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This book uniquely demonstrates how a new combination of communities, progressive visions, and strategies provides a path to defeat fascist machinations and strengthens social justice movements. Taking the incredible twists and turns of elections as a given, the book takes the issues, grievances and solutions of social movements as its grounding.Would-be change agents, be they first-time voters, freshly minted activists, impacted communities, or veteran strategists, will find answers to questions of voting, organizing, and mobilization. In doing so, readers will find answers to activating their networks and communities not merely to vote, but how to build on their “Emergency Election” mobilizing and power-building efforts to win their agendas, regardless of who holds office.This theoretically and empirically informed handbook for activists, voters, their organizations, unions, and communities provides both mobilizing tools and talking points about the elections'most vital and contested issues.

This book focuses on small-scale mobilisation and everyday social movements that take the form of grassroots resistance and solidarity initiatives. Through a series of case studies drawn from the UK, Europe, India, and Latin America, it examines the dynamics and role of micro-acts of resistance, with attention to a range of themes including organisational issues, the construction of collective identity, strategies, tactics and participation, and media representations and public perception of small-scale social movements. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media and communication and politics with interests in social movements, political mobilisation and activism.

When speaking colloquially of political participation or civic action, one thinks, in the first instance, of groups and organizations such as political parties, social movements or various types of voluntary associations. The perspective of individuals is not the first thing that comes to mind when seeking to understand their functioning. In contrast to this vision, understanding the dynamics of participation requires taking a closer look at the individual, that is, at his or her moral dispositions and projects, his or her multiple and simultaneous identities, the breaking points in his or her biographical trajectory, the roles he or she adopts in an organization or the styles of communication which he or she uses. The book comprises a variety of case studies and theoretical and methodological contributions that, independent of rational choice theories, seek to understand collective action at the level of the individual and, in doing so, to articulate the various fields of study in this regard with the singularity of biographies and the reflective personal identities that characterize contemporary individualism.

Cultures of Resistance provides new insight on a long-standing question: whether government efforts to repress social movements produce a chilling effect on dissent, or backfire and spur greater mobilization. In recent decades, the U.S. government's repressive capacity has expanded dramatically, as the legal, technological, and bureaucratic tools wielded by agents of the state have become increasingly powerful. Today, more than ever, it is critical to understand how repression impacts the freedom to dissent and collectively express political grievances. Through analysis of activists'rich and often deeply moving experiences of repression and resistance, the book uncovers key group processes that shape how individuals understand, experience, and weigh these risks of participating in collective action. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate that, following experiences of state repression, the achievement or breakdown of these group processes, not the type or severity of repression experienced, best explain why some individuals persist while others disengage. In doing so, the book bridges prevailing theoretical divides in social movement research by illuminating how individual rationality is collectively constructed, mediated, and obscured by protest group culture.

Wie lernen soziale Bewegungen? Im Unterschied zu anderen Organisationen wie Parteien oder Gewerkschaften gibt es bei ihnen in der Regel keine feste Mitgliedschaft, keine klare Aufgabenteilung und keine verlässlichen Regeln der Entscheidungsfindung. Wie kann es ihnen dennoch gelingen, ein gemeinsames Wissen auszubilden, aus vergangenen Erfahrungen zu lernen und nachfolgende (Protest-)Generationen von diesen Erkenntnissen profitieren zu lassen?

Das Handbuch widmet sich erstmals systematisch und vergleichend der Frage, wie soziale Bewegungen aus einer poststrukturalistischen Perspektive analysiert werden können. Die Beiträge stellen verschiedene Ansätze vor und zeigen jeweils anhand eines Beispiels aus der Forschungspraxis, wie dieser Ansatz für die Analyse sozialer Bewegungen genutzt werden kann. Durch die Anwendung alternativer Methoden, die enge Verknüpfung von Theorie und Praxis und eine gesellschaftstheoretische Perspektive werden auf diese Weise neue Einsichten in den Forschungsgegenstand »soziale Bewegungen« möglich.

The crisis in Greece has elicited the full spectrum of responses - from optimism for a left parliamentary politics inspired by Syriza's electoral victory, to pessimism about the intransigence of the EU and calls for the reinstatement of full national sovereignty in Europe. In Surplus Citizens, Dimitra Kotouza questions the terms of the debate by demonstrating how the national framing of social contestation posed obstacles to transformative collective action, but also how this framing has been challenged. Analysing the increasing superfluousness of subordinate classes in Greece as part of a global phenomenon with racialised and gendered dimensions, the book interrogates the strengths, contradictions and limits of collective action and identity in the crisis, from the movement of the squares and neighbourhood assemblies, to new forms of labour activism, environmental struggles, immigrant protests, anti-fascism and pro-refugee activism. Arguing against the strategic fixation on unified identities and pointing instead to the transformative potential of internal dispute within movements, Surplus Citizens highlights the relevance of a discussion of Greece to collective action beyond it, as we continue to traverse a global financial crisis that has provoked conflicts over nationalism, immigration and the rise of neo-fascism.

