In the spring of 1989 over 100,000 students in Beijing initiated the largest student revolt in human history. Television screens across the world filled with searing images from Tiananmen Square of protesters thronging the streets, massive hunger strikes, tanks set ablaze, and survivors tending to the dead and wounded after a swift and brutal government crackdown.
Dingxin Zhao's award-winning "The Power of Tiananmen" is the definitive treatment of these historic events. Along with grassroots tales and interviews with the young men and women who launched the demonstrations, Zhao carries out a penetrating analysis of the many parallel changes in China's state-society relations during the 1980s. Such changes prepared an alienated academy, gave rise to ecology-based student mobilization, restricted government policy choices, and shaped student emotions and public opinion, all of which, Zhao argues, account for the tragic events in Tiananmen.

This volume is an anthology of current groundbreaking research on social practice art. Contributing scholars provide a variety of assessments of recent projects as well as earlier precedents, define approaches to art production, and provide crucial political context. The topics and art projects covered, many of which the authors have experienced firsthand, represent the work of innovative artists whose creative practice is utilized to engage audience members as active participants in effecting social and political change. Chapters are divided into four parts that cover history, specific examples, global perspectives, and critical analysis.

They are reviled. For centuries the Roma have wandered Europe; during the Holocaust half a million were killed. After World War II and during the Troubles, a wave of Irish Travellers moved to England to make a better, safer life. They found places to settle down - but then, as Occupy was taking over Wall Street and London, the vocal Dale Farm community in Essex was evicted from their land. Many did not leave quietly; they put up a legal and at times physical fight. Award-winning journalist Katharine Quarmby takes us into the heat of the battle, following the Sheridan, McCarthy, Burton and Townsley families before and after the eviction, from Dale Farm to Meriden and other trouble spots. Based on exclusive access over the course of seven years and rich historical research, No Place to Call Home is a stunning narrative of long-sought justice.

Originally published as a pamphlet in 1979 and again by Pluto in 1980, In and Against the State brought together questions of working-class struggle and state power, exploring how revolutionary socialists might reconcile working in the public sector with their radical politics. Informed by autonomist political ideas and practices that were central to the protests of 1968, the book's authors spoke to a generation of activists wrestling with the question of where to place their energies. Forty years have passed, yet the questions it posed are still to be answered. As the eclipse of Corbynism and the onslaught of the global pandemic have demonstrated with brutal clarity, a renewed socialist strategy is needed more urgently than ever. This edition includes a new introduction by Seth Wheeler and an interview with John McDonnell that reflect on the continuing relevance of In and Against the State and the questions it raises.

Mass protests have raged since the global financial crisis of 2008. Across the world students and workers and environmentalists are taking to the streets. Discontent is seething even in the wealthiest countries, as the world saw with Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Protest Inc. tells a disturbingly different story of global activism. As millions of grassroots activists rally against capitalism, activism more broadly is increasingly mirroring business management and echoing calls for market-based solutions. The past decade has seen nongovernmental organizations partner with oil companies like ExxonMobil, discount retailers like Walmart, fast-food chains like McDonald s, and brand manufacturers like Nike and Coca-Cola. NGOs are courting billionaire philanthropists, branding causes, and turning to consumers as wellsprings of reform. Are career activists selling out to pay staff and fund programs? Partly. But far more is going on. Political and socioeconomic changes are enhancing the power of business to corporatize activism, including a worldwide crackdown on dissent, a strengthening of consumerism, a privatization of daily life, and a shifting of activism into business-style institutions. Grassroots activists are fighting back. Yet, even as protestors march and occupy cities, more and more activist organizations are collaborating with business and advocating for corporate-friendly solutions. This landmark book sounds the alarm about the dangers of this corporatizing trend for the future of transformative change in world politics.

In an era of stark racial injustice and decisive action, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to the struggle for change, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at 19. Through his eyes, we see the courage of a generation that stood up to injustice, their political triumphs and tragedies and the unforgettable legacy of Black Power.

