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  3. Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics breaks apart the narrow disciplinary and subfield boundaries that have fragmented the study of both traditional social movements and their non-routine politics. The exploration of noninstitutionalized political actions, including revolutions, democratization, cycles of protest, and ethnic conflicts, enables the connections between a wide array of political and social phenomena to be examined in national, comparative, and global perspective.

  • General Editors: David S. Meyer, University of California, Irvine
  • Associate Editors: Mark Beissinger, Princeton University, New Jersey, Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Jack A. Goldstone, George Mason University, Virginia, Doug McAdam, Stanford University, California and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, California, Holly J. McCammon, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Sarah Soule, Stanford University, California, Suzanne Staggenborg, University of Pittsburgh, Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University, New York, Elizabeth J. Wood, Yale University, Connecticut, Deborah Yashar, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Founding Editors: Doug McAdam, Stanford University, California, Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University, New York, Charles Tilly, Columbia University, New York

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78 results in Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

Page 3 of 4

The Politics of Collective Violence
  • Charles Tilly
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    17 March 2003
  • Are there any commonalities between such phenomena as soccer hooliganism, sabotage by peasants of landlords' property, incidents of road rage, and even the events of September 11? With striking historical scope and command of the literature of many disciplines, this book, first published in 2003, seeks the common causes of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Professor Tilly argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet that it also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective violence and its variations, and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property.

The Logic of Connective Action
  • Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics
  • W. Lance Bennett, Alexandra Segerberg
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    26 August 2013
  • The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar forms of collective action based on organizational resource mobilization, leadership, and collective action framing. In some cases, connective action emerges from crowds that shun leaders, as when Occupy protesters created media networks to channel resources and create loose ties among dispersed physical groups. In other cases, conventional political organizations deploy personalized communication logics to enable large-scale engagement with a variety of political causes. The Logic of Connective Action shows how power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.

The Language of Contention
  • Revolutions in Words, 1688–2012
  • Sidney Tarrow
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    19 August 2013
  • This book examines the relations between the material and political bases of contentious politics and the construction, diffusion and endurance of contentious language. Beginning with the language of revolution developed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, it examines contentious language at work, in gender and race relations and in nationalist and ethnic movements. It closes with an examination of emotions in contentious politics, reflecting on the changes in political language since 9/11 and assessing the impact of religion and recent innovations in electronic communication on the language of politics.

Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War
  • Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Halvard Buhaug
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    26 August 2013
  • This book argues that political and economic inequalities following group lines generate grievances that in turn can motivate civil war. Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug offer a theoretical approach that highlights ethnonationalism and how the relationship between group identities and inequalities are fundamental for successful mobilization to resort to violence. Although previous research highlighted grievances as a key motivation for political violence, contemporary research on civil war has largely dismissed grievances as irrelevant, emphasizing instead the role of opportunities. This book shows that the alleged non-results for grievances in previous research stemmed primarily from atheoretical measures, typically based on individual data. The authors develop new indicators of political and economic exclusion at the group level, and show that these exert strong effects on the risk of civil war. They provide new analyses of the effects of transnational ethnic links and the duration of civil wars, and extended case discussions illustrating causal mechanisms.

Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa
  • The Case of Tanzania
  • Ronald Aminzade
  • Published online:
    05 November 2013
    Print publication:
    31 October 2013
  • Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of African nationalism as it unfolded over decades of Tanzanian history in conflicts over public policies concerning the rights of citizens, foreigners, and the nation's Asian racial minority. These policy debates reflected a history of racial oppression and foreign domination and were shaped by a quest for economic development, racial justice, and national self-reliance.

The U.S. Women's Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation
  • A More Just Verdict
  • Holly J. McCammon
  • Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    30 April 2012
  • When women won the vote in the United States in 1920 they were still routinely barred from serving as jurors, but some began vigorous campaigns for a place in the jury box. This book tells the story of how women mobilized in fifteen states to change jury laws so that women could gain this additional right of citizenship. Some campaigns quickly succeeded; others took substantially longer. The book reveals that when women strategically adapted their tactics to the broader political environment, they were able to speed up the pace of jury reform, while less strategic movements took longer. A comparison of the more strategic women's jury movements with those that were less strategic shows that the former built coalitions with other women's groups, took advantage of political opportunities, had past experience in seeking legal reforms and confronted tensions and even conflict within their ranks in ways that bolstered their action.

