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Book ReviewsCaroline W. Lee a , Steven Boutcher b , Benjamin Ferron c , MajidRfaizadeh d , Swetha Rao Dhananka e , Bin Xu f , Dana Williams g ,Giuseppe Caruso h , Suryakant Waghmore i , Alexander Hensby j ,Stefania Milan k & Gian-Andrea Monsch la Anthropology and Sociology Department, Lafayette Collegeb Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherstc Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Rennes, Centre de Recherches surl'Action Politique en Europed University of California, Santa Barbarae Institute of Political and International Studies, University ofLausannef Asian Studies and Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies,Florida International Universityg Valdosta State Universityh Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research, Universityof Helsinkii Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbaij University of Edinburghk European University Institute and Central European Universityl Institute of Political and International Studies, University ofLausanne

Available online: 22 Nov 2011

To cite this article: Caroline W. Lee, Steven Boutcher, Benjamin Ferron, Majid Rfaizadeh, SwethaRao Dhananka, Bin Xu, Dana Williams, Giuseppe Caruso, Suryakant Waghmore, Alexander Hensby,Stefania Milan & Gian-Andrea Monsch (2011): Book Reviews, Social Movement Studies, 10:4, 441-463

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Book Reviews

Handbook of Social Movements across Disciplines (Handbooks of Sociology and

Social Research Series)

Bert Klandermans and Conny Roggeband (Eds)

New York, Springer, 2007, vii þ326 pp., index, £144.00, ISBN 978-0-387-70959-8

(hardback), £67.99, ISBN 978-0-387-76580-8 (paperback)

Type in ‘Handbook of the Sociology of’ into Google and its autocomplete feature offers up

a bounty of options: morality, health, religion, education, gender, or finance, to start. Due

to trends in academic publishing, the age of pricey handbooks intended to be definitive

references in their field is upon us. Of course, this proliferation challenges the notion that

any one is truly essential for institutional collections. At their worst, these doorstoppers

contain 30-plus disconnected chapters of wildly uneven quality and uniformly slapdash

editing. A time-pressed academic will skim the introduction and contents for a useful cite

and move along to more rewarding reads.

All of which is to ask, is the Handbook of Social Movements across Disciplines one of

these groaners? I am delighted to report that this is a very different kind of handbook, and

one that merits more attention than it seems to have gathered thus far (a quick search

reveals few, if any, English-language reviews). Bert Klandermans and Conny Roggeband

have assembled a tight collection of six essays on disciplinary approaches to the study of

social movements. A chapter each is devoted to perspectives from political science,

history, anthropology, and social psychology. Two chapters cover structural and cultural

approaches within sociology.

The chapters differ in style but are consistently thorough. Jackie Smith and Tina Fetner

provide a comprehensive survey of structural approaches (I counted over 250 citations for

this chapter alone), while James Jasper offers a lively account of cultural approaches and

their shortcomings, beginning not in the expected ‘cultural turn’ of the social sciences, but

in ancient Greek and Roman interest in rhetoric. Interestingly, the only chapter that does

not provide an intellectual history is the one by Brian Dill and Ronald Aminzade on

historical approaches. The authors, instead, sample 60 articles by historians on social

movements over three decades, and analyze prevailing tendencies in this work—a choice

that reveals much about the rhetorical proclivities of historians.

Lengthy and exacting, the chapters read less as state-of-the-field pieces and more as

exemplary field examinations penned by experts who are well versed in the intellectual

ancestry of recent scholarship. According to Jasper, ‘Each intellectual fashion inspires a

backlash, in what looks like a repetitive cycle but is more of a spiral: we never quite return

to the same place’ (p. 61). Taken together, they produce a systematic understanding of the

idiosyncratic and differentiated development processes of social movement research in the

disciplines. David Meyer and Lindsey Lupo, for instance, argue that political science has

1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/11/040441-23

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614117

Social Movement Studies,Vol. 10, No. 4, 441–463, November 2011

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failed to analyze social movements as distinct phenomena despite promising insights

from numerous sub-areas, resulting in ‘missed analytical opportunities’ (p. 112).

The cross-disciplinary scope of the volume means that contributors are acutely attuned to

what is absent as well as present. Nearly all of the chapters contain suggestions for further

reading and unanswered questions for future research—not the same as cutting-edge

questions, but equally important. While the chapters on their home disciplines will contain

limited revelations for movement scholars, the text will be a useful resource for professors

designing interdisciplinary courses and for graduate students delving into new literatures

for uncommon research questions.

However, the volume itself may be most fascinating as a contribution to the sociology of

knowledge. In the introductory essay, Roggeband and Klandermans argue that their aim is

to stimulate interdisciplinary research, a task which cannot be accomplished without

understanding the distinct contributions and assumptions of disciplines that often talk past

each other. The editors claim that conceptual innovations have heretofore diffused from

peripheral disciplines through the ‘central node’ of sociology, where movement

scholarship has developed a ‘critical mass’ as a central, stand-alone research area

(pp. 6–7). It is quite surprising for this researcher to hear that sociology is most coherent

when so many critiques of the discipline contend that it is plagued by fragmentation.

Perhaps, silos have underappreciated virtues.

The argument that it is essential to understanding interdisciplinarity from a disciplinary

perspective is intriguing, especially inasmuch as the volume also proves the reverse: many

of the (successfully interdisciplinary) contributors describe disciplines in which they are

not centrally located. Boundary crossers are well-positioned to shed light on the oddities

and myopias of disciplinary cultures. Many years hence, when an intellectual descendant

of Randall Collins is writing the ‘Handbook of the Sociology of Social Science’ and needs

a critical guide to interdisciplinary fashions of the 2000s, she could do worse than look to

this unique volume as an important turn in the spiral.

Caroline W. Lee

Anthropology and Sociology Department, Lafayette College

leecw@lafayette.edu

q 2011 Caroline W. Lee

Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements

Nella Van Dyke and Holly J. McCammon (Eds)

Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2010, ix þ329 pp., index, $82.50,

ISBN 978-0-8166-6733-8 (hardback), $27.50, ISBN 978-0-8166-6734-5 (paperback)

Scholars have increasingly focused their attention on understanding the dynamics of social

movement coalitions. However, the topic remains understudied and scattered across the

literature, with no clear theoretical framework for scholars working in this area.

Strategic Alliances fills this void. Nella Van Dyke and Holly McCammon have assembled

an impressive mix of contributions that provide a focused theoretical framework for

research on coalition formation.

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The volume is organized around three sections. The first section examines the role of

social ties between organizations and activists that provide the foundation for coalition

formation. Similar to research on individual recruitment, these studies demonstrate the

importance of prior social ties for organizational collaboration. For example, Catherine

Corrigall-Brown and David Meyer’s chapter demonstrates that prior connections between

six core activists helped facilitate the Win Without War coalition—a group of

organizations that mobilized to oppose the Iraq War. Corrigall-Brown and Meyer argue

that not all organizations or individuals are likely to join coalitions; however, ‘social ties

between individuals are highly predictive of which groups and individuals are targets of

mobilization’ (p. 12). Thus, social ties between activists are an important mechanism for

explaining which groups collaborate. Although several scholars point to ties between

organizations as an important mechanism for forming coalitions, there remain questions

about how these ties affect the composition of the coalition. For instance, are these

coalitions less diverse in terms of the goals and ideologies represented compared to other

coalitions which were formed in the absence of strong organizational ties?

The second section of the volume examines the role of interests, ideology and identities

in the formation of coalitions. Several chapters demonstrate that coalitions are most easily

facilitated when there is at least some sort of ideological congruence between groups and

when they share similar goals. For example, Daniel Cornfield and Holly McCammon’s

chapter examined the increasing convergence between the American Federation of Labor

and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the decades leading up to their merger.

