Storying Social Movement S

This book stories social movements on the margins. Foregrounding historically silenced, dismissed and ignored Aboriginal, young, voiceless, and intersex Australian activists, the book theorizes how movement away from exclusionary praxis at the margins can offer renewed hope. Using diverse and creative forms of research underpinned by storying, social movement and critical race theoretical knowledge with a commitment to social justice, this book will be of interest and value to scholars of cultural studies, Indigenous studies, education, human geography, political sciences, and sociology.

Despite the amount of storytelling in social movements, little attention has been paid to narrative as a form of movement discourse or as a mode of social interaction. Stories of Change is a systematic study of narrative as well as a demonstration of the power of narrative analysis to illuminate many features of contemporary social movements. Davis includes a wide array of stories of change—stories of having been harmed or wronged, stories of conflict with unjust authorities, stories of liberation and empowerment, and stories of strategic success and failure. By showing how these stories are a powerful vehicle for producing, regulating, and diffusing shared meaning, the contributors explore movement stories, their functions, and the conditions under which they are created and performed. They show how narrative study can illuminate social movement emergence, recruitment, internal dynamics, and identity building.

Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960 four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month sit-ins spread to thirty cities in seven states. Student participants told stories of impulsive, spontaneous action—this despite all the planning that had gone into the sit-ins. “It was like a fever,” they said. Francesca Polletta’s It Was Like a Fever sets out to account for the power of storytelling in mobilizing political and social movements. Drawing on cases ranging from sixteenth-century tax revolts to contemporary debates about the future of the World Trade Center site, Polletta argues that stories are politically effective not when they have clear moral messages, but when they have complex, often ambiguous ones. The openness of stories to interpretation has allowed disadvantaged groups, in particular, to gain a hearing for new needs and to forge surprising political alliances. But popular beliefs in America about storytelling as a genre have also hurt those challenging the status quo. A rich analysis of storytelling in courtrooms, newsrooms, public forums, and the United States Congress, It Was Like a Fever offers provocative new insights into the dynamics of culture and contention.

What do activists know? Learning Activism is designed to encourage a deeper engagement with the intellectual life of activists who organize for social, political, and ecological justice. Combining experiential knowledge from his own activism and a variety of social movements, Choudry suggests that such organizations are best understood if we engage with the learning, knowledge, debates, and theorizing that goes on within them. Drawing on Marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial perspectives on knowledge and power, the book highlights how activists and organizers learn through doing, and fills the gap between social movement practice as it occurs on the ground, critical adult education scholarship, and social movement theorizing. Examples include anti-colonial currents within global justice organizing in the Asia-Pacific, activist research and education in social movements and people's organizations in the Philippines, Migrant and immigrant worker struggles in Canada, and the Quebec student strike. The result is a book that carves out a new space for intellectual life in activist practice.

Children’s participation in social movements is presented through a theoretical typology consisting of strategic participants, participants by default and active participants. This range of participation accounts for the social location of children historically and internationally, calling for their inclusion into social movement research. Children are unresearched and untheorized participants within social movement literature. Providing rich detail of children’s participation through illustrative case studies, this book presents the ideal types of participation as grounded in their social movement activity. These cross cultural, historical and contemporary case studies include, whenever possible, children’s perspective in their own words. Utilizing insights from childhood studies on agency and rights of children enhances the understanding of social movement strategies and mobilization. Following the chapters on each type of participation, suggestions are provided for rethinking existing social movement theories to acknowledge child participants. Scholars and students of social movements and childhood studies, as well as within the field of sociology will find interest in the wide range of case studies presented of children in social movements. The discussion of how social movement theory might be applied to the types of participation is meant to inspire future research and expand analysis of children’s participation in social movements.

The advent of social media has had varying effects across fields, industries, and governments. As more individuals rely on this technology, its uses continue to develop and expand. Social media has forever changed the way in which politics are discussed, social movements are formed, and how governments interact with the public. To fully understand the future of social media, further study is required. The Research Anthology on Social Media's Influence on Government, Politics, and Social Movements investigates how social media is used within governments as well as the history behind the technology. The book also examines best practices, tactics, and challenges associated with utilizing social media platforms for social movements. Covering key topics such as communication, interactive technology, and social change, this major reference work is ideal for government officials, industry professionals, policymakers, administrators, business owners, managers, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

In thirteen succinct chapters, Buechler traces movement theories from the classical era of sociology to the most recent examples of transnational activism. He identifies the socio-historical context, central concepts, and guiding logic of diverse movement theories, with emphasis on: Comparisons of Marx and Lenin; Weber and Michels; and Durkheim and LeBon The Chicago School of the inter-war period The political-sociological approaches of the 1950s The varieties of strain and breakdown theories at the dawn of the 1960s Major paradigm shifts caused by the cascade of 1960s social movements Vivid examples of movements worldwide and coverage of all major theorists Critiques, debates, and proposed syntheses dominating the turn of the 21st century Recent trends (such as cyberactivism and transnational movements) and their theoretical implications"

"Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change explores the functions and public influence of social-issue documentary storytelling in the networked era. At the book's core is an argument about documentary's vital role in storytelling culture and civic practice with an impulse toward justice and equity. Intimate documentaries illuminate complex realities and stories that disrupt dominant cultural narratives and contribute new ways for publics to contemplate and engage with social challenges. Written by a documentary producer, scholar, and director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, the book features original interviews with award-winning filmmakers and field leaders to reveal the motivations and influence of some of most lauded, eye-opening stories of the evolving documentary golden age"--