American Extremism explains how at the heart of the politics practiced by the militia movement is an attempt to define the nature of 'Americanism', and shows how militia members employ the myths, metaphors and perceived historical lessons of the American Revolution, the constitutional settlement and America's frontier experience to do so. Mulloy argues that militia members' search for the 'authority of history' leads them to a position best characterized as 'ahistorical historicism', in which political interests in the present are given greater weight than the demands of a historically accurate reading of the past.
With discussion of such recent events as the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco and the September 11th attacks alongside topical issues including militia conspiracy theories and the origins of Americans' right to keep and bear arms, this work provides the deepest understanding to date of the American militia movement.

Addressing the question of how neoliberal ideology has served to conflate the radical left with extremism, this book examines how the Arab left has asserted itself in the context of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism during and after the Arab uprisings. It examines how the Arab cultural left has offered a critique of the signifying practices of political hegemonies in the region and argues that though creative expression as constituted in the very language of the Arab uprisings, it has put forward its own alternatives Using a wide array of texts and sources, both Arab and non-Arab, the opening chapters of the book identify how ethical and radical values pertaining to sociality are co-opted by political leaders in the Middle East and turned into jargon. Later chapters outline resistance to this co-option through a poetics of inter-subjectivity that takes structures of feeling into account, ranging from disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred. In showing how psychological and affective states relate to signifying practices, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating 'radicalization' from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde.

This book provides new perspectives on transnational activism with a specific regional focus on Asia. By offering an innovative approach, its theoretical chapters and empirical case studies examine macro as well as micro aspects of power and how cross-border activities of civil society groups are related to problems of democracy.

An innovative and accessible work that introduces readers to the main arguments for and against the use of violence in politics. Indeed, the problem of political violence has acquired new salience in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The book has been specially designed to engage readers by encouraging them to assume the role of impartial jurors in a simulated trial against nonviolence.

An innovative and accessible work that introduces readers to the main arguments for and against the use of violence in politics. Indeed, the problem of political violence has acquired new salience in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The book has been specially designed to engage readers by encouraging them to assume the role of impartial jurors in a simulated trial against nonviolence.

How does the concept of 'space' impact upon International Relations? This book examines this interesting subject with reference to the ideas of French sociologist Henri Levebre and applies his theories to the use by NGOs of advances in information communications technologies, particularly the internet.

Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia is one of the first substantial comparative studies of contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia, homes to the world's largest Muslim population. Following the collapse of New Order rule in Indonesia in 1998, this book provides an in-depth examination of anti-authoritarian forces in contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia, assessing their problems and prospects. The authors discuss the roles played by women, public intellectuals, arts workers, industrial workers as well as environmental and Islamic activists. They explore how different forms of authoritarianism in the two countries affect the prospects of democratization, and examine the impact and legacy of the diverse social and political protests in Indonesia and Malaysia in the late 1990s.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203208005

Becoming Activists in Global China is the first purely sociological study of the religious movement Falun Gong and its resistance to the Chinese state. The literature on Chinese protest has intensively studied the 1989 democracy movement while largely ignoring opposition by Falun Gong, even though the latter has been more enduring. This comparative study explains why the Falun Gong protest took off in diaspora and the democracy movement did not. Using multiple methods, Becoming Activists in Global China explains how Falun Gong's roots in proselytizing and its ethic of volunteerism provided the launch pad for its political mobilization. Simultaneously, diaspora democracy activists adopted practices that effectively discouraged grassroots participation. The study also shows how the policy goal of eliminating Falun Gong helped shape today's security-focused Chinese state. Explaining Falun Gong's two decades of protest illuminates a suppressed piece of Chinese contemporary history and advances our knowledge of how religious and political movements intersect.

Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, Palestinian youth movements have formed unofficial and leaderless networks of political activism, using the internet to mobilise and bring together three generations of Palestinian activists. This book focuses on three key case studies that have marked a turning point in the development of youth-organised and grassroots Palestinian politics: the 15 March movement in Gaza, the Palestinians for Dignity movement in the West Bank, and the Prawer movement of young Palestinians in Israel. Drawing on extensive fieldwork composed of interviews with leading Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza and detailed analysis of social media patterns, this book offers a fresh reading of Palestinian youth and their central online and offline role in popular protests against both Israeli and Palestinian power structures.

This thoroughly updated edition provides a comprehensive overview of two centuries of transnational feminist efforts to produce a more just global order. Mary Hawkesworth explores how social, economic, and political inequalities between men and women of different races, classes, ethnicities, and nationalities have been transformed over two centuries of globalization. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, she demonstrates how women have forged international networks and alliances to address specific women's issues beyond the borders of the nation-state, crafting policies to mitigate pressing abuses and devising alternatives to liberal and neo-liberal agendas. The book considers innovative feminist tactics to produce global change, carefully tracing the structural forces that constrain transnational feminist activism. Hawkesworth illuminates the complexity of feminist strategies to influence international agencies and foundations, national governments, and transnational NGOs. By providing critical new insights into the gendered nature of the global system and the gendered dynamics of international institutions and nation states, this work will be invaluable for all those engaged in the interdisciplinary fields of globalization studies and feminist studies.

