In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century.

Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining their roles in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time.

We’re often told art can’t change anything. In Funny Weather, Laing argues that it can. It changes how we see the world, it exposes inequality, and it offers fertile new ways of living.

Activists use digital as well as mainstream media tools to attract supporters, advertise their campaigns, and raise awareness of issues in the broader community. Activism and Digital Culture in Australia examines the use of digital tools and culture by Australian and international activist organisations to facilitate public engagement, participation and deliberation in issues and advance social change. In particular the book engages media studies, cultural studies, social theory and various ethical and political philosophical perspectives to examine the use of digital multi-platform tools by activist organisations and advocates for social change to a) disseminate information and raise public awareness; b) invoke, inform and shape public debate through the provision of information and invocation of affect; and c) garner public support (including funding) for issues and for associated social change. Engaging both qualitative and quantitative approaches, these case studies will demonstrate the richness of digital culture for activism and advocacy, examining the use by activist organisations of such digital media tools as apps, blogging, Facebook, RSS, Twitter, and YouTube. The shows that digital culture offers productive mechanisms and spaces for the reshaping of society itself to take more of a participatory role in progressing social change.

An illuminating biography of the bold, principled, and fiercely independent woman who defied convention to make her own mark on the world. Eslanda "Essie" Cardozo Goode Robeson lived a colorful and amazing life. Her career and commitments took her many places: colonial Africa in 1936, the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, the founding meeting of the United Nations, Nazi-occupied Berlin, Stalin's Russia, and China two months after Mao's revolution. She was a woman of unusual accomplishment-an anthropologist, a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist, and an internationally sought-after speaker. Yet historians for the most part have confined Essie to the role of Mrs. Paul Robeson, a wife hidden in the large shadow cast by her famous husband. In this masterful book, biographer Barbara Ransby refocuses attention on Essie, one of the most important and fascinating Black women of the twentieth century.

Collective Action 2.0 explores the issues related to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in detail, providing a balanced insight into how ICTs leverage and interact with collective action, which will have an impact on the current discourse. Recent events in different authoritarian regimes, such as Iran and Egypt, have drawn global attention to a developing phenomenon in collective action: People tend to organize through different social media platforms for political protest and resistance. This phenomenon describes a change in social structure and behavior tied to ICT. Social media platforms have been used to leverage collective action, which has in some cases arguably lead, to political revolution. The phenomenon also indicates that the way information is organized affects the organization of social structures with which it interoperates. The phenomenon also has another side, which is the use of social media for activist suppression, state and corporate surveillance, commodifi cation of social processes, demobilization, or for the mobilization of collective action toward undesirable ends.

Founded by members of America's first postwar domestic Nazi movement, the National States Rights Party evolved on dual fronts as a political protest movement and a vehicle of violent resistance to the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Its acts of terrorism made international headlines and claimed multiple lives-including evidence suggesting that its members were involved in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Officially dissolved in 1987, it revived in 2005 and one of its original founders remains active today in racial agitation on the Internet.

This book aims to encourage and develop understanding of the social category of gender, the concept of visual representation, and the relationship between the two, with contributions stimulating discussion within and between disciplines, research paradigms, and methods. By emphasising 'real world' issues, drawn from across the globe, the book aims to contribute towards and inspire broader feminist activism. Inviting readers to approach in an interdisciplinary spirit, the contributions suspend assumptions, and ask us to accept conceptual contradictions and tensions as they may arise, aspiring to (re)centre the concept of representation when considering the social category of gender within our dynamic and changing digital age. This book will be of interest to academics, students, and practitioners from a range of disciplines with an interest in gender studies and in particular the visual representation of gender. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Gender Studies.

Due to the strong sense among the student community of belonging to a specific social group, student revolts have been an integral part of the university throughout its history. Ironically, since the Middle Ages, the advantageous position of students in society as part of the social elite undoubtedly enforced their critical approach. This edited collection studies the role of students as a critical mass within their urban context and society through examples of student revolts from the foundation period of universities in the Middle Ages until today, covering the whole European continent. A dominant theme is the large degree of continuity visible in student revolts across space and time, especially concerning the (rebellious) attitudes of and criticisms directed towards students. Too often, each generation thinks they are the first. Moreover, student revolts are definitely not always of a progressive kind, but instead they are often characterized by a tension between conservative ambitions (e.g. the protection of their own privileges or nostalgia for the good old days) and progressive ideas. Particular attention is paid to the use of symbols (like flags, caps, etc.), rituals and special traditions within these revolts in order to bring the students' voice back to the fore.