The policy convergence between both organizations laid the foundation for the merger to

occur and maintain itself. Although shared interests facilitate coalition formation, they do

not always lead to collaboration. Benita Roth’s chapter demonstrates that even though

activists might share similar goals, their ideological differences can trump their

collaboration from the outset. Roth analyzed feminist organizations in the USA during the

1960s and 1970s and found that coalitions did not form across ethnic and racial

boundaries. Even though these groups shared similar goals, their ideological

understandings about the correct way to organize women led them to focus within ethnic

and racial boundaries and not attempt to build alliances with other groups. Roth’s chapter

also demonstrates how cultural factors (i.e. ideology) can trump rational interests. Thus,

the decision to form coalitions is not always based on rational calculations on the part of

activists. Culture matters.

The third section examines the role of political context for coalition formation. Similar

to research on movement mobilization more generally, these chapters focus on the

structure of political opportunities that facilitate and constrain organizations from working

together. Although much of social movement scholarship focuses on the expansion of

political opportunities for mobilization, several of the chapters in this volume focus on the

role of common threats (political and economic) that spur organizations to collaborate.

Often, the factors that lead to coalition formation are multiple and interacting. The final

section focuses on the dynamic processes of coalitions—although many of the chapters

throughout the book also focus on the interacting forces leading to coalition formation.

Elizabeth Borland argues that political context alone is not enough for producing effective

coalitions—activists have to perceive these shifts as opportunities for collaboration. Her

case study of the women’s movement in Buenos Aires demonstrates how the political

context was mediated by differences in identities among women’s groups in the wake of

the Argentinian economic crisis in 2001. Thus, there are often multiple pathways to

Book Reviews 443

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coalition formation, which is the focus of the chapter by Holly McCammon and Nella Van

Dyke. In their analysis of the existing empirical research on coalitions, they use

Qualitative Comparative Analysis to find out which factors are the most important across

cases. Although previous research demonstrates that a host of factors appear causally

important for coalitions, only threats or a common ideology were both necessary and

sufficient in their meta-analysis of existing research.

In addition to the coherent framework presented across the chapters, another major

strength is the overall diversity of research on coalitions included. Substantively, the

chapters range from historical coalitions to more current collaborations among movement

groups. For example, Larry Isaac’s chapter examines the formation of coalitions betweeen

local government and social movements that countered labour activism in the USA during

the late 19th century. Daniel Cornfield and Holly McCammon’s chapter focuses on the

converging agendas of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial

Organizations prior to their merger in 1955. Additionally, several of the contributions

examine coalition formation outside of the USA, including examples of coalitions in Asia,

Europe and Latin America. The contributors also examine coalitions using a broad range

of research methods, ranging from case studies, historical-comparative methods, network

analysis and event history analysis.

This volume raises more questions than it answers, which is a testament to its real

strength. For instance, do the factors highlighted here vary by the type of coalition? Are

coalitions that include elites or state actors different from coalitions comprising only

movement actors? Are cross-movement coalitions easier to organize than single-

movement coalitions? Do conservative coalitions differ from those on the left? Are the

factors that lead to coalition formation different from the factors that sustain them? These

questions and others will sustain continued research and this volume provides a solid

foundation for subsequent scholarship on coalitions.

Steven Boutcher

Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

boutcher@soc.umass.edu

q 2011 Steven Boutcher

The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance

Julie Norman

London, Routledge, 2010, xiii þ157 pp., index, £70.00, ISBN 978-0-415-77995-1

(hardback)

What are the social and political conditions of possibility for non-violent collective action

in a violent context? Julie Norman’s book offers theoretical and empirical answers to this

question. She explores a disregarded aspect of the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli

occupation, that of popular or civil-based resistance during the second Intifada

(2000–2008). A doctor in political science and a lecturer at Concordia University

(Montreal), Norman shows that, far away from media stereotypes, the Palestinian residents

of the West Bank never stopped using non-violent forms of action and unarmed insurrection

during this period. However, she aims at understanding why this form of activism has

444 Book Reviews

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known such little success, compared with militant and armed actions on the one hand, and

the strong popular support for non-violent actions during the first Intifada on the other hand.

Norman’s thesis is that this form of resistance is the product of a strategic choice rather

than a pure question of principle. She insists on the fact that the popular support for

non-violent action is not necessarily correlated with a rejection of armed struggle. Her

theoretical framework crosses academic studies on social movements and activist

literature on non-violence. She starts by defining key notions such as strategic

non-violence, direct action, protest, persuasion, non-cooperation, and civil disobedience.

Norman then proposes a historical background demonstrating that non-violent action has

been a constant in Palestinian national struggle since the beginning of the Zionist

colonization, even before the Balfour declaration (1917): protests, petitions, strikes, shop

closures, non-cooperation. The study precisely shows that the use of violence is

systematically stronger when the use of non-violent methods failed.

Her comparison of the Palestinian repertoires of action between the two Intifadas is

convincing. She reminds us that around 90 to 95% of the calls to action during the first

Intifada (1987–1992) were non-violent. This contributed to widespread popular

participation, enabling the struggle against Israeli occupation to overlap with nationalist

idealism for the creation of a Palestinian state. In contrast, the second Intifada was

dominated by the use of political violence, with collective struggles mainly reduced to a

sometimes cynical anti-Israeli dimension.

However, civil resistance during the second Intifada has been a real phenomenon,

especially since 2003, offering many Palestinians a third way between military action and

disenchanted defection. But this movement has been fragmented and localized in rural

villages, such as Budrus, Biddu, Bil’in, south Bethlehem, and the south Hebron Hills.

However, it has been legitimated by its popular dimension and its organization at a

grassroots level. Support from the Palestinian Authority for these movements came late

(2004) and remained limited. It explains the importance of the participation of

international activists (International Solidarity Movement, Palestinian Solidarity Project,

Christian Peacemaker Teams), as well as Israeli anti-occupation groups (Ta’ayush,

Anarchists Against The Wall, Gush Shalom, Peace Now).

In parallel to direct actions on the ground, the author shows that several types of indirect

actions have been used, as illustrated by popular campaigns (Stop the Wall Campaign),

action dialogues (Combatants for Peace), the role of political parties (Fatah Youth groups),

the production of alternative media (alternative news networks, documentaries,

participatory media). Notwithstanding the subtlety of her analysis of the complexity of

the activists’ identities, from community activists to young people, or militant activists and

prisoners, it would have been interesting to read greater detail on the sociological profiles

and biographical trajectories of the activists involved in these actions. According to the

author, the failure of this movement is not due to a lack of support for non-violent action,

but to external constraints at local, national and international levels. The arguments

explaining the weakness of the movement through its organizing and mobilizing structures

(no unified movement leadership, the professionalization of NGO networks after the

Oslo agreements, the institutionalization of political parties), as well as the negative role

of the Palestinian Authority and, above all, the Israeli military occupation, give justice

to the sociological experiences of West Bank Palestinians. Norman offers a stimulating

interpretation of the role of international constraints in limiting the emergence of a massive

popular movement. She demonstrates how the post-Oslo redefinition of non-violence

Book Reviews 445

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as people-to-people dialogue, within the framework of the institutionalization of the

peace-building industry, strongly contributed to taking away many young Palestinians

from non-violent methods, which they assimilate to a normalization of the Israeli

occupation.

Norman’s book empirically demonstrates that contemporary Palestinian resistance is

not reducible to the cliches conveyed by anti-terrorist propaganda. Her analysis of the

discourse and practice of the Sumoud (steadfastness in Arabic) not only shows a

remarkable sensitivity to Palestinian daily experience of resistance to the occupation, but

confirms the findings of other works on the anthropology of war. At the same time, the

author never reduces the defence of non-violent resistance to a depoliticized pacifism, or

considers armed resistance as an intrinsically illegitimate form of struggle. Written in a

clear and concise style, it will be a useful reading both for academics and students

specialized in the study of social movements’ strategies in oppressive contexts and

non-violence, as well as journalists or activists looking for the seeds of a just peace in the

Middle East.

