"Agitation with a Smile" offers a reappraisal of Howard Zinn s political thought and situates his efforts in a contemporary context, looking toward the nature of activism and dissent in the future. This is the first book to provide a substantive account and assessment of Zinn s philosophy and approach to collective action and, to a larger extent, democracy. The contributors to this book explore the most effective mechanisms by which to arouse public support for seemingly radical positions and how current technological advancements may alter our perception of Zinn s activism. The book is a valuable guide to a new generation of activists and scholars of politics in gauging the lasting relevance and legacy of Zinn s ideals, concepts, and methodology.The text is neither fawning nor unduly critical, unlike many discussions of Zinn in popular culture. Rather, the contributors to this book engage the various complexities and tensions present throughout Zinn s work and subject them to a twenty-first century assessment. This is a multi-disciplinary and international approach to Howard Zinn s intellectual and activist canon.Features of the text: "

In recent years immigration and the integration of migrants and minorities have become politicised in public and policy debates in Britain, the rest of Europe and the United States. In such debates, migrants are commonly treated as objects of politics and spoken in terms of management, national interest, control and contention. This treatment has characterised not only policy makers and politicians but also many academics. Existing scholarly research on migrants as subjects of politics is limited and largely carried out through detached and structural approaches. These approaches have focused on the institutional environments in which mobilisations develop. They have, however, overlooked migrants' conditions, experiences, subjectivities and practices as well as the focus of their engagement. This volume contributes to the study of migrants' mobilisation through theoretically informed original empirical papers focusing on current forms and aspects of migrants and minorities practices of citizenship in an engaged and people-centred manner. In particular, the book addresses issues of change both in the forms assumed by migrants' and minorities political engagements and in the transformations these engagements produce as well as exclusion-inclusion dynamics that migrants experience with regard to the political process and more generally. This book was previously published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759 -1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the centre of this heroic life was a passionate twenty year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies, a victory achieved just three days before his death in 1833. Metaxas discovers in this unsung hero a man of whom it can truly be said: he changed the world. Before Wilberforce, few thought slavery was unjust. After Wilberforce, most societies in the world came to see it as a great moral wrong.

Social Activism in Southeast Asia brings together cutting-edge accounts of social movements concerned with civil and political rights, globalization, peace, the environment, migrant and factory labour, the rights of middle- and working-class women, and sexual identity in an overarching framework of analysis that forefronts the importance of human rights and the state as a focus for social activism in a region characterized by a history of authoritarian developmentalism and weak civil society. Drawing on contemporary case study material from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Timor-Leste, contributors explore the ways in which social movement actors engage with their international allies, the community and the state in order to promote social change. In doing so, they not only provide detailed and nuanced analyses of particular movements in particular parts of Southeast Asia; they also address difficult questions concerning the nature of social movements and their politics, strategies and claims to authenticity.

During the 1990s, as widespread perception spread of declining state sovereignty, activists and social movement organizations began to form transnational networks and coalitions to pressure both intergovernmental organizations and national governments on a variety of issues. Research has focused on the formation of these transnational networks, campaigns, and coalitions; their objectives, strategies and tactics; and their impact. Yet the issue of how participation in transnational networks influences national level mobilization has been little analyzed. What effects has the experience of social movement organizations at the transnational scale had for the development at the national scale? This volume addresses this significant gap in the literature on transnational collective action by building on approaches that stress the multi-level characteristics of transnational relations. Edited by noted Latin American politics scholar Eduardo Silva, the contributions focus on four distinct themes to which the empirical chapters contribute: Building a Transnational Relations Approach to Multi-Level Interaction; Transnational Relations and Left Governments; North-South and South-South Linkages; and The "Normalization" of Labor. Bridging the Divide will add considerably to empirical knowledge of the ways in which transnational and national factors dynamically interact in Latin America. Additionally, the mid-range theorizing of the empirical chapters, along with the mix of positive and negative cases, raises new hypotheses and questions for further study.

Recently, American youth have demonstrated en masse about a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. Youth in Revolt chronicles the escalating backlash against dissent and peaceful protest while exposing a lack of governmental concern for society's most vulnerable populations. Henry Giroux carefully documents a wide range of phenomena, from pervasive violent imagery in our popular culture to educational racism, censorship, and the growing economic inequality we face. He challenges the reader to consider the hope for democratic renewal embodied by Occupy Wall Street and other emerging movements. Encouraging a capacity for critical thought, compassion, and informed judgment, Giroux's analysis allows us to rethink the very nature of what democracy means and what it might look like in the United States and beyond.