The existence and urgency of global climate change is a matter of scientific consensus. Yet the global politics of climate change have been anything but consensual. In this context, a wave of global climate activism has emerged in the last decade in response to the perceived failure of the political negotiations. This book provides a unique comparative study of environmental movements in USA, Japan, Denmark and Sweden, analyzing their interaction with the international climate institutions of the United Nations, with national governments, and with currents in the global climate movement. It documents how and why the movement evolved between the Copenhagen Summit of 2009 and the Paris Summit of 2015, altering its strategies and tactics while attracting new actors to the issue area. Further, it demonstrates how the development of global environmental networks has increased contact between environmental movements in the Global North and those from the Global South, resulting in the establishment of 'climate justice' as a political cause and unifying frame for global climate activism.

Struggles for LGBT rights and the security of sexual and gender minorities are ongoing, urgent concerns across the world. For students, scholars, and activists who work on these and related issues, this handbook provides a unique, interdisciplinary resource. In chapters by both emerging and senior scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics introduces key concepts in LGBT political studies and queer theory. Additionally, the handbook offers historical, geographic, and topical case studies contexualized within theoretical frameworks from the sociology of sexualities, critical race studies, postcolonialism, indigenous theories, social movement theory, and international relations theory. It provides readers with up-to-date empirical material and critical assessments of the analytical significance, commonalities, and differences of global LGBT politics. The forward-looking analysis of state practice, transnational networks, and historical context presents crucial perspectives and opens new avenues for debate, dialogue, and theory.

When the Women's March gathered millions just one day after Trump's inauguration, a new era of progressive action was born. Organizing on the far Right led to Trump's election, bringing authoritarianism and the specter of neo-fascism, and intensifying corporate capitalism's growing crises of inequality and injustices. Yet now we see a new universalizing resistance among progressive and left movements for truth, dignity, and a world based on democracy, equality, and sustainability. Derber offers the first comprehensive guide to this new era and an original vision and strategy for movement success. He convincingly shows how only a new universalizing wave, a progressive and revolutionary "movement of movements," can counter the world-universalizing economic and cultural forces of intensifying corporate and far-right power. Derber explores the crises and eroding legitimacy of the globalized capitalist system and the right wing movements that helped create the Trump era . He shows how left universalizing movements can--and must-converge to propel a mass base that can prevent societal, economic, or ecological collapse, stop a resurgent Right, and build a democratic social alternative. He describes tactics and strategies for this new progressive movement. Brief guest "interludes" by Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Bill Fletcher, Juliet Schor, Gar Alperovitz, Chuck Collins, Matt Nelson, Janet Wallace, and other prominent figures tell how to coalesce and universalize activism into a more powerful movement wave-at local, community, national, and international levels. Vivid and highly accessible, this book is for activists, students, and all citizens concerned about the erosion of justice and democracy. It thoroughly illuminates the rationale, theory, practice, humanism, love, and joy of the social transformation that we urgently need.

This collection of essays confirms Carmen de Burgos's pivotal place in Spanish feminist history by bringing together eminent international scholars who offer new readings of Burgos's work. It includes the analyses of a number of lesser-known texts, both fictional and non-fictional, which give us a more comprehensive examination of Burgos's multipronge feminist approach. Burgos's works, especially her essays, are essential feminist reading and complement other European and North American traditions. Gaining familiarity with the breadth and depth of her work serves not only to provide an understanding of Spanish firstwave feminism, but also enriches our appreciation of cultural studies, gender studies, subaltern studies and travel literature. Looking at the entirety of her life and work, and the wide-ranging contributions in this volume, it is evident that Burgos embodied the tensions between tradition and modernity, depicting multiple representations of womanhood. Encouraging women to take ownership of their personal fashion, the design of their homes and the decorum of their families were steps towards recognizing a female population that was cognizant of its own desires.

This book examines how student debt informs the political action and participation of university students. The scale of student debt is unprecedented, particularly in the English-speaking world. In these democracies, debt has become an increasingly integral part of student life for many young people to enable participation in education and the wider economy. Using New Zealand as a case study, the author challenges existent assumptions about student attitudes towards loans by analysing how students speak about the impact of debt on themselves and their peers, including politically. Listening to these perspectives will provide a more nuanced insight into the underlying tensions and challenges of participating politically in a context of rising debt.

