places. This book offers both methodological and theoretical innovations in the study of social movements, and analyses how the trajectories of protest activity and institution-building fit together. The rich empirical study, together with focused research on discursive activism, blogging, popular culture and advocacy networks, provides an extraordinary resource, showing how the women's movements can survive the highs and lows and adapt in unexpected ways. Expert contributors explore the ways in which the movement is continuing to work its way through institutions, and persists within submerged networks, cultural production and in everyday living, sustaining itself in non-receptive political environments and maintaining a discursive feminist space for generations to come. Set in a transnational perspective, this book trace the legacies of the Australian women's movement to the present day in protest, non-government organisations, government organisations, popular culture, the Internet and the Slut Walk. The Women's Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet will be of interest to international students and scholars of gender politics, gender studies, social movement studies and comparative politics.

The armed anti-Soviet resistance movement which arose in the second half of 1944 in Lithuania, as Soviet forces began to reoccupy the Baltic countries and Galicia, sparking a nearly decade-long fierce military conflict, has yet to become established in the common narrative of contemporary European history. However, controversy regarding the nature of this `war after the war' and its legacies constitutes one of the core elements in the contemporary information warfare waged by Russia against its neighbouring countries. The origins of various distortions surrounding the story of the partisan war in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union can even be traced to the final stages of that war, when Soviet propaganda sought to discredit the campaign as a battle waged by criminal elements. In this example of a historical event charged with controversial memories and geopolitical connotations, a thorough academic approach is extraordinarily instrumental. Responding to the growing need for historical research capable of providing international readers with the latest findings in the thematic field under question, six scholars from Vilnius University address the diverse aspects of this phenomenon as well as its role in the culture and politics of memory. Toward this end, this analysis - among the most comprehensive explorations of this history to date - is being released in both Lithuanian and English.

"Hunt deliciously complicates the history of the 1960s by introducing a protest element not bound to college campuses or the counterculture. . . . It is a disturbing story, one that Hunt tells well."
--"Choice"

"All students of the concluding years of America's longest war should be grateful to Andrew Hunt for the clarity and grace with which he has told V.V.A.W.'s story."
--"Canadian Journal of History"

"This extraordinary and deeply moving history explodes all the encrusted stereotypes of GIs on one side of the barricades and anti-war protestors on the other. At along last we can again hear the voices of the thousands of courageous veterans who refused to be silent about the immoral war in Indochina."
"--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz"

"A splendid addition to the growing literature on Vietnam veterans and their experiences during and after the war. Hunt's complex and moving history is a vital corrective to accounts which equate the anti-war movement with student activists as well as to those who persist in seeing veterans as passive victims."
"--Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars"

"Explodes one of the most persistent and pernicious myths attached to the 1960s: that the anti-war movement was anti-GI and anti-veteran. How could that be, when, as Hunt shows, many of the most committed and eloquent opponents of the Vietnam war were themselves veterans of the conflict in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were heroes then, and they deserve to be remembered as heroes today."
"--Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College"

"For all kinds of veterans of the Sixties era, this book offers powerful testimony on the meaning of patriotismand moral courage. For younger people, whose images of the Sixties are often caught in the caricatures of the mass media, Hunt's sophisticated account of veterans' anti-war protest evokes new understanding, and I think, hard questions about a difficult time."
"--David Farber, author of The Age of Great Dreams"

The anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States is perhaps best remembered for its young, counterculture student protesters. However, the Vietnam War was the first conflict in American history in which a substantial number of military personnel actively protested the war while it was in progress.

In The Turning, Andrew Hunt reclaims the history of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that transformed the antiwar movement by placing Vietnam veterans in the forefront of the nationwide struggle to end the war. Misunderstood by both authorities and radicals alike, VVAW members were mostly young men who had served in Vietnam and returned profoundly disillusioned with the rationale for the war and with American conduct in Southeast Asia. Angry, impassioned, and uncompromisingly militant, the VVAW that Hunt chronicles in this first history of the organization posed a formidable threat to America's Vietnam policy and further contributed to the sense that the nation was under siege from within.

Based on extensive interviews and in-depth primary research, including recently declassified government files, The Turning is a vivid history of the men who risked censures, stigma, even imprisonment for a cause they believed to be "an extended tour of duty."

