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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Demonstrations & protest movements
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.
From Protest to Challenge Volume 4: Political Profiles, 1882–1990, in Jacana’s second edition of the six volumes of From Protest to Challenge, profiles over six hundred individual activists who played important political roles during the century before the abolition of apartheid in 1990. Among those included are John Dube, Clements Kadalie, Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko, Beyers Naude and Joe Slovo, as well as Ellen Kuzwayo, Jay Naidoo, Robert McBride, P.K. Leballo and Patricia de Lille. These books are a wonderful resource for future generations of scholars. The publication of the Vol. 4 completes the series.
"Rivers of Blood" offers a glimpse into the brutal world of state terrorism. In this innovative study, the author explores the strategies, targets, and motives of terror by reviewing the conditions surrounding government massacres. By introducing an innovative typology of massacres and a classification of terror strategies, the author develops a structural approach to the study of state terror, thus challenging the viewpoint that state terrorism is a situational or reactionary phenomenon. Case studies of government massacres such as those occuring in China (Tiananmen), Iraq (Halabja), and El Salvador (San Salvador), are included. Each case study includes a discussion on the historical, political, and social climate preceding the massacre. "Rivers of Blood" is a welcome addition to the literature on state terrorism.
Power and Protest presents chapters that analyse the dynamics of power in social movements. Examining how marginalized groups use their identities, resources, cultural traditions, violence and non-violence to assert power and exert pressure, this volume shines a light on the interaction of these groups with governments, international organizations, businesses and universities. Including chapters which draw from multidisciplinary theories and utilise quantitative and qualitative research to examine how power shapes the context and experiences of protest, the authors analyse movements in Asia, South Africa, Arab nations, the United States and Argentina to offer insights into the power utilised by average citizens, and particularly members of marginalized groups. With contributors serving up findings based on uprisings, strikes and activist activity across the globe, the first section provides theoretical insights into the power of protest campaigns against governments or corporations. Moving on to an examination of nongovernmental institutions and cultural traditions, the authors in the second section explore the role of business and education in bringing down illegitimate governments, investigates the clashes of transnational norms, government policy and the heritage industry, and examines student protests against university policies. This volume encourages readers to reconsider their assumptions about which groups can successfully wield power in social movements.
This book analyzes the individual and contextual determinants of protest politics in Western Europe. Building on different theoretical perspectives, from social movements theory to political behavior approaches, the author provides new empirical evidence on the patterns of protest politics. Readers will discover why some citizens are more likely to get involved in protests than others, and why levels of protest differ from country to country. The author illustrates that engagement in political protest is often rooted in the interplay of the protester's individual characteristics and their home country's contextual characteristics.
Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive "authenticity" that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves-their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, East German lesbian activists, and punks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Together they show not only how authenticity came to define varied social contexts, but also how it helped to usher in the neoliberalism of a subsequent era.
Manzo examines, by means of historical analysis, the effects of global power relationships on the politics of South Africa. The author looks at the ways in which global power constructs identity, normalizes relations of domination, and shapes the form that resistance takes. She asks, for example, why dominated people are so often waging conflicts among themselves rather than directing their resistance unfailingly toward their oppressors. Why, too, is open defiance relatively rare and mass action infrequently used? South Africa, as an example, is used to illustrate the much broader experience of oppressed populations as they struggle against western domination. The book vividly portrays the complexity of relationships in South Africa and the role played by black resistance in economic and political change over time. Manzo's sound interpretation unifies and enriches the historical progression and establishes a solid foundation for analyzing the lessons South Africa offers about the use of power in international relations.
The German abandonment of nuclear power represents one of the most successful popular revolts against technocratic thinking in modern times-the triumph of a dynamic social movement, encompassing a broad swath of West Germans as well as East German dissident circles, over political, economic, and scientific elites. Taking on Technocracy gives a brisk account of this dramatic historical moment, showing how the popularization of scientific knowledge fostered new understandings of technological risk. Combining analyses of social history, popular culture, social movement theory, and histories of science and technology, it offers a compelling narrative of a key episode in the recent history of popular resistance.
Traces the development of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and examines the organization's efforts for nuclear disarmament.
This collection explores conceptions and practices of democracy of
social movement organizations involved in global protest. Focusing
on the global justice movement this book shows how they adopt
radical new democratic approaches and thus provide a fundamental
critique of conventional politics.
