Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed, Inside Insurgency provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior.

Claire Metelits draws from over 100 interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the SPLA, FARC, and PKK. The engaging narratives that emerge from her on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world's most notorious insurgent groups. Inside Insurgency offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.

The term 'revolutionary' is used liberally in histories of Indian anticolonialism, but scarcely defined. Implicitly understood, it functions as a signpost or a badge, generously conferred in hagiographies, loosely invoked in historiography, and strategically deployed in contemporary political contests. It is timely, then, to ask the question: Who counts as a 'revolutionary' in South Asia? How can we read 'the revolutionary' in Indian political formations? And what does it really mean to be 'revolutionary' in turbulent late colonial times? This volume takes a biographical approach to the question, by examining the life stories of a series of activists, some well known, who all defined themselves in explicitly revolutionary terms in the early twentieth century: V. D. Savarkar, M. N. Roy, Bhagat Singh, J.P. Narayan and Hansraj Vohra. The authors interrogate the subversive lives of these figures, tracing their polyglot influences and transnational impacts, to map out the discursive travels of 'the revolutionary' in Indian historical and literary worlds from the early 1900s, and to indicate its reverberations in the politics of the present. This book was previously published as a special issue of Postcolonial Studies.

Ruthless Winnicott is an extended exploration of the role of ruthlessness in psychic development. That survival is of no use unless it is preceded by a ruthless attack is one of D. W. Winnicott's most resonant paradoxes. The book links this with the search for subjective freedom for those traumatized by colonialism, and in doing so draws on the work of Algerian psychiatrist and revolutionary psychoanalytic thinker Frantz Fanon. Sally Swartz examines essential pieces of Winnicott's work on ruthlessness as central to the emergence of concern for the Other. She illustrates, with clinical examples, ways in which the ruthless use of the psychoanalytic psychotherapeutic space allows the patient either to enter fully into a process that allows growth, or to defend ruthlessly against the anxieties provoked by psychic change. Ruthless Winnicott also maps decolonial challenges to psychoanalytic theory, and the role of ruthlessness in protest movements demanding radical subjective change. Swartz's exploration of ruthlessness as both zest and defense in individual development and in protest movements illuminates processes of psychological collision and change. It traces links between individual trauma and collective turbulence, and maps ways in which ruthlessness is essential to subjective change. Ruthless Winnicott will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as scholars of colonialism, decolonization and post-colonialism.

Now available for the first time in paperback, Photography and social movements is the first thorough study of photography's interrelationship with social movements. Focusing on photographic production and dissemination during the student and worker uprising in Paris in May 1968, the Zapatista rebellion, and the anti-capitalist protests in Genoa in 2001, the book argues that at times of political uprisings, photographic documentations, often contradictory, strive to prevail in the public domain, extending the political or economic struggle to a representational level. Photography plays a central role in this representational conflict, by either reproducing or challenging stereotypical narratives of protest. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary analysis of a wide range of practices - amateur and professional - and of previously unpublished archival material will add considerably to students', researchers' and scholars' knowledge of both the visual imagery of political movements and the developing history of photographic representation. -- .

Recent global events, including the 'Arab Spring' uprisings, Occupy movements and anti-austerity protests across Europe have renewed scholarly and public interest in collective action, protest strategies and activist subcultures. We know that social movements do not just contest and politicise culture, they create it too. However, scholars working within international politics and social movement studies have been relatively inattentive to the manifold political mediations of graffiti, muralism, street performance and other street art forms. Against this backdrop, this book explores the evolving political role of street art in Latin America during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It examines the use, appropriation and reconfiguration of public spaces and political opportunities through street art forms, drawing on empirical work undertaken in Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina. Bringing together a range of insights from social movement studies, aesthetics and anthropology, the book highlights some of the difficulties in theorising and understanding the complex interplay between art and political practice. It seeks to explore 'what art can do' in protest, and in so doing, aims to provide a useful point of reference for students and scholars interested in political communication, culture and resistance. It will be of interest to students and scholars working in politics, international relations, political and cultural geography, Latin American studies, art, sociology and anthropology.

