For over half a century, the countless organizations and initiatives that comprise the Women's Liberation movement have helped to reshape many aspects of Western societies, from public institutions and cultural production to body politics and subsequent activist movements. This collection represents the first systematic investigation of WLM's cumulative impacts and achievements within the West. Here, specialists on movements in Europe systematically investigate outcomes in different countries in the light of a reflective social movement theory, comparing them both implicitly and explicitly to developments in other parts of the world.

Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.

For the first time in a single volume, the growing field of network analysis is systematically explored and assessed in terms of its ability to throw light on individual behaviour, social movements and political processes.

This pioneering examination of the nuclear threat, written for both the interested general reader and the student of war and peace issues, blends broad philosophical/theoretical themes and themes in the peace and conflict literature with the results of the authors' extensive survey research in the United States and Europe. While never losing sight of the threat of a nuclear holocaust, authors Lisl Goodman and Lee Ann Hoff argue that it is possible to turn the tide of aggression and destruction and, in the process, create an utterly different human society. They challenge the myth of innate aggression which sees war as inevitable; present a critical examination of the psychodynamic, sociocultural, and political-economic factors which have led to current inaction in the face of the nuclear threat; and investigate the link between the insecurities of life in the nuclear age and the increasing rate of youth suicide, apathy, disengagement, and the general devaluation of life without a secure future.

Divided into three parts, the book begins by analyzing how we got to where we are today. The authors show that clinging to the outdated notion that aggression and violence are inevitable responses to human conflict has led to an abdication of individual responsibility and placed the fate of the planet in the hands of very few individuals. This abdication has led to feelings of powerlessness and desensitization as well as to a denial of the nuclear threat, a syndrome the authors label omnicidal. In Part Two, the authors present findings from several studies conducted in North America and Europe which reveal the pervasiveness of fear, denial, a fatalistic world view, and omnicidal personality patterns. The final section presents social change strategies that can be adopted at the individual, family, and sociopolitical levels to promote peace. The authors place particular emphasis on the pivotal role of childrearing and education patterns that emphasize cooperative behavior and critical thinking about global issues.

In "The Last Crusade, " Gerald McKnight examines the Poor People's Campaign, the last large-scale demonstration of civil rights-era America, and the systematic efforts of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his executive officers to subvert King's ambitious effort to force the federal government to live up to its promises of a Great Society. The book also looks at King's last days as he helped Memphis sanitation workers in their labor-cum-civil rights struggle with a recalcitrant and racist city government. Although there is no persuasive evidence that the FBI and the Memphis police conspired to assassinate King, McKnight marshals evidence to show that neither agency was blameless.The conventional view of the Poor People's Campaign is that it was a self-inflicted failure. The blame rested squarely on the shoulders of the second-raters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who failed to fill the leadership vacuum after King's assassination. But, as McKnight shows, there was a hidden, dark counterpoint to the accepted version--namely, the triumph of the 1960s American surveillance state and its repressive power and flagrant violation of protected freedoms. In fact, whatever the FBI wanted to do to disrupt the Campaign, it did, aided and abetted by local police agencies and elements of the federal government, including military intelligence.

The Little Rock Crisis frames the story of the Little Rock 1957 desegregation crisis through the lens of memory. Over time, those memories - individual and collective - have motivated Little Rockians for social and political action and engagement.

Impassioned social protest writers inspire readers to relive injustice, empathize with its victims, and take action. The more than 450 entries in this volume survey the most important protest works of our time as well as the classics of the past. Social Protest Literature discusses the lives and concerns of more than 100 writers; analyzes each work's themes, content, and targeted social problems; provides plot synopses and character sketches; demonstrates how major literary creations represent specific ideologies; and explores key social protest concepts in the context of historical events and social and cultural milieus. This beautifully illustrated encyclopedia focuses on recent works that look at environmentalism, labor issues, civil rights for such marginalized groups as gays and lesbians and racial and ethnic minorities, the role of art under repressive regimes, and other timely issues. Extensive cross-references direct readers to other works with similar themes and a comprehensive bibliography suggests further reading.

The persuasive strategies employed by the Moral Majority in the early 1980s reassured and calmed a segment of the American population left confused and uncertain by recent national events. David Snowball analyzes this powerful movement, how its rhetoric energized its supporters, the positions it endorsed and causes it championed, and its response to political and media critics. By examining the fundamental messages, the tactics used, and the personalities involved, the study reveals that, while the basic message of the Moral Majority remained constant, its changing popular image and maturing rhetoric, which initially added momentum to its rapid rise, may also have been at the root of its swift decline by the end of the decade. While tracing the movement's origins, Snowball investigates in-depth the American people's reaction to the influence of the Moral Majority. He subsequently reviews its founding tenets and the language typically used to encourage its disciples. A look at the specific issues which polarized critics and followers exposes the reasons for the movement's collapse and poses questions regarding its future. Although the primary focus of this study is the history of the Moral Majority, the analysis also provides valuable insight into the nature of the American political system's response to religiously-motivated movements in general.

