Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (People, Passions, & Power Series)

by Victoria Johnson Jo Freeman (Editor)

This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed_from an earlier emphasis on collective behavior, to the resource mobilization approach, and currently to analyses that emphasize culture, ideology, and collective identity. Top social scientists combine insiders' insights with critical analyses to examine a wide variety of social movements active in the most recent U.S. cycle of protest. Waves of Protest is a must-read for students of social movements, social change, political sociology, and American studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

394 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapters I learned the most from: "Mobilizing the Disabled" - about the first civil rights type actions from people with disabilities, completely new territory for me. James Jasper on recruitment in the Animal Rights Movement; Abigail Halci on ACT UP was an exciting read. All of Part 3 Consciousness was right up my alley, kicking off with a look at the Christian Right in the 1980s, then a spirited defense of lesbian separatism and what has been disparaged as 'cultural feminism,' and generally activism as lifestyle, and then for me the high point of the whole book, a chapter about the Satanic Panic: "The Social Construction of Subversive Evil," although the Judas Priest lawsuit failed to appear here. The next 4 chapters cover strategy and tactics and though I find myself thinking more systematically about the movements I am active in, I can't really point at one of these strategy chapters as the best. I did learn an awful lot about Caesar Chavez in the chapter about the UFW though. In the past I've only read hagiographies of him. The last section, about Decline, concludes with a chapter on my favorite activist group of all time, SNCC, so of course, I gobbled that up. Once you get in the mind set of academics pretending to be 'objective' and 'neutral,' this collection really holds up although it was published in 1998. Looking back to that time, it is especially interesting to see what is written about anti-abortion and other right-wing groups here, I don't think anyone could have predicted their startling success now based on where they were back then.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

a collection of essays of social movement theory, full of case studies of all sorts of movements and countermovements in the post-60s period. too academic for my taste, but useful nonetheless.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome! Has some great coverage of a wide variety of movements and great insight into what makes them tick.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

used college text; writing in text, worn and grubby, stickers, slight water damage; $3.99