Insisting on the importance of internal constraints rather than psychological motivations

to explain both the use and the weakness of the Palestinian civil-based resistance,

Norman’s work opens a reflection on the comparability of her case study. Nelson Mandela

sets out in his autobiography the detailed story of the popular campaign conducted by the

African National Congress in 1954–1955 against the eviction of the Black inhabitants of

the township of Sophiatown. He shows how its failure directly led the anti-apartheid

movement’s leaders to choose violent and armed forms of resistance in the following

years. The Afrikaner press consequently launched a systematic campaign of propaganda to

denounce the threat of these ‘terrorist’ groups to public order. Is this so different from the

practical contradictions which structure the contemporary forms of the Palestinian

resistance?

Benjamin Ferron

Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Rennes

Centre de Recherches sur l’Action Politique en Europe

benjamin.ferron@univ-rennes1.fr

q 2011 Benjamin Ferron

Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

Asef Bayat

Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press, 2010, xi þ 320 pp., index, $60, ISBN

9780804769235 (hardback), $21.95, ISBN 9780804769242 (paperback)

Asef Bayat, a scholar of social movements, working-class activism, the agency of the

urban poor, and the politics of space and place in the Middle East has published his most

recent book entitled Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Bayat

is a sociologist by training whose work has consistently been theoretically informed and

engaged. Bayat’s most recent book provides an overview of the intellectual project that he

has been engaged in over the past decade. As a public intellectual and scholar, Bayat

examines the lives of the working poor and other subordinated groups in the Middle East,

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including women. He observes how these groups have been forces for social and political

change in the region. As such, he offers an alternative theoretical paradigm to the one of

mainstream Euro-American political science which claims that (male) sociopolitical elites

are the only significant agents of change. Life as Politics is a collection of articles and

essays originally published by Bayat in a range of academic journals and edited volumes

between the years 2000 and 2009.

Bayat points out that, through the prism of prevailing social movement theories

formulated largely by western social scientists, many scholars have concluded that

youth and women’s movements do not exist in the Middle East because the

characteristics of these groups do not comply with the principle ‘framework’. This

conclusion relies, specifically, on Euro-American patterns of historical development and

socio-political contention. Given the fact that these social movement theories draw

purely upon western experiences, Bayat questions the extent to which predominant

western social movement theories can account for the complexities and particularities of

the socio-political and socio-religious ‘social movements’ of the Middle East. He

emphasizes that it is problematic to make a comparison that takes one of the elements

of comparison as a ‘norm’ while not questioning the ‘original configuration’. Because

dominant western ‘models’ have specific historical genealogies, it is debatable if they

can effectively explain the intricate dynamics of the resistance and upheavals of the

Middle East.

Bayat contends that predominant western social movement theories fail to pay adequate

attention to the way in which disenfranchised urban youth in the region, ‘through their

quiet and unassuming daily struggles, refigure new life and communities for themselves

and different urban realities on the ground in Middle Eastern cities [ . . . ] not through

formal institutional channels, from which they are largely excluded, but through direct

actions in the very zones of exclusion’ (p. 5). The book argues that many Westerners who

promote social change in the Middle East get it wrong by failing to comprehend the

particular fluidity of the region’s people, social structures, movements and cultures. Life as

Politics has contributed to the conceptualization of social movements, agency and politics

in the Middle East by introducing the term ‘social non-movements’. According to Bayat,

‘social non-movements’ refers to the ‘collective actions of non-collective actors; they

embody shared large numbers of ordinary people whose fragmented but similar activities

trigger much social change, even though these practices are rarely guided by an ideology

or recognizable leaderships and organizations’ (p. 14).

Examples include urban youth struggling to create a space for ‘fun’ lifestyles and

ideologies which are not approved by the state or by Islamist movements; urban poor

running their own parking services; Iranian youth throwing parties behind closed doors;

daily cosmopolitan co-existence between Muslims and Christians in an Egyptian suburb;

Muslim women wearing the veil, or hijab, based on their individual preferences; Egyptian

and Iranian youth expressing themselves by balancing God, fun, and sex; and the ways in

which urban public spaces have transformed into locations of struggle in many parts of the

Middle East.

Bayat contrasts these movements with the organized social movements of the West.

According to western sociologists, ‘social movements’ are constituted by three

fundamental elements. First, movements must have an organized and sustained claim

on the authorities. Second, they must hold a repertoire of performances such as street

marches, public meetings, associations and media statements. Third, through a variety of

Book Reviews 447

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political actions, the movements have ‘public representations of the cause’s worthiness,

unity, numbers, and commitments’ (p.9). On the other hand, social movements in the

Middle East bear different characteristics. First, they have a tendency to be unspoken, yet

action-oriented. Their demands are made on an individual basis rather than through groups

that are ideologically driven, audible and unified. Second, despite government sanctions,

people practice their demands directly rather than organizing and mobilizing under leaders

who put pressure on authorities. Finally, the resistance takes place during everyday life

rather than through extraordinary deeds of mobilization such as attending meetings,

lobbying, petitioning and so on.

Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East is a source for scholars

and activists who seek to gain a comprehensive and deep understanding of the ongoing

struggles of people in the Middle East who struggle for a better life in the face of severe

socio-economic conditions and the brutality of oppressive, dictatorial regimes.

Majid Rfaizadeh

University of California, Santa Barbara

majid_rafizadeh@hotmail.com

q 2011 Majid Rfaizadeh

Protest and Social Movements in the Developing World

Shinichi Shigetomi & Kumiko Makino (Eds)

Massachusetts, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009, xii þ246 pp., index, £58.50, ISBN 978 1

84844 362 4 (hardback)

This edited volume is the outcome of a two-year long academic dialogue around the theme

of ‘social movements and popular participation in developing countries’. The authors of

the book sections heed the call from social movement scholars to extend the study of social

movements beyond the realm of western political contexts, in order to revisit prevalent

theoretical paradigms mainly consolidated on the basis of western case studies, against

non-western societies. The book is organized in three parts, each stressing one theoretical

notion to explain the emergence of social movements: Part I emphasizes resource

mobilization in a peace initiative in Columbia and inter-provincial coordination in

Thailand. Part II regards the political opportunity structure for the environmental

movement in China, Aids activism in South Africa and the mobilization by the

unemployed in Argentina. Part III describes framing processes at play in movements about

indigenous peoples in Mexico, women in India and youth in Nigeria. These countries are

subsumed under the controversial term of ‘developing countries’. This book contributes to

a greater visibility of the struggles taking place in these countries. The excellent and

concise contextualization of the movements in social, historical and political terms makes

the case studies a fascinating read. Describing the properties of the sites, the

embeddedness of the movements is the rationale of this edited book.

The introduction promises theoretical innovation in scrutinizing social movements in

developing countries. The principal argument of the book is that the ‘objective and

environmental dimensions’ (p. 2) of social movements have been left unexamined within

‘western theories’. They thus aim ‘to bring back environmental factors into the analysis’

(p. 2) by asking how the explanatory processes of social movement emergence identified

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in ‘western theory’, are conditioned within contexts of developing countries (p. 5). It is

argued that such factors are serious constraints on economic resources, more direct

authoritarian control on citizen’s political behavior, stricter control on mass media and

fewer educated individuals free from their societal position (p. 227).

While the identification of these distinct factors seems to be highly pertinent and the

central argument of the book is noteworthy, it does not demonstrate enough depth to result

in the theoretical enhancements that the editors claim. The lack of depth can be noticed in

three aspects. First, the causal model in which the environmental factors are embedded

remains rather confusing. The temporality is not clearly outlined: are the environmental

factors intermediary variables to the relationship between those identified by western

theory effecting the emergence of social movement (as presented in the figure, p. 10) or do

they condition the former (as discussed in the introduction)? The reader is not given a lucid

analytical lens to approach the individual articles.

Second, a deeper consideration of regime variation among the selected cases studies,

and its repercussions on the emergence of social movement, would have been desirable

and could have avoided the diluting label of ‘developing countries’. Such a lacuna does not

allow identification of possible patterns within regime types which could have enhanced

the explanatory power of the distinct factors that have been identified.