Remembering Women's Activism examines the intersections between gender politics and acts of remembrance by tracing the cultural memories of women who are known for their actions. Memories are constantly being reinterpreted and are profoundly shaped by gender. This book explores the gendered dimensions of history and memory through nation-based and transnational case studies from the Asia-Pacific region and Anglophone world. Chapters consider how different forms of women's activism have been remembered: the efforts of suffragists in Britain, the USA and Australia to document their own histories and preserve their memory; Constance Markievicz and Qiu Jin, two early twentieth-century political activists in Ireland and China respectively; the struggles of women workers; and the movement for redress of those who have suffered militarized sexual abuse. The book concludes by reflecting on the mobilization of memories of activism in the present. Transnational in scope and with reference to both state-centred and organic acts of remembering, including memorial practices, physical sites of memory, popular culture and social media, Remembering Women's Activism is an ideal volume for all students of gender and history, the history of feminism, and the relationship between memory and history.

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.

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.

What can contemporary activists and political theorists learn from the life and work of Rosa Luxemburg? Examining her contribution to radical democracy and revolutionary socialism, Jon Nixon shows why Red Rosa's legacy lives on. Luxemburg's political and intellectual formation was in itself a 'long revolution', conceived of over time and in response to world events; her groundbreaking ideas around internationalism and spontaneity were formulated in the context of revolution. Returning to her thinking on global capitalism, democratic renewal, state militarism, and the social question, Nixon draws out the enduring nature of her work, using her framework of ideas as a lens through which to view the contemporary debates. By establishing a rich and distinctive account of Luxemburg, Nixon makes the argument for why her struggle for democratic renewal is as relevant as ever.

The broad expansion of non-electoral political participation is considered one of the major changes in the nature of democratic citizenship in the 21st century. Most scholars - but also governments, transnational and subnational political institutions, and various foundations - have adopted the notion that contemporary democratic societies need a more politically active citizenry. Yet, contemporary democracies widely differ in the extent to which their citizens get involved in politics beyond voting. Why is political activism other than voting flourishing in the United States, but is less common in Britain and almost non-existent in post-communist countries like Bulgaria? The book shows that the answer does not lie in citizen's predispositions, social capital or institutions of consensual democracy. Instead, the key to understanding cross-country differences in political activism beyond voting rests in democratic structures that combine inclusiveness and contestation. What Kind of Democracy? is the first book to provide a theoretically driven empirical analysis of how different types of democratic arrangements affect individual participation in non-electoral politics.

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'.

Drawing on over 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most accounts of the peace process are 'top-down', relying upon the views of political elites. This book is 'bottom-up', analysing the voices of those who actually 'fought the war'. What made them fight, why did they stop and what are the lessons for other conflict zones? Using unrivalled access to members of the armed groups, the book, available for the first time in paperback, offers a critical appraisal of one-dimensional accounts of the onset of peace, grounded in 'mutually hurting stalemate' and 'ripeness', which downgrade the political and economic aspects of conflict. Military stalemate had been evident since the early 1970s and offers little in explaining the timing of the peace process. Moreover, republicans and loyalists based their ceasefires upon very different perceptions of transformation or victory. Based on a Leverhulme Trust project and written by an expert team, Abandoning Conflict offers a new analysis, based on subtle interplays of military, political, economic and personal changes and experiences. -- .

The Middle East is often portrayed as oppressively patriarchal and homophobic. Yet, in recent years the region has become a vibrant and important arena for feminist and LGBTQ activism. This book provides an insight into this emerging politics through a unique analysis of feminist and LGBTQ social movements in the context of Lebanon's postwar sectarian system. Resisting Sectarianism argues that LGBTQ and feminists social movements are powerful agents of political and social transformation in Lebanon. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the book takes the reader inside these movements to see how they attract members and construct campaigns, forge alliances, and the multiple ways in which they generate important forms of resistance to, and change within, the sectarian system. The book also traces the strong obstacles that sectarian parties and religious authorities employ to weaken LGBTQ and feminist activism.