The 'moment' of May 1968 offered a vivid example of intellectual engagement with radical politics, which dominated the late 1960s and 1970s but arguably became passe thereafter with the emergence of a depoliticised post-modernism and the seeming demise of Marxism after the fall of Soviet Communism. However, more recently, there has been a revival of interest in political engagement, with actions such as the demonstrations against the Iraq War and the Occupy movement. Pawling focuses on a number of key writers who have made significant contributions to critical theory in what can be called the 'spirit of '68', including Sartre, Derrida, Badiou, Jameson and Said. These figures do not necessarily share the same perspective on questions such as the role of the 'subject' and the political relevance of art in cultural struggle; however, Pawling concludes that they do share a key problematic: namely, how to understand the dialectical relationship between the formal imperatives of critical theory and its political conditions of existence.
Examines the 1980 Solidarity revolution in Poland, the government's subsequent establishment of martial law in response, in 1981, and the eventual transition to democracy in 1989. The 1980 general strike in Poland and the establishment of the independent Solidarity movement, which sought to create a state based on civic freedom, were symptoms of a crisis of the communist system. On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski on behalf of the ruling Communist Party imposed martial law, effectively quashing Solidarity. Jaruzelski won the battle, but Solidarity continued its revolution in secret and Poland remained politically destabilized. Elections held in June 1989 ended with the defeat of the Communists and the establishment in September of a coalition government in which half of the parliamentary seats went to Solidarity, whose representative was also appointed prime minister. The revolution inaugurated in 1980 by the dockworkers of Gdansk had come to fruition. Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980-1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism inEurope recounts and analyzes the events of this formative decade in Polish history, with particular emphasis on the martial law period. Drawing on extensive archival research, Andrzej Paczkowski examines the origin and form of the Solidarity revolution, the course of the Communist counterrevolution, and the final victory won by Solidarity along with its international repercussions. Andrzej Paczkowski is professor of political studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Christina Manetti, PhD, is a translator and independent researcher of Polish history.
The New Left was founded in 1962, and as a social and political protest movement, it captured the attention of the nation in the Sixties. By 1968, the New Left was marching in unison with hundreds of political action groups to achieve one goal—the end of the war in Vietnam. Under J. Edgar Hoover's direction, the FBI went from an intelligence collection agency during WWII, to an organization that tried to undermine protest movements like the New Left. Hoover viewed the New Left as a threat to the American way of life, so in an enormous effort of questionable legality, the FBI implemented some 285 counter-intelligence (COINTELPRO) actions against the New Left. The purpose of COINTELPRO was to infiltrate, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the entire movement. In truth, the FBI intended to wage war on the antiwar movement. In this real-life spy story—J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men, wiretaps, burglaries, misinformation campaigns, informants, and plants—Davis offers a glimpse into the endlessly fascinating world of the Sixties. Kent State, Columbia University, Vietnam Moratorium Day, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Cambodian invasion and March Against Death are all examined in this riveting account of the longest youth protest movement in American history. This is the only book devoted entirely to the New Left COINTELPRO, and the first one written after the declassification of more than 6,000 counterintelligence documents that reveal the true nature and extent of the FBI's Assault on the Left.
Gosse, one of the foremost historians of the American postwar left, has crafted an engaging and concise synthetic history of the varied movements and organizations that have been placed under the broad umbrella known as the New Left. As one reader notes, gosse 'has accomplished something difficult and rare, if not altogether unique, in providing a studied and moving account of the full array of protest movements - from civil rights and Black Power, to student and antiwar protest, to women's and gay liberation, to Native American, Asian American, and Puerto Rican activism - that defined the American sixties as an era of powerfully transformative rebellions...His is a 'big-tent' view that shows just how rich and varied 1960s protest was.' In contrast to most other accounts of this subject, the SDS and white male radicals are taken out of the center of the story and placed more toward its margins. A prestigious project from a highly respected historian, The New Left in the United States, 1955-1975 will be a must-read for anyone interested in American politics of the postwar era.
Strangely enough, while the pictures used to illustrate the most recent wave of protests for democracy in North Africa represent mass protest, research on social movements and democratization have rarely interacted. This volume aims to fill this gap by looking at episodes of democratization through the lens of social movement studies. Without assuming that democratization is always produced from below, the author singles out different paths of democratization by looking at the ways in which the masses interact with the elites, and protest with bargaining: eventful democratization, participated pacts and troubled democratization. The main focus is on the first of the paths: eventful democratization, that is cases in which authoritarian regimes break down following-often short but intense-waves of protest. Recognizing the particular power of some transformative events, the analysis locates them within the broader mobilization processes, including the multitude of less visible, but still important protests that surround them. Cognitive, affective and relational mechanisms are singled out as transforming the contexts in which dissidents act. In all three paths, mobilization of resources, framing processes and appropriation of opportunities will develop in action, in different combinations. The comparison of different cases within two waves of protests for democracy, in Central Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, allows the author to theorize about causal mechanisms and conditions as they emerge in mobilizations for democracy.
