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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > General
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license.Globalization has adversely affected working-class organization and mobilization, increasing inequality by redistribution upwards from labour to capital. However, workers around the world are challenging their increased exploitation by globalizing corporations. In developed countries, many unions are transforming themselves to confront employer power in ways more appropriate to contemporary circumstances; in developing countries, militant new labour movements are emerging. Drawing upon insights in anti-determinist Marxian perspectives, Verity Burgmann shows how working-class resistance is not futile, as protagonists of globalization often claim. She identifies eight characteristics of globalization harmful to workers and describes and analyses how they have responded collectively to these problems since 1990 and especially this century. With case studies from around the world, including Greece since 2008, she pays particular attention to new types of labour movement organization and mobilization that are not simply defensive reactions but are offensive and innovative responses that compel corporations or political institutions to change. Aging and less agile manifestations of the labour movement decline while new expressions of working-class organization and mobilization arise to better battle with corporate globalization. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of labour studies, globalization, political economy, Marxism and sociology of work.
In a seventeenth-century English landscape populated with towering political and philosophical figures like Hobbes, Harrington, Cromwell, Milton, and Locke, William Penn remains in many ways a man apart. Yet despite being widely neglected by scholars, he was a sophisticated political thinker who contributed mightily to the theory and practice of religious liberty in the early modern Atlantic world. In this long-awaited intellectual biography of William Penn, Andrew R. Murphy presents a nuanced portrait of this remarkable entrepreneur, philosopher, Quaker, and politician. Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration focuses on the major political episodes that attracted William Penn's sustained attention as a political thinker and actor: the controversy over the Second Conventicle Act, the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, the founding and settlement of Pennsylvania, and the contentious reign of James II. Through a careful examination of writings published in the midst of the religious and political conflicts of Restoration and Revolutionary England, Murphy contextualizes the development of Penn's thought in England and America, illuminating the mutual interconnections between Penn's political thought and his colonizing venture in America. An early advocate of representative institutions and religious freedom, William Penn remains a singular figure in the history of liberty of conscience. His political theorizing provides a window into the increasingly vocal, organized, and philosophically sophisticated tolerationist movement that gained strength over the second half of the seventeenth century. Not only did Penn attempt to articulate principles of religious liberty as a Quaker in England, but he actually governed an American polity and experienced firsthand the complex relationship between political theory and political practice. Murphy's insightful analysis shows Penn's ongoing significance to the broader study of Anglo-American political theory and practice, ultimately pointing scholars toward a new way of understanding the enterprise of political theory itself.
Why and how do some acts of protest trigger mass mobilization while others do not? Using the cases of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, Mekouar argues that successful mass mobilization is the result of a surprise factor, whose impact and exceptionality is amplified by the presence of influential political agents during the early phase of protest, as well as by regime violence and unusual media coverage. Together this study argues that these factors create a perception of exceptionality, which breaks the locally available cognitive heuristic originally in favor of the regime, and thus creates the necessary conditions for mobilization to occur. This book provides a unique dialectical picture of mobilization in North Africa by focusing both on the perspective of those who mobilized against their local regimes and members of the security forces who were responsible for stopping them. Moreover, it offers a first-hand account of the tumultuous days preceding authoritarian collapse and explains the mechanisms through which political change occurs.
The heart of any trade union is its reps and activists organising in the workplace. After years of membership decline across sectors, a renewed recognition of this essential fact is behind the 'turn to organising' in the union movement today. This turn to collective organising builds strength at a local as well as a national level, and also aids in mobilising around a wider range of political issues from campaigning against austerity to taking action for the environment. In recent years, this fusion of workplace organising and national campaigning has been exemplified by Europe's largest education trade union, the National Education Union (NEU). In Lessons in Organising, the authors bring together activist, academic and union official perspectives to assess the potential (and the limitations) of the 'turn to organising' and set out the case for a new transformative trade unionism for the 21st century.
The Occupy movement managed to draw global attention to the massive disparity of income, wealth and privilege held by 1% of the population in nations across the world. In The 1% and the rest of us, Tim Di Muzio explores what it means to be part of a socio-economic order presided over by the super-rich and their political servants. Incorporating provocative and original arguments about philanthropy, social wealth and the political role of the super-rich Di Muzio reveals how the 1% are creating a world unto themselves in which the accumulation of ever more money is really a symbolic drive to control society and the natural environment. A timely and innovative book that provides readers with the first global political economy of the 1%, while demonstrating how resistance can continue to challenge their rule.