Working-class Appalachian women on the picket line, fighting for better working conditions. White women organizing against the racial integration of schools. Native American women struggling for Indian treaty rights. African American women in the Black Panther Party. What prompts these women to adopt political stances outside mainstream politics? How are these women changed by personal experiences of militancy and activism?

Until recently, radical and militant activists have been viewed largely as male, while women have been assumed to be apolitical, more interested in domestic concerns and personal relationships than in public issues and political controversies. Despite evidence that women have been involved in a wide range of political activities, from revolutionary parties to racial hate groups, little attention has been paid to women's radical action.

No Middle Ground brings together a wide variety of contributors to uncover women's roles in radical and militant movements. Examining women's radicalism in the United States from the 1950s through the 1990s, the volume details women's activism in both right-wing and left-wing movements, in feminist as well as anti-feminist groups, and in both movements supporting racial equality and those favoring race supremacism. The essays shed light on the conditions which encourage women's militancy, the issues around which women mobilize, how they organize, and what divides them in organizations.

The essays and personal narratives in No Middle Ground advance our understanding of the gendered underpinnings of activism that occurs outside the "middle ground" of conventional electoral and pressure group politics. They suggest the significance of identity, consciousness, personal biography, and external context for understanding women's involvement with radical protest movements.

No Middle Ground brings new insight into women's oppositional politics, as well as into our understandings of radical action.

Dispelling the myth that women became involved in partisan politics only after they obtained the vote, this study uses contemporary newspaper sources to show that women were active in the party struggle long before 1920. Although their role was initially limited to attending rallies and hosting picnics, they gradually began to use their pens and voices to support party tickets. By the late 19th century, women spoke at party functions and organized all-female groups to help canvass neighborhoods and get out the vote. In the early suffrage states of the West, they voted in increasing numbers and even held a few offices. Women were particularly active, this book shows, in the minor reformist parties--Populist, Prohibitionist, Socialist, and Progressive--but eventually came to play a role in the major parties as well. Prominent suffrage leaders, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, entered the partisan arena in order to promote their cause. By the time the suffrage amendment was ratified, women were deeply involved in the mainstream political process.

In this hard-hitting polemic, one of America's best-known political commentators explains why racial tensions are now approaching critical mass - and points to what we must do to defuse the situation. Carl T. Rowan has spent his entire life fighting for racial justice. The Coming Race War in America names and pinpoints the issues that are tearing this country apart. Rowan blows the whistle on America's "gatekeepers" - in academia, media, and government - who fan the flames of racial hatred, whether intentionally or accidentally. He tears into demagogues who promote racial tensions, from Rush Limbaugh to Louis Farrakhan. And above all, he lambastes politicians who blame welfare mothers, immigrants, affirmative action, and the urban underclass for all of America's social ills - and reinforce a "hate-the-poor" mind-set that can only lead to disaster. Rowan explores the rising tensions in every stratum of society, from upper-class white-males protesting reverse discrimination to young black men desperate for a piece of the pie. He takes a hard look at how and why two African Americans - O. J. Simpson and Colin Powell - could inspire such disparate and emotionally charged reactions, and sees an omen of things to come. What's simmering now, he says, could soon boil over. The signs of the coming race war are everywhere, says Rowan, and there is no easy path to peace. But there is hope. By recognizing the full dimensions of the problem, well-intentioned Americans of all races can push for courses of action - from increased community involvement to greater support for education - that will help relieve tensions and build trust.

This volume of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change is divided into two parts. Part I presents a series of cases that tie together narratives of being, knowing and contestation surrounding the claiming of identity for the self or the categorization of the other. It does this by exploring narratives to claim identities and assert agency; showing us the dialectic between dominant forces and those who would challenge existing narratives about place, identity or space. Part II continues RSMCC's tradition of cutting edge research in social movement formation, conflict and change. These chapters focus on a wide range of social organizations from immigrant movements, to the occupy struggle, to the narratives around the framing and counter-framing of the radical environmental movement. The volume concludes with two chapters focusing on more recent developments in data gathering and analysis to examine changes in how researchers collect and analyze data. Each of the nine chapters engages with notions of identity, whether in the examination of the subject or in the reference to the researcher him or herself.

This book investigates the role of society groups in the making of the Arab Spring and under which conditions they attained their goals. Democracy and recognition of human rights and fundamental freedoms seem to be the main drives of the people organized in form of civil groups or grassroots movements in the Arab Spring countries; but it is essential to identify when they find it suitable to take such extreme action as taking the streets in an attempt to take down the repressive regimes. It is also important to investigate what methods they relied on in their action and how they challenged the state and the government. A review of the cases in this volume shows that civil society has certain limitations in its action. Analysis of the cases also challenges a commonly held assumption that the Arab world does not have strong and rich civil society tradition. However, for a lasting success and consolidation of democracy, something more than civil society action is obviously needed. A strong organized opposition and a democratic culture seems to be indispensable elements for the evolution of a democratic order and tradition.