A global exploration of internet memes as agents of pop culture, politics, protest, and propaganda on- and offline, and how they will save or destroy us all.Memes are the street art of the social web. Using social media–driven movements as her guide, technologist and digital media scholar An Xiao Mina unpacks the mechanics of memes and how they operate to reinforce, amplify, and shape today's politics. She finds that the “silly” stuff of meme culture—the photo remixes, the selfies, the YouTube songs, and the pun-tastic hashtags—are fundamentally intertwined with how we find and affirm one another, direct attention to human rights and social justice issues, build narratives, and make culture. Mina finds parallels, for example, between a photo of Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, raising their hands in a gesture of resistance and one from eight thousand miles away, in Hong Kong, of Umbrella Movement activists raising yellow umbrellas as they fight for voting rights. She shows how a viral video of then presidential nominee Donald Trump laid the groundwork for pink pussyhats, a meme come to life as the widely recognized symbol for the international Women's March. Crucially, Mina reveals how, in parts of the world where public dissent is downright dangerous, memes can belie contentious political opinions that would incur drastic consequences if expressed outright. Activists in China evade censorship by critiquing their government with grass mud horse pictures online. Meanwhile, governments and hate groups are also beginning to utilize memes to spread propaganda, xenophobia, and misinformation. Botnets and state-sponsored agents spread them to confuse and distract internet communities. On the long, winding road from innocuous cat photos, internet memes have become a central practice for political contention and civic engagement.Memes to Movements unveils the transformative power of memes, for better and for worse. At a time when our movements are growing more complex and open-ended—when governments are learning to wield the internet as effectively as protestors—Mina brings a fresh and sharply innovative take to the media discourse.

»Eine andere Welt ist möglich« - so lautet das Credo der Globalisierungskritik, die sich als Gegenbewegung zur neoliberalen Umgestaltung der Welt formiert hat. Darin liegt ein Appell zum politischen Engagement und eine Kritik am Rückzug ins Private, Gemütliche und Überschaubare. Doch auf welcher Erfahrungsbasis beruht dieser Appell? Welche Rolle spielt etwa die Erfahrung der Empörung für die Motivation politischen Handelns? Und lässt sich aus universalem Mitleid ein neues Ethos für eine globalisierte Welt ableiten? Christine Unrau geht diesen Fragen anhand eines mehrdimensionalen Erfahrungsbegriffs nach, der neben Vernunft auch Spiritualität, Emotionalität und Kreativität miteinbezieht.

Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom. Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front. Why are activists and activist scholars unable to'let go'of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries? This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to'human'rights and in the argument'our understandings of rights are better than theirs'that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship.

Wie entstehen und reproduzieren sich soziale Bewegungen? Was ist das Verhältnis sozialer Bewegungen zu anderen Typen sozialer Systeme wie z.B. Organisationen, dem Wirtschaftssystem oder der Gesellschaft? Luca Tratschin präsentiert eine kommunikationstheoretische Antwort auf diese Fragen und zeigt, wie soziale Bewegungen durch die kontingente Entdeckung von Gemeinsamkeiten vieler raum-zeitlich verankerter Protestkommunikationen entstehen können.

Conflict in the Middle East, human rights violations, and religious turmoil plague the world now more than ever before. As populations seek more and more democratic methods of governance, a trend which often results in revolution, it is important for lawmakers to look toward the future when instituting or revising public policy. Politics and Social Activism: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications explores the concept of civil disobedience and how social and political upheaval has characterized the modern sociopolitical system. From the Arab Spring to the Egyptian uprising, this three-volume reference book includes chapters on topics including social media, democratic policies, online activism, urbanism, leadership, and socioeconomic disparity and is a timely resource for policymakers, social scientists, government officials, and students of politics and political science.

Mit der Globalisierungsthematik sind seit den 1990er Jahren Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs) in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses sowohl der Politik als auch der Sozialwissenschaften gerückt. Oftmals wurden NGOs dabei als Träger der Hoffnungen auf Entfaltung zivilgesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen in der Weltgesellschaft betrachtet. Die vorliegende Studie analysiert die inzwischen ausdifferenzierte Debatte um NGOs und zeigt kritisch deren theoretische Defizite auf, indem verschiedene Theorien der Weltgesellschaft sowie der herrschaftskritischen Organisationstheorie auf innovative Weise zusammengeführt werden. NGOs erscheinen so eben nicht als Gegenspieler der Globalisierung, sondern als Vermittler der universalistisch-rationalistischen Grundstruktur der Moderne. Ihre Einbettung in das hegemoniale Doppelkonzept von »dialogischen Verfahren« und »formaler Organisierung« verhindert, dass emanzipatorische Alternativen auf globaler Ebene relevant werden.