While the genre of testimonio has deep roots in oral cultures and in Latin American human rights struggles, the publication and subsequent adoption of This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983) and, more recently, Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Latina Feminist Group, 2001), have demonstrated the power of testimonio as a genre that exposes brutality, disrupts silencing, and builds solidarity among women of colour. Within the field of education, scholars are increasingly taking up testimonio as a pedagogical, methodological, and activist approach to social justice, which transgresses traditional paradigms in academia. Unlike the more usual approach of researchers producing unbiased knowledge, the testimonio challenges objectivity by situating the individual in communion with a collective experience marked by marginalization, oppression, or resistance. This approach has resulted in new understandings about how marginalized communities build solidarity, and respond to and resist dominant culture, laws, and policies that perpetuate inequity. This book contributes to our understanding of testimonio as it relates to methodology, pedagogy, research, and reflection in pursuit of social justice. A common thread among the chapters is a sense of political urgency to address inequities within Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Equity & Excellence in Education.
This book explores the nature, significance and consequences of the religious activism surrounding AIDS in Africa. While African religion was relatively marginal in inspiring or contributing to AIDS activism during the early days of the epidemic, this situation has changed dramatically. In order to account for these changes, contributors provide answers to pressing questions. How does the entrance of religion into public debates about AIDS affect policymaking and implementation, church-state relations, and religion itself? How do religious actors draw on and reconfigure forms of transnational connectivity? How do resource flows from development and humanitarian aid that religious actors may access then affect relationships of power and authority in African societies? How does religious mobilization on AIDS reflect contestation over identity, cultural membership, theology, political participation, and citizenship? Addressing these questions, the authors draw on social movement theories to explore the role of religious identities, action frames, political opportunity structures, and resource mobilization in African religions' reaction to the AIDS epidemic. The book's findings are rooted in fieldwork conducted in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Mozambique, among a variety of religious organizations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies.
The political revival of the anti-war movement after 9/11 launched a controversial debate on global resistance. Through detailed study of the anti-war movement in Britain, this book critically evaluates the theoretical debate from the perspective of 'critical theory in political practice'. This book presents new arguments and theoretical framework to consider globalized resistance to war. In an attempt to develop the theoretical debate further, this book analyses two strands of current thought; liberal cosmopolitanism which considers the movement a consensual force of opposition against war in the form of global civil society, and radical poststructuralism which speaks of the Multitude's 'war against war'.. Including detailed empirical case study of four anti-war organizations; the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Globalise Resistance and War Resisters' International, the author illustrates the limitations of the abstract nature of current theorizing and highlights the need for theory to be more engaged with political practice. While revealing tensions and conflicts within the new anti-war movement, the study not only underlines the need to critically analyse the dominant theoretical discourses but also suggests that the movement would benefit from a more open discussion about the complex relationship between unity and diversity. Globalizing Resistance against War is invaluable reading for students and scholars of International Sociology, International Relations, War and Peace Studies, International Theory and Political Theory.
From animal rights to anti-abortion, from tax resistance to anti-poverty, activists from across the political spectrum often deliberately break the law to further their causes. While not behaviors common to hardened or self-seeking criminals, the staging of civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, and direct action can nevertheless trigger a harsh response from law enforcement, with those arrested risking jail time and criminal records. Crimes of Dissent features the voices of these activists, presenting a fascinating insider's look at the motivations, costs and consequences of deliberately violating the law as a strategy of social change. Crimes of Dissent provides readers with an in-depth understanding of why activists break the law, and what happens to them when they do. Using dynamic examples, both historic and recent, Jarret Lovell explores how seasoned protesters are handled and treated by the criminal justice system, shedding light on the intersection between the political and the criminal. By adopting the unique vantage of the street-level activist, Crimes of Dissent provides a fascinating view of protest from the ground, giving voice to those who refuse to remain silent by risking punishment for their political actions.