Since the 1970s, global capitalism has been marked by evermore intense cycles of boom and crisis. Today, Spain is at the epicentre of a crisis that threatens the future of the eurozone. Drawing upon Marxian value theory, Charnock, Purcell, and Ribera-Fumaz explain the deep historical and structural roots of the crisis in Spain, contextualised within global political and economic transformations in recent decades. They analyse the most recent cycle of boom and crisis in Spain, the nexus among European circuits of financial capital, urbanisation, and the emergent dynamics of state austerity and popular revolt - from the indignados movement to demands for an independent Catalonia.

This unique study argues that the draft dodgers who went to Canada during the Vietnam War were not always the anti-war radicals portrayed in popular culture. Many were the products of stable, conservative, middle class homes who were more interested in furthering their education and careers than in fighting in Southeast Asia. The conflict in Vietnam was just one cause among many for their deep sense of disaffection from the land of their birth. These expatriates remained quintessentially American, because evading the draft was in their opinion consistant with the very best American traditions of individualism and resistance to undue authority or state servitude.

Although the war was not the only or even the primary reason for their immigration to Canada, it was the final action in response to an increasing sense of alientation from America that many had felt since childhood. Kusch's work also raises questions about what it means to be an American. Intriguingly, it suggests the actions of these expatriates should be seen not merely as a drastic response to the Vietnam war, but as a commitment to the core ideals of American and European thought since the Enlightenment.

During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, many Korean-American businesses were looted and burned to the ground. Although nearly half of the looters arrested were Latinos, the media portrayed this aspect of the riots more in terms of the on- going conflicts between Korean-Americans and African- Americans. In another part of the world in 1984, the violence which ensued after the assassination of India's Indira Gandhi was portrayed by officials and state leaders as a spilling over of mass sentiments of grief and anger, a conflict between ethnic groups instead of a pogrom against the Sikhs.

Riots and Pogroms presents comparative studies of public violence in the twentieth-century in the United States, Russia, Germany, Israel, and India with a comparative, historical, and analytical introduction by the editor. The focus of the book is on the interpretive process which follows riots and pogroms, rather than on the search for their causes. Its emphasis is on the struggle for control over the meaning of riotous events, for the right to represent them properly. How do political and social forces seek to assign causes and attach labels to riots, attribute motives to rioters and pogromists, and explain why particular groups are selected for violent assaults? To what extent are the state and its agents implicated in those assaults? To what degree does organization and/or spontaneity play a role in these incidents?

While the 2011 Egyptian revolution has already become the subject of much debate, the roots of the socio-economic context which made the revolution possible have seldom been explored. Roberto Roccu addresses this gap and in doing this provides the first detailed study of the deeper causes of the Egyptian revolution. Relying on an innovative understanding of Antonio Gramsci's thought, He argues that economic reforms implemented since the late 1980s provided the conditions for both the emergence of a capitalist oligarchy within the regime and an unprecedented rise in socio-economic inequality in society at large. These two processes substantially eroded any remnants of hegemony, leaving the Mubarak regime ill-equipped to face the global economic crisis. By alienating sections of the ruling bloc while impoverishing vast strata of the population, neoliberal reforms provided a necessary, although by no means sufficient, condition for the Egyptian revolution to occur.

When contrasted with the miners' dramatic strike victories in 1972 and 1974, the shattering industrial defeat suffered by British miners in 1985 has been seen as evidence of the further weakening of working-class solidarity. Undertaken with complete unity, the strikes of 1972 and 1974 brought the miners substantial material gains, contributed to the downfall of a government, and reinforced the National Union of Mineworkers' position at the core of the British labour movement. In contrast, the strike in Britain in 1984/85 was marked by internal division and by the miners' attempt to resist the pit closure programme of the Thatcher government, and it ended in bitter defeat.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was a woman's rights' activist during the 19th century, committed to the woman suffrage movement and civil rights. This book brings needed attention to Gage's life and work and explores her impact on women's rights. Using an advanced and distinctive form of feminist thought that encompassed an incisive analysis of patriarchy, Gage even criticized the church as patriarchy's prime sponsor. In fact, Gage connected all of women's oppression, including prostitution, marriage customs, divorce, rape and cusotdy rights to patriarchy, It is perhaps for her radical theory that Gage's arguments remain salient and controversial today. An overdue addition to the scholarship on the role feminists like Matilda Joslyn Gage have played in history, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of United States history, women's history, and women's studies.