Recently, American youth have demonstrated en masse about a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. Youth in Revolt chronicles the escalating backlash against dissent and peaceful protest while exposing a lack of governmental concern for society's most vulnerable populations. Henry Giroux carefully documents a wide range of phenomena, from pervasive violent imagery in our popular culture to educational racism, censorship, and the growing economic inequality we face. He challenges the reader to consider the hope for democratic renewal embodied by Occupy Wall Street and other emerging movements. Encouraging a capacity for critical thought, compassion, and informed judgment, Giroux's analysis allows us to rethink the very nature of what democracy means and what it might look like in the United States and beyond.

'This extraordinary book is the roadmap for a new kind of effective activism' - Brian Eno 'This book is for people who are angry with the ways things are and want to do something about it; for people who are frustrated with the system, or worried about the direction the country is going. Maybe they've been on a march, posted their opinions on social media, or shouted angrily at something they've seen on the news but don't feel like it's making any difference. It is for people who want to make a change but they're not sure how.' - Matthew Bolton

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun-but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940-1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America offers an essential perspective on the post-1960 movement for women's equality and liberation. Tracing the histories of feminist activism, through the National Organization of Women (NOW) chapters in three different locations: Memphis, Tennessee, Columbus, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, Gilmore explores how feminist identity, strategies, and goals were shaped by geographic location. Departing from the usual conversation about the national icons and events of second wave feminism, this book concentrates on local histories, and asks the questions that must be answered on the micro level: Who joined? Who did not? What did they do? Why did they do it? Together with its analysis of feminist political history, these individual case studies from the Midwest, South, and West coast shed light on the national women's movement in which they played a part. In its coverage of women's activism outside the traditional East Coast centers of New York and Boston, Groundswell provides a more diverse history of feminism, showing how social and political change was made from the ground up.

Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America offers an essential perspective on the post-1960 movement for women s equality and liberation. Tracing the histories of feminist activism, through the National Organization of Women (NOW) chapters in three different locations: Memphis, Tennessee, Columbus, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, Gilmore explores how feminist identity, strategies, and goals were shaped by geographic location.

Departing from the usual conversation about the national icons and events of second wave feminism, this book concentrates on local histories, and asks the questions that must be answered on the micro level: Who joined? Who did not? What did they do? Why did they do it? Together with its analysis of feminist political history, these individual case studies from the Midwest, South, and West coast shed light on the national women s movement in which they played a part.

In its coverage of women s activism outside the traditional East Coast centers of New York and Boston, Groundswell provides a more diverse history of feminism, showing how social and political change was made from the ground up. "

For the first time in a decade, leaders and citizens across the political spectrum are celebrating dissent. The reappearance of dissent in town hall meetings and on street corners brings new promise for improved democratic life and citizen participation. But this promise cannot be fulfilled if schools do not cultivate the skills necessary for our citizens to engage in political dissent. Indeed, this book reveals troubling practices in schools, resulting from the testing atmosphere and the hidden curriculum, that omit or suppress students ability to dissent and voice ideas that stand in opposition to the status quo. In this exciting book, Stitzlein investigates the historical and philosophical foundations of dissent in the work of the American Founders and the pragmatist philosophers who followed them. She examines the ways in which dissent is understood as a negative right and then proposes instead that dissent should be seen as a positive right. This book calls for a realignment of curriculum and the practices of schooling with both a guiding vision and a realistic interpretation of democracy as it is currently invoked in the era of Tea Party protests."

The famous 1962 Port Huron Statement by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) introduced the concept of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice. In Inspiring Participatory Democracy Tom Hayden, one of the principal architects of the statement, analyses its historical impact and relevance to today's movements. Inspiring Participatory Democracy includes the full transcript of the Port Huron statment and shows how it played an important role in the movements for black civil rights, against the Vietnam war and for the Freedom of Information Act. Published during the year of Port Huron's 50th anniversary, Inspiring Participatory Democracy will be of great interest to readers interested in social history, politics and social activism.

Social Activism in Southeast Asia examines the ways in which social movements operate in a region characterized by a history of authoritarian regimes and relatively weak civil society. It situates cutting-edge accounts of activism around civil and political rights, globalization, peace, the environment, migrant and factory labour, the rights of middle- and working-class women, and sexual identity in an overarching framework of analysis that forefronts the importance of human rights and the state as a focus for social activism. Drawing on contemporary evidence from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Timor-Leste, the book explores the ways in which social movement actors engage with their international allies, the community and the state in order to promote social change. As well as providing detailed and nuanced analyses of particular movements in specific areas of Southeast Asia, the book addresses difficult questions about the politics, strategies and authenticity of social movements.

Created by Students for a Democratic Society in a small Michigan town in 1962, the Port Huron Statement has been called "the most ambitious, the most specific, and the most eloquent manifesto in the history of the American Left." Now, fifty years after its drafting, principal architect Tom Hayden and the other SDS contributors revisit this seminal document and provide an original and comprehensive analysis of its historical impact andits increasing relevance to today's movements. Central to legacy of the Port Huron Statement is the fact that it introduced the concept of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice. It made sense of the fact that ordinary people were making history and not waiting for parties or traditional organizations. That vision of a half-century ago is at the core of today's social movements. In fact, the first principle declared by the Occupy Wall Street was for a "transparent and direct participatory democracy." Along with the full transcript of the Port Huron Statement, chapters written by the original framers tie its genesis to the direct action of the Freedom Riders in the segregated South and explore its influence in numerous social movements that have arisen since its creation. Including themes and events ignored by popular history and journalism, Inspiring Participatory Democracy illustrates how the PHS played a catalytic role in democratic reforms such as the expansion of civil and voting rights, ending the Vietnam War and military draft, oversight of the CIA and FBI, enacting environmental protection legislation, and the Freedom of Information Act. Published during the year of Port Huron's 50th anniversary and celebrated at campuses nationwide, Inspiring Participatory Democracy will be of great interest to readers interested in our social history, politics, and social activism.

This book explores how the World Social Forum (WSF) has developed in response to the current period of profound crisis and transition in the history of Western capitalist modernity. The WSF has been thrown up by social forces as a laboratory of practices for other possible worlds; it is at a leading edge of the transition, where other possible futures are being imagined and constructed, but it is also firmly rooted in the order that is passing. Based on ten years of field work on three continents, this book examines social movements as knowledge producers. It pays attention to specific movements and their praxis-based knowledges and its arguments are grounded in sustained empirical attention to what movements are doing and saying on the terrain of the WSF over time and from place to place. Engaging with several strands of social and political thought, global civil society, autonomism, and transnational feminism, each chapter outlines a set of contestations and contributions with relevance beyond debates about the WSF.It will be of strong interest to students and scholars of social movement studies; international politics; gender studies; sociology; political theory and social work.

This book highlights how online networking offers potential for new forms of activist mobilizing, repertoires, participatory democracy, direct action, fundraising, and civic engagement. It calls for a re-conceptualization of some of the main tenets of contentious and electoral politics, which were originally constructed to describe and analyze face-to-face forms of mobilization, in order to more accurately analyze contemporary forms of protest, electoral processes, and civil society organizing.

'This book will make you love her as much as I do' FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON 'Breath-taking courage and compassion [...]a beautiful book' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'A renegade Florence Nightingale cares for the ill in a remarkable tale of compassion and combating prejudice' GUARDIAN 'An extraordinary tale' EVENING STANDARD 'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant ride, it's in those wildflowers dancing on their way to the shared grave of two men in love, and it's in caring for that young man who just needed information without judgement.' In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Coker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. And in doing so, Ruth's own life changes forever. As word spreads in the community that she is the only person willing to help the young men afflicted by the growing AIDS crisis, Ruth goes from being an ordinary young mother to an accidental activist. Forging deep friendships with the men she helps, Ruth works to find them housing and jobs, and then funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She prepares and delivers meals to 'her guys,' supplementing her own income with discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets. She defies local pastors and the medical community to store rare medications for her most urgent patients, and teaches sex education to drag queens after hours at secret bars. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis, and in doing so becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of society. Ruth kept her story a secret for years, fearful of repercussions within her deeply conservative community. But at a time when it's more important than ever to stand up for those who can't, Ruth has found the courage to have her voice - and the voices of those who were stigmatised, rejected and abandoned - heard.