Third, the explicit use of the social movement vocabulary varies across individual

articles. The contributors making the most use of it are those included in the second part,

who consider the structure of political opportunity. These authors are also those who are

most critical of the theory they mobilize and make a case for more nuanced and diversified

effects of such a structure. While the avoidance of specific vocabulary makes the text

easily accessible to a broader audience, at the same time, common processes and

mechanisms described within the episodes of mobilization are not identified as such, hence

leading to a possible camouflage of theoretically established mechanisms. On the other

hand, processes and mechanisms found to be specific to developing countries could go

unnoticed, as they are not theoretically grasped in a sufficient manner. For example,

Shigetomi describes the emergence of a forum movement in Thailand distinct from the

mass mobilization and NGOs, which has a peculiar relationship with the state—this could

inform typologies of society—state relations. The specific influence of the church on the

respective movements in Columbia and Mexico has been highlighted by Hataya and

Yonemura—these case studies could contribute to describing the resource potential that

the church represents. Practices of clientelism in Argentina and co-optation in India and

China are described by Usami, Murayama and Otsuka—such accounts could help explain

how such practices influence mobilizing potentials. The change in targets of social

movements in post-colonial societies such as South Africa by Makino and India by

Murayama—could point out history’s legacy to social movements. The necessity of social

movements becoming a survival strategy to assure physical security and a certain basis of

sustenance is argued by Hataya in the Columbian case and by Mochizuki in the Nigerian

example. All articles contain interesting elements to specify ‘mainstream’ theories.

A deeper discussion of these novel elements could further contribute to expanding the

geographical reach and enhancing the explicative strengths of the established theories.

Most interestingly, a common underlying issue that is noteworthy in all the articles, the

effect of the introduction of neo-liberal policies that have directly or indirectly caused an

uprising across developing countries on varied issues, has not gained much ground. These

include the range of effects of neo-liberal policies that encompass changes in funding

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patterns, which are exemplified by the case studies in Columbia, Thailand and India; the

ravaging effects of structural adjustment programs and trade agreements producing strong

grievances expressed through social movements in Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria; and

the interconnectedness of the issue of Aids treatment coverage and the required scale shifts

in the struggle depicted in the case of South Africa. For all the effort to argue for the

distinctiveness of the contexts, like most social movements around the world with

concerns for equality and protection of minorities and the marginalized, even these case

studies are expressions of human desires for peace, stability and dignity.

While the contributions as an ensemble reify the established social movement theories,

they also put their reach into question. The individual articles are highly informative and

valuable owing to the rigorous contextualization of the movements and the attention to

detail of the movement cycles. This edited volume will appeal to social movement

scholars as well as to activists interested in the specific countries or issues included in this

book.

Swetha Rao Dhananka

Institute of Political and International Studies, University of Lausanne

swetha.raodhananka@unil.ch

q 2011 Swetha Rao Dhananka

Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao’s Great Leap Forward Famineand the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village

Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, xxii þ383 pp., indicies, £50.00, ISBN

9780521897495 (hardback), £22.99, ISBN 9780521722308 (paperback)

In Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China, Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr. makes laudable

contributions to social scientific studies of local politics during the Great Leap Forward

famine in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even a cursory reader will not miss the book’s

most impressive feature: a rich narrative based on oral history and local documents, which

the author collected in his twenty years of fieldwork in Da Fo, a village in Henan Province.

The author argues that the Great Leap Forward led to distrust in and everyday resistance to

the Communist Party’s rule at the local level. Memories of the suffering and brutality also

persisted and complicated state legitimacy in the post-Mao era. But the book is more

complex and historically deeper than this succinct statement. It is not just a case study; it is

an epic of a village’s suffering, endeavor, and struggles over four decades. The author

demonstrates that the Great Leap Forward had its roots long before the 1950s and

influenced local politics even in the years after the Cultural Revolution.

The best chapters, Chapters 5 and 6, are devoted to vivid descriptions of the villagers’

strategies of survival and resistance despite surveillance and torture from the local

officials. The author provides enthralling details of the villagers’ tactics in seizing every

opportunity to survive the catastrophe, such as foot-dragging, relatives’ remittances,

migrating to less harsh places, producing earth salt in exchange for food on the black

market, crop theft, and so on. The author uses a whole chapter to describe the villagers’

major strategy of survival, chi qing (eating immature crops). Driven by hunger, many

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villagers took false breaks during their field work and ate crops from the collective field

before harvest. This behavior was certainly highly risky since the villagers could be caught

and then ‘struggled’—publicly humiliated and tortured. Despite the commune-level

officials’ attempt to prohibit such behavior, the Da Fo village brigades and production

team leaders turned a blind eye to this in order not to offend their fellow community

members. Consequently, chi qing prevailed and somehow ruined the already disastrous

local agricultural production. But it led to the relatively lower mortality rate in Da Fo than

other comparable places. Chi qing and other strategies were the everyday, low-profile

forms of resistance to the state’s policy errors and local government’s harsh suppression.

By this nuanced description, Thaxton also explains why, as the famine killed a massive

number of people, there was no large-scale public rebellion against the government. The

author’s artful narrative can be read as a comparable case to James Scott’s and John

Gaventa’s classics. In this sense, this book is not just about China but also has general

significance. The author, however, achieves this not by theoretical speculation but by in-

depth, long-time devotion to careful fieldwork.

The book is a single case study at its best. In addition to the rich data, the book dialogues

with previous studies of the Great Leap Forward in particular and Chinese politics,

resistance and disaster in general. The theoretical dialogue, however, is woven into

narratives and is illustrated in empirical data. Too often social scientific studies use dry

theoretical discussions to turn off readers or try to submerge readers by massive but

disorganized data. This is not the case in Thaxton’s book. The narrative structure, plot, and

characters remind the readers of the best Chinese novels about one single village’s fate in

the historical changes after 1949, such as Gu Hua’s Furong Zheng and Zhang Wei’s

The Ancient Boat. Like those literary epics, this book will have a lasting influence on

Chinese studies.

Despite my enthusiasm, I do have some reservations. In Chapter 7, the author challenges

Yang Dali’s argument that the famine only delegitimized communes and local officials but

not the central state. The author attempts to claim that the villagers’ tragedies did harm

their confidence in the Party state, and, therefore, the legitimacy of the state was also more

or less ruined. This argument makes more intuitive sense than Yang’s point. It is hard to

believe that the villagers, who were repeatedly tortured and had witnessed widespread

corruption, only blamed local officials but still maintained their blind faith in the state. But

Thaxton does not provide adequate evidence to support this plausible argument.

The thorny concept of legitimacy can be defined either normatively, as moral and

ideological principles, or constructively, as the subordinates’ subjective perception of

political regimes. The author seems inclined to the latter. But, surprisingly, in contrast to

the numerous quotes in other chapters, Chapter 7 does not contain many of the villagers’

own words about their subjective evaluations of the state as well as their interpretations

about justice. The author does provide stories about corruption, but objective facts about

malpractice cannot replace subjective perceptions. Moreover, the author, in fact, talks past

Yang Dali because his analysis is still about how the villagers hated the local officials

rather than the central state.

There are some other minor issues. As a collective memory scholar, I am a bit

disappointed about the author’s lack of engagement with collective memory literature.

Many relevant classics are either absent or only treated in courtesy citations. The book

could also have contained a glossary of local terms in Chinese characters. Sometimes I, a

native speaker of Chinese, have difficulty in deciphering pinyin (Romanization) of a few

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terms, which I suspect are colloquial expressions in that particular area. There also are

quite a few mistranslated or misspelled words. For example, yinjian (p.305) is misspelled

as yingjian and mistranslated as ‘heaven’, which is the opposite of its meaning in Chinese,

‘hell’.

Despite these issues, I still recommend this book as one of the most important studies of

the Great Leap Forward for any professional researchers and general readers interested in

Chinese politics, Chinese history, political scientific studies of rural areas, local resistance

and protests and disasters. This book should be on any reading list about modern Chinese

politics.

