Protest and Politics
Protest and Politics
The Promise of Social Movement Societies
The Tea Party. The Occupy Movement. Idle No More. Around the world, social movements have taken to new media and the streets to challenge the status quo. At the same time, most democratic countries have witnessed a sharp decline in voter turnout. Protest and Politics examines this seemingly contradictory shift in political participation, as well as the blurring of social movement and mainstream politics, through the lens of the social movement society (SMS) thesis.
Social movement theory suggests that in recent decades contentious politics have become a regular, even institutionalized, feature of the democratic landscape. The contributors to Protest and Politics analyze the long history of social movements in Canada, in comparison to movements in the US and the transnational sphere, to determine whether the SMS thesis still applies, to see what insights can be gleaned from Canadian social movements, and to clarify the relationships between social movements and mainstream politics.
The contributors determine that the SMS thesis must be recalibrated to reflect changes in political participation; extended to embrace broader political and historical contexts; and that it must consider the emergence of social movement societies, plural, over a single polity within and across countries. In short, this book challenges its readers to reconsider the boundaries between politics and protest.
Scholars and students of contentious politics, social movements, and Canadian history will appreciate this detailed analysis of social movement societies, both within the Canadian context and in comparison to other countries and the transnational sphere.
This high-quality collection … makes an important empirical contribution, especially because of the many chapters that deal with aspects of activism that are not often canvassed in Canadian scholarship.
Howard Ramos is an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University. He researches issues of social justice. He is the co-author, with Karen Stanbridge, of Seeing Politics Differently: A Brief Introduction to Political Sociology and co-author, with Suzanne Staggenborg, of Social Movements (3rd Canadian edition).
Kathleen Rodgers is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa. Her current research areas include political sociology, social movements, and digital media. Her most recent project is focused on indigenous responses to large-scale mining projects. She is the author of Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia.
Introduction: The Promise of Social Movement Societies / Howard Ramos and Kathleen Rodgers
Part 1: Political and Historical Context1 Reconsidering the Social Movement Society in the New Century / David S. Meyer and Amanda Pullum
2 Evangelical Radio: Institution Building and the Religious Right / Tina Fetner, Allyson Stokes, and Carrie B. Sanders
3 The Social Movement Society and the Human Rights State / Dominique Clément
4 Institutionalization, State Funding, and Advocacy in the Quebec Women’s Movement / Dominique Masson
Part 2: State Dynamics and Processes5 How the State Shapes Social Movements: An Examination of the Environmental Movement in Canada / Catherine Corrigall-Brown and Mabel Ho
6 Immigrant Collective Mobilization and Socio-economic Integration in Canada / Philippe Couton
7 Uncooperative Movements, Militarized Policing, and the Social Movement Society / Lesley Wood
Part 3: How People Participate8 Social Movement Communities in the Movement Society / Suzanne Staggenborg
9 No to Protests, Yes to Festivals: How the Creative Class Organizes in the Social Movement Society / Judith Taylor
10 Justification and Critique in the Social Movement Society / Jim Conley
11 The Concept of Social Movement and Its Relationship to the Social Movement Society: An Empirical Investigation / David B. Tindall and Joanna L. Robinson
Part 4: Knowledge and Culture12 Alternative Policy Groups and Global Civil Society: Networks and Discourses of Counter-Hegemony / William K. Carroll
13 Wilderness Revisited: Canadian Environmental Movements and the Eco-Politics of Special Places / Mark C.J. Stoddart
14 Alberta Internalizing Oil Sands Opposition: A Test of the Social Movement Society Thesis / Randolph Haluza-DeLay
Conclusion: What We Can Say about the Promise of Social Movement Societies / Kathleen Rodgers and Howard Ramos
References
Index
Rising Up
The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada
Edited by Bryan Evans, Carlo Fanelli, and Tom McDowell
