State repression creates solidarity among movement participants, who justify the need for violence as a form of self-defence, or, as Donatella Della Porta puts it, violence emerges from violence. The sad reality is that the authorities often ignore peaceful, non-disruptive protests. What students have deduced from this is that unless the “normal” functioning of an unequal educational system is disrupted, then it is unlikely to change.

Sociologists have argued that political violence by protesters is rarely ever adopted overnight or consciously. Rather, in the early stages of the protest cycle, such violence is generally unplanned, small in scale and limited in scope. It often occurs as a spontaneous reaction to an escalation of force by the police or a more general closure of democratic space. Many protesters are frightened off by the escalating violence, but small groups begin to specialise in tactics that do not rely on mass support – such as more organised acts of violence. These tactical decisions shift the struggle onto a terrain that is dominated overwhelmingly by the state and its repressive apparatus.

It is the easier route for universities to say and do “security” in response to growing campus unrest. But it is also the more simplistic road. There is enough scholarship to show that this road leads nowhere. University actors must do more to break with this self-fulfilling prophecy.

For a detailed and insightful account of the myriad ways in which the policing of protest violates the rights of ordinary South Africans, see the new book by Jane Duncan (University of Johannesburg), Protest Nation: the Right to Protest in South Africa, published in September 2016 by UKZN Press.

« Mouvements sociaux. Quand le sujet devient acteur »

Les mouvements sociaux ont profondément marqué la première partie des années 2010, marquée à la fois par la multiplication des « mouvements des places » (Indignés, Occupy, Gezi Park ou Nuit Debout) et la montée des mouvements d’extrême droite. Cet ouvrage rassemble les analyses de mouvements sociaux dans 14 pays. À partir de solides recherches empiriques portant sur différents types de mouvements (démocratiques, écologistes, conservateurs, indigènes…) dans quatorze pays, les contributions réunies dans cet ouvrage se rejoignent autour de trois propositions:

• L’intégration des dynamiques de subjectivation (construction de soi, cohérence personnelle,…) dans l’analyse des mouvements sociaux contemporains.
• Ces mouvements se déploie et s’organisent à différentes échelles, du local au global. Les dimensions globales de ces mouvements ne doivent pas conduire à sous-estimer l’importance des échelles locales et nationales.
• L’étude des mouvements sociaux progressistes et celle des mouvements conservateurs ne doivent pas être considérées comme relevant de deux champs d’analyse séparés.

Introduction : La subjectivation au cœur des mouvements des années 2010, Geoffrey Pleyers et Brieg Capitaine

PARTIE I – Du sujet au global : La subjectivation au cœur des « mouvements des places »
Chapitre 1 – De la subjectivation à l’action. Le cas des jeunes alter-activistes, Geoffrey Pleyers
Chapitre 2 – La subjectivité des femmes à Gezi, Buket Türkmen
Chapitre 3 – Le Parc Gezi : l’espace d’un mouvement social dans un imaginaire global, Deniz Günce Demirhisar
Chapitre 4 – L’engagement en mouvement : Des « Soixante-huitards » à la Résistance de Gezi, Esin Ileri
Chapitre 5 – De la subjectivation à l’institutionnalisation. L’Espagne, le 15M et Podemos, Antonio Álvarez-Benavides

PARTIE II – Du conflit local aux enjeux globaux
Chapitre 6 – Russie : Mobilisations locales et montée en généralité, Karine Clément
Chapitre 7 – Les travailleurs précaires: l’affirmation des sujets face à la crise de la démocratie, Daniele Di Nunzio
Chapitre 8 – « Civil marriage not civil war » : L’engagement anti-confessionnaliste dans le Liban d’après-guerre, Alexandra Kassir
Chapitre 9 – Le sujet social face à l’exploitation des ressources naturelles dans les pays andins, Narda Henriquez
Chapitre 10  – Le mouvement anti-ACTA en Pologne, Lukasz Jurczyszyn
Chapitre 11 – Le Maidan ukrainien en 2013 : Entre localisme et universalisme, Anton Oleinik