A Dissenting Democracy explores the tension between the will of the whole of Israeli society and the right of the individual conscience to take precedence over that collective will. The author explores the dilemmas that stem from such an individual stance in relation to Jewish political culture.

'A real hero looks like Nice Leng'ete . . . [An] elegant and inspiring memoir' New York Times Nice Leng`ete was raised in a Maasai village in Kenya. In 1998, when Nice was six, her parents fell sick and died, and Nice and her sister Soila were taken in by their father's brother, who had little interest in the girls beyond what their dowries might fetch. Fearing "the cut" (female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes deadly ritualistic surgery), which was the fate of all Maasai women, Nice and Soila climbed a tree to hide. Nice hoped to find a way to avoid the cut forever, but Soila understood it would be impossible. But maybe if one of the sisters submitted, the other would be spared. After Soila chose to undergo the surgery, sacrificing herself to save Nice, their lives diverged. Soila married, dropped out of school, and had children -- all in her teenage years -- while Nice postponed receiving the cut, continued her education, and became the first in her family to attend college. Supported by Amref, Nice used visits home to set an example for what an uncut Maasai woman can achieve. Other women listened, and the elders finally saw the value of intact, educated girls as the way of the future. The village has since ended FGM entirely, and Nice continues the fight to end FGM throughout Africa and the world. Nice's journey from "heartbroken child and community outcast, to leader of the Maasai" is an inspiration and a reminder that one person can change the world -- and every girl is worth saving.

Tibet has been occupied for over fifty years, yet no progress has been made in solving the Tibetan problem. The first serious analysis of the Tibetan independence movement, this book is also the first to view the struggle from a comparative perspective, making an overt comparison with the Indian independence movement. It rectifies the problem that the Tibetan independence movement is not taken seriously from a political perspective. The book is particularly concerned with the relationship between Buddhism and Tibetan politics and resistance, comparing this with the relationship between Hinduism and Gandhian political thought. It also expands on the limited literature concerning violent resistance in Tibet, examining guerilla warfare and the hunger strike undertaken by the Tibetan Youth Congress in 1998, rejecting the 'Shangri-la-ist' approach to Tibetan resistance.

eBook available with sample pages: 020322115X

Arguing that the accomplishments of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his followers have been marginalized in narratives of the black freedom struggle, this volume draws on decades of overlooked research to reveal the profound impact of Garvey's post-World War I black nationalist philosophy around the world and across the twentieth century. These essays examine the influence of Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Africa, Australia, North America, and the Caribbean. They highlight the poorly recognized work of many Garveyite women and show how the UNIA played a key role in shaping labor unions, political organizations, churches, and schools. They also trace the imprint of the movement on long-term developments such as decolonization in Africa and the Caribbean, the civil rights and Black Power movements in the United States, and the radical pan-African movement. Rejecting the idea that Garveyism was a brief and misguided phenomenon, this volume exposes its scope, significance, and endurance. Together, contributors assert that Garvey initiated the most important mass movement in the history of the African diaspora, and they urge readers to rethink the emergence of modern black politics with Garveyism at the center.

What do people make of their own development? In Educating Activists, Rebecca M. Klenk illuminates a reality that is far more complex than either development planners or critics commonly assume. This gracefully written, accessible ethnography shows how rural women accept, refuse, reinterpret, and negotiate development's terms in a quest to improve their own communities. Klenk offers an account of Lakshmi Ashram, a remarkable Gandhian educational initiative for women and girls in Himalayan India. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Educating Activists blends memories and stories with historical research and richly detailed ethnographic analysis to craft a compelling portrait of how women across two generations have engaged with issues of sustainability, poverty, gender equity, autonomy, and progress.

Subhas Chandra Bose continues to be a well-known figure in India more than fifty years after his death, but in the West remains a shadowy figure unknown to many. He made headlines worldwide as the extremist leader of the Provisional Government of Free India after its establishment by the Axis powers during World War II and was viewed as sort of an Asian Hitler or Quisling, but when the Allies crushed Boses Indian National army, the world seemed quickly to forget him. This work is a biography of Bose, the self-proclaimed Netaji, or "revered leader, " who sought to bring down the British Raj by making alliances with Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo during World War II and by helping India thrive economically and politically as a free socialist nation. It details his political activities, including radio broadcasts in which he attempted to sway his countrymen with pro-Axis propaganda and predicted a bloody end to imperialism at the hands of Axis powers, and his commanding of two liberation armies, one under Nazi authority and the other under Tokyos auspices, made up of rehabilitated and coerced prisoners of war. Bose is noted for having unified his countrys multiethnic population and enlisting the support of Indians overseas, all the while incurring the wrath of the Allies, who crushed his armies and his hopes of transforming India into a socialist nation. A discussion of his mysterious death in a plane crash while en route to an unknown location in 1945 concludes the book.