Bin Xu

Asian Studies and Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies

Florida International University

xubin013@gmail.com

q 2011 Bin Xu

Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos (International

Library of Sociology)

Graeme Chesters and Ian Welsh

London, Routledge, 2006, ix þ195 pp., indices, ISBN 0-415-34414-X (hardback)

North American students of social movements may struggle somewhat with this book,

given its European orientation to the subject. The very first chapter includes a broad

smattering of so-called ‘minoritarian’ theorists, including Melucci, Lyotard, Bateson,

Goffman, and so forth. This chapter sets up the rest of the book and is of crucial

significance. The authors weave a story about the contemporary alternative globalization

movement (AGM) that relies on a re-framing of various movement themes in light of these

minoritarian theorists. Yet, the biggest debt of Complexity and Social Movements is to the

recent works by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (including Empire and Multitude). As

this book seems to be an extension of this line of thinking, I fear it would be rather difficult

to comprehend without a functioning knowledge of Hardt and Negri. Due to the book’s

title, one might expect a scholarly appraisal of the now near-mainstream scientific

traditions of chaos and complexity theory as applied to social movements. Instead, readers

should take note of a more important word in the book’s subtitle (‘multitude’), which in

academic-ese refers to Hardt and Negri’s neo-autonomist ideas. This book is not only an

extension of the ideas to be found in Empire, but also of the compositional style as well.

For the North American, research-study-inclined readers, the authors do give a critical

treatment to certain European AGM protests in the early 2000s, for example, the

anti-World Bank protests in the Czech Republic in 2000. Chapters 3 and 4 are likely the

most universally interesting to social movement students, as they are a learned discussion

of these protests. The authors describe the varied participants (including police and a

middle ‘third element’), efforts of the young Czech state to create ‘win–win’ conditions

for all participants and the enthusiastic framing attempts on all sides. Perhaps the most

interesting aspects of this portion of Complexity and Social Movements are the authors’

positioning of the ‘tactical frivolity’ bloc in the protests (especially as a highly reflexive,

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anti-machismo element) and the common portrayal of protesters as ‘folk devils’. This

latter contribution extends some of the authors’ previous analysis on states’ practices in

constructing social movements as the arch enemies of societies. Here, the authors deal

with the anti-capitalist May Day 2000 demonstrations in London and the mass media’s

narrow and cynical treatment of such protests, which resulted in the British state more

easily restricting future protests, regardless of the actual dangers posed by demonstrations.

In relation to this analysis, the closest recent work to Complexity and Social Movements

published in English is probably Jeffrey Juris’s excellent Networking Futures, which

focused on similar European activities initiated by the AGM, particularly in Barcelona

(related to Peoples’ Global Action and the European Social Forum). Taken together, the

two books nicely complement each other: Juris’s detailed ethnography and the current

book’s synthesis of minoritarian theorists.

The authors state in the preface that they wish for their scholarship to be accessible

(p. viii) and useful for actual social movement participants (p. ix). For presumably

sympathetic observer-participants, this is a noble and admirable goal (if only half of all

scholars aspired to such standards!). But, I am uncertain as to how accessible

Complexity and Social Movements really is. I can easily see it being read by similar

activist-intellectuals, but I doubt (although I sincerely hope I am wrong) that the average

AGM sympathizer, demonstrator or militant will wish to spend their time trying to

ascertain the insights—as funneled through the Hardt–Negri lens—as contained here.

In my own experience, most activists (including the more intellectually inclined,

book-reading ones) are highly critical of most scholarship on social movements, finding it

curious at best, navel-gazing or parasitic at its worst. I am afraid Complexity and

Social Movements falls within this nebulous range too, as it offers few practical insights to

activists to hone or extend their pre-existing strategies or tactics, nor does it offer a more

useful frame for interpreting the ravenous force of globalizing capitalism than the

time-tested frames already in use.

There has been a predictable growth of scholar-produced studies on the AGM, with an

impressive range of focus, method and theoretical perspective. Yet, perhaps the best

example of an intellectual theorizing on these issues is offered in the activist-authored

Notes from Nowhere collection. That volume—curious and fascinating to both activists

and scholars—makes grounded connections between movement activities and theory,

particularly through Zapatismo, anarchism, autonomism and radical democratic theory.

These are the ideas that drive the AGM; Complexity and Social Movements (like some

other academic works) tries hard to re-frame the terrain of conflict and the AGM’s

behaviors through tangential theories. Take, for example, how the authors—despite their

being well versed in anarchist theory—never seem to analyze the AGM from

‘minoritarian’ perspectives that would seem highly advantageous, such as anarchism.

This, of course, is ironic, since many commentators have noted the active presence of

anarchists within the AGM, the driving influence of anarchist ideas in movement structure

and tactics, and the arching frame utilized by the media and politicians of the ‘anarchist

criminal’ for the AGM. (It is important to note, however, that most scholars refuse to do

this, despite the astute observations by activists themselves and sympathetic journalists—

maybe indicating a hostility to anarchist ideas in the academy more than the incompetence

of scholars.) A sensible appraisal of that movement by ‘minoritarian’ theories would,

conceivably, necessitate an analysis of this movement via such theories. Yet, ‘anarchism’

does not appear even once in the book’s index—even though Foucault and Lyotard receive

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numerous mentions. Bakunin and Dolgoff appear on one mere page, yet it feels like an

afterthought. Zapatismo is, rightfully so, treated somewhat more favorably, although still

briefly. In this respect, Complexity and Social Movements’ one central weakness is that it

aims too high and attempts to do too much, pulling from all sorts of quarters all at once.

A dilution of the book into a longer, less terse and fragmented collection might have

anchored it more.

These shortcomings aside, there is a lot to like and admire about Complexity and Social

Movements, and I am not dispassionate about the authors’ project. The obligatory

discussion (seemingly mandatory in books about ‘globalization’) about ‘global civil

society’ is excellent and important, and other fascinating insights can be garnered

throughout the book. The book would best serve as a text for a graduate-level social theory

course or maybe a special-topics seminar on globalization. Otherwise, I expect Hardt and

Negri fans will soak up the authors’ ideas and absorb their insights into their own analyses.

It is also clear that the authors have established an impressive and formidable research

trajectory for upcoming years, to elaborate on the various strands they have begun to tie

herein. In this task, I wish them the best of luck.

Dana Williams

Valdosta State University

danawilliams@valdosta.edu

q 2011 Dana Williams

Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age

Geoffrey Pleyers

Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010, xviii þ272 pp., index, £50, ISBN 0-7456-4675-1

(hardback), £16.99, ISBN 978-0-7456-4675-6 (paperback)

The alter-globalisation movement is a complex network of movements, organisations, and

activists whose size, geographical reach and multiplicity of embodiments challenge the

consolidated practices of social research. But examples are flourishing of a growing body

of engaged scholarship that both unveils the complex historical and social dynamics and

may inspire transformative practices. Pleyers’ book is one such example.

Pleyers’ main claim is that the alter-globalisation movement is engaged in a social and

organisational process of individuation; it is developing its identity by attempting to

become an actor. However, this process might not, eventually, give birth to a fully

institutionalised historical actor and, instead, give rise to other potential processes of

individuation, the outcomes of which cannot be foreseen. Such a process of individuation

takes place through the mediation of its two main trends, which Pleyers calls the ‘way of

subjectivity’ and the ‘way of reason’. The former develops subjectivity and creativity, the

latter reason and rationality as the privileged tool for social transformation.

Pleyers’ case studies range from the Zapatistas with its charismatic leadership, its

communal focus, its global networks of supporters and its rootedness in the Southern

Mexican states of Chiapas, to small collectives in Liege, Paris, London and Buenos Aires;

from large NGOs like Global Citizen to bureaucratic initiatives like ATTAC. The first-

hand material familiarises the reader with the activists’ language, practices, world views

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and aspirations and the social environments in which they act. Profound differences can be

noticed in the ways in which society and change are perceived, theory and practice

conceptualised, visions and goals articulated and acted upon within the Alter-

Globalisation movement.