A lightning rod for liberal and conservative opposition alike, affirmative action has proved one of the more divisive issues in the United States over the past five decades. Dennis Deslippe here offers a thoughtful study of early opposition to the nation's race- and gender-sensitive hiring and promotion programs in higher education and the workplace. This story begins more than fifteen years before the 1978 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Partisans attacked affirmative action almost immediately after it first appeared in the 1960s. Liberals in the opposition movement played an especially significant role. While not completely against the initiative, liberal opponents strove for "soft" affirmative action (recruitment, financial aid, remedial programs) and against "hard" affirmative action (numerical goals, quotas). In the process of balancing ideals of race and gender equality with competing notions of colorblindness and meritocracy, they even borrowed the language of the civil rights era to make far-reaching claims about equality, justice, and citizenship in their anti-affirmative action rhetoric. Deslippe traces this conflict through compelling case studies of real people and real jobs. He asks what the introduction of affirmative action meant to the careers and livelihoods of Seattle steelworkers, New York asbestos handlers, St. Louis firemen, Detroit policemen, City University of New York academics, and admissions counselors at the University of Washington Law School. Through their experiences, Deslippe examines the diverse reactions to affirmative action, concluding that workers had legitimate grievances against its hiring and promotion practices. In studying this phenomenon, Deslippe deepens our understanding of American democracy and neoconservatism in the late twentieth century and shows how the liberals' often contradictory positions of the 1960s and 1970s reflect the conflicted views about affirmative action many Americans still hold today.

Makes available twenty-two protest songs of the period up to and including the 1848 Revolution in Germany along with a reception history of the songs through their revival after 1945. The socially volatile period of the Vormarz (1830-1848) and the 1848 Revolution in Germany produced a wealth of political protest song. Songs for a Revolution makes available twenty-two prominent protest songs from that time, both lyrics (in German and English) and melodies. It also chronicles the songs' reception: suppressed after the revolution, they fell into obscurity, despite intermittent revivals by the workers' movement and later in the Weimar Republic, until they were appropriated as democratic cultural heritage by the folk and political song movements of East and West Germany after 1945. The songs reflect the new, oppositional political consciousness that emerged during the post-1830 period of restoration and led to the revolution. The book makes use of broadsides, songbooks, newspaper reports, and manuscripts to document the songs' transmission and shed light on the milieus in which they circulated. It also demonstrates how the appropriation of these songs by the German Liedermacher and folk scene shaped today's cultural memory of the 1848 period. It illuminates the functioning of political ideology in these reception processes, which in turn have given rise to myths that have influenced the discourse on the 1848 songs.

Protest has become an everyday part of modern societies, one of the few recognized outlets for voicing and discussing basic moral commitments. Protest movements shape our thinking about social change and human agency. At a time when schools, the media, and even religious institutions offer little guidance for our moral judgments, protest movements have become a central source for providing us with ethical visions and creative ideas. In this book, James Jasper integrates diverse examples of protest, from 19th-century boycotts to recent anti-nuclear, animal-rights, and environmental movements, into an understanding of how social movements operate. He highlights their creativity, not only in forging new morals but in adopting courses of action and inventing organizational forms. The work stresses the role of individuals, both as lone protesters and as key decision-makers, and it emphasizes the open-ended nature of strategic choices as protesters, their opponents, their allies, and the government respond to each other's actions. The book also synthesizes the many concepts developed in recent years as part of the cultural approach to social movements, placing them in context and showing what they mean for other scholarly traditions. Drawing on lengthy interviews, historical materials, surveys, and his own participation in protests, Jasper offers a systematic overview of the field of social movements. He weaves together accounts of large-scale movements with individual biographies, placing the movements in cultural perspective and focusing on individuals' experiences.

During the 1970s and beyond, political causes both left and right--the gay rights movement, second-wave feminism, the protests against busing to desegregate schools, the tax revolt, and the anti-abortion struggle--drew inspiration from the protest movements of the 1960s. Indeed, in their enthusiasm for direct-action tactics, their use of street theater, and their engagement in grassroots organizing, activists in all these movements can be considered "children of the Sixties." Invocations of America's founding ideals of liberty and justice and other forms of patriotic protest have also featured prominently in the rhetoric and image of these movements. Appeals to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have been made forcefully by gay rights activists and feminists, for instance, while participants in the antibusing movement, the tax revolt, and the campaign against abortion rights have waved the American flag and claimed the support of the nation's founders.In tracing the continuation of quintessentially "Sixties" forms of protest and ideas into the last three decades of the twentieth century, and in emphasizing their legacy for conservatives as well as those on the left, "American Patriotism, American Protest" shows that the activism of the civil rights, New Left, and anti-Vietnam War movements has shaped America's modern political culture in decisive ways. As well as providing a refreshing alternative to the "rise and fall" narrative through which the Sixties are often viewed, Simon Hall's focus on the shared commitment to patriotic protest among a diverse range of activists across the political spectrum also challenges claims that, in recent decades, patriotism has become the preserve of the political right. Full of original and insightful observations, and based on extensive archival research, "American Patriotism, American Protest" transforms our understanding of the Sixties and their aftermath.

