ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, there has been an unprecedented mobilization of street protests worldwide, from the demonstrations that helped bring progressive governments to power in Latin America, to the Arab Spring, to Occupy movements in the United States and Europe, to democracy protests in China. This edited volume investigates the current status, nature and dynamics of the new politics that characterizes social movements from around the world that are part of this revolutionary wave.

Spanning case studies from Latin America, North and South Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America, this volume examines the varied manifestations of the current cycle of protest, which emerged from the Global South and spread to the North and highlights their interconnections – the globalized nature of these social movements. Analytically converging around Sidney Tarrow’s emphasis on protest cycles, political opportunity structures and identity, the individual chapters investigate processes such as global framing, internationalization, diffusion, scale shifts, externalizations and transnational coalition building to provide an analytic cartography of the current state of social movements as they are simultaneously globalizing while still being embedded in their respective localities.

Looking at new ways of thinking and new forms of challenging power, this comprehensive volume will be of great interest to graduates and scholars in the fields of globalization, social movements and international politics.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Setting the stage

part I|67 pages

Latin America

chapter 2|16 pages

Constructing autonomy

Zapatista strategies of indigenous resistance in Mexico

chapter 3|17 pages

New social movement governance in Bolivia

Contention in a multiethnic democracy

chapter 4|15 pages

Cycles of protest and social movements in Brazil

The MST, the 2013 protests, and the 2016 movements around impeachment

part II|91 pages

Africa and the Middle East

chapter 6|13 pages

Transition of governance in Egypt

chapter 9|12 pages

Sisterhood in the age of imperialism

Women’s movements engaging transnational activism in postcolonial Muslim societies of MENA

chapter 10|18 pages

Revolution or retaliation

Contested meanings in the Syrian uprising

chapter 11|14 pages

South African social movements

Between confrontation and cooptation

part III|50 pages

Europe and the United States

chapter 12|16 pages

The Global Social Justice Movement and its subterranean afterlife in Europe

The rhizomatic epoch of contention – from the Zapatistas to the European anti-austerity protests

chapter 13|14 pages

Occupy

Prehistories and continuities

part IV|31 pages

Asia

chapter 16|16 pages

Demanding state intervention

New opportunities for popular protest in China