PARTIE III – Faire face au racisme et à la violence
Chapitre 12 – CasaPound : La nouvelle droite radicale en Italie, Emanuele Toscano
Chapitre 13 – Zaitoku-kai : Nouveau mouvement raciste au Japon, Chikako Mori
Chapitre 14     – Trauma et solidarité. Les survivants des pensionnats indiens face à la violence, Brieg Capitaine
Chapitre 15 – L’expérience de post-désengagement des ex-guérilleros du PKK, Massoud Sharifi Dryaz
Chapitre 16 – Radicalité et non-violence dans le contexte israélo-palestinien, Brigitte Verscheure Beauzamy

Postface de Michel Wieviorka

The University of Bucharest organized on May 11-12, 2015 the International Sociological Association regional conference “Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe” with the support of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Romania. The Research Committee 47 (ISA 47) intended to evaluate the current status of research on collective action in the former communist countries to asses the capacities of research centers to generate valid knowledge in an highly competitive European and global environment and to encourage young scholars to make research on the new forms of social participation in Central and Eastern Europe.

As stated by the ISA 47 President, professor Geoffrey Pleyers, the social movements are important triggers for consolidating democracy and market economy in the region. As such, new forms of social participation shall be developed in the next period of time.

There were registered 96 scholars that represented some 25 countries. Additionally, some other 40 Romanian researchers and students took part in or assisted to specific panels or plenaries. 21 panels, 4 semi-plenaries, 2 plenaries and a concluding plenary were organized during the two days of workings. A group of well known scholars supervised these sessions. (Among them professors Jim M Jasper from the City University of New York, Kerstin Jacobsson from Gothenburg University, Sweden, A. Ishkanian from London School of Economics, Tova Benski, the ISA 48 President from Tel Aviv, Israel, Carine Clement from Russia. The keynote speakers were the well-known French sociologists Alain Touraine and Michel Wieviorka.)

An e-Book is published by the University of Bucharest Publishing House. Many thanks to volunteers Georgiana Popescu, Ana Popa, Cristian Chira, Sergiu Velesniuc and Adelina Nedelcu.

Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson’s Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States (Indiana University Press, 2012) has been awarded the gold medal in the Religion category of the Independent Publishers Book Awards, which recognize books by university and independent presses. The book also won the Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. The book focuses on common strategies used by religiously orthodox (what some would call “fundamentalist”) movements around the world. Rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of taking over civil society.

Claiming Society for God tells the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States, showing how these movements, grounded in a communitarian theology, are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, rotating credit societies, schools, charitable organizations, worship centers, and businesses. These networks are already being called states within states, surrogate states, or parallel societies, and in Egypt have now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to control of parliament and the presidency. This bottom-up, entrepreneurial strategy is aimed at nothing less than making religion the cornerstone of society.

The Facebook page for the book, which includes news stories on orthodox movements and study questions for the book is at www.facebook.com/ClaimingSocietyForGod.

From 1960s student movements to today’s global jihad, this text explores the factors and debates shaping violence and terrorism in our contemporary society. Each chapter confronts examples of disturbing terrorist acts and events of mass violence from recent history and uses these to examine key questions, theories and concepts surrounding this sensitive and controversial topic. In particular, the book:

– identifies core tools for the analysis of public violence
– explores the processes that mutate social movements into violent groups
– describes the cultural, embodied, experiential and imagined dimensions of violence
– highlights different periods and varying forms of terrorist violence
– examines the role of globalization, media, technology and the visual in violence and terror today.

Our Violent World shows how the social sciences can contribute to an understanding of violence and responses to terror, as well as the construction of a social world less dominated by fear of the other. It is a must-read for students and citizens.