In the first section of the book, Pleyers discusses the role of libertarian and autonomous

direct action groups, loosely organised in affinity groups and horizontal networks often

articulated in virtual spaces of communication, in treading the path to alternative forms of

socialization through a stress on the subjective dimension of existence and on

pre-figurative politics. The second section focuses on the larger NGOs and movements’

organisations whose struggle revolves around the management of specialised expert

knowledge about the current conjuncture and potential alternatives. If the way of

subjectivity stresses the relational nature of existence, knowledge and transformation, the

way of reason opposes the domination of capitalism by mobilising counter-hegemonic

information and knowledge capitals.

For Pleyers the truly innovative way to another world rests with the way of subjectivity

as the way of reason is partly led by an instrumental, unaccountable and vanguardist

leadership, often ideologically inflexible and self-appointed. The argument is compelling;

the alter-globalizers of the way of reason and the globalizers share the very foundations of

social conceptualisation and politics. The true innovators are those who are able to practice

emancipated social relations between autonomous subjectivities. Their relational

conceptualisation of knowledge may be ‘better’ than the instrumental one of both

globalizers’ and alter-globalizers’ way of reasoning.

For narrative reasons the two trends that produce the alter-globalisation movement are

treated separately and Pleyers stresses how these apparently incommensurable tendencies

are often embodied within the same instance. Emotional and relational politics is not alien

to the organisations of the way of reason, just as rationality is not denied by the collectives

of the way of subjectivity. Moreover, Pleyers accounts for a variety of alliances within

spaces of convergences like the Social Forums which illustrate how, though analytically

separated within the confines of the book, the two ways are indeed often intertwined in the

daily practice of activism.

The terms of this alliance have been challenged as in the case of the European Social

Forum in London in 2004 in which the conflict between activists of the way of subjectivity

and reason could not be mediated leading to the organisation of two parallel forums. But

Pleyers’ study pre-figures scenarios rather than laying out alleged historical or structural

necessities. Indeed, the tensions between the two trends might tear the current movement

apart and reformulate processes of individuation that may lead to other and unexpected

historical actors.

The implications of Pleyers’ arguments are twofold. Methodologically, he highlights

apparent contradictions in order to unpack the complexities and explore new ways of

looking at problems. Theoretically, by submitting to the reader’s attention apparent

paradoxes he reformulates traditional matters of concern (both scholarly and activist).

Why are the majority of activists middle class, and why do those most affected by

neoliberal policies not engage with the movement? Why are women less represented than

men, especially in the way of reason? Why is the same true of people of colour, indigenous

people and other marginalised categories?

Moreover, Pleyers illustrates and further substantiates the arguments of scholars like

David Held, Antony Giddens, Alain Touraine, John Holloway, Robert Putnam and Mary

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Kaldor (among others) relating them to the struggles and imagination of activists and

engaged citizens. Following Putnam, Pleyers asks how solidarity is built with a view to

consolidating effective social capital in order to strengthen democracy. To illustrate such a

dynamics Pleyers offers the example of neighbourhood network building in a Catalan city.

With Amartya Sen, he asks how can the necessary capacity be created for responsive

political citizenship. Pleyers provides the example of a collective in Liege. And following

Held, Pleyers asks how the conviviality necessary to build a truly cosmopolitan world be

realised? Pleyers shows how conviviality in activist groups is both practice and objective.

There are other important theoretical and methodological contributions that can only be

mentioned here: the adoption of a cosmopolitan methodology, the reflection on

the theoretical and practical content of categories like activism and citizenship, the

engagement with social dynamics like individuation, autonomy and emancipation. In the

wealth of theoretical engagements it would have been interesting to also see an analysis of

the activists’ views on the main claim of this book. What would the activists of reason and

subjectivity think about the portrait of the mediation between them as a path towards the

individuation of a historical actor? What would their views be about individuation and

historical actors? It is possible to imagine how the way of subjectivity would rather

highlight the multiplicity of historical actors at the global level while, perhaps, the activists

of the way of reason might stress the importance of the individuation of such global actor.

Pleyers’ book is an important addition to the bookshelf of activists and researchers: its

detailed case studies and wide theoretical engagements make it appropriate for both

undergraduate and graduate students.

Giuseppe Caruso

Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research

University of Helsinki

giu.caruso@gmail.com

q 2011 Giuseppe Caruso

Globalizing Social Justice: The Role of Non-Government Organizations in Bringing

about Social Change

Jefferey Atkinson and Martin Scurrah with Jeanet Lingan, Rosa Pizarro and Catherine

Ross

Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, xviii þ244 pp., indices, £57.50,

ISBN 9780230221130 (hardback)

Globalizing Social Justice (GSJ) is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the blurring

of national political and economic boundaries. It analyses the role of civil society in global

democratisation processes through particularly engaging with transnational advocacy

NGOs. The collaborative interventions of Oxfam with local NGOs and grassroots

organisations in South Asia and South America are explored reflexively by the authors,

who are part of Oxfam, to present a pragmatic view on the ‘globalising of social justice

agenda’. In the era of globalisation the role of advocacy NGOs in social change processes

is a debated one. Advocacy NGOs are largely criticised for their politics of

‘de-politicisation’. The authors of GSJ set themselves the agenda of defending

transnational advocacy NGOs which they suggest are increasingly influencing the politics

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and practice of governments, international institutions and corporations. In these neo-

liberal times, where states are increasingly influenced by market interests, the growth of

transnational advocacy is viewed as a ‘third force matching the power and influence of

government and business’ (p. 2). GSJ underlines the importance of transnational

advocacy, their collaboration with local movements and NGOs and their role in bringing

social justice issues to the centre of local politics in the global south. The focus is also on

the ethical challenge facing the northern NGOs representing or speaking for the global

south. The issues of legitimacy, accountability and voice are therefore explored

throughout this work. The typologies of Keck and Sikkink (strategies of advocacy NGOs)

and Jordon and Tuilj (political responsibility) are used to assess functioning and the level

of democratic participation and downward accountability in Oxfam’s interventions.

The major part of GSJ (chapters 3–8) provides introductory and empirical material

from two Oxfam campaigns: Make Trade Fair (MTF) and a campaign against global

extractive industries. In the MTF campaign, Oxfams of various regions aligned under

Oxfam International to protest discriminatory rules of trade favouring powerful countries

and companies. Two sub-campaigns of MTF on garment trade and on agriculture are

discussed in detail in chapters 4 and 5. They specifically document the experience of

campaigns for the rights of garment workers from Sri Lanka and farmers in India

respectively. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 discuss the exploitative practices of extractive industries

affecting the environment and the rights of vulnerable groups in Peru.

Oxfam’s experiences, in terms of local NGO responses, project processes and

outcomes, are presented in these cases. For instance, in the case of La Oroya in Peru,

Oxfam’s strategies contributed to mobilising the groups affected by mining; whereas the

campaign against liberalisation of agricultural trade in India Oxfam indulged in buying

people’s participation (through local NGOs). In the case of the garment trade campaign in

Sri Lanka the level of political responsibility on the part of Oxfam is seen as very low,

whereas the ‘boomerang strategy’ (Keck and Sikkink) worked well only in the Camisea

project of Peru.

Based on these cases GSJ adds to the critique of northern NGOs that may dominate over

southern NGOs, and it also points out the possible productive alliances between these. GSJ

makes some key arguments such as that INGOs are claiming a voice, not a vote; northern

NGOs are not ‘imperialism in disguise’: they are vibrant actors of civil society, ‘who act

based on universally recognised freedoms of speech, assembly and association,

democratic processes, and on the values they seek to promote’ (p. 210). GSJ thus

makes an attempt to transcend simple dichotomies of local against global. Its strength lies

in the description of strategies and challenges of northern NGOs and their role in the

processes of the globalising the social justice agenda.

