The strategic interactions between protestors and their targets shape the world around us in profound ways. The editors and contributors to Protesters and Their Targets—all leading scholars in the study of social movements—look at why movements do what they do and why their interactions with other societal actors turn out as they do. They recognize that targets are not stationary but react to the movement and require the movement to react back.

This edited collection analyzes how social movements select their targets, movement-target interactions, and the outcomes of those interactions. Case studies examine school closures in Sweden, the U.S. labor movement, Bolivian water and Mexican corn, and other global issues to show the strategic thinking, shifting objectives, and various degrees of success in the actions and nature of these protest movements. 

Protesters and Their Targets seeks to develop a set of tools for the further development of the field’s future work on this underexplored set of interactions.

James M. Jasper writes about politics and culture. His recent books include The Emotions of Protest and The Identity Dilemma: Social Movements and Collective Identity (Temple). He is affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  Brayden G King is the Max McGraw Chair of Management and the Environment at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is a sociologist whose research examines the role of social movements in organizational, political, and social change.