From Egypt to South Africa, Nigeria to Ethiopia, a new force for political change is emerging across Africa: popular protest. Widespread urban uprisings by youth, the unemployed, trade unions, activists, writers, artists, and religious groups are challenging injustice and inequality. What is driving this new wave of protest? Is it the key to substantive political change? Drawing on interviews and in-depth analysis, Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly offer a penetrating assessment of contemporary African protests, situating the current popular activism within its historical and regional contexts.

Exploring what it means to enact feminist geography, this book brings together contemporary, cutting-edge cases of social justice activism and collaborative research with activists. From Black feminist organizing in the American South to the stories of feminist geography collectives in Latin America, the editors present contemporary case studies from the global north and south. The chapters showcase the strength and vibrancy of activist-engaged scholarship taking place in the field and serve as a call to action, exploring how this work advances real-world efforts to fight injustice and re-make the world as a fairer, more equitable, and more accepting place.

This book investigates the decision-making process, rationale and determining factors which underlie the strategic shifts of armed movements from violent to nonviolent resistance. The revival of global interest in the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle since the 2011 Arab Spring offers a welcome opportunity to revisit the potential of unarmed resistance as an alternative pathway out of armed conflicts, in cases where neither military (or counter-insurgency) nor negotiated solutions have succeeded. This volume brings together academics from various disciplinary traditions and offers a wide range of case studies - including South Africa, Palestine and Egypt - through which to view the changes from violence to nonviolence within self-determination, revolutionary or pro-democracy struggles. While current historiography focuses on armed conflicts and their termination through military means or negotiated settlements, this book is a first attempt to investigate the nature and the drivers of transitions from armed strategies to unarmed methods of contentious collective action on the part of non-state conflict actors. The text concentrates in particular on the internal and relational factors which underpin the decision-making process, from a change of leadership and a pragmatic re-evaluation of the goals and means of insurgency in the light of evolving inter-party power dynamics, to the search for new local or international allies and the cross-border emulation or diffusion of new repertoires of action. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, peace and conflict studies, political sociology and IR in general.

In this monograph, Chris Featherman adopts a discourse analytical approach to explore the ways in which social movement ideologies and identities are discursively constructed in new and old media. In the context of his argument, Featherman also considers current debates surrounding the role that technologies play in democracy-building and global activist networks. He engages these critical issues through a case study of the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, looking at both US legacy media coverage of the protests as well as activists' use of social media. Through qualitative analysis of a corpus of activists' Twitter tweets and Flickr uploads, Featherman argues that activists' social media discourses and protesters' symbolic and tactical borrowing of global English contribute to micronarratives of globalization, while also calling into question master narratives about Iran commonly found in mainstream Western media accounts. This volume makes a timely contribution to discussions regarding the relationship between cyber-rhetoric and democracy, and provides new directions for researchers engaging with the influence of new media on globalized vernaculars of English.

This book explores the conditions that encourage non-violent civic engagement in emerging civil societies. Gurbuz examines the radical transformations over the past decade in the politics of Turkey's Kurdish minority. On the eve of the new millennium, the Turkish state was still openly denying the existence of Kurds, calling them "mountain Turks," and Kurdish populated cities were ruled under martial law. Kurdish politics in Turkey was dominated by a revolutionary movement, the PKK, which engaged in violent clashes with the state. Less than a decade later, the PKK's rebellion had all but ended, and Kurdish political and civic movements of numerous stripes had emerged. The Turkish state even introduced an official Kurdish-language TV channel. How did this rapid change occur? Gurbuz proposes that contending social movements has transformed the politics of the region, ushering in an era of post-conflict political and cultural competition.

Although living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest. Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest examines some of those problems, progressing from methodological issues, to discussions of the part that the mass media plays in protest, finally to several case studies of protests in different contexts.

*Written by the winners of the Inttranews Linguists of the Year award for 2016!* Discursive and non-discursive interventions in the political arena are heavily mediated by various acts of translation that enable protest movements to connect across the globe. Focusing on the Egyptian experience since 2011, this volume brings together a unique group of activists who are able to reflect on the complexities, challenges and limitations of one or more forms of translation and its impact on their ability to interact with a variety of domestic and global audiences. Drawing on a wide range of genres and modalities, from documentary film and subtitling to oral narratives, webcomics and street art, the 18 essays reveal the dynamics and complexities of translation in protest movements across the world. Each unique contribution demonstrates some aspect of the interdependence of these movements and their inevitable reliance on translation to create networks of solidarity. The volume is framed by a substantial introduction by Mona Baker and includes an interview with Egyptian activist and film-maker, Philip Rizk. With contributions by scholars and artists, professionals and activists directly involved in the Egyptian revolution and other movements, Translating Dissent will be of interest to students of translation, intercultural studies and sociology, as well as the reader interested in the study of social and political movements. Online materials, including links to relevant websites and videos, are available at http://www.routledge.com/cw/baker. Additional resources for Translation and Interpreting Studies are available on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/translationstudies.