GSJ, however, restricts its theoretical framework to Keck and Sikkink and Jordon and

Tuilj. While this helps in covering good ground from the point of the INGOs, their

networks, role, dilemmas and challenges, it hardly presents the agency of those

comprehended as ‘voiceless’ in NGO discourses. For instance, Oxfam’s agricultural trade

campaign in India points to the disinterest of dominant peasant castes in this campaign.

These groups are well represented in the local state and regularly extract rent from the state

at the cost of landless groups and marginal farmers. Further, a narrow focus on advocacy

NGOs and understanding NGOs as civil society (minus political parties and non-NGO

social movements and associations) can affect the study of local processes of

democratisation and social justice struggles. Despite some of these shortcomings, this

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book will be interesting reading for scholars and students of global civil society and

NGOs.

Suryakant Waghmore

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

swaghmore@gmail.com

q 2011 Suryakant Waghmore

Alternative and Activist New Media

Leah A. Lievrouw

Cambridge, Polity, 2011, x þ 294 pp., indices, £45.00, ISBN 978-0-7456-4183-6

(hardback), £14.99, ISBN 978-0-7456-4184-3 (paperback)

There are mixed blessings in writing a book on alternative and activist media. Clearly, it is

a subject of great contemporary relevance and interest, as illustrated in the multi-platform

news coverage of the recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, the emergence of ‘open source’

protest networks such as UK Uncut, the Tea Party movement, not to mention the

controversy created by Wikileaks’ publishing of classified government papers. For the

comparatively snail-paced world of academic publishing, however, capturing activist new

media in its present form is something of a Sisyphean task, with new innovations in media

technology advancing the narrative ever-forward. It is therefore unsurprising that the

above examples are too recent to make it into Leah A. Lievrouw’s Alternative and Activist

New Media. This does not prove a major hindrance, however, as instead of breathlessly

chasing activist media’s ever-unfurling present, Lievrouw sets out, instead, on the more

important task of explaining how we got here in the first place.

The book benefits from having a clear, logical structure and an often painstakingly

consistent chapter format. The abundance of tables and summaries make this book a useful

reference tool, but this does not come at the expense of detail. The book initially traces new

media’s conceptual roots, including an illuminating account of the subversive activities of

Dadaists and the Situationist International, as well as a more familiar run-through of social

movement theories. From this base, the concept of new media is broken down into five

separate themes covering culture-jamming, ‘hacker’ culture, alternative journalism,

mediated mobilization and commons knowledge. Lievrouw argues that underpinning each

of these activities is a political ethos that values creative freedom and the sharing of

resources, as well as a desire to break down existing systems of authority.

The book’s key argument is that scholars in communication studies need to re-think

how the relationship between media and society is theorised. Lievrouw argues that there is

dwindling evidence for mass conceptions of media engagement, as actors are increasingly

adept in creating and adapting media technologies for their own purposes. Mediation is

thus the product of a dialectical relationship between the everyday adapting and upgrading

of communications technologies, and the creation of new meanings and interactions out of

how the technologies are used. Lievrouw illustrates this by drawing attention to how

alternative software programs and open-source sites such as Wikipedia and Indymedia

have gained a global audience of users. The creation of these programs was driven initially

by an anti-authoritarian desire to create free software superior to those manufactured by

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large companies, although as they become more widely used, hacker values come

increasingly into conflict with pressures to adopt self-sustaining revenue-generating

business models—a dilemma illustrated in the recent controversy caused by AOL’s

takeover of the independent news site The Huffington Post.

Whilst Lievrouw does explore cyber-sceptic perspectives to some extent, the onus remains

on alternative media’s self-generating creative capacities. Much emphasis is therefore placed

on how new and alternative media has enhanced political activism, not only as a means of

trans-territorial organization but also as a site where meaningful protest can be played out.

Certainly, the Internet provides a platform for low-cost and highly effective protest

repertoires, best exemplified in Jonah Peretti’s ‘Nike Media Adventure’ where he took

advantage of the company’s promotional offer of customised trainers and requested to have

his pair imprinted with the word ‘sweatshop’. Once he published online his correspondence

with an intransigent Nike, this ‘meme’ quickly went viral and consequently succeeded in

drawing worldwide attention to the company’s nefarious manufacturing practices.

The book also examines the role played by Indymedia in promoting ‘participatory

journalism’ through its coverage of the fledgling Global Justice Movement during the

2000s. However, there is little analysis of the actual politics of the GJM—characterised here

simply as ‘radical’—and how its different ideological strands interact with the alternative

media ethos: more could have been made, for example, of the ideological correlation

between alternative media and anarchist philosophy, illustrated in Hakim Bey’s (2003)

concept of ‘temporary autonomous zones’. Furthermore, investigation into cases where

alternative media repertoires have been taken up by larger social movement organizations

such as Avaaz.org would also have provoked interesting questions about the pressures of

alternative activist media to resist institutionalization through constant innovation.

Such issues are perhaps revealing of a book that errs more on the side of communication

studies than social movement studies, but this does not limit its usefulness to scholars

working in the latter field. Rather, Alternative and Activist New Media provides a thoroughly

readable account the role of the media in contemporary protest, and thus serves as a valuable

resource for placing its ever-rolling developments into a broader historical context.

Alexander Hensby

University of Edinburgh

a.r.hensby@sms.ed.ac.uk

q 2011 Alexander Hensby

Between Hope and Despair: Women Learning Politics

Donna M. Chovanec

Halifax and Winnipeg, Fernwood Publishing, 2009, 128 pp, $17.95, ISBN

9781552662991 (paperback)

The book is a fascinating account of political learning in social activism. Through the

analysis of a case study, the women’s movement(s) in Arica, Chile, the author takes us to a

largely unexplored land—learning and educational processes in social movements.

Why Chile? In the early 1970s Chile elected a socialist president, Salvador Allende,

who would later be killed in a coup d’etat under the direction of General Augusto

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Pinochet. A military dictatorship was installed immediately after, in September 1973, and

would last till 1989. Citizens were severely repressed—over 3000 people were

assassinated by the state apparatus, and over 1000 remain still ‘disappeared’. In such a

context, political and social activism came at a cost. Yet, Chilean women played an

important role during the dictatorship and in the transition to democracy: for example, they

were the first to organise and mobilise against the authoritarian government. Chovanec’s

characters, real women with real-life experiences, move in a highly risky scenario where

activism pervades all corners of their lives. The author follows them in the intricate

labyrinths of their memory and their pain, and explores with them their struggle and the

countless efforts to become political subjects through self-education and skill

development. The Arica women are a exemplary case to explore how people develop

political consciousness through participation in social movement and what Chovanec calls

‘social movement praxis’, that is to say the combination of action and reflection.

The book is divided in two parts. The first part explores the political and social context

in which the women’s struggle takes place. It is a gripping plot that illustrates the recent

history of the country, from the1970s to the early 2000s. Chovanec combines quotes from

life stories, interviews, excerpts from documents and pictures from those years with a

historical perspective to offer a poignant description of the Chilean society and its women.

The analysis takes into account linguistic differences too: often the author resorts to

original language (Spanish) concepts and words, promptly translated into English, in order

to capture even the most subtle nuances of meanings that might be lost in translation. This

first part reads like an attention-grabbing novel—yet, it is a thoughtfully researched

socio-historical account, which proves that academic writing, especially when dealing

with life-soaked experiences like social movements, does not have to be boring in order to

be scientific. Chovanec’s prose sets the context to understand the second part of the book,

which is devoted to theory development.

The second part disentangles the pedagogical dynamics within women’s movements,

moving away from the specificity of the case study to engage with literature and theory. It

is composed of five chapters, dedicated respectively to research design and methods,

political consciousness, social movement praxis, the impact of social movements on

individuals, and the role of adult educators in movements. Here I concentrate on the

aspects of this second part of the book that I consider most innovative, and which I believe

contributes to illuminating the previously dark concerns of our discipline.