The resurgence of Palestinian nationalism in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war tended to overshadow the fact that Palestinian national consciousness is not a new phenomenon, but traces its origins back to the time when the first stirrings of nationalism were being felt in many parts of the under-developed world. This work, first published in 1974, is based on both Arabic and Hebrew primary sources as well as English and French official and unofficial documents, and was the first detailed study of the infancy period of Palestinian nationalism. The book begins by establishing the position of Palestine and Jerusalem in Islamic history and their significance within the concepts of Islam, and outlines the social and political features of the Palestinian population at the beginning of the First World War. The author then charts in detail the development of Palestinian nationalism over the decade after the War. Two major forces influenced this development and reacted with it: Zionism, with its ambitious schemes for settling Jews in Palestine and creating a National Home for them there, and Arab nationalism on a wider scale, which was emerging spontaneously with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the spreading of ideas of self-determination. The growing threat posed by Zionism awoke the Palestinian population to the need for organization and the establishment of their own identity to oppose it, while the focus of their national aspirations widened or narrowed according to the ability which they felt at any given time to confront Zionism and achieve self-expression within a Palestinian rather than an all-Syrian national framework. The events of these turbulent years - the confrontations with the British, delegations, boycotts, proposals and rejections, the emergence of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Wailing Wall conflict and its repercussions - are all described within the context of these wider considerations, which also include Britain's own role as holder of the Mandate over Palestine.
***** 'There have been many books written about the events of Bloody Sunday, however, none has wrenched the reader as violently back to those CS gas-choked streets, dumping them right in the heart of the screaming, running, shooting and crying, as Julieann Campbell's On Bloody Sunday. A powerful chronicle of one of the darkest episodes of modern times.' - Sunday Times 'Powerful and moving ... The strength of this important new book lies in the artistry the author brings to the tasks of portraying both the community upon which the massacre was perpetrated, and the individuals within it.' - Irish Times 'Meticulous.... On Bloody Sunday possesses a veracity and cumulative power that sets it apart from previous accounts' - Observer 'A momentous chronicle, timely and vital, which highlights that the burden of change rests, as always, upon the shoulders of those who suffered and yet, have nurtured the desire that lessons be learned.' - Michael Mansfield QC, who represented a number of families during the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. 'It is a vital record of the time, the city, and its people, and more impressive still it does so almost entirely in their own words, their heartbreak, their anger, their resilience, their humour. Julieann Campbell has given their voices, so long silenced, the dignity they deserve. It is a staggering achievement.' - Seamas O'Reilly 'It's a wonderful book. The technique used - multiple voices speaking directly to us - is very simple but it has a profound effect. It puts us into the middle of the chaos of Bloody Sunday and keeps us there throughout the grief and anger that follow. A wonderful, wonderful book.' - Jimmy McGovern, BAFTA winning screenwriter, creator of 'Sunday' (2002) In January 1972, a peaceful civil rights march in Northern Ireland ended in bloodshed. Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teenage boys. The day became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. The events occurred in broad daylight and in the full glare of the press. Within hours, the British military informed the world that they had won an 'IRA gun battle'. This became the official narrative for decades until a family-led campaign instigated one of the most complex inquiries in history. In 2010, the victims of Bloody Sunday were fully exonerated when Lord Saville found that the majority of the victims were either shot in the back as they ran away or were helping someone in need. The report made headlines all over the world. While many buried the trauma of that day, historian and campaigner Juliann Campbell - whose teenage uncle was the first to be killed that day - felt the need to keep recording these interviews, and collecting rare and unpublished accounts, aware of just how precious they were. Fifty years on, in this book, survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses and politicians, shine a light on the events of Bloody Sunday, together, for the first time. As they tell their stories, the tension, confusion and anger build with an awful power. ON BLOODY SUNDAY unfolds before us an extraordinary human drama, as we experience one of the darkest moments in modern history - and witness the true human cost of conflict.
"An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend." --Ibram X. Kendi This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis's classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author. "I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past." --Angela Y. Davis Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. Davis describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis's autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.
This collection brings together a series of essays that combine the public and private nature of dissent, stories of dissent that encapsulate the mood of an historical or cultural period, or of a society. Dissent is most memorable when it is public, explosive, dramatically enacted. Yet quiet dissent is no less effective as a methodical unstitching of social and political mores, rules and regulations. Success depends, perhaps, less on intensity than on determination, on patience as much as courage. Moreover, although many persistent dissenters often gain an iconic status, most live dissent in the fabric of their ordinary lives. Some combine both. Imprisoned at Robben Island for 27 years, his image and voice erased from the print media or airwaves, Nelson Mandela remained even in jail one of the most powerful agents of dissent in South African society until his freedom in 1990. Deep connections, deep commitment, profoundly personal convictions and courageous public dissent are some of the threads that bind together this diverse and exciting collection of essays. Alone, each essay explores dissent and consent in stimulating and distinct ways; together, they speak both of the effects of dissent and consent and of their affective energies and potential. This book was originally published as a special issue of Life Writing.
***Winner of an English PEN Award 2021*** In this sharp intervention, authors Luci Cavallero and Veronica Gago defiantly develop a feminist understanding of debt, showing its impact on women and members of the LGBTQ+ community and examining the relationship between debt and social reproduction. Exploring the link between financial activity and the rise of conservative forces in Latin America, the book demonstrates that debt is intimately linked to gendered violence and patriarchal notions of the family. Yet, rather than seeing these forces as insurmountable, the authors also show ways in which debt can be resisted, drawing on concrete experiences and practices from Latin America and around the world. Featuring interviews with women in Argentina and Brazil, the book reveals the real-life impact of debt and how it falls mainly on the shoulders of women, from the household to the wider effects of national debt and austerity. However, through discussions around experiences of work, prisons, domestic labour, agriculture, family, abortion and housing, a narrative of resistance emerges. Translated by Liz Mason-Deese.
Fight back examines the different ways punk - as a youth/subculture - may provide space for political expression and action. Bringing together scholars from a range of academic disciplines (history, sociology, cultural studies, politics, English, music), it showcases innovative research into the diverse ways in which punk may be used and interpreted. The essays are concerned with three main themes: identity, locality and communication. These, in turn, cover subjects relating to questions of class, age and gender; the relationship between punk, locality and socio-political context; and the ways in which punk's meaning has been expressed from within the subculture and reflected by the media. Jon Savage, the foremost commentator and curator of punk's cultural legacy, provides an afterword on punk's impact and dissemination from the 1970s to the present day. -- .
This is study of six Chartist Leaders. It portrays movements for democracy and social progress, and explores the role of the uneasy middle classes, in movements for working class rights. The comparative analysis provides insights in to the development of dissent, the nature of class and of radicalism in the nineteenth century. An introduction sketches the historical context. - Dr. Peter M McDouall, fiery orator and Scottish surgeon, who built his practise and his political reputation at Ramsbottom, near Bury in Lancashire. - the Rev. Henry Solly, Chartist pamphleteer and Unitarian Minister who lived and worked in Yeovil and Cheltenham Spa and became a nationally-known campaigner for co-operatives, anti-slavery, the vote, and rational recreation, - Rev. James Scholefield, a chaplain from Manchester who campaigned for the ten hour week: a teacher, apothecary, surgeon and vegetarian, - Richard Bagnall Reed, a blacksmith, who became the manager of the Newcastle Chronicle, he also ran guns to Garibaldi for Italian unification, - William Villiers Sankey, an aristocrat, son of an Irish Volunteer and Member of Parliament, who resided among the political elite of London, he represented Edinburgh at the Chartist Convention, - The Rev. Benjamin Parsons. a radical and political preacher who used the Bible to justify campaigns for social justice, from the Gloucestershire.
An extraordinarily brave and moving memoir from one of the world's most famous whistle-blowers, activists and trans women. In 2010 Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in Iraq, disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. In March 2011, the United States Army sentenced Manning to thirty-five years in military prison, charging her with twenty-two counts relating to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military documents. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison. In her memoir, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. She reveals her challenging childhood, her struggles as an adolescent, what led her to join the military, and the fierce pride she took in her work. We also learn the details of how and why she made the decision to send classified military documents to WikiLeaks. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of the digital age. **CHOSEN AS A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK TO WATCH OUT FOR, A NEW STATESMAN BOOK TO READ, AND ONE OF COSMOPOLITAN'S BEST FORTHCOMING BOOKS**
This volume provides a much needed update on the state of civil society in post-communist Europe and Russia more than two decades after the fall of the communist regimes. The chapters offer new perspectives on social movement strategies in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. The chapters illustrate how social movements develop particular repertoires of action and contention, which are better suited for their specific local contexts in the post-communist setting. In Russia and Poland, the use of domestic and transnational legal opportunities, judicial activism and litigation is a popular strategy complementing the traditional lobbying and mass mobilization. Human rights framing has become important in Hungary and the Czech Republic. The chapters analyse various types of rights-based activism that operate in otherwise prohibitive social and political environments, thereby raising highly contentious issues, such as animal rights, environment and sustainability, human rights, women s rights, and gay rights activism. The contributions richly illustrate the often surprising and multiple ways in which transnational discourses and norm pressure are received, translated or resisted in the local contexts. Finally, the volume provides a novel reconceptualisation and offers new understandings of the relationships between the state and civil society in the post-communist context. This book is based on a special issue of East European Politics."