This book is a study of local grassroots activism in two major political areas, the peace and environmental movements, over a period of five years. Interviews with leaders of 166 different groups in five states (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, California, and Oregon), supplemented by personal observation and participation in several of those groups are the foundations of this analysis. The major concerns are the components of group and movement successes, both short-run and long-run, and activist group adaptations to change in the larger social and political world in light of political upheaval in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and several environmental crises that occurred during the period in question. Finally, Zisk focuses on the growing convergence (and barriers to convergence) of the movements. After examining short run accomplishments, Zisk concludes that most of the groups in both movements are faring poorly: few of their concrete goals are achieved, media attention is poor, and membership growth is problematic. For both movements, the transformational wings (those that press for basic changes, use consensus decision making, have few paid staff members) are not doing so well as the incremental wings (those seeking limited goals, using traditional decision techniques, employing larger staffs). This book should be of interest to students and teachers of political science and sociology.
That Hitler's Gestapo harshly suppressed any signs of opposition inside the Third Reich is a common misconception. This book presents studies of public dissent that prove this was not always the case. It examines circumstances under which "racial" Germans were motivated to protest, as well as the conditions determining the regime's response. Workers, women, and religious groups all convinced the Nazis to appease rather than repress "racial" Germans. Expressions of discontent actually increased during the war, and Hitler remained willing to compromise in governing the German Volk as long as he thought the Reich could salvage victory.
In the popular imagination, no issue has been more closely linked with the environmental group Greenpeace than whaling. Opposition to commercial whaling has inspired many of the organization's most dramatic and high-profile "direct actions"-as well as some of its most notable failures. This book provides an inside look at one such instance: Greenpeace's decades-long campaign against the Norwegian whaling industry. Combining historical narrative with systems-theory analysis, author Juliane Riese shows how the organization's self-presentation as a David pitted against whale-butchering Goliaths was turned on its head. She recounts how opponents successfully discredited the campaign while Greenpeace struggled with internal disagreements and other organizational challenges, providing valuable lessons for other protest movements.
In this perceptive book, cultural and political theorist Jason M.
Adams moves beyond increasingly inadequate accounts of speed and
acceleration to reflect upon the temporality of the Occupy Wall
Street movement. In doing so, he develops the concept of immediacy
- the 'speed-limit' that, today more than ever, is reformatting
thought, control, and resistance alike. In the process, Adams
mobilizes the work of Paul Virilio, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and
Gilles Deleuze to rethink the ancient Greek concept of kairos for
the contemporary moment.
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.
International labour migration can be characterized in three ways - as human aspiration, tradition, and necessity. For some people, working overseas is a dream. For others, international labour mobility is a tradition. For a great number of people however, international labour migration is an economic necessity. It is the only viable solution to realize their basic human right to a decent life. GMS worker movements to Thailand typify all three characterizations of international labour mobility. While this book focuses on the economic dimensions of international labour emigration, principally from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to Thailand, it recognizes at the very outset the equal standing of non-economic motivations for migration.
This work examines the environment and events of the spring 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy. The author argues that the mass movement, which climaxed in Beijing, can be understood only if attention is given to the external environment that provided both opportunities and constraints to the interactions of participating groups, to the shifting participants and their goals and interests, and to the historical and cultural factors which guided the behavior of those participants (on both the student and government sides). Unlike other works on this topic, The Struggle for Tiananmen describes and analyzes the movement from its inception to its end--presenting the entire process, providing information from both the authorities and non-student participants, identifying the interactions between external events and the movement, and placing the particular event in the larger context of social movements. This work will be of interest to scholars and laymen alike in contemporary history, Chinese studies, sociology, and political science.
In "Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in
Mississippi," Tiyi M. Morris provides the first comprehensive
examination of the Jackson, Mississippi-based women's organization
Womanpower Unlimited. Founded in 1961 by Clarie Collins Harvey, the
organization was created initially to provide aid to the Freedom
Riders who were unjustly arrested and then tortured in Mississippi
jails. Womanpower Unlimited expanded its activism to include
programs such as voter registration drives, youth education, and
participation in Women Strike for Peace. Womanpower Unlimited
proved to be not only a significant organization with regard to
civil rights activism in Mississippi but also a spearhead movement
for revitalizing black women's social and political activism in the
state.
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