In Unearthing Conflict Fabiana Li analyzes the aggressive expansion and modernization of mining in Peru since the 1990s to tease out the dynamics of mining-based protests. Issues of water scarcity and pollution, the loss of farmland, and the degradation of sacred land are especially contentious. She traces the emergence of the conflicts by discussing the smelter-town of La Oroya-where people have lived with toxic emissions for almost a century-before focusing her analysis on the relatively new Yanacocha gold mega-mine. Debates about what kinds of knowledge count as legitimate, Li argues, lie at the core of activist and corporate mining campaigns. Li pushes against the concept of "equivalence"-or methods with which to quantify and compare things such as pollution-to explain how opposing groups interpret environmental regulations, assess a project's potential impacts, and negotiate monetary compensation for damages. This politics of equivalence is central to these mining controversies, and Li uncovers the mechanisms through which competing parties create knowledge, assign value, arrive at contrasting definitions of pollution, and construct the Peruvian mountains as spaces under constant negotiation.

This fascinating historical overview of a significant but sometimes overlooked era will serve as a valuable reference for librarians, teachers, and students in grades 7 through 12. While not standardized in the social studies curriculum, this era is one of the more commonly studied periods in multicultural units, and until now little material has been available about it. This information-packed book covers the years 1917-1933 and is organized by theme (e.g., historical and biographical references, notable contributors, literature and writing). Each section includes an overview of the topic, brief biographical sketches, and an annotated list of pertinent nonfiction references. Intended as a supplement to social studies textbooks and instruction, this work gives educators and students the information they need about this major cultural movement and the achievements of African Americans during an important era. Black-and-white photos illustrate the text.

"A valuable resourcea]the names of the authors and activists within it are undoubtedly ones we will encounter again and again over the decades to come."
--"Sojourner"

Still Lifting, Still Climbing is the first volume of its kind to document African American women's activism in the wake of the civil rights movement.

Covering grassroots and national movements alike, contributors explore black women's mobilization around such areas as the black nationalist movements, the Million Man March, black feminism, anti-rape movements, mass incarceration, the U.S. Congress, welfare rights, health care, and labor organizing. Detailing the impact of post-1960s African American women's activism, they provide a much-needed update to the historical narrative.

Ideal for course use, the volume includes original essays as well as primary source documents such as first-hand accounts of activism and statements of purpose. Each contributor carefully situates their topic within its historical framework, providing an accessible context for those unfamiliar with black women's history, and demonstrating that African American women's political agency does not emerge from a vacuum, but is part of a complex system of institutions, economics, and personal beliefs.

This ambitious volume will be an invaluable resource on the state of contemporary African American women's activism.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. Structures and processes occurring within and between states are no longer the only - or even the most important - determinants of those political, economic and social developments and dynamics that shape the modern world. Many issues, including the environment, health, crime, drugs, migration and terrorism, can no longer be contained within national boundaries. As a result, it is not always possible to identify the loci for authority and legitimacy, and the role of governments has been called into question. Civil Society anf International Governance critically analyses the increasing impact of nongovernmental organisations and civil society on global and regional governance. Written from the standpoint of advocates of civil society and addressing the role of civil society in relation to the UN, the IMF, the G8 and the WTO, this volume assess the role of various non-state actors from three perspectives: theoretical aspects, civil society interaction with the European Union and civil society and regional governance outside Europe, specifically Africa, East Asia and the Middle East. It demonstrates that civil society's role has been more complex than one defined in terms, essentially, of resistance and includes actual participation in governance as well as multi-facetted contributions to legitimising and democratising global and regional governance. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, civil society, sociology, European politics and global governance.

