Performance Constellations maps transnational protest movements and the dynamics of networked expressive behavior in the streets and online, as people struggle to be heard and effect long-term social justice.  Its case studies explore collective political action in Latin America, including the Zapatistas in the mid-’90s, protests during the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, the 2011 Chilean student movement, the 2014–2015 mobilizations for the disappeared Ayotzinapa students, and the 2018 transnational reproductive rights movement. The book analyzes uses of space, time, media communication, and corporeality in protests such as virtual sit-ins, flash mobs, scarfazos, and hashtag campaigns, arguing that these protests not only challenge hegemonic power but are also socially transformative. While other studies have focused either on digital activism or on street protests, Performance Constellations shows that they are in fact integrally entwined. Zooming in on protest movements and art-activism in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and putting contemporary insurgent actions in dialogue with their historical precedents, the book demonstrates how, even in moments of extreme duress, social actors in Latin America have taken up public and virtual space to intervene politically and to contest dominant powers.

The first international examination of how police respond to political protests.

The way in which police handle political demonstrations is always potentially controversial. In contemporary democracies, police departments have two different, often conflicting aims: keeping the peace and defending citizens’ right to protest. This collection, the only resource to examine police interventions cross-nationally, analyzes a wide array of policing styles. The contributors look at cultures and political power to examine the methods, the trends and cycles, and the consequences of policing protest.

Focusing on Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain, the United States, and South Africa, the contributors explore the various police strategies of coercion, negotiation, and information surveillance. They discuss protest policing in relation to specific countries’ governments and consider public opinion, media, and the police’s perception of reality to illustrate the reciprocal ways in which police and protest are defined. Moreover, this volume considers the profound changes from the forceful 1960s to a “softer” 1990s, including the consequences of this move.Comparative and innovative, Policing Protest highlights the crucial influences of demonstration interventions and lends greater understanding to the study of social movements and their relationship to the state. Contributors: Rocco De Biasi, U of Genoa; Olivier Fillieule, Institute of Political Science, Paris; Oscar Jaime-Jiménez, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid; Fabien Jobard, U of Rouen, France; Hanