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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > General
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.
Flashes in her Soul is the story of Jabu Ndlovu, a shop steward of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and a community leader in Imbali near Pietermaritzburg. Jabu, her husband and her oldest daughter were killed in a brutal attack on their home in May 1989. This story shows the courage and compassion with which Jabu fought against all forms of exploitation. Her story represents the experiences of thousands of women who struggled and suffered as a result of the war in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1980s and 1990s. Jabu’s story reminds us of the devastation that violence brings to families, communities and organisations. The politics and dynamics behind the violence today are not the same as in the 1980s and early 1990s, but the need remains for strong and moral leaders like Jabu to speak out and organise against the violence and the moral corruption that lies behind it. First published in 1991, this is the second book in the Hidden Voices Series. The Hidden Voices Series emerged out of an interest in left intellectual contributions towards discussions on race, class, ethnicity and nationalism in South Africa. Before and during the apartheid years, many universities were closed to existing local ideas and debates, and critical intellectual debates, ideas, texts, poetry and songs often originated outside academia during the period of the struggle for liberation. The Hidden Voices Series seeks to publish key texts, books, documents and other materials that were never published under apartheid, or seminal books that have gone out of print. We hope that these recovered, lost or forgotten voices will help reinvigorate the humanities and social sciences, and contribute to the decolonisation of knowledge production in South Africa and indeed throughout Africa.
Labour internationalism is often viewed as impossible or inevitable, depending upon political perspective. O'Brien argues for a more nuanced, diverse understanding of labour internationalism, identifying six different 'faces', shaped by the national or global orientation of particular groups in the fields of production, regulation and ideas. Providing a general view of labour's global activity and a case study of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR), the book illustrates how the productive and regulatory structures of the global economy are pushing labour internationalism in particular directions. It details how leftist unions in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, the Philippines, South Africa, and South Korea have tried to bridge their differences and launch collective actions. Drawing upon twenty years of participant observation, O'Brien reveals a specific Global South approach based upon anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism and empathetic internationalism.
Creative Participation presents the theory and practice of new innovative forms of political participation. Examples covered in the book include consumers engaging in political shopping, capitalists building green developments, UK Muslim youth campaigning on the internet, Sicilian housewives taking on the Mafia, young evangelical ministers becoming concerned with social change and vegetarians making political statements. The authors show how in these new campaigns individuals swarm like honeybees around particular issues, causing those in power to sit up and take notice. This is the essential guide to the new politics of participation.
This book brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research on the front lines of climate resistance and renewal. The many contributors to this volume explore the impacts of extreme weather events in Africa, the Caribbean and on Pacific islands, experiences of life-long defenders of the land and forests in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and eastern Canada, and efforts to halt the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure from North America to South Africa. They offer various perspectives on how a just transition toward a fossil-free economy can take shape, as they share efforts to protect water resources, better feed their communities, and implement new approaches to urban policy and energy democracy. Climate Justice and Community Renewal uniquely highlights the accounts of people who are directly engaged in local climate struggles and community renewal efforts, including on-the-ground land defenders, community organizers, leaders of international campaigns, agroecologists, activist-scholars, and many others. It will appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a truly justice-centered response to escalating climate disruptions.
From 1994 to 2006, William F. Schulz headed Amnesty International USA. During this time, he and the organization confronted some of the greatest challenges to human rights, including genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan; controversies over the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the use of torture by the United States after 9/11; as well as growing concern about inequities in the American justice system, from police misconduct to the death penalty. Drawing upon his encounters with tyrants, the inspiration of brave human rights heroes, and collaborations with celebrities ranging from Patrick Stewart to Salma Hayek, Schulz uses poignant narrative and amusing anecdotes to discuss the day-to-day realities of struggling with life-and-death human rights crises. In the process he ducks an assassination threat in Liberia; brings tears to the eyes of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland; and bests America's self-described "toughest sheriff" on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. Full of reflection as well as action, Reversing the Rivers provides Schulz with the opportunity to address profound philosophical questions, such as "What is the nature of evil?"; "How do we foster the 'better angels of our nature'?" "When may we use force to stop people from using force?" "Is the prohibition on torture as simple as it seems?" and "What's wrong with an eye for an eye?" Most important, in an eloquent concluding chapter, he answers the quandary most frequently posed to him during his years at Amnesty, "Given all the horrors in the world you see day after day, how do you retain any hope at all in humanity?"
In recent years, celebrities from George Clooney to Bono to Angelina Jolie have attempted to play an increasingly important role in global politics. Celebrity activism is an ever-growing, internationally visible phenomenon--yet the impact of these high-profile humanitarians on public awareness, government support, and mobilization of resources remains under-researched. Bringing together a diverse group of contributors from media studies and public diplomacy, "Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics "aims to fill that void with a new interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of celebrity activism in international relations.
"Jane Addams and Her Vision of America" brings Addams' life and work alive in a way that no account has before. The book is a presentation of Jane Addams' story in clear, non-technical language, focusing primarily on her philosophy and achievements as well as their significance in her own time and ours. Paperback, brief and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times.
In recent years, there has been substantial progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) civil rights in the United States. We are now, though, in a time of incredible political uncertainty for queer people. LGBTQ Social Movements provides an accessible introduction to mainstream LGBTQ movements in the U.S., illustrating the many forms that LGBTQ activism has taken since the mid-20th century. Covering a range of topics including the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation, AIDS politics, queer activism, marriage equality fights, youth action, and bisexual and transgender justice, Lisa M. Stulberg explores how marginalized people and communities have used a wide range of political and cultural tools to demand and create change. The five key themes that guide the book are assimilationism and liberationism as complex strategies for equality, the limits and possibilities of legal change, the role of art and popular culture in social change, the interconnectedness of social movements, and the role of privilege in movement organizing. This book is an important tool for understanding current LGBTQ politics and will be essential reading for students and scholars of sexuality, LGBTQ studies, and social movements.
Over the course of the twentieth century, Bombay's population grew twentyfold as the city became increasingly industrialized and cosmopolitan. Yet beneath a veneer of modernity, old prejudices endured, including the treatment of the Dalits. Even as Indians engaged with aspects of modern life, including the Marxist discourse of class, caste distinctions played a pivotal role in determining who was excluded from the city's economic transformations. Labor historian Juned Shaikh documents the symbiosis between industrial capitalism and the caste system, mapping the transformation of the city as urban planners marked Dalit neighborhoods as slums that needed to be demolished in order to build a modern Bombay. Drawing from rare sources written by the urban poor and Dalits in the Marathi language-including novels, poems, and manifestos-Outcaste Bombay examines how language and literature became a battleground for cultural politics. Through careful scrutiny of one city's complex social fabric, this study illuminates issues that remain vital for labor activists and urban planners around the world.
Cyberprotest, available for the first time in paperback, is an exploration of contemporary radical internet activism in Britain. It investigates the context, tensions and outcomes of environmentalists' use of the internet. Examining a wide variety of groups - from radical direct action protesters to the political lobbying of Friends of the Earth - it allows activists to speak of their experiences, challenges and innovations, providing a unique insight into the workings of frontline activism. Internet use in all levels of activism - from long-running campaigns to short-term intense tactics - is analysed in the quest to determine the value of this much-hyped technology. The book documents the negotiations and achievements of environmentalists both in dealing with the tensions of using environmentally damaging technology and in avoiding surveillance and counter-strategies. It also examines how they use the internet in a participatory manner, to aid mobilisation and to add to their tactical repertoire. It reflects upon the implications of these uses for political campaigning and identifies emerging trends in the forms and processes of the environmental movement. This book will appeal to those interested in politics and the environment or who have a concern for the politics of the internet and activism. -- .
Creative Participation presents the theory and practice of new innovative forms of political participation. Examples covered in the book include consumers engaging in political shopping, capitalists building green developments, UK Muslim youth campaigning on the internet, Sicilian housewives taking on the Mafia, young evangelical ministers becoming concerned with social change and vegetarians making political statements. The authors show how in these new campaigns individuals swarm like honeybees around particular issues, causing those in power to sit up and take notice. This is the essential guide to the new politics of participation.
Rich, personal stories shed light on midwives at the frontier of women's reproductive rights. Midwives in the United States live and work in a complex regulatory environment that is a direct result of state and medical intervention into women's reproductive capacity. In Birthing a Movement, Renee Ann Cramer draws on over a decade of ethnographic and archival research to examine the interactions of law, politics, and activism surrounding midwifery care. Framed by gripping narratives from midwives across the country, she parses out the often-paradoxical priorities with which they must engage-seeking formal professionalization, advocating for reproductive justice, and resisting state-centered approaches. Currently, professional midwives are legal and regulated in their practice in 32 states and illegal in eight, where their practice could bring felony convictions and penalties that include imprisonment. In the remaining ten states, Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) are unregulated, but nominally legal. By studying states where CPMs have differing legal statuses, Cramer makes the case that midwives and their clients engage in various forms of mobilization-at times simultaneous, and at times inconsistent-to facilitate access to care, autonomy in childbirth, and the articulation of women's authority in reproduction. This book brings together literatures not frequently in conversation with one another, on regulation, mobilization, health policy, and gender, offering a multifaceted view of the experiences and politics of American midwifery, and promising rich insights to a wide array of scholars, activists, healthcare professionals alike.
In this eye-opening true story about immigrants in America, a visionary labor leader devises a plan that wins the citizenship of 500 workers from India after being exposed to inhumane conditions. In late 2006, Saket Soni, a 28-year-old, Indian-born community organizer received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to $20,000 each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. During a series of clandestine meetings, Soni and the workers devise a bold plan. In The Great Escape, Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape, their march on foot to Washington DC, and their 23-day-hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Along the way, ICE agents try to deport the men, company officials work to discredit them, and politicians avert their eyes. But none of this shakes the workers' determination to win their dignity and keep their promises to their families. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of 21st-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the hidden lives of the foreign workers the US increasingly relies on for cheap skilled labor to rebuild after climate disasters. The Great Escape is the astonishing story of one of the largest human trafficking cases in modern American history--and the workers' heroic journey for justice.
Politics is a field of mighty passions fueled by the identities of nation, religion, culture, gender, and class. Yet the study of politics is dominated by narrowly rationalist perspectives that see emotions as fleeting reactions and consider citizens primarily in terms of their individual interests. In this wide-ranging book, Paul Hoggett argues that human feelings and identities are constitutive of both personal and political life. Engaging with major debates in political theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, he brings fresh insights to a range of issues: dynamics of political protest, intractable conflicts, fundamentalism and populism, the new political charismatics, the nature of forgiveness, and the relationship between anxiety and governance.The book is conceptually innovative and accessible, carefully introducing different theories of collective emotion and group identity and making extensive use of case studies from the U.S., England, and across the globe.
Frances C. Galt explores the role of trade unions and women's activism in the British film and television industries in this important contribution to debates around gender inequality. The book traces the influence of the union for technicians and other behind-the-camera workers and examines the relationship between gender and class in the labour movement. Drawing on previously unseen archival material and oral history interviews with activists, it casts new light on women's experiences of union participation and feminism over nine decades. As concerns about the gender pay gap, women's rights and harassment continue, it assesses historical progress and points the way to further change in film and TV.
"A great read."-Whoopi Goldberg, The View How the clash between the civil rights firebrand and the father of modern conservatism continues to illuminate America's racial divide On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro," and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event, the radically different paths that led Baldwin and Buckley to it, the controversies that followed, and how the debate and the decades-long clash between the men continues to illuminate America's racial divide today. Born in New York City only fifteen months apart, the Harlem-raised Baldwin and the privileged Buckley could not have been more different, but they both rose to the height of American intellectual life during the civil rights movement. By the time they met in Cambridge, Buckley was determined to sound the alarm about a man he considered an "eloquent menace." For his part, Baldwin viewed Buckley as a deluded reactionary whose popularity revealed the sickness of the American soul. The stage was set for an epic confrontation that pitted Baldwin's call for a moral revolution in race relations against Buckley's unabashed elitism and implicit commitment to white supremacy. A remarkable story of race and the American dream, The Fire Is upon Us reveals the deep roots and lasting legacy of a conflict that continues to haunt our politics.
Politics is a field of mighty passions fueled by the identities of nation, religion, culture, gender, and class. Yet the study of politics is dominated by narrowly rationalist perspectives that see emotions as fleeting reactions and consider citizens primarily in terms of their individual interests. In this wide-ranging book, Paul Hoggett argues that human feelings and identities are constitutive of both personal and political life. Engaging with major debates in political theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, he brings fresh insights to a range of issues: dynamics of political protest, intractable conflicts, fundamentalism and populism, the new political charismatics, the nature of forgiveness, and the relationship between anxiety and governance.The book is conceptually innovative and accessible, carefully introducing different theories of collective emotion and group identity and making extensive use of case studies from the U.S., England, and across the globe.
Social movements play a vital and increasingly visible role in modern politics. Headline-grabbing demonstrations against authoritarian governments, police brutality, economic inequality, and other grievances suggest that, around the world, social movements are seen as powerful catalysts of change. In democracies as well as autocracies, rich countries as well as poor, citizens turn repeatedly to protest as a way of addressing a range of perceived social ills. This engaging and accessible book by leading social movements scholar Devashree Gupta offers a thorough introduction to the study of social movements in these diverse settings, examining their structures and operations to identify the ways in which political and social contexts shape how movements behave and what impacts they have. Drawing on multiple theoretical approaches and contemporary case studies from far-right nationalist movements to Black Lives Matter, Gupta explores how movements think and act strategically, learning from past interactions with authorities and the experiences of other movements, to find innovative ways to challenge the status quo. Protest Politics Today also engages key questions of why and how people protest, how the political role of protest has changed over time, how new technologies affect protest, and how protest contributes to social and political change. With suggestions for further reading and questions for class discussion throughout, this book will be essential reading for students of social movements and contentious politics across the world.
Contains an Open Access chapter. Protest Technologies and Media Revolutions portrays the critical role of mass connection in the success of any movement, resurrection, protest, and revolution. The communication mechanisms for this connection have, at times, evolved and elsewhere undergone revolutions of their own. Authors debate this relationship, and the strategies and lessons of 'connecting to the masses' considering the development of media, technology and communication strategies over the last century. Key topics covered include revolution, communication, protest and technology, spanning from the Russian Revolution to the present day. The discussion is not limited to historic cases of technology and revolution, nor to contemporary ones. The book, therefore, generates a debate about how art, media and communication technologies have been operationalized to connect, mobilize and organize, in different historical times, and in diverse national, political, and socio-economic contexts.
Throughout the world, from the United States to Tanzania, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, everyday people are working together and taking actions to improve their lives, end inequality, and change global society. Action groups and movements see dialogue and learning as important ways to extend democracy and, with its inclusiveness, remake society. Long-term change often takes place in civil society and its institutions. By putting strategy with theory, local groups and movements are able to begin making changes in institutions that allow people to begin living in new ways. Inclusive, multicultural projects make dedicated efforts to end hierarchy and global injustice and reinvent culture, ideas, and social relations. Written for laypeople and students interested in change, these multidisciplinary essays take readers on a journey of discovery as they show how various groups have brought theory and action together to make urban, rural, and transnational change. These case studies and explanatory articles reveal how feminist, antiracist, ecological, and peace movements reinforce each other. This collection is an analytical organizing tool that demonstrates how people can initiate well-placed and enduring change. The writings also identify the inadequacies of academic change theories and highlight the contributions of intellectual activists across the world.
One woman's national, political, ethnic, social, and personal identities impart an extraordinary perspective on the histories of Europe, Polish Jews, Communism, activism, and survival during the twentieth century. Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed Communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life these identities brought her to multiple countries--Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel--during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century. In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society while working to promote Communism and trying to create a safe space for her small children. Born in Lodz in 1918, Lechtman became fascinated with Communism in her early youth. In 1935, to avoid the consequences of her political activism during an increasingly anti-Semitic and hostile political environment, the family moved to Palestine, where Tonia met her future husband, Sioma. In 1937, the couple traveled to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War. After discovering she was pregnant, Lechtman relocated to France while Sioma joined the International Brigades. She spent the Second World War in Europe, traveling with two small children between France, Germany, and Switzerland, at times only miraculously avoiding arrest and being transported east to Nazi camps. After the war, she returned to Poland, where she planned to (re)build Communist Poland. However, soon after her arrival she was imprisoned for six years. In 1971, under pressure from her children, Lechtman emigrated from Poland to Israel, where she died in 1996. In writing Lechtman's biography, Anna Muller has consulted a rich collection of primary source material, including archival documentation, private documents and photographs, interviews from different periods of Lechtman's life, and personal correspondence. Despite this intimacy, Muller also acknowledges key historiographical questions arising from the lacunae of lost materials, the selective preservation of others, and her own interpretive work translating a life into a life story.
Using interviews with women from diverse backgrounds, Dabrowski makes an invaluable contribution to the debates around the gendered politics of austerity in the UK. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between the state's legitimization of austerity and women's everyday experiences, she reveals how unjust policies are produced, how alternatives are silenced and highlights the different ways in which women are used or blamed. By understanding austerity as more than simply an economic project, this book fills important gaps in existing knowledge on state, gender and class relations in the context of UK austerity. Austerity, Women and the Role of the State is shortlisted for the 2021 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.
Throughout the world, from the United States to Tanzania, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, everyday people are working together and taking actions to improve their lives, end inequality, and change global society. Action groups and movements see dialogue and learning as important ways to extend democracy and, with its inclusiveness, remake society. Long-term change often takes place in civil society and its institutions. By putting strategy with theory, local groups and movements are able to begin making changes in institutions that allow people to begin living in new ways. Inclusive, multicultural projects make dedicated efforts to end hierarchy and global injustice and reinvent culture, ideas, and social relations. Written for laypeople and students interested in change, these multidisciplinary essays take readers on a journey of discovery as they show how various groups have brought theory and action together to make urban, rural, and transnational change. These case studies and explanatory articles reveal how feminist, antiracist, ecological, and peace movements reinforce each other. This collection is an analytical organizing tool that demonstrates how people can initiate well-placed and enduring change. The writings also identify the inadequacies of academic change theories and highlight the contributions of intellectual activists across the world. |
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