The horrific slaughter in Rwanda has once again driven home the deeply rooted existence and continuing presence of genocidal impulses. In this passionately argued volume-first published to great acclaim in France and considerably updated during the translation process-a deeply involved witness of the massacres takes an unflinching look at recent events in Rwanda and what they can tell us about the nature of genocide.

Table of Contents
Foreword
By William Shawcross
1. The Unlearned Lesson of History
2. Three Genocides in the Twentieth Century
3. The Hutu and the Tutsi
4. From Indifference to Compassion
5. Justice Must be Done
Appendix 1: Convention on the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Appendix 2: Chronology
Notes
Index

During the early 1980s, large parts of Europe were swept with riots and youth revolts. Radicalised young people occupied buildings and clashed with the police in cities such as Zurich, Berlin and Amsterdam, while in Great Britain and France, 'migrant' youths protested fiercely against their underprivileged position and police brutality. Was there a link between the youth revolts in different European cities, and if so, how were they connected and how did they influence each other? These questions are central in this volume. This book covers case studies from countries in both Eastern and Western Europe and focuses not only on political movements such as squatting, but also on political subcultures such as punk, as well as the interaction between them. In doing so, it is the first historical collection with a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective on youth, youth revolts and social movements in the 1980s.

Can electoral and parliamentary arenas be used toward revolutionary ends? This is precisely the question that held Lenin's attention from 1905 to 1917, leading him to conclude that they could-and would. This book explores the time in which Lenin initiated his use of the electorate, beginning with the Marxist roots of Lenin's politics, and then details his efforts to lead the deputies of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the First and Second State Dumas, concluding with Russia's first experiment in representative democracy from 1906 to 1907. During this time, Lenin had to address issues such as whether to boycott or participate in undemocratic elections, how to conduct election campaigns, whether to enter into electoral blocs and the related lesser of two evils dilemma, how to keep deputies accountable to the party, and how to balance electoral politics with armed struggle. Lenin later said that the lessons of that work were 'indispensable' for Bolshevik success in 1917, which means that this detailed analysis of that period is crucial to any thorough understanding of Leninism.

A rare insider's view of educational development and problems in China since economic reform began in 1978, this volume critically examines the issue of political socialization through curriculum and compares the curriculum used during the Cultural Revolution with that compiled and used throughout China in 1988. Also explored are problems with student dropouts and teacher motivation in rural education and government-supported nonformal education; the tracking system and vocational education development in urban schools; problems that came about with economic and political reform; and the issue of inequality existing between and within rural and urban schools.

Turning to recent decentralization efforts in school administration, Jing Lin analyzes evidence suggesting that educational policy is politically controlled. Additionally, the development of educational research in the 1980s and 1990s constitutes the topic of one chapter, based on hundreds of published books and papers. Finally, Lin reflects on the massive student movement that arose in the spring of 1989 and delineates the social, economic, and political changes that sparked it. This final section treats these educational changes as an interconnected whole that underlay the movement and gave it such distinctive characteristics as nonviolence and a rational, constructive outlook.

Highly recommended. . . . Presented here is a critique of the major ways in which social movements have been conceptualized and interpreted. . . . An excellently documented work, featuring a useful set of references and a good index. Choice A book to provoke and unsettle, a book of enormous intellectual and moral ambition. Contemporary Sociology Brilliantly reconceptualizing social movements from a historical perspective, Foss and Larkin critically review the major theories in social movements. They analyze the mechanisms of the reproduction of social privilege to examine the underlying contradicitons in society which give rise to collective dissidence and conclude with some intriguing speculations as to the possibility of social revolution in the U.S. Essential reading for all social scientists, and for courses in social movements, contemporary social theory, and political sociology.

This study examines the development of Panamanian nationalism, focusing on the period from 1903 to 1941. Utilizing historiography, literature, public architecture, and monuments, Szok posits that Panamanian nationalism is, in part, a legacy of the nineteenth century when Panama experienced a nationalist movement typical of the rest of Latin America. This movement was a creation of the country's white elite, who feared the Afro-mestizo masses and sought the protection of outside powers. Later joining forces with the growing middle class, the upper class continued to emphasize liberalism and promoted nostalgia for things Hispanic. This effort left it largely divorced from the Afro-Caribbean culture of the terminal cities and would ultimately contribute to its loss of power in 1968. The elite's goal of constructing an interoceanic canal that would Europeanize the isthmus and open it to investment was realized in 1903 with the intervention of the United States and the separation from Colombia. The canal and independence soon fostered a rising middle class who became disillusioned with post-independence society and the limits placed upon its professional advancement. Once united with the elite in the protection of their own interests, the middle class used nostalgia to protect their social position even as they continued to press for modernization. Szok challenges some long-held stereotypes of Panama, particularly that it was "invented" by the United States and that its development is unique and thus lies outside the trajectory of Latin America.