Until recent times, incidents of mass unrest in the USSR were shrouded in official secrecy. Now this pioneering work by historian Vladimir A. Kozlov has opened up these hidden chapters of Soviet history. It details an astonishing variety of widespread mass protest in the post-Stalin period, including workers' strikes, urban riots, ethnic and religious confrontations, and soldiers' insurrections. Kozlov has drawn on exhaustive research in police, procuracy, KGB, and Party archives to recreate the violent major uprisings described in this volume. He traces the historical context and the sequence of events leading up to each mass protest, explores the demographic and psychological dynamics of the situation, and examines the actions and reactions of the authorities. This painstaking analysis reveals that many rebellions were not so much anti-communist as essentially conservative in nature, directed to the defense of local norms being disturbed by particular instances of injustice or by the rash of Krushchev-era reforms. This insight makes the book valuable not only for what it tells us about postwar Soviet history, but also for what it suggests about contemporary Russian society as well as popular protests in general.

The Co-opting of Education by Extremist Factions: Professing Hate is a study of the ways in which various extremist groups have appropriated education for social manipulation in order to gain political power, and, in some cases, to incite violence. It is a detailed exploration of case studies representing both a wide range of situational differences (time, place, and political orientation) and experiential similarities. To examine a broad scope of circumstances, this book explores various types of rule (from National Socialism to communism to capitalism) from around the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America) and spans time periods from the mid-twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. With the purpose of allowing these diverse situations to dialogue with one another, this study explores each country in its own right as well as in relation to others, ultimately demonstrating the extent to which they influenced one another.

The bad news is that our civilisation is collapsing. The good news is that you are already helping create a new and better one. The Ocean in a Drop follows the quest of Roz Savage, a frustrated environmentalist and ocean adventurer, to find out why her own endeavours and the environmental movement more generally have failed to achieve change of the necessary scope, scale and speed. Her journey takes her from the environment through economics and politics into patriarchy and a global culture of domination - the domination of rich over poor, strong over weak, humanity over nature. She examines the tragic psychological flaws in the way we think, and the apparent inevitability of civilisational collapse, and deduces that our best hope is to transcend the current trap of runaway materialism. But how? Exploring cutting-edge theories on the nature of reality and the relationship between matter and consciousness, she peels back the veils of our shared delusions to arrive at a new narrative about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. She paints a bold, exciting vision of a future in which people and planet thrive.

Does the dithering intellectualism of left politics prevent genuine political action? Many theorists have said this, but this book refutes these arguments, reconciling philosophical debates with the realities of current activism. This book is an important effort to enliven liberal conceptions of politics and political action by providing new and fresh ideas about many of the very points on which liberalism is frequently pronounced boring, fading, or useless.

"Cutting-edge."--Patrick Bond

"This fascinating book fills a vacuum that has weakened the believers in Marxist resistance in Africa."--Joseph Iranola Akinlaja, general secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Nigeria

" An] excellent collection."--"Socialist Review"

"Read this for inspiration, for the sense that we are part of a world movement."--"Socialist Worker "(London)

"Grab this book. Highly recommended."--Tokumbo Oke, "Bookmarks"

This collection of essays and interviews studies class struggle and social empowerment on the African continent.

Employing Marxist theory to address the postcolonial problems of several different countries, experts analyze such issues as the renewal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, debt relief, trade union movements, and strike action. Includes interviews with leading African socialists and activists.

With contributions from Leo Zeilig, David Seddon, Anne Alexander, Dave Renton, Ahmad Hussein, Jussi Vinnikka, Femi Aborisade, Miles Larmer, Austin Muneku, Peter Dwyer, Trevor Ngwane, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, and Azwell Banda.

Leo Zeilig coordinated the independent media center in Zimbabwe during the presidential elections of 2002 and, prior to this, worked as a lecturer at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. He then worked for three years as a lecturer and researcher at Brunel University, moving later to the Center of Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg. He has written on the struggle for democratic change, social movements, and student activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Zeilig is co-author of "The Congo: Plunder and Resistance 1880-2005."

Social science theories of contentious politics have been based almost exclusively on evidence drawn from the European and American experience, and classic texts in the field make no mention of either the Chinese Communist revolution or the Cultural Revolution -- surely two of the most momentous social movements of the twentieth century. Moreover, China's record of popular upheaval stretches back well beyond this century, indeed all the way back to the third century B.C. This book, by bringing together studies of protest that span the imperial, Republican, and Communist eras, introduces Chinese patterns and provides a forum to consider ways in which contentious politics in China might serve to reinforce, refine or reshape theories derived from Western cases.