In this important book, Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper bring together an internationally acclaimed group of contributors to demonstrate the complexities of the social and political spheres in various areas of public policy. By breaking down the state into the players who really make decisions and pursue coherent strategies, these essays provide new perspectives on the interactions between political protestors and the many parts of the state"from courts, political parties, and legislators to police, armies, and intelligence services. By analyzing politics as the interplay of various players within structured arenas, Breaking Down the State provides an innovative look at law and order versus opposition movements in countries across the globe.

There has been clear recognition of tendencies towards uncritically celebrating resistance and the need for critical appraisal within the literature on globalization and contestation. This book provides a conceptual history of global civil society and a critical examination of the politics of resistance in the global political economy. It uses a dialectical method of analysis to illustrate the conceptual stasis of mainstream approaches to questions of globalization and contestation, while demonstrating the potential of a Gramscian approach to reconstitute hegemony as a key analytical and explanatory tool. Buckley offers insight to the movements of transversal hegemony and existent and anticipated modes of social relation through the case studies of the World Social Forum and the World People's Conference on Climate Change. Offering a more comprehensive understanding of change in the global political economy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, globalization, global civil society, sociology, and the politics resistance.

Social movements throughout the world have been central to history, politics, society, and culture. Observing Protest from a Place examines the impact of one such campaign, the global justice movement, as seen from the southern hemisphere. Drawing upon a collective survey from the 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar, the essays explore a number of vital issues, including the methodological problems of studying international activist gatherings and how scholars can overcome those challenges. By demonstrating the importance of the global justice movement and the role of nongovernmental organizations for participants in the southern hemisphere, this volume is an important addition to the literature on community action.

Islam is more than a set of laws, rites and beliefs presented as a religious and social totality. As a word it covers a multitude of everyday forms and practices that are interwoven in complex, sometimes almost invisible ways in daily existence. Drawing exclusively on his own fieldwork in Egypt, South Arabia and the Lebanon, the author explores the nature of Islam and its impact on the daily lives of its followers; he shows that all the Western stereotypes of Islam and its practitioners need to be treated with considerable scepticism. He demonstrates also that the understanding of Islam is dependent on recognizing a variety of class tensions and oppositions within an Islamic society. These have become all the more crucial in recent years with the growth of a capitalist economy, in which the forms and functions of the state have expanded considerably. This study focuses on the social and cultural divisions between very different groups and classes, ranging from the working masses of Cairo to the new bourgeoisie of Algeria and Morocco. The accent of the book is on the forms and transformations of Islam within these different societies. The impact of colonialism is discussed in this context, and reformist and radical Islamic movements are analyzed in relation to shifting structures in class and society at large. First published in 1982.

Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass media"as well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social and political structures, but from other players with different goals and interests. Through a careful treatment of these situations, this volume offers a new way to approach the role of social protest in national and international politics.

Uses the methods of literary, cultural, and subaltern studies to examine what cultural foundations and practices gave rise to this political uprising. Explores and analyzes these five months which have come to be known as the Chilean social explosion [estallido social].

This book demonstrates synergies and distils hard-earned lessons of human and forest rights struggles to inform the ongoing debates on environmental human rights. It highlights the ongoing struggles of the communities in postcolonial India that are confronted with the most brutal and unprecedented assault on their economic and sociocultural rights - often led by the political establishment. The contributions in this edited volume present multiple narratives of these struggles, theoretical inquiries into a diversity of political imaginations, and the intertwined changes in the legal and biophysical landscapes. These contributions speak to some of the most important contemporary debates within the human rights community that stands in the crossroads with rights of Indigenous Peoples and other members of subaltern groups. This volume will be of great value to scholars, students, and researchers interested in human rights politics, power, forest governance, and environmental movements in postcolonial India. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

This book addresses issues surrounding the evolution of the Arab Spring in North Africa. After a general introduction and explanation of the events on a region-wide basis, it turns to examine aspects of each of the countries concerned. The role of the Muslim Brotherhood during the Nasser regime and in the contemporary situation is compared, together with an analysis of the emergence of new political parties in Egypt. The book analyses the links between social media and satellite television during the revolution in Egypt. This is followed by a study of the intellectual and cultural background to the Tunisian revolution and an analysis of the new political parties in Tunisia. It also looks at the revolution process in Libya and concludes with a study of why there was no revolution in Algeria and how the Moroccan monarchy was able to sideline those who challenged it at the price of constitutional changes that are essentially cosmetic. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of North African Studies.