You can download the index of the book and the first chapter here

Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson

“Illuminating intersections of religion and public life in four different nations, this book is topical. Given that two of these nations are in the Middle East and one of them is Egypt, it is timely, even urgent.”

Jeffrey Broadbent, Vicky Brockman  (eds.)

ISBN 9780387096254

Hardback €124.75

Springer 2011

In the study of civil society and social movements,  most cases are based in Western Europe and North America.  These two areas of the world have similar histories and political ideals and structures in common which in turn, affect the structure of its civil society.  In studying civil society in Asia, a different understanding of history, politics, and society is needed.  The region’s long traditions of centralized, authoritarian states buttressed by Confucian and in some cases Communist ideologies may render this concept irrelevant. The chapters in this international volume cover most of the areas and countries traditionally defined as belonging to East Asia: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.  The case studies included in this volume confront the utility of using the Western concept of civil society, represented in its most active form – social movements – to think about East Asia popular politics. Along with providing an array of important case studies of social movements in East Asia, the introduction, chapters and conclusion in the book take up three major theoretical questions: the effect of the East Asian cultural, social and institutional context upon the mobilization, activities and outcomes of social movements in that region the role of social movements in larger transformative processes  utility of Western social movement concepts in explaining social movements in East Asia. This book will be of interest to two major groups of readers, those who study East Asia and those who pursue social movements and civil society, as well as politics more generally.

Download the table of contents

Please also note that if any journal would like to review this book, please contact Teresa Krauss at Springer and she will send you a review copy.

Pascale Dufour, Dominique Masson, and Dominique Caouette (eds.)

ISBN 9780774817967

Paperback $34.95

UBC Press 2010

Scholars of social movements tend to overlook the achievements and political significance of women’s movements. Through theoretical discussions and empirical examples, Solidarities beyond Borders demonstrates the creativity and dynamism of transnational women’s movements around the world.

These timely case studies from North America, Latin America, and Southeast Asia introduce feminists, activists, and scholars to the benefits and challenges of building relationships, dialogues, and perspectives that extend beyond the boundaries of nation-states and disciplines. Part 1 opens a dialogue between feminist theorists and scholars of social movements in other disciplines — geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists. Part 2 explores how the mutual recognition of interests and identities among feminist activists and women’s organizations can deepen solidarities. Part 3 focuses on the challenges that feminists and women’s groups will face as they build solidarities beyond borders but argues that these links can be extended to embrace other progressive movements and their goals.

Solidarities beyond Borders not only brings to light the opportunities and challenges that globalization poses for transnationalizing women’s movements, it also offers important strategic, conceptual, and methodological lessons for all social movements.

Here you can download more information

Reformulating the possibilities for action in this global world constitutes a major issue in contemporaneous social sciences and a central challenge of the alter-globalization/global justice movement. This book proposes to discuss it starting from concrete experimentations by social actors who have contested globalization in its neoliberal form, proposed alternative policies, implemented participatory organization models and promoted a nascent global public space. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces, analyzing their main political cultures, their outcomes and limits as well as the inner tensions of the movement on the base of extensive field research conducted since 1999 and until the aftermath of the global crisis in Europe, Latin America and at eight world social forums.

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Hein-Anton van der Heijden

This book examines how the European environmental movement, as part of an emerging European civil society, has impinged on the problem definitions and solution strategies in the European politics of the environment. Examining core case studies in European environmental policy – biodiversity politics (Natura 2000), the politics of genetically modified organisms, Trans-European Transport Networks, and the European politics of climate change – this study, written at the crossroads of social movement, public sphere and political discourse theory, argues that a social movement’s most important feature is its ‘cognitive praxis’, its ability to successfully challenge dominant conceptions of reality and to create new green public spheres. It examines whether ‘ecological modernization’ is able to solve the tension between economic growth and environmental protection, and to what extent European environmentalism has contributed to the emergence of a green ‘normative power Europe’.