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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism
The uprisings which spread across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011 irrevocably altered the way in which the region is now perceived. But in spite of the numerous similarities in these protests, from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and Bahrain, their broader political effects display important differences. This book analyses these popular uprisings, as well as other forms of protest, and the impact they had on each state. Why were Mubarak and Bin Ali ousted relatively peacefully in Egypt and Tunisia, while Qadafi in Libya and Saleh in Yemen fought violent battles against their opponents? Why do political transformations differ in countries that were able to shed their autocratic presidents? And why have other regimes, including Morocco and Saudi Arabia, experienced only limited protests or managed to repress and circumvent them? Looking at the aftermath and transitional processes across the region, this book is a vital retrospective examination of the uprisings and how they can be understood in the light of state formation and governmental dynamics.
The Polish Revolution cast off the Russian hegemony that had kept
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth impotent for most of the
eighteenth century. Before being overthrown by the armies of
Catherine the Great, the Four Years' Parliament of 1788-92 passed
wide-ranging reforms, culminating in Europe's first written
constitution on 3 May 1791.
View the Table of Contents aDrawing on comprehensive interviews and archival research,
Andrew E. Hunt has written a highly informative account of one of
the twentieth centuryas leading figures of American
radicalism.a "The story of David Dellinger's half century of leadership in
the struggle for peace and social justice in the United States
challenges the conventional narrative of recent American political
history. Instead of the familiar history-by-decade, in which the
radical thirties are followed by the conservative forties and
fifties, to be succeeded again by the radical sixties, and so on,
Hunt's biography of Dellinger provides readers with a sense of
important and underlying continuities in the history of American
radicalism." "Meticulously researched and gracefully written, Andrew Hunt's
splendid biography of David Dellinger follows the courageous
revolutionary through six decades of activism while contributing
new insights into the colorful history and interactions of
pacifist, antiwar, and progressive organizations that shook the
American establishment." "In this valuable biography, Hunt offers an outstanding
description of Dellinger's political thought and activities over a
sixty year period. Particularly interesting, because so little has
been written about the subject, is the detailed discussion of
Dellinger's antiwar activities during WWII. At the same time, Hunt
is careful to portray a comprehensive view of Dellinger's career
and placeshim in relation to the work of others in the American
left." The year was 1969. In a Chicago courthouse, David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Eight, stood trial for conspiring to disrupt the National Democratic Convention. Dellinger, a long-time but relatively unknown activist, was suddenly, at fifty-three, catapulted into the limelight for his part in this intense courtroom drama. From obscurity to leader of the antiwar movement, David Dellinger is the first full biography of a man who bridged the gap between the Old Left and the New Left. Born in 1915 in the upscale Boston suburb of Wakefield to privilege, Dellinger attended Yale during the Depression, where he became an ardent pacifist and antiwar activist. Rejecting his parentsa affluent lifestyle, he endured lengthy prison sentences as a conscientious objector to World War II and created a commune in northern New Jersey in the 1940s, a prototype for those to follow twenty years later. His instrumental role in the creation of "Liberation" magazine in 1956 launched him onto the national stage. Writing regular essays for the influential radical monthly on the arms race and the Civil Rights movement, he earned an audience among the New Left radicals. As anti-Vietnam sentiment grew, he became, in Abbie Hoffmanas words, the father of the antiwar movement and the architect of the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago. He remained active in anti-war causes until his death on May 25, 2004 at age 88. Vilified by critics and glorified by supporters, Dellinger was a man of contradictions: a rigid Ghandian who nonetheless supported violent revolutionarymovements; a radical thinker and gifted writer forced to work as a baker to feed his large family; and a charismatic leader who taught his followers to distrust all leaders. Along the way, he encountered Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panthers and all the other major figures of the American Left. The remarkable story of a stubborn visionary torn between revolution and compromise, David Dellinger reveals the perils of dissent in America through the struggles of one of our most important dissenters.