This book examines Arab approaches to mediation, negotiation and settlement of political disputes. This book proposes that two clusters of independent variables are potentially responsible for the distinctive nature of Arab conflict resolution. Firstly, those linked with Arab political regimes and imperatives, and secondly those linked with Arab and /or Islamic culture. The text also focuses on the Arab League and its history of involvement in crisis and conflict situations, along with the roles of individual leaders, emissaries and extra-regional actors such as IGOs (Inter-Governmental Organisations) in undertaking mediation initiatives. IGO and Arab League activity has taken on new importance since the various intervention attempts in connection with the 'Arab Spring' since 2011. During the negotiation process, most Arab regimes tend to view conflicts within a broad historical context and Islamic culture prioritises the cohesion of the community and internal stability of the state over individual autonomy. This has created an authoritarian style of leadership, and in practice, leaders in the Middle East have had near absolute authority in the decision-making process-a fact which will have a lot of weight in conflict management and whether peace will endure for a long period of time. This book is unique in studying these clusters through comparative systematic case study analysis of events prior to and subsequent to the 'Arab Spring', augmented by a quantitative analysis of sample data on Arab disputes, compiled from a larger and newly augmented study comprising the years 1945-2000. Complementary data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) data base of armed conflicts since 1975 is also utilized. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, Middle Eastern politics and IR in general.
This collection, originally published in 2007, offers a diachronic analytical study of new and alternative social movements in Spain from the democratic transition to the first decade of the 21st century, paying attention to anti-war mobilizations and the use of new technologies as a mobilizing resource. New and alternative social movements are studied through the prism of identified linkages among the left, movement identities and global processes in the Spanish context. Weight is given to certain important historical aspects, like Spain's relatively recent authoritarian past, and certain value-added factors, such as the weak associationalism and materialism exhibited by the Spanish public. These are complemented by exploring insights offered by key theoretical approaches on social movements (political opportunities structures, resource mobilization). The volume covers established social movement cases (gender, peace, environmental movements) as well as those with a more explicit connection to the current context of global contestation (squatters' and anti-globalization movements). This bookw as published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.
Since the structural change in Indian society that began in the 1990s - the result of the liberalisation of the economy, devolution of power, and decentralisation of the government an unprecedented, democratic transformation has been taking place. This has caused the emergence of unexpected coalitions and alliances across diverse castes, classes, and religious groups according to the issues involved. In this volume, we intend to understand this deepening of democracy by employing a new analytical framework of the 'vernacular public arena' where negotiations, dialogues, debates, and contestations occur among 'vernacular publics'. This reflects the profound changes in Indian democracy as diverse social groups, including dalits, adivasis, and Other Backward Classes; minorities, women; individuals from rural areas, towns, and cities; the poor and the new middle classes the 'vernacular publics' participate in new ways in India s public life. This participation is not confined to electoral politics, but has extended to the public arenas in which these groups have begun to raise their voice publicly and to negotiate and engage in dialogue with each other and the wider world. Contributors demonstrate that the participation of vernacular publics has resulted in the broadening of Indian democracy itself which focuses on the ways of governance, improving people s lives, life chances, and living environments. An original, comprehensive study that furthers our understanding of the unfolding political dynamism and the complex reshuffling and reassembling taking place in Indian society and politics, this book will be relevant to academics with an interest in South Asian Studies from a variety of disciplines, including Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies."
Cyberactivism already has a rich history, but over the past decade the participatory web-with its de-centralized information/media sharing, portability, storage capacity, and user-generated content-has reshaped political and social change. This volume examines the impact these new digital technologies are having on political organizing and protest across the political spectrum, from the Arab Spring to artists to far-right groups. Contributors to this volume offer sophisticated case studies from science and technology studies, the digital humanities, communication studies, and the social sciences, examining recent developments such as the use geo-spatial software on mobile devices; the role of social media in recent democratic movements in the Middle East; the role of new media in the global environmental justice movement; and the significance of the convergence culture in which we now find ourselves.
Specifically designed to reach people who normally would not consider themselves activists, The Better World Handbook is directed toward those who care about creating a more just, sustainable, and socially responsible world but don't know where to begin. Substantially updated, this revised bestseller now contains more recent information on global problems, more effective actions, and many new resources. |
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