The year 2011 will go down in history as a turning point for the Arab world. The popular unrest that swept across the region and led to the toppling of the Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddhafi regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya has fundamentally altered the social, economic, and political outlooks of these countries and the region as a whole. This book assesses the transition processes unleashed by the uprisings that took place in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011. The wave of unrest and popular mobilisation that swept through these countries is treated as the point of departure of long and complex processes of change, manipulation, restructuring, and entrenchment of the institutional structures and logics that defined politics. The book explores the constitutive elements of institutional development, namely processes of constitution making, electoral politics, the changing status and power of the judiciary, and the interplay between the civilian and the military apparatuses in Egypt and Tunisia. It also considers the extent to which these two countries have become more democratic, as a result of their institutions being more legitimate, accountable, and responsive, at the beginning of 2014 and from a comparative perspective. The impact of temporal factors in shaping transition paths is highlighted throughout the book. The book provides a comprehensive assessment of political and institutional transition processes in two key countries in North Africa and its conclusions shed light on similar processes that have taken place throughout the region since 2011. It will be a valuable resource for anyone studying Middle Eastern and North African politics, area studies, comparative institutional development and democratisation.

This book develops an informational theory to account for the coexistence of China's exceptionally resilient authoritarianism and its high decentralization. The nuanced information contained in citizens' complaints, which are filed through the petition system, helps to sustain China's decentralized authoritarianism in three important ways. First, petitions help to alleviate the information asymmetry problem that arises when the central government has less information than lower level governments do. When studying citizens' petitions, higher level governments can obtain valuable and accurate information about local officials' performance in policy implementation, public goods provision, and corruption. Higher level governments need this information in order to effectively utilize the cadre management system to reward good performance and punish malpractice. The result of this interaction is the PRC's relatively high quality of governance and effective control of local officials. There is also a second way in which citizens' petitions help the government to overcome the dictator's dilemma that arises when an authoritarian regime is uncertain about how much support it really enjoys among its citizens. Citizens' specific grievances are revealed in these petitions and are mostly addressed in their beginning stages. When citizens' complaints are rooted in central policy, they set the agenda for policy change in order to maintain social order. There is yet a third benefit conferred upon the PRC by the petition system. Thanks to the petition system, the central government can present itself as the ally of citizens when it addresses the matters raised by their petitions. As a result, the petition system grants the central government an opportunity to hold local officials accountable, scapegoat local authorities, divide citizens and local officials, and justly claim all the credit when its policies succeed. This helps to build citizens' trust in their central government and reinforces its legitimacy in their eyes. In Huntington's terms, the Chinese Communist Party institutionalizes mass support by addressing citizens' grievances expressed through the channel of communication provided by the petition system. In this sense, the complaints of citizens can be very useful tools for regime maintenance. The author substantiates these points with case studies and statistical analysis.

The Caribbean has played a crucial geopolitical role in the Western pursuit of economic dominance, yet Eurocentric research usually treats the Caribbean as a peripheral region, consequently labelling the inhabitants as beings without agency. Examining asymmetrical relations of power in the Greater Caribbean in historical and contemporary perspectives, this volume explores the region's history of resistance and subversion of oppressive structures against the backdrop of the Caribbean's central role for the accumulation of wealth of European and North American actors and the respective dialectics of modernity/coloniality, through a variety of experiences inducing migration, transnational exchange and transculturation. Contributors approach the Caribbean as an empowered space of opposition and agency and focus on perspectives of the region as a place of entanglements with a long history of political and cultural practices of resistance to colonization, inequality, heteronomy, purity, invisibilization, and exploitation. An important contribution to the literature on agency and resistance in the Caribbean, this volume offers a new perspective on the region as a geopolitically, economically and culturally crucial space, and it will interest researchers in the fields of Caribbean politics, literature and heritage, colonialism, entangled histories, global studies perspectives, ethnicity, gender, and migration.

With the elevation of Islam and Muslim transnational networks in international affairs, from the rise of Al Qaeda to the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, the study of Diasporas and transnational identities has become more relevant. Using case studies from Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa, this book explores the diaspora identities and impact of social movements on politics and nationalism among indentured Indian diaspora. It analyses the way in which diasporas are defined by themselves and others, and the types of social movements they participate in, showing how these are critical indicators of the threat they are perceived to pose. The book examines the notions of national and transnational identity, and how they are determined by the placement of Diasporas in the transnational locality. It argues that the transnationality intrinsic to diaspora identities mark them as others in the nation-state, and simultaneously separates them from the perceived motherland, thus displacing them from both states and situating them in a transnational locality. It is from this placement that social movements among Diasporas gain salience. As outsiders and insiders, they are well placed to offer a formidable challenge to the host state, but these challenges are limited by their hybrid identities and perceived divided loyalties. Providing an in-depth analysis of Indian Diasporas, the book will be of interest to those studying South Asian Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies.