State-of-the-art counter-terrorism techniques, insights into modern medical practice, medical errors, and disaster prevention all intersect in this groundbreaking book by Adam Dorin, M.D., an anesthesiologist and medical director across 15 years. Dr. Dorin shows us why our healthcare system may be the next Ground Zero for terrorism and how many opportunities there are for terrorists to infiltrate the system. He offers a history of medical and healthcare-related serial killers, showing how they got inside the system to murder relatively easily, takes a detailed look at the profound problems that already exist in counterfeit and tainted medicinal products, and describes biological, chemical, and nuclear terrorism that could be used against our healthcare system. Most critically, Dr. Dorin presents a detailed blueprint for safeguarding our system and preventing medical terrorism from ever taking place. In tackling largely hidden but potentially deadly issues such as the failures of security at hospitals and surgical centers, Dr. Dorin's unique book offers the first in-depth public expose and loud alert to the risks and gaping weak spots in our healthcare system. Written simply and clearly, this work will interest all readers concerned with terrorism and the ways they might become victim to it. Dr. Dorin's warnings should certainly also interest and inform leaders and employees in the security, law enforcement, and medical fields.
Behind India's high recent growth rates lies a story of societal conflict that is scarcely talked about. Across its villages and production sites, state institutions and civil society organisations, the dominant and less well-off sections of society are engaged in antagonistic relations that determine the material conditions of one quarter of the world's 'poor'. Increasingly mobile and often with several jobs in multiple locations, India's 'classes of labour' are highly segmented but far from passive in the face of ongoing exploitation and domination. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in rural South India, the book uses a 'class-relational' approach to analyse continuity and change in processes of accumulation, exploitation and domination. By focusing on the three interrelated arenas of labour relations, the state and civil society, it explores how improvements can be made in the conditions of labourers working 'at the margins' of global production networks, primarily as agricultural labourers and construction workers. Elements of social policy can improve the poor's material conditions and expand their political space where such ends are actively pursued by labouring class organisations. More fundamental change, though, requires stronger organisation of the informal workers who make up the majority of India's population. -- .
Much is known about the media's role in conflict, but far less is
known about the media's role in peace. Graham Spencer's study
addresses this deficiency by providing a comparative analysis of
reporting conflicts from around the world and examining media
receptiveness to the development of peace. This book establishes an
argument for the need to rethink journalistic responsibility in
relation to peace and interrogates the consequences of news
coverage that emphasizes conflict over peace.
Europe Confronts Terrorism examines the institutional, political, security and reforms that have taken place in Europe since the catastrophic terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. The tragic attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004 - to date, the worst terror attack on European soil - demonstrated that Europe was also a target, and emphasized the necessity of decisively defeating the al-Qa'ida organization, movement and network. Europe undertook a number of reforms, not only as a response to the terror attacks, US unilateralism and individual country concerns about becoming the next target, but also as part of a process that had been underway since the 1970s.
On September 30, 1965, six of Indonesia's highest ranking generals were killed in an effort by President Sukarno to crush an alleged coup. The events of that were part of a rapidly growing power struggle pro and anti-Communist factions. The elimination of the generals, however, did little to increase and preserve Sukarno's power, though, and he was stripped of the presidency in 1967. Hunt's work is a unique and original examination of the events that culminated on that night in September, 1965. It is the first detailed account of the Indonesian Coup that reveals the previously unknown workings of the PKI's ultra-secret Special Bureau, a clandestine organization within the Communist Party that may be the prototype of other similar entities that flourished around the world in the mid-50's and 60s. No such expose of secret communist organizations committed to covert killings of the top military or political leaders of the country has ever been published. She establishes beyond any doubt that the PKI, under Chairman Aidit's direction, using the capabilities of a secret organization within the PKI that only Aidit and a handful of trusted high-level members of the Communist Party even knew about, and, most importantly, acting with President Sukarno's full knowledge and approval, planned and then-dramatically-failed to execute a bold plan to kill the top leadership of the Army and proclaim a new socialist state under President Sukarno's leadership with PKI Chairman Aidit as his proclaimed successor. At the time of the coup, government analysts as well as non-government scholars were of two minds. Some, like the group at Cornell University, were convinced that the PKI (Indonesian CommunistParty) had not been involved, that the coup was the action mid-level army officers against the top leadership. That was the official line at the time. Others were convinced that the PKI alone had planned and executed the coup in its long-held desire to remove the pro-U.S. army leadership. No one at the time saw the hand of Indonesia's world-famous President Sukarno in the affair.