Chapter 6 investigates how people learn political consciousness. Curiously, such a

fundamental question is, to a large extent, overlooked in social movement studies, if we

exclude socio-psychological approaches a la Gamson. According to Chovanec, political

learning that emerges is a complex process made of several elements or stages. Its core is

consciousness-raising through transformative learning: put simply, it is experience, and

thus action (where the personal meets the social, p. 75), which forms the basis for political

consciousness. It is a dynamic relationship, one that needs to come into play in the early

phases of one’s life, and requires a continuous ‘living out’ (p. 77) to become active and

remain meaningful. Here social movement scholarship meets the work of Brazilian

educator Paulo Freire, gaining precious insights into the connection between the personal

sphere and political action. In other words, Chovanec makes explicit the critical link

between action and empowerment beyond action itself; a link often missing in a discipline

that tends to reduce activism to mechanisms and macro units of analysis, with the risk of

rendering it sterile and devoid of its empowerment consequences for the individual.

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Chapter 7 engages with social movement praxis, and brings back into social movement

research a notion that has long been absent, or even explicitly avoided—ideology.

Chovanec roots praxis in both Marxist and Freirian thought. Activism in the present exists

only in connection with reflection, and through reflection it becomes vision, defined as

‘an image or concept in the imagination that anticipates the future’ (p. 92). It is this

visionary capacity, coupled with a pre-existing ideological understanding of reality, that

will eventually make social and political change possible; however, this link is only

suggested by the author. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the social and political, as well as

personal and interpersonal consequences of participation in social movements. In this

respect Chovanec’s book speaks to Francesca Polletta’s work on emotions (2001) and

storytelling (2006). In this perspective, the book misses out further engagement with the

bourgeoning literature on emotions and the so-called cultural turn in social movement

studies and remains somewhat superficially anchored to the empirical data.

Finally, Chapter 9 speaks to education scholars and movement participants, exploring

the potential for adult education in social movements. This chapter builds a bridge

between academic investigation and social movement practice, offering some

political–pedagogical entry points that are designed to be useful to those engaged in

the field. It is a merit of this book to move beyond theory development to promote research

that matters to the people being studied—again, a fundamental task that is often

overlooked by social movement scholars.

In summary, Chovanec’s book contributes to our understanding of reflective and

educational processes in social movements, and is a must read for both social movement

scholars and researchers of education. If we have to find a weakness of this book it is the

lack of reflection on a fundamental question: how does social change come about? Many

partial answers can be found in the book, scattered around chapters and in the women’s

narrations. Yet, reflecting on this million dollar question seems like the natural follow-up

for a project like this.

Stefania Milan

European University Institute and Central European University

stefania.milan@eui.eu

q 2011 Stefania Milan

Joining Political Organisations: Institutions, Mobilisation and Participation in

Western Democracies

Laura Morales

Colchester, ECPR Press, 2009, 236 pp., index, £27.00, ISBN 9780955248894 (paperback)

Laura Morales’ book is an important contribution in the field of collective political

behavior. Her study proposes an exhaustive theoretical framework to explain

cross-country variation in political membership in western democracies by combining

four different sets of factors: attitudes and resources on the individual level, mobilization

by organizations and political opportunity structures within states. Drawing upon the work

of Verba, Schlozman & Brady, she includes the neglected but crucial element of

institutional opportunities. In particular, she convincingly connects two bodies of research.

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On the one hand, she shows the significant impact of the political context on individual

decision-making processes to join political organizations, thus breaking with the norm of

political behavior approaches solely holding on to individual-level variables to explain

political participation. On the other hand, she reveals an additional value for the political

opportunity theory that so far has largely focused on explaining the development and

emergence of social movements while fading out their vivid base. This model of citizen

participation allows Morales to offer a compelling, highly nuanced account of one

important mechanism that controls and holds governing elites accountable (p. 1).

However, while she does a brilliant job in developing her theoretical framework, it is

puzzling how these set of factors are able to explain citizen participation and account for

cross-country variations, thus answering two research questions at the same time. She

convincingly argues that cross-national variations can hardly be explained by individual

factors and we thus have to rely on organizational and state factors. On the other hand, it is

questionable if the same processes account for citizen participation. Implicitly, her results

seem even to confirm this as she finds rather stable influences for individual factors across

countries (p. 196). In this regard, she shows that political membership is unequally

distributed across different social groups (Chapter 3); social inequalities are thus translated

into unequal patterns of political membership. Socio-economic factors, and especially

educational status, retain their explicative power. In contrast, the usually allotted impact of

political attitudes and political culture in assessing political membership is put into

question (p. 108).

Her empirical analysis allows us to gain much more valuable insights into the

mechanisms of political membership. Her descriptive account underlines two basic but

nevertheless often neglected facts concerning political membership in western

democracies. While research on the so-called new social movements gets more and

more prominence, traditional membership still represents the bulk of the political

membership. Moreover, Morales shows that involvement in political organization is

fundamentally about passive membership and financial support (p. 62). Whereas this is an

expected result, it seems astonishing that social movement scholars have devoted so little

attention to this population. Although these findings are important, Morales is able to dig

deeper when she makes us familiar with the role of the social and political context in

determining individual recruitment and mobilization opportunities. The main theoretical

premise behind these hypotheses is that these organizational as well as state-level factors

substantially affect the individual cost–benefit structure to take part in collective action (p.

115). On the organizational level, three sub-dimensions are evaluated (Chapter 5): a

structural dimension accounts for direct mobilization by organizations, a cognitive

dimension is assessed by measuring the ideological polarization in a country and a

historical dimension evaluating the tradition of mobilization. Whenever union member-

ship is excluded, all three dimensions contribute in important ways to explain the

cross-national variation of political membership (p. 159).

As far as the impact of institutional factors is concerned (Chapter 6), Morales evaluates

the openness of the political system. She concentrates on the available access points of a

political system, the fragmentation of the political elites and the porousness of the

decision-making process (p. 169). As was the case for the organizational context, Morales

shows that institutional elements contribute considerably to improving our understanding

of political membership among individuals and across countries.

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Most interesting is the twofold impact of the contextual variables. Besides the important

direct impact on individual participation, Morales detects a significant interaction effect

between education and institutional openness. Thereby, she concludes, institutional

accessibility can mitigate the inequalities introduced by different educational

opportunities (p. 191). Therefore, the political context helps to explain why organized

political action is more egalitarian in some countries than in others.

In sum, these results are encouraging for further investigation into a multilevel

explanation of political membership. However, producing more adequate data seems to be

an indispensable requirement to make this endeavor possible, as Morales acknowledges.

This is a threefold problem. First, using secondary data from multiple sources, the author is

forced to neglect crucial variables (for example, personal networks). Second,

cross-country comparison remains rather vague as not all surveys contain exhaustive

lists of associations (p. 52). Third, operationalization problems are a recurrent theme

throughout this study, especially when it comes to attitudinal variables on the individual

level. Therefore, her claim, that attitudinal parameters are insufficient to adequately

explain participation in political organizations, should be moderated (p. 109). Another

consequence of the important lacunae in the data is that political membership is measured

as a dichotomous catch-all concept. This becomes problematic when Morales wants to

differentiate her model for various types of organizations. For example, different

processes seem to account for union membership (p. 184). On the same lines, it is

questionable if active engagement and passive support can be considered as the same

phenomenon—a topic largely overlooked in this book.

Regardless of these issues, Morales’s holistic approach is an ambitious step in the right

direction in order to understand political membership in western democracies in general

and to cope with the inequalities produced by this form of political participation.

Accordingly, her book should be of greatest interest for scholars interested in the

functioning of western democracies in general and for those interested in political

behavior and social movement studies in particular.

Gian-Andrea Monsch

Institute of Political and International Studies, University of Lausanne

gianandrea.monsch@unil.ch

q 2011 Gian-Andrea Monsch

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