Clandestine Political Violence
  • Donatella della Porta
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    20 May 2013
  • Clandestine Political Violence compares four types of clandestine political violence: left-wing (in Italy and Germany), right-wing (in Italy), ethnonationalist (in Spain) and religious fundamentalist (in Islamist clandestine organizations). Oriented toward theory building, Della Porta develops her own definition of clandestine political violence. Building on the most recent developments in social movement studies, Della Porta proposes an original interpretative model. Using a unique research design, she singles out some common causal mechanisms at the onset, during the persistence and at the demise of clandestine political violence. The development of the phenomenon is located within the interactions among social movements, countermovements and the state. She pays particular attention to the ways different actors cognitively construct the reality they act upon. Based on original empirical research as well as existing research in many languages, this book is rich in empirical evidence on some of the most crucial cases of clandestine political violence.

Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India
  • Rina Agarwala
  • Published online:
    05 March 2013
    Print publication:
    08 April 2013
  • Since the 1980s, the world's governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected 'informal' or 'precarious' workers. As a result, more and more workers do not receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. This book offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to 'citizenship', rather than labor rights.

The Political Power of Protest
  • Minority Activism and Shifts in Public Policy
  • Daniel Q. Gillion
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    15 April 2013
  • Gillion demonstrates the direct influence that political protest behavior has on Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, illustrating that protest is a form of democratic responsiveness that government officials have used, and continue to draw on, to implement federal policies. Focusing on racial and ethnic minority concerns, this book shows that the context of political protest has served as a signal for political preferences. As pro-minority rights behavior grew and anti-minority rights actions declined, politicians learned from minority protest and responded when they felt emboldened by stronger informational cues stemming from citizens' behavior, a theory referred to as the 'information continuum'. Although the shift from protest to politics as a political strategy has opened the door for institutionalized political opportunity, racial and ethnic minorities have neglected a powerful tool to illustrate the inequalities that exist in contemporary society.

The New Transnational Activism
  • Sidney Tarrow
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    01 August 2005
  • The New Transnational Activism, first published in 2005, shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book.

Social Movements and Organization Theory
  • Edited by Gerald F. Davis, Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, Mayer N. Zald
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    09 May 2005
  • Although the fields of organization theory and social movement theory have long been viewed as belonging to different worlds, recent events have intervened, reminding us that organizations are becoming more movement-like - more volatile and politicized - while movements are more likely to borrow strategies from organizations. Organization theory and social movement theory are two of the most vibrant areas within the social sciences. This collection of original essays and studies both calls for a closer connection between these fields and demonstrates the value of this interchange. Three introductory, programmatic essays by leading scholars in the two fields are followed by eight empirical studies that directly illustrate the benefits of this type of cross-pollination. The studies variously examine the processes by which movements become organized and the role of movement processes within and among organizations. The topics covered range from globalization and transnational social movement organizations to community recycling programs.

Contesting Citizenship in Latin America
  • The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge
  • Deborah J. Yashar
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    07 March 2005
  • Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways - demanding recognition, equal protection, and subnational autonomy. These are remarkable developments in a region where ethnic cleavages were once universally described as weak. Recently, however, indigenous activists and elected officials have increasingly shaped national political deliberations. Deborah Yashar explains the contemporary and uneven emergence of Latin American indigenous movements - addressing both why indigenous identities have become politically salient in the contemporary period and why they have translated into significant political organizations in some places and not others. She argues that ethnic politics can best be explained through a comparative historical approach that analyzes three factors: changing citizenship regimes, social networks, and political associational space. Her argument provides insight into the fragility and unevenness of Latin America's third wave democracies and has broader implications for the ways in which we theorize the relationship between citizenship, states, identity, and social action.

Rightful Resistance in Rural China
  • Kevin J. O'Brien, Lianjiang Li
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    13 February 2006
  • How can the poor and weak 'work' a political system to their advantage? Drawing mainly on interviews and surveys in rural China, Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li show that popular action often hinges on locating and exploiting divisions within the state. Otherwise powerless people use the rhetoric and commitments of the central government to try to fight misconduct by local officials, open up clogged channels of participation, and push back the frontiers of the permissible. This 'rightful resistance' has far-reaching implications for our understanding of contentious politics. As O'Brien and Li explore the origins, dynamics, and consequences of rightful resistance, they highlight similarities between collective action in places as varied as China, the former East Germany, and the United States, while suggesting how Chinese experiences speak to issues such as opportunities to protest, claims radicalization, tactical innovation, and the outcomes of contention.

Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement
  • Sharon Erickson Nepstad
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    07 April 2008
  • As the nuclear arms race exploded in the 1980s, a group of U.S. religious pacifists used radical nonviolence to intervene. Armed with hammers, they broke into military facilities to pound on missiles and pour blood on bombers, enacting the prophet Isaiah's vision: 'Nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.' Calling themselves the Plowshares movement, these controversial activists received long prison sentences; nonetheless, their movement grew and expanded to Europe and Australia. In this book, Sharon Erickson Nepstad documents the emergence and international diffusion of this unique form of high-risk collective action. Drawing on interviews, original survey research, and archival data, Nepstad explains why some Plowshares groups have persisted over time while others have struggled or collapsed. Comparing the U.S. movement with less successful Plowshares groups overseas, Nepstad reveals how decisions about leadership, organization, retention, and cultural adaptations influence movements' long-term trajectories.

NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism
  • Tamara Kay
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    31 January 2011
  • When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, many feared it would intensify animosity among North American unions, lead to the scapegoating of Mexican workers and immigrants, and eclipse any possibility for cross-border labor cooperation. But far from polarizing workers, NAFTA unexpectedly helped stimulate labor transnationalism among key North American unions and erode union policies and discourses rooted in racism. The emergence of labor transnationalism in North America presents compelling political and sociological puzzles: how did NAFTA, the concrete manifestation of globalization processes in North America, help deepen labor solidarity on the continent? In addition to making the provocative argument that global governance institutions can play a pivotal role in the development of transnational social movements, this book suggests that globalization need not undermine labor movements: collectively, unions can help shape how the rules governing the global economy are made.

Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina
  • The Gray Zone of State Power
  • Javier Auyero
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    16 April 2007
  • Close to three hundred stores and supermarkets were looted during week-long food riots in Argentina in December 2001. Thirty-four people were reported dead and hundreds were injured. Among the looting crowds, activists from the Peronist party (the main political party in the country) were quite prominent. During the lootings, police officers were conspicuously absent - particularly when small stores were sacked. Through a combination of archival research, statistical analysis, multi-sited fieldwork, and taking heed of the perspective of contentious politics, this book provides an analytic description of the origins, course, meanings, and outcomes of the December 2001 wave of lootings in Argentina.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Logic of Social Change
  • Joseph E. Luders
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    25 January 2010
  • Social movements have wrought dramatic changes upon American society. This raises the question: Why do some movements succeed in their endeavors while others fail? Luders answers this question by introducing an analytical framework that begins with a shift in emphasis away from the characteristics of movements toward the targets of protests and affected bystanders and why they respond as they do. This shift brings into focus how targets and other interests assess both their exposure to movement disruptions as well as the costs of conceding to movement demands. From this point, diverse outcomes stem not only from a movement's capabilities for protest but also from differences among targets and others in their vulnerability to disruption and the substance of movement goals. Applied to the civil rights movement, this approach recasts conventional accounts of the movement's outcome in local struggles and national politics and clarifies the broader logic of social change.

Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing
  • Stuart A. Wright
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    11 June 2007
  • This book explores social movements by analyzing an escalating spiral of tension between the Patriot movement and the state centered on the mutual framing of conflict as 'warfare'. By examining the social construction of 'warfare' as a principal script or frame defining the movement-state dynamic, Stuart A. Wright explains how this highly charged confluence of a war narrative engendered a kind of symbiosis leading to the escalation of a mutual threat that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Wright offers a unique perspective on the events leading up to the bombing because he served as a consultant to Timothy McVeigh's defense team for eighteen months and draws on primary data based on face-to-face interviews with McVeigh. The book contends that McVeigh was firmly entrenched in the Patriot movement and was part of a network of 'warrior cells' that planned and implemented the bombing.

Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests
  • Andrew Yeo
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    13 June 2011
  • Anti-U.S. base protests, played out in parliaments and the streets of host nations, continue to arise in different parts of the world. In a novel approach, this book examines the impact of anti-base movements and the important role bilateral alliance relationships play in shaping movement outcomes. The author explains not only when and how anti-base movements matter, but also how host governments balance between domestic and international pressure on base-related issues. Drawing on interviews with activists, politicians, policy makers and U.S. base officials in the Philippines, Japan (Okinawa), Ecuador, Italy and South Korea, the author finds that the security and foreign policy ideas held by host government elites act as a political opportunity or barrier for anti-base movements, influencing their ability to challenge overseas U.S. basing policies.

The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics
  • Clifford Bob
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    27 February 2012
  • This book is an eye-opening account of transnational advocacy, not by environmental and rights groups, but by conservative activists. Mobilizing around diverse issues, these networks challenge progressive foes across borders and within institutions. In these globalized battles, opponents struggle as much to advance their own causes as to destroy their rivals. Deploying exclusionary strategies, negative tactics and dissuasive ideas, they aim both to make and unmake policy. In this work, Clifford Bob chronicles combat over homosexuality and gun control in the UN, the Americas, Europe and elsewhere. He investigates the 'Baptist-burqa' network of conservative believers attacking gay rights, and the global gun coalition blasting efforts to control firearms. Bob draws critical conclusions about norms, activists and institutions, and his broad findings extend beyond the culture wars. They will change how campaigners fight, scholars study policy wars, and all of us think about global politics.

Page 3 of 4