The protest movements that followed the Second World War have recently become the object of study for various disciplines; however, the exchange of ideas between research fields, and comparative research in general, is lacking. An international and interdisciplinary dialogue is vital to not only describe the similarities and differences between the single national movements but also to evaluate how they contributed to the formation and evolution of a transnational civil society in Europe. This volume undertakes this challenge as well as questions some major assumptions of post-1945 protest and social mobilization both in Western and Eastern Europe. Historians, political scientists, sociologists and media studies scholars come together and offer insights into social movement research beyond conventional repertoires of protest and strictly defined periods, borders and paradigms, offering new perspectives on past and present processes of social change of the contemporary world.

Environmental stories have all the elements of a good drama-villains that plunge the world into danger and heroes that fight for positive change. Industrial Disasters and Environmental Policy: Stories of Villains, Heroes, and the Rest of Us illuminates the interplay between environmental policies and the people and groups who influence their development and implementation. Through the stories of four major industrial disasters-the Union Carbide plant explosion, the BP oil spill, the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion, and the asbestos poisoning in Libby, Montana-this book examines the organizational breakdowns and regulatory lapses that caused these disasters, and how attitudes and policies changed as a result. It also explores the achievements of environmental heroes like Gaylord Nelson and Judy Bonds and how their activism has shaped US environmental politics and policies. Industrial Disasters and Environmental Policy concludes with a discussion of how the "rest of us" can participate in everyday environmental actions, hold corporations and the government accountable, and lobby for greater environmental protections. With its compelling stories and calls to action, this book helps students understand how US environmental policies have developed and transformed-and how they can continue to do so.

By the mid-1980s, Sudan's economy, society and political framework were on the point of disintegration. Civil war was exacerbating the effects of an already major famine. An unpopular government was resorting to ever more extreme measures in order to remain in power. The imposition of a particularly oppressive and hash interpretation of sharia law was heightening racial and religious tensions. Internationally, Sudan was faced by a debt crisis which was apparently insoluble, and which threatened to undermine completely what was left of the economy. This book, first published in 1988, examines the complex economic and social processes which led to this situation - emphasising the part played by the state itself. The book combines detailed multi-disciplinary analyses of Sudan in the post-colonial era with a consideration of possibilities for the future.

Performance Action looks to advance the understanding of how art activism works in practice, by unpacking the relationship between the processes and politics that lie at its heart. Focusing on the UK but situating its analysis in a global context of art activism, the book presents a range of different cases of performance-based art activism, including the anti-oil sponsorship performances of groups like Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP?, the radical pedagogy project Shake!, the psychogeographic practice of Loiterers Resistance Movement, and the queer performances of the artist network Left Front Art. Based on participatory, ethnographic research, Performance Action brings together a wealth of first-hand accounts and interviews followed by in-depth analysis of the processes and politics of art activist practice. The book is unique in that it adopts an interdisciplinary approach that borrows concepts and theories from the fields of art history, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology and performance studies, and proposes a new framework for a better understanding of how art activism works, focusing on processes. The book argues that art activism is defined by its dual nature as aesthetic-political practice, and that this duality and the way it is manifested in different processes, from the building of a shared collective identity to the politics of participation, is key towards fully understanding what sets apart art activism from other forms of artistic and political practice. The book is aimed at both specialist and non-specialist audiences, offering an accessible and engaging way into new theoretical contributions in the field of art activism, as well as on wider subjects such as participation, collective identity, prefiguration and institutional critique.