As a Western economist studying and working abroad, Peter M. Lichtenstein witnessed first-hand China's tumultuous cycle of reform and retrenchment in the 1980s. From the early euphoric stage to the last and most brutal episode, Lichtenstein's book describes and explains the economics behind this cycle and ties together the economic, political, and cultural aspects of the reform era. The book also chronicles the achievements, problems, events and political controversies that led up to the Tiananmen Square debacle and the subsequent retrenchment away from the broad goals of reform. Organized chronologically, this work begins by detailing the reasons for the economic reform movement upon the death of Mao in 1976. In the mid-1980s those reforms began to encounter serious difficulties--Lichtenstein explains what these difficulties were and why they arose. He also describes how, in the summer of 1988, the conservative hardliners were able to regain political power from the reformers, setting the stage for what would happen eight months later in Tiananmen Square. Following this is an analysis of the development of the basic positions of the Chinese left and right, and Lichtenstein's first-hand observations of the retrenchment following Tiananmen. Concluding with a retrospective look at the reforms and retrenchment, this work will be of interest to professors and students of political science, international relations, economics, contemporary Asian history, and China in particular. It will also appeal to the intelligent layperson with an interest in current affairs.
This new book explores the changing world of pressure group politics in Britain. Pressure groups have become an integral part of the Western democratic political tradition since 1945. The 1960s saw a proliferation of social movements and single issue groups and recent environmental protests, from professional Greenpeace activists to middle-class women picketing veal exporters, have demonstrated that it is increasingly single issues that people feel strongly about as opposed to political parties. Bill Coxall examines these changes in terms of the historical development of pressure groups, their expansion into European Union lobbying and their changing strategies and responses to ideological thrusts from government.
The American Settlement Movement was one of the most significant, broadly based reform efforts in the history of the United States, yet surprisingly few people are even aware of its existence. "American Settlement Houses and Progressive Social Reform" documents, for the first time, the history of the American Settlement Movement in an A to Z format. Included in the Encyclopedia's 230 entries are biographies of key individuals, descriptions of settlement houses and reform committees, synopses of influential writings and reports, and articles on major issues affecting the movement
Why are some transnational public-private partnerships (PPPs) highly effective, while others are not? The contributors compare 21 transnational PPPs that seek to provide collective goods in the field of sustainable development.
In this exciting new work, David Boucher and Gary Browning explore
Bob Dylan's radical and changing engagement with the "political."
The contributions deal with various aspects and periods of Dylan's
career, including the early protest ballads, the artistic
high-point of his mid-sixties electric period in which his songs
question the very notion of ordered collective politics, and
present alternative disturbing images of a counter-reality. Finally
the book explores the more personal and religious songs on issues
of identity, alienation and ethical striving. Whereas in the early
protest songs the diagnosis and prognosis did not always give rise
to answers, the later religious analyses of the world gone wrong
appeared to generate a very clear and simple remedy in Jesus.
Condemned as a fascist putsch in the East and praised as a 'people's uprising' in the West, the uprising of 17 June 1953 shook East Germany. Drawing on interviews and archive research, this book examines East German citizens' memories of the unrest and reflects on the nature of state power in the GDR.
Histories of Portugal's transition to democracy have long focused on the 1974 military coup that toppled the authoritarian Estado Novo regime and set in motion the divestment of the nation's colonial holdings. However, the events of this "Carnation Revolution" were in many ways the culmination of a much longer process of resistance and protest originating in universities and other sectors of society. Combining careful research in police, government, and student archives with insights from social movement theory, The Revolution before the Revolution broadens our understanding of Portuguese democratization by tracing the societal convulsions that preceded it over the course of the "long 1960s."
It is universally accepted that there has been a huge growth in EU
lobbying over the past few decades. There is now a dense EU
interest group system. This entirely new volume, inspired by Mazey
& Richardson's 1993 book Lobbying in the European Community,
seeks to understand the role of interest groups in the policy
process from agenda-setting to implementation. Specifically, the
book is interested in observing how interest groups organize to
influence the EU institutions and how they select different
coalitions along the policy process and in different policy
domains.
In one of the most politically volatile and dynamic regions of the world, new media technologies are profoundly influencing the course of events. Satellite television and the Internet are affecting how the people and states of the Middle East function individually and in a global context. In "New Media and the New Middle East, " topics ranging from women's rights to terrorism and countries from Israel to Saudi Arabia are examined in terms of how new media are reshaping lives and politics. Leading international scholars examine the global and regional ramifications of the proliferation of communication technologies and the information that they disseminate.
