Social Movements

In The Art of Moral Protest, James Jasper integrates diverse examples of protest--from nineteenth-century boycotts to recent movements--into a distinctive new understanding of how social movements work. Jasper highlights their creativity, not only in forging new morals but in adopting courses of action and inventing organizational forms. "A provocative perspective on the cultural implications of political and social protest."--Library Journal

Building on a critical overview of current social movement theory, this book presents a structural model for analysing social movements in advanced capitalism that locates them within global, national, regional and local structures. Buechler discusses a redirection of social movement theory that restores a critical, structural, macro-level, and historical emphasis to sociological theorizing about social movements. Clearly presented, this is a thoughtful introduction to the sociological study of social movements, linking the theoretical traditions that comprise the core of the discipline to the subfield of social movements. It is an excellent supplementary text for any advanced undergraduate or graduate class on collective action and social movements.

hy do social movements take the forms they do? How do activists' efforts and beliefs interact with the cultural and political contexts in which they work? Why do activists take particular strategic paths, and how do their strategies affect the course and impact of the movement? Social Movements aims to bridge the gap between "political opportunities" theorists who look at the circumstances and effects of social movement efforts and "collective identity theorists" who focus on the reconstruction of meaning and identity through collective action. The volume brings together scholars from a variety of perspectives to consider the intersections of opportunities and identities, structures and cultures, in social movements. Representing a new generation of social movement theory, the contributors build bridges between political opportunities and collective identity paradigms, between analyses of movements' internal dynamics and their external contexts, between approaches that emphasize structure and those that emphasize culture. They cover a wide range of case studies from both the U.S. and Western Europe as well as from less developed countries. Movements include feminist organizing in the U.S. and India, lesbian/gay movements, revolutionary movements in Burma, the Philippines, and Indonesia, labor campaigns in England and South Africa, civil rights movements, community organizing, political party organizing in Canada, student movements of the left and right, and the Religious Right. Many chapters also pay explicit attention to the dynamics of gender, race, and class in social movements. Combining a variety of perspectives on a wide range of topics, the contributors' synthetic approach shifts the field of social movements forward in important new directions.

This work examines the relationship between social movements and democracy in social and political thought in the light of feminist efforts to democratise the polity and the feminist movement itself.

CyberProtest explores the effects of the synergy between ICTs and people power, analyzing the implications for politics and social policy at both a national and a global level.