As the 2011 uprisings in North Africa reverberated across the Middle East, a diverse cross section of women and girls publicly disputed gender and sexual norms in novel, unauthorized, and often shocking ways. In a series of case studies ranging from Tunisia's 14 January Revolution to the Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, the contributors to Freedom without Permission reveal the centrality of the intersections between body, gender, sexuality, and space to these groundbreaking events. Essays include discussions of the blogs written by young women in Egypt, the Women2Drive campaign in Saudi Arabia, the reintegration of women into the public sphere in Yemen, the sexualization of female protesters encamped at Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout, and the embodied, performative, and artistic spaces of Morocco's 20 February Movement. Conceiving of revolution as affective, embodied, spatialized, and aesthetic forms of upheaval and transgression, the contributors show how women activists imagined, inhabited, and deployed new spatial arrangements that undermined the public-private divisions of spaces, bodies, and social relations, continuously transforming them through symbolic and embodied transgressions. Contributors. Lamia Benyoussef, Susanne Dahlgren, Karina Eileraas, Susana Galan, Banu Goekariksel, Frances S. Hasso, Sonali Pahwa, Zakia Salime

'John Feffer is our 21st-century Jack London' - Mike Davis In a post-Trump world, the right is still very much in power. Significantly more than half the world's population currently lives under some form of right-wing populist or authoritarian rule. Today's autocrats are, at first glance, a diverse band of brothers. But religious, economic, social and environmental differences aside, there is one thing that unites them - their hatred of the liberal, globalised world. This unity is their strength, and through control of government, civil society and the digital world they are working together across borders to stamp out the left. In comparison, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands - Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain and Uruguay. So far they have been on the defensive, campaigning on local issues in their own countries. This narrow focus underestimates the resilience and global connectivity of the right. In this book, John Feffer speaks to the world's leading activists to show how international leftist campaigns must come together if they are to combat the rising tide of the right. A global Green New Deal, progressive trans-European movements, grassroots campaigning on international issues with new and improved language and storytelling are all needed if we are to pull the planet back from the edge of catastrophe. This book is both a warning and an inspiration to activists terrified by the strengthening wall of far-right power.

This volume combines empirically oriented and theoretically grounded reflections upon various forms of LGBT activist engagement to examine how the notion of intersectionality enters the political context of contemporary Serbia and Croatia. By uncovering experiences of multiple oppression and voicing fear and frustration that accompany exclusionary practices, the contributions to this book seek to reinvigorate the critical potential of intersectionality, in order to generate the basis for wider political alliances and solidarities in the post-Yugoslav space. The authors, both activists and academics, challenge the systematic absence of discussions of (post-)Yugoslav LGBT activist initiatives in recent social science scholarship, and show how emancipatory politics of resistance can reshape what is possible to imagine as identity and community in post-war and post-socialist societies. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of history and politics of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav states, as well as to those working in the fields of political sociology, European studies, social movements, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, and queer theory and activism.

Violence In Colombia provides students with a deeper understanding of the crisis facing Colombia today. The book focuses on the 1990s, a decade that witnessed a strengthening of the oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency in the Americas and the emergence of a powerful paramilitary right. The decade also saw a dramatic rise in homicide, kidnapping, and human rights violations that made Colombia by far the most violent nation in the hemisphere. But the 1990s was also about negotiating peace. The decade began with negotiations between the government and some of the guerrilla groups that led to their demobilization and to the important reforms codified in the Constitution of 1991. It ended with another serious attempt at negotiating peace, a historic agreement between the government and the largest and most powerful of the guerrilla groups to put a range of social and economic reforms on the negotiating table. For many, the crisis in Colombia is understood in terms of the drug trade. To be sure, the drug trade is implicated in every aspect of the crisis. And despite (or because of?) escalating efforts by the Colombian and U.S. governments to curb the trade, Colombia's role as the leading supplier of cocaine, and increasingly of heroin, to the U.S. market continues to expand. But the drug trade, by itself, cannot explain the crisis. If it could, why have other Latin American drug-producing and trafficking nations not experienced a fate like Colombia's? To answer this question, the book presents some of the best recent work by Colombian scholars on the crisis facing the nation. Violence in Colombia also includes a large section devoted to primary documents, which enables students to get a feel for the views of the protagonists in the conflict and judge for themselves the meaning of what they say. Examples include the negotiating positions of the government, the guerrillas, and the paramilitary right; testimony by kidnap victims and human rights lawyers; and assessments by U.S. officials and Colo