Why do some individuals choose to protest political grievances via non-violent means, while others take up arms? What role does whom we trust play in how we collectively act? This book explores these questions by delving into the relationship between interpersonal trust and the nature of the political movements that individuals choose to join. Utilizing the examples of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria, a novel theoretical model that links the literature on social capital and interpersonal trust to violent collective action is developed and extended. Beyond simply bringing together two lines of literature, this theoretical model can serve as a prism from which the decision to join terrorist organizations or violent movements may be analyzed. The implications of the theory are then examined more closely through an in-depth look at the behavior of members of political movements at the outset of the Arab Spring, as well as statistical tests of the relationship between interpersonal trust and terrorism in the Middle East and globally. Trust and Terror will be of interest to scholars of Comparative Politics and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315505817, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Global economic and political systems have been facing serious threats from different terrorist groups for the last few decades, and the implications of these incidences are increasing rapidly. This edited collection seeks to address and analyse the ramifications of terrorism and terrorist activities on economic and political systems in terms of the decline in GDP levels, increase in unnecessary military expenditure at the cost of social and economic developments, disincentives to the foreign investors, loss of diplomatic powers at global levels, social unrest, and increase in youth unemployment, poverty, political violence, and more. Whilst the book considers the effects of terrorism at a world-level, there is a specific focus on the economies in the Afro-Asian regions. This unique coverage of studies in quantitative economics and political systems offers postgraduate students, researchers and academics in the fields of political economics, international relations, and defence studies, among others, the opportunity to expand their knowledge on the impact of terrorism.

Wangari Maathai was a scholar, writer, envrionmental activist, human rights champion, and Nobel Prize laureatte. In her life and thought, she tenaciously sought to expose the precarious lives of people across a variety of communities: women, rural communities, political prisoners, Kenyans, Africans, and citizens of the global South saddled with the burdens of international debt. She also intervened practically to dismantle the forces that limit people’s access to a dignified life. Wangari Maathai is, without a doubt, a worthy and relevant subject for the latest addition to the series, Voices of Liberation, published by the HSRC Press. She was committed to service and felt strongly about the principle of servant leadership, a timely and urgent issue not only for sub-Saharan Africa but, indeed, for the world. Wangari Maathai’s registers of freedom explores the multiple legacies of her life and offers readers a glimpse into the life and thought of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable woman.

British women were deeply invested in foreign policy between the wars. This study casts new light on the turn to international affairs in feminist politics, the gendered representation and experience of the Munich Crisis, and the profound impression made by female public opinion on PM Neville Chamberlain in his negotiations with the dictators.

The National Front was one of the most controversial political parties in Britain. This exploration, first published in 1981, of the NF ideology and its meaning for members is based on a participation observation study which involved the development of relations with its headquarters, and with branch staff and members in several English cities. The fieldwork was carried out at marches, branch meetings and rallies, and candidates, activists, ordinary members and opponents of the NF were interviewed. Nigel Fielding examines in detail the ethnography of the National Front, describing its history, electoral performance and some demographic characteristics of its membership. He investigates the party ideology, concentrating on the key aspects of race, nationalism and conspiracy theory. The party's involvement in overt and covert political action is discussed, and tolerance of ambiguity in adherence to ideology, are explored. In a final chapter the author discusses the case for regarding active NF membership as evidence of a commitment to an alternative conception of social reality founded on fundamental disagreement with the political and social order of the status quo. This book examines the problem of the relationship between the beliefs and actions of the political deviant in the context of a group which is involved in political activism.

Being the public voice of over 180 member organisations across nearly 90 countries, La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement, has planted itself firmly on the international scene. This book explores the internationalisation of the movement, with a specific focus on the engagement of peasants in the processes of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Since the reform of the CFS in 2009, civil society actors engage in the policy processes of this UN Committee from a self-designed and autonomous global Civil Society Mechanism. The author sheds light on the strategies, tensions, debates, and reconfigurations arising from rural actors moving between every day struggles in the fields and those of the UN arena. Whereas most theories in the dominant literature on social movements expect them to either disappear or institutionalise in a predetermined pattern, the book presents empirical evidence that La Via Campesina is building a much more sophisticated model. The direct participation of representatives of peasant organisations in the CFS is highlighted as a pioneering example of building a more complex, inclusive and democratic foundation for global policy-making. Foreword by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008-2014).

