Andrew Hsiao, Audrea Lim (eds.): The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, dissent, philosophy, politics, protest, resistance, revolution, social movements
A sparkling anthology of revolt and resistance to orthodoxy and repression.
Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest—rallying others around them and inspiring uprisings in eras yet to come. Their echoes reverberate from Ancient Greece, China and Egypt, via the dissident poets and philosophers of Islam and Judaism, through to the Arab slave revolts and anti-Ottoman rebellions of the Middle Ages. These sources were tapped during the Dutch and English revolutions at the outset of the Modern world, and in turn flowed into the French, Haitian, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions. More recently, resistance to war and economic oppression has flared up on battlefields and in public spaces from Beijing and Baghdad to Caracas and Los Angeles.
This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent will become an invaluable resource, reminding today’s citizens that these traditions will never die.
Preface by Tariq Ali
Publisher Verso Books, 2010
ISBN 1844674487, 9781844674480
366 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-5-2)
Comment (0)Charles Tilly: Regimes and Repertoires (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, democracy, politics, revolution, social movements, violence
The means by which people protest—that is, their repertoires of contention—vary radically from one political regime to the next. Highly capable undemocratic regimes such as China’s show no visible signs of popular social movements, yet produce many citizen protests against arbitrary, predatory government. Less effective and undemocratic governments like the Sudan’s, meanwhile, often experience regional insurgencies and even civil wars. In Regimes and Repertoires, Charles Tilly offers a fascinating and wide-ranging case-by-case study of various types of government and the equally various styles of protests they foster.
Using examples drawn from many areas—G8 summit and anti-globalization protests, Hindu activism in 1980s India, nineteenth-century English Chartists organizing on behalf of workers’ rights, the revolutions of 1848, and civil wars in Angola, Chechnya, and Kosovo—Tilly masterfully shows that such episodes of contentious politics unfold like loosely scripted theater. Along the way, Tilly also brings forth powerful tools to sort out the reasons why certain political regimes vary and change, how the people living under them make claims on their government, and what connections can be drawn between regime change and the character of contentious politics.
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2006
ISBN 0226803503, 9780226803500
266 pages
review (Tim Lacy, H-Net)
review (Adham Saouli, Political Studies Review)
Sheila Rowbotham: Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World (1972)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, feminism, history, politics, protest, resistance, revolution, social movements, socialism, women
“This is the first narrative history of feminism. Sheila Rowbotham, a young social historian, explores the relationship between feminism and social revolution, and the varied historical forms that the attempt to change the position of women has taken in the West and in revolutionary countries like China, the U.S.S.R., Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam.” (from the back cover)
Originally published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 1972
This edition published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York, January 1974
ISBN 0394719549
288 pages
PDF (no OCR)
Comment (0)