Patterns Of Protest

Asked to name an activist, many people think of someone like Cesar Chavez or Rosa Parks—someone uniquely and passionately devoted to a cause. Yet, two-thirds of Americans report having belonged to a social movement, attended a protest, or engaged in some form of contentious political activity. Activism, in other words, is something that the vast majority of people engage in. This book examines these more common experiences to ask how and when people choose to engage with political causes. Corrigall-Brown reveals how individual characteristics and life experiences impact the pathway of participation, illustrating that the context and period in which a person engages are critical. This is the real picture of activism, one in which many people engage, in a multitude of ways and with varying degrees of continuity. This book challenges the current conceptualization of activism and pushes us to more systematically examine the varying ways that individuals participate in contentious politics over their lifetimes.

In June 1990, Ecuador saw the first major indigenous rebellion within its borders since the colonial era. For weeks, indigenous protesters participated in marches, staged demonstrations, seized government offices, and blockaded roads. Since this insurrection, indigenous movements have become increasingly important in the fight against Latin American Neoliberalism. Roberta Rice's New Politics of Protest seeks to analyze when, where, and why indigenous protests against free-market reforms have occurred in Latin America. Comparing cases in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, this book details the emergence of indigenous movements under and against Neoliberal governments. Rice uses original field research and interviews with indigenous leaders to examine long-term patterns of indigenous political activism and overturn accepted theories on the role of the Indian in democracy. A useful and engaging study, The New Politics of Protest seeks to determine when indigenous movements become viable political parties. It covers the most recent rounds of protest to demonstrate how a weak and unresponsive government is more likely to experience revolts against unpopular reforms. This influential work will be of interest to scholars of Latin American politics and indigenous studies as well as anyone studying oppressed peoples who have organized nationwide strikes and protests, blocked economic reforms, toppled corrupt leaders, and even captured presidencies.

Patterns of Protest explains the basis of a poor country's struggle against its most powerful neighbours, and the predatory interests of global capitalism. It looks at the unique way that Boliva has united disparate populations - the urban working class and rural indigenous people - demanding that Bolivian natural resources benefit Bolivians first.

Which elements do the Arab Spring, the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street have in common? How do they differ? What do they share with social movements of the past? This book discusses the recent wave of global mobilisations from an unusual angle, explaining what aspects of protests spread from one country to another, how this happened, and why diffusion occurred in certain contexts but not in others. In doing this, the book casts light on the more general mechanisms of protest diffusion in contemporary societies, explaining how mobilisations travel from one country to another and, also, from past to present times. Bridging different fields of the social sciences, and covering a broad range of empirical cases, this book develops new theoretical perspectives.

In Donald Trump’s America, protesting has roared back into fashion. The Women’s March, held the day after Trump’s inauguration, may have been the largest in American history, and resonated around the world. Between Trump’s tweets and the march’s popularity, it is clear that displays of anger dominate American politics once again. There is an extensive body of research on protest, but the focus has mostly been on the calculating brain—a byproduct of structuralism and cognitive studies—and less on the feeling brain. James M. Jasper’s work changes that, as he pushes the boundaries of our present understanding of the social world. In The Emotions of Protest, Jasper lays out his argument, showing that it is impossible to separate cognition and emotion. At a minimum, he says, we cannot understand the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street or pro- and anti-Trump rallies without first studying the fears and anger, moral outrage, and patterns of hate and love that their members feel. This is a book centered on protest, but Jasper also points toward broader paths of inquiry that have the power to transform the way social scientists picture social life and action. Through emotions, he says, we are embedded in a variety of environmental, bodily, social, moral, and temporal contexts, as we feel our way both consciously and unconsciously toward some things and away from others. Politics and collective action have always been a kind of laboratory for working out models of human action more generally, and emotions are no exception. Both hearts and minds rely on the same feelings racing through our central nervous systems. Protestors have emotions, like everyone else, but theirs are thinking hearts, not bleeding hearts. Brains can feel, and hearts can think.

Protest, Activism, and Social Movements is a thematic overview of the study of social movements in Canada, covering key topics such as framing, identity, tactics, repression, digital media, and globalization. With an engaging narrative style, case studies, and empirical examples from Canadianand global movements that are solidly grounded in theory, this text brings the passion and potential of social movements to life for Canadian students.

This book analyzes social movements across a range of countries in the non-Western world: Bosnia, Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Turkey and Ukraine in the period 2008 to 2016. The individual case studies investigate how political and social goals are framed nationally and globally, and the types of mobilization strategies used to pursue them. The studies also assess how, in the age of transnationalism, the idea of participatory democracy produces new collective-action frames and mass-mobilization strategies. The book challenges the view that most social movements unequivocally seek to achieve higher levels of democratization. Instead, the authors argue that protesters across different movements advocate more involved forms of citizen participation, since passive representation through liberal democratic institutions fails to address mass grievances and demands for accountability in many countries.