In 1918, after years of campaigning, many British women over the age of 30 gained a parliamentary vote. Cheltenham was the hub of activity in the Cotswolds, and before the First World War it had a number of vigorous societies and individuals. From being imprisoned for trying to approach the prime minister to refusing to be counted in the 1911 census, local women - and many men - from across the region fought a valiant and dignified campaign to make their voices heard. At a time when women had very little power inside or outside the home, this is the story of how they supported each other to demand a say in the affairs of the country. Richly illustrated and featuring previously undiscovered material, this is the first book to investigate the women's suffrage movement in the Cotswolds and to celebrate the many who supported the cause.

Although academics have paid much attention to contentious politics in China and elsewhere, research on the outcomes of social protests, both direct and indirect, in non-democracies is still limited. In this new work, Yongshun Cai combines original fieldwork with secondary sources to examine how social protest has become a viable method of resistance in China and, more importantly, why some collective actions succeed while others fail.
Cai looks at the collective resistance of a range of social groups--peasants to workers to homeowners--and explores the outcomes of social protests in China by adopting an analytical framework that operationalizes the forcefulness of protestor action and the cost-benefit calculations of the government. He shows that a protesting group's ability to create and exploit the divide within the state, mobilize participants, or gain extra support directly affects the outcome of its collective action. Moreover, by exploring the government's response to social protests, the book addresses the resilience of the Chinese political system and its implications for social and political developments in China.

This book recounts the story of how a diverse social movement placed sexual harassment on the public agenda in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from varying racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by representing the experiences and perspectives of a broad range of women, and incorporating their resources and strategies for social change. Black women; middle-class feminists; women breaking into construction, coal mining, and other non-traditional occupations; and women in pink-collar and working-class white-collar jobs all helped to convince governments to adopt public policies against sexual harassment in the United States. Based on interviews and original research, this book shows how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women's opportunities today.

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.

This powerful collection-which captures the energy, humour and humanity of the ground-breaking protests that surrounded the Stonewall Riots-celebrates the diversity of the LGBT rights movement, both in the subjects of the photos and by presenting Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies' distinctive work and perspectives in conversation with each other. A preface, captions and part introductions from curator Jason Baumann provide illuminating historical context. And an introduction from best-selling author Roxane Gay speaks to the continued importance of these iconic photos of resistance.

Peaceful protest is a strong driver for democratization across the globe. Yet, it doesn't always lead to democratic transition, as seen in the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt or Yemen. Why do some nonviolent transitions end in democracy while others do not? In From Dissent to Democracy, Jonathan Pinckney systematically examines transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance campaigns and argues that two key factors explain whether or not democracy will follow such efforts. First, a movement must sustain high levels of social mobilization. Second, it must direct that mobilization away from revolutionary "maximalist" goals and tactics and towards support for new institutions. Pinckney tests his theory by presenting a global statistical analysis of all political transitions from 1945-2011 and three case studies from Nepal, Zambia, and Brazil. Original and empirically rigorous, this book provides new insights into the intersection of democratization and nonviolent resistance and gives actionable recommendations for how to encourage democratic transitions.

This book examines the representation of Birsa's political life, memory politics and the making of anticolonialism in contemporary Jharkhand. It offers contrasting features of political imaginations deployed in developing memorial landscapes. Framing of Birsa in the heroic narrative through a grand scale of memorialisation, often in the form of the built environment, curates a selective version. This isolates the scope of elaborating his political ideas outside the confines of atypical historical records and their relevance in the contemporary context. The book argues that everyday politics through affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities. It shows how such symbolic sites are often strategically placed and politically motivated to inscribe ideologies. This process outlines how the state and Adivasi use memory as a political tool to lay claims to the past of the Birsa Movement.

As the waves of Occupy movements gradually recede, we soon forget the political hope and passions these events have offered. Instead, we are increasingly entrenched in the simplified dichotomies of Left and Right, us and them, hating others and victimizing oneself. Studying Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, which might be the largest Occupy movement in recent years, The Appearing Demos urges us to re-commit to democracy at a time when democracy is failing on many fronts and in different parts of the world. The 79-day-long Hong Kong Umbrella Movement occupied major streets in the busiest parts of the city, creating tremendous inconvenience to this city famous for capitalist order and efficiency. It was also a peaceful collective effort of appearance, and it was as much a political event as a cultural one. The urge for expressing an independent cultural identity underlined both the Occupy movement and the remarkably rich cultural expressions it generated. While understanding the specificity of Hong Kong's situations, The Appearing Demos also comments on some global predicaments we are facing in the midst of neoliberalism and populism. It directs our attention from state-based sovereignty to city-based democracy, and emphasizes the importance of participation and cohabitation. The book also examines how the ideas of Hannah Arendt are useful to those happenings much beyond the political circumstances that gave rise to her theorization. The book pays particular attention to the actual intersubjective experiences during the protest. These experiences are local, fragile, and sometimes inarticulable, therefore resisting rationality and debates, but they define the fullness of any individual, and they also make politics possible. Using the Umbrella Movement as an example, this book examines the "freed" political agents who constantly take others into consideration in order to guarantee the political realm as a place without coercion and discrimination. In doing so, Pang Laikwan demonstrates how politics means neither to rule nor to be ruled, and these movements should be defined by hope, not by goals.