This comprehensive volume examines the relationship between revolutionary politics and the act of writing in modern South Asia. Its pages feature a diverse cast of characters: rebel poets and anxious legislators, party theoreticians and industrious archivists, nostalgic novelists, enterprising journalists and more. The authors interrogate the multiple forms and effects of revolutionary storytelling in politics and public life, questioning the easy distinction between 'words' and 'deeds' and considering the distinct consequences of writing itself. While acknowledging that the promise, fervour or threat of revolution is never reducible to the written word, this collection explores how manifestos, lyrics, legal documents, hagiographies and other constellations of words and sentences articulate, contest and enact revolutionary political practice in both colonial and post-colonial South Asia. Emphasising the potential of writing to incite, contain or reorient the present, this volume promises to provoke new conversations at the intersection of historiography, politics and literature in South Asia, urging scholars and activists to interrogate their own storytelling practices and the relationship of the contemporary moment to violent and contested pasts. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

There is a long tradition in western political thought suggesting that violence is necessary to defend freedom. But nonviolence and civil disobedience have played an equally long and critical role in establishing democratic institutions. Freedom Without Violence explores the long history of political practice and thought that connects freedom to violence in the West, from Athenian democracy and the Roman republic to the Age of Revolutions and the rise of totalitarianism. It is the first comprehensive examination of the idea that violence is necessary to obtain, defend, and exercise freedom. The book also brings to the fore the opposing theme of nonviolent freedom, which can be found both within the Western tradition and among critics of that tradition. Since the plebs first vacated Rome to refuse military service and win concessions from the patricians in 494 B.C., nonviolence and civil disobedience have played a critical role in republics and democracies. Abolitionists, feminists and anti-colonial activists all adopted and innovated the methods of nonviolence. With the advent of the Velvet Revolutions, the end of apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, the Arab Spring, nonviolence has garnered renewed interest in both scholarly publications and the popular imagination. In this book, Dustin Ells Howes traces the intellectual history of freedom as it relates to the concepts and practices of violence and nonviolence. Through a critique and reappraisal of the Western political tradition, Freedom Without Violence constructs a conception of nonviolent freedom. The book argues that cultivating and practicing this brand of freedom is the sine qua non of a vibrant democracy that resists authoritarianism, imperialism and oligarchy.

Through the artful science of portraiture, The Pedagogy of Teacher Activism presents the stories of four teacher activists-how they are and have become social change agents-to uncover important pedagogical underpinnings of teacher activism. Embedded in their stories are moments of political clarity and consciousness, giving rise to their purpose as teacher activists. The narratives illuminate how both inner passions and those stirred by caring relationships with others motivate their work, while the intentional ways in which they attempt to disrupt power relations give shape to their approaches to teacher activism. Knowing their work will never truly be done and that the road they travel is often difficult, the teacher activists considered here persist because of the hope and possibility that their work might change the world. Like many pre-service educators or undergraduates contemplating teaching as a vocation, these teacher activists were not born ready for the work that they do. Yet by mining their biographical histories and trajectories of political development, this book illuminates the pedagogy of teacher activism that guides their work.

This book revisits and analyzes three of the most accomplished twentieth century Black Diaspora activists: Malcolm X (1925-1965), Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998) and Walter Rodney (1942-1980). All three began their careers in the Diaspora and later turned toward Africa. This became the foundation for developing and solidifying a global force that would advance the struggles of Africans and people of African descent in the Diaspora. Adeleke engages and explores this "African-centered" discourse of resistance which informed the collective struggles of these three men. The book illuminates shared and unifying attributes as well as differences, presenting these men as unified by a continuum of struggle against, and resistance to, shared historical and cultural challenges that transcended geographical spaces and historical times. Africa in Black Liberation Activism will be of interest to scholars and students of African-American history, African Studies and the African Diaspora.

This comprehensive study traces the transnationalization of activist networks, analyzing their changing compositions and characters and examining the roles played by the World Social Forum in this process. Comparing four of the largest global networks targeting the 'neoliberal triumvirate' of the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization: the Jubilee anti-debt campaigners Via Campesina peasant farmers Our World Is Not For Sale and the anarchistic Peoples' Global Action. Written by a scholar-activist, the book highlights that despite their diversity, these collective actors follow a similar globalizing path and that networks in which solidarity is based on a shared identity perceived as threatened by neoliberal change are gaining strength. Social forums are depicted as a fertile ground to strengthen networks and a common ground for cooperative action among them, but also a battleground over the future of the forum process, the global anti-neoliberal struggle, and 'other possible worlds' in the making. Global Activism will appeal to students and scholars interested in globalization, international relations, IPE and social movements.