Voicing Dissent presents a unique and original series of interviews with American artists (including Guerrilla Girls on Tour, Tony Shalhoub, Shepard Fairey, Sean Astin, and many others) who have voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq. Following Pierre Bourdieu's example, these discussions are approached sociologically and provide a thorough analysis of the relationships between arts and politics as well as the limits and conditions of political speech and action. These painters and graphic artists, musicians, actors, playwrights, theatre directors and filmmakers reveal their perceptions of politics, war, security and terrorism issues, the Middle East, their experiences with activism, as well as their definition of the artist's role and their practice of citizenship. Addressing the crucial questions for contemporary democracies - such as artists' function in society, the crisis of political legitimacy and representation, the rise of new modes of contestation, and the limits to free public speech - this book will be of interest to scholars in sociology, politics, and the arts.

A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking writing on race in America, including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more From the pages of the New Yorker comes a bold and telling portrait of Black life in America, with astonishing early work from Rebecca West's account of a lynching trial and James Baldwin's 'Letter from a Region in My Mind' (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time) to more recent writing by Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, Hilton Als, Jamaica Kincaid, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Alexander, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Doreen St. Felix, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kelefa Sanneh, and more. Reaching back across the last century, The Matter of Black Lives includes a wide array of material from the New Yorker archives ranging across essays, reported pieces, profiles, criticism, and historical pieces. This book addresses everything from the arts to civil rights, matters of justice, and politics, and brings us up to the present day with accounts of what Jelani Cobb calls "The American Spring." The result is a startling, nuanced and, ultimately, indelible portrait of America's complex relationship with race.

This volume of cutting-edge research comparatively analyzes violent protest and rioting, furthering our understanding of this increasingly prevalent form of claim making. Hank Johnston and Seraphim Seferiades bring together internationally recognized experts in the field of protest studies and contentious politics to analyze the causes and trajectories of violence as a protest tactic. Crossnational comparisons from North America, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Thailand, and elsewhere contribute to the volume's theoretical elaboration, while several case studies add depth to the discussion. This title will be of key importance to scholars across the social sciences, including sociology, political science, geography and criminology. Johnston and Seferiades's exciting book is a significant contribution to the study of rioting and violent protest in the contemporary neoliberal state.

External intervention by the U.N. and other actors in ethnic conflicts has interfered with the state-building process in post-colonial states. Rear examines the 1991 uprisings in Iraq and demonstrates how this intervention has contributed to the problems with democratization experienced in the post-Saddam era. This timely work will appeal to scholars of International Relations and Middle East studies, as well as those seeking greater insight into the current conflict in Iraq.

This book deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams, with a particular focus on the Narmada Valley projects in India. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and research, the author draws on Marxist theory to craft a detailed analysis of how local demands for resettlement and rehabilitation were transformed into a radical anti-dam campaign linked to national and transnational movement networks.

The book explains the Narmada conflict and addresses how the building of the anti-dam campaign was animated by processes of collective learning, how activists extended the spatial scope of their struggle by building networks of solidarity with transnational advocacy groups, and how it is embedded in and shaped by a wider field of force of capitalist development at national and transnational scales. The analysis emphasizes how the Narmada dam project is related to national and global processes of capitalist development, and relates the Narmada Valley movement to contemporary popular struggles against dispossession in India and beyond.

Conclusions drawn from the resistance to the Narmada dams can be applied to social movements in other parts of the Global South, where people are struggling against dispossession in a context of neoliberal restructuring. As such, this book will have relevance for people with an interest in South Asian studies, Indian politics and Development Studies.

Microverses comprises over a hundred short essays inviting us to think about society - and social theory - in new ways. Lockdown created the conditions for what Adorno once termed 'enforced contemplation'. Dylan Riley responded with the tools of his trade, producing an extraordinary trail of notes exploring how critical sociology can speak to this troubled decade. Microverses analyses the intellectual situation, the political crisis of Trump's last months in office, and love and illness in a period when both were fraught with the public emergency of the coronavirus. Riley brings the theoretical canon to bear on problems of intellectual culture and everyday life, working through Weber and Durkheim, Parsons and Dubois, Gramsci and Lukacs, MacKinnon and Fraser, to weigh sociology's relationship to Marxism and the operations of class, race and gender, alongside discursions into the workings of an orchestra and the complicatedness of taking a walk in a pandemic. Invitations rather than finished arguments, the notes attempt to recover the totalising perspective of sociology - the ability to see society in the round, as though from the outside - and to recuperate what Paul Sweezy described as a sense of the 'present as history'.