Die Indigenenbewegung ist trotz ihrer enormen Diversität ein wichtiger sozialer Akteur in der ecuadorianischen Gesellschaft. Seit einer Sattelzeit zwischen Mitte der 1970er und Mitte der 1980er Jahre hat sie einen Diskurs herausgebildet, der identitäre mit klassistischen Positionen verbindet und um die politischen Begriffe indigene Nationalität, Territorialität, Plurinationalität, Interkulturalität und Gutes Leben herum aufgebaut ist. Philipp Altmann zeigt, wie sich dieser Diskurs gegen die koloniale Strukturierung der Gesellschaft und ihre Auswirkungen - wie etwa Diskriminierung und Ungleichheit - wendet und daher dekolonial zu verstehen ist.

This volume provides a critical and in-depth investigation of the relationship between alter-globalist thinking and practices and their popular discourses. It examines the ways in which several alter-globalist activist groups (like Indymedia, no-borders campaigns, and forms of climate change activism), as well as left-wing intellectuals and academics (like Michael Hardt, Al Gore, Antonio Negri, Hakim Bey, and Geert Lovink), mobilize problematic discourses, tools, and divisions in an attempt to overcome gendered, raced, and classed oppressions worldwide. The book draws out how these mobilizations and theorizations, despite (or possibly because of) their liberatory claims, are actually implicated in the intensification of global hierarchies by repeatedly invoking narratives of transcendence, connection, progress, and in particular of speed. Hoofd argues that the humanist ideals that underlie all these practices paradoxically trigger increasing disenfranchisements worldwide.

Global crises such as rising economic inequality, volatile financial markets, and devastating climate change illustrate the defects of a global economic order controlled largely by transnational corporations, wealthy states, and other elites. As the impacts of such crises have intensified, they have generated a new wave of protests extending from the countries of the Middle East and North Africa throughout Europe, North America, and elsewhere. This new surge of resistance builds upon a long history of transnational activism as it extends and develops new tactics for pro-democracy movements acting simultaneously around the world. In Social Movements in the World-System, Jackie Smith and Dawn Wiest build upon theories of social movements, global institutions, and the political economy of the world-system to uncover how institutions define the opportunities and constraints on social movements, which in turn introduce ideas and models of action that help transform social activism as well as the system itself. Smith and Wiest trace modern social movements to the founding of the United Nations, as well as struggles for decolonization and the rise of national independence movements, showing how these movements have shifted the context in which states and other global actors compete and interact. The book shows how transnational activism since the end of the Cold War, including United Nations global conferences and more recently at World Trade Organization meetings, has shaped the ways groups organize. Global summits and UN conferences have traditionally provided focal points for activists working across borders on a diverse array of issues. By engaging in these international arenas, movements have altered discourses to emphasize norms of human rights and ecological sustainability over territorial sovereignty. Over time, however, activists have developed deeper and more expansive networks and new spaces for activism. This growing pool of transnational activists and organizations democratizes the process of organizing, enables activists to build on previous experiences and share knowledge, and facilitates local actions in support of global change agendas. As the world faces profound financial and ecological crises, and as the United States'dominance in the world political economy is increasingly challenged, it is especially urgent that scholars, policy analysts, and citizens understand how institutions shape social behavior and the distribution of power. Social Movements in the World-System helps illuminate the contentious and complex interactions between social movements and global institutions and contributes to the search for paths toward a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic world. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

« Antimondialisation », « altermondialisation » ou « mouvement pour la justice mondiale » : le « mouvement des mouvements », à la fois enraciné dans les contextes politiques nationaux et nourri de ses multiples liens transnationaux, représente une puissante lame de fond, un ressac contre l'idéologie néolibérale et les politiques menées depuis des décennies que les contestataires jugent éminemment injustes et néfastes pour une grande partie de la population. Ce vaste mouvement social est complexe. On le voit dans ses actions, ses pratiques, ses organisations et ses discours. Il est une force critique porteuse d'une multitude d'idéaux, d'espoirs et de projets souvent contradictoires. Cette synthèse présente le mouvement altermondialiste pour en discuter les faiblesses et les forces, en portant une attention particulière à son activité au Québec et en Occident. Elle présente les éléments essentiels permettant de comprendre le mouvement et d'en débattre, en tant que force politique plurielle et contradictoire, et pourtant animée d'un même idéal de justice.

'Be original. See what happens.'So Todd Gitlin advises the young mind burning to take action to right the wrongs of the world but also looking for bearings, understanding, direction, and practical examples. In Letters to a Young Activist, Todd Gitlin looks back at his eventful life, recalling his experience as president of the formidable Students for a Democratic Society in the'60s, contemplating the spirit of activism, and arriving at some principles of action to guide the passion and energy of those wishing to do good. He considers the three complementary motives of duty, love, and adventure, and reflects on the changing nature of idealism and how righteous action requires realistic as well as idealistic thinking. And he looks forward to an uncertain future that is nevertheless full of possibility, a future where patriotism and intelligent skepticism are not mutually exclusive. Gitlin invites the young activist to enter imaginatively into some of the dilemmas, moral and practical, of being a modern citizen -- the dilemmas that affect not only the problems of what to think but also the problems of what to love and how to live.