Newcastle’s most notorious riot lives on in the lyrics of Cold Chisel’s 1980 song Star Hotel, grainy YouTube videos and Novocastrian mythology. But beneath thecompelling images of surging crowds, hurled beer cans and flaming police cars was a radical intent that has been all but forgotten … The Star Hotel in Newcastle has become a site of defiance for the marginalised young and dispossessed working class. To understand the whole story of the Star Hotel riot, it should be seen alongside other moments of resistance, Newcastle-style, such as the 1890 Maritime Strike, the Rothbury miners’ lockout in 1929 and the recent battle for the Laman Street fig trees. Radical Newcastle brings together short essays from academics, local historians, journalists and present-day radicals to document the region’s radical past.

Since the uprisings of 2010 and 2011, it has often been assumed that the politics of the Arab-speaking world is dominated, and will continue to be dominated, by orthodox Islamic thought and authoritarian politics. Challenging these assumptions, Line Khatib explores the current liberal movement in the region, examining its activists and intellectuals, their work, and the strengths and weaknesses of the movement as a whole. By investigating the underground and overlooked actors and activists of liberal activism, Khatib problematizes the ways in which Arab liberalism has been dismissed as an insignificant sociopolitical force, or a mere reaction to Western formulations of liberal politics. Instead, she demonstrates how Arab liberalism is a homegrown phenomenon that has influenced the politics of the region since the nineteenth century. Shedding new light on an understudied movement, Khatib provokes a re-evaluation of the existing literature and offers new ways of conceptualizing the future of liberalism and democracy in the modern Arab world.

Social movements take shape in relation to the kind of state they face, while over time states are transformed by the movements that they both incorporate and resist. Green States and Social Movements is a comparative study of the environmental movement's successes and failures in four very different states: the USA, UK, Germany and Norway. The history covers the entire sweep of the modern environmental era that begins in 1970. The end in view is a green transformation of the state and society on a par with earlier transformations that gave us first the liberal capitalist state and then the welfare state. The authors explain why such a transformation is now most likely in Germany, and why it is least likely in the United States, which has lost the status of environmental pioneer that it gained in the early 1970s. Their comparative analysis also explains the role played by social movements in making modern societies more deeply democratic, and yields insights into the strategic choices of environmental movements as they decide on what terms to engage, enter or resist the state. Sometimes it makes sense for a movement to act conventionally, as a green party or set of interest groups. But sometimes inclusion can mean co-optation, in which case a movement can instead emphasize action in and through civil society.

When students at Oxford University called for a statue of Cecil Rhodes to be removed, following similar calls by students in Cape Town, the significance of these protests was felt across continents. This was not simply about tearing down an outward symbol of British imperialism - a monument glorifying a colonial conqueror - but about confronting the toxic inheritance of the past, and challenging the continued underrepresentation of people of colour at universities. And it went to the very heart of the pernicious influence of colonialism in education today. Written by key members of the movement in Oxford, Rhodes Must Fall is the story of that campaign. Showing the crucial importance of both intersectionality and solidarity with sister movements in South Africa and beyond, this book shows what it means to boldly challenge the racism rooted deeply at the very heart of empire.

A comprehensive study of religious violence and aggression in Nigeria, notably its causes, consequences, and the options for conflict resolution. Violence in Nigeria is the most comprehensive study of religious violence and aggression in Nigeria, notably its causes, consequences, and the options for conflict resolution. After an analysis of the links between religionand politics, the book elaborates on all the major cases of violence in the 1980s and 90s, including the Maitatsine, Kano, Bauchi, Kaduna, and Katsina riots. Zones of religious tensions are identified, as well as general characteristics of violence in Nigeria; and issues in inter and intra-religious relations, relious organizations, and the states, and the main actors in the conflicts are explored in great detail. A product of extensive primary research,Violence in Nigeria makes a contribution to contemporary social and political history that no previous study has attempted, and it is written to appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books dealing with the history of Nigeria, its people, their religion and politics.