In this work, Carl Anthony shares his perspectives as an African-American child in post-World War II Philadelphia; a student and civil rights activist in 1960s Harlem; a traveling student of West African architecture; and an architect, planner, and environmental justice advocate in Berkeley. He contextualizes this within American urbanism and human origins, making profoundly personal both African American and American urban histories as well as planetary origins and environmental issues, to not only bring a new worldview to people of color, but to set forth a truly inclusive vision of our shared planetary future. The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race connects the logics behind slavery, community disinvestment, and environmental exploitation to address the most pressing issues of our time in a cohesive and foundational manner. Most books dealing with these topics and periods silo issues apart from one another, but this book contextualizes the connections between social movements and issues, providing tremendous insight into successful movement building. Anthony's rich narrative describes both being at the mercy of racism, urban disinvestment, and environmental injustice as well as fighting against these forces with a variety of strategies. Because this work is both a personal memoir and an exposition of ideas, it will appeal to those who appreciate thoughtful and unique writing on issues of race, including individuals exploring their own African American identity, as well as progressive audiences of organizations and community leaders and professionals interested in democratizing power and advancing equitable policies for low-income communities and historically disenfranchised communities.
Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.
Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied social phenomenon, one that finds expression not only in modern social movements and political organizations but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. It constitutes a distinct cultural domain, one whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among other actors. Yet within social movement scholarship, such cultural considerations have been comparatively neglected. Protest Cultures: A Companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects. It combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on a remarkable array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.
In his heyday, Carlo Tresca ranked among the most important radicals and labour activists in the United States, often sharing the spotlight with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 'Big Bill' Haywood, and Emma Goldman. A charismatic Italian anarchist who became a folk hero to immigrant and native-born workers alike, Tresca was described by comrades as a 'freelance revolutionary' because of his independent spirit and militant activism. During his wild and adventurous career spanning nearly forty years (1904-1943), Tresca pursued a range of activities unmatched by any of his radical contemporaries: independent newspaper editor, labour agitator and organizer, civil libertarian, foremost leader of the Italian American anti-fascist resistance, and an indomitable foe of Stalinism. Culminating over a decade of research, this fast-paced and vivid biography brings to life the volatile world of radical politics in early twentieth-century America through one of its foremost figures.
The Movimiento Autonomo de Mujeres (Women's Autonomous Movement) in Nicaragua - birthed in part from the Sandinista Revolution of the 1980s - represents one of the largest, most diverse, and most autonomous women's movements in all of Latin America. While it's true that scholars across a wide range of disciplines have written invariably about this social movement (and have been instrumental in arguing that these women are not mere victims, but individuals who have worked hard to resist oppression and fight injustice for decades) what remains missing from this body of work is scholarship aimed at understanding, specifically, the psychology of resistance; in other words, what are the psychological mechanisms and methodologies that emerge from the margins that determine the kind of social action that revolutionizes societies? Investigating the psychosocial processes behind resistance is critical to understanding a commitment to justice and the development of subjectivity necessary for enacting the political activity required for social transformation. Psychology, in particular, as author Shelly Grabe argues, is positioned to engage in a systematic exploration of the links between social and political conditions that determine how, why, and under what circumstances resistance emerges. Narrating a Psychology of Resistance documents the first-hand accounts of the Nicaraguan women's Movimiento: a coordinated mobilization of women that has weathered unremitting power differentials characterized by patriarchy and capitalism. In this collection of testimonios, Grabe gives voice to these extraordinary women and closely examines how psychological processes that emerge in response to sociopolitical oppression can lead to gendered justice and the revolutionizing of societies at large.
James Walker Fannin. Illegitimate son. Southern gentleman. Failed
businessman. Devoted family man. Illegal slave trader. Courageous
martyr. Tarnished hero of the revolution. But what is the rest of
the story?
Faced with injustice, what can a concerned citizen do? In 1933, when Hitler blamed Communists for setting the Reichstag on fire, European and American lawyers responded by staging a countertrial, which proved them innocent and eventually led to their release, launching a new unofficial way of advancing human rights. This book is the first full account of citizens' tribunals. It tells the history of such tribunals from this first success to the mixed record of subsequent efforts: the Moscow show trials, the American war in Vietnam, Japanese sexual slavery, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the excesses of “global capitalism.”
Terrorist violence can often seem both irrational and indiscriminate. This book is an attempt to describe why terrorists attack particular targets. Looking at terrorist groups from around the world, and over the past 100 years, it examines the nature of terrorism and the various factors which influence terrorists' target selection. In particular it looks at the influence of the ideologies, strategies and tactics of terrorist groups, and describes how these are restricted by the terrorists' resources, by security and anti-terrorist measures, and by society within which the terrorists operate. The book also shows how target selection can be affected by the nature of the terrorists themselves and by their supporters. Overall it concludes that apparently irrational and indiscriminate terrorist attacks are frequently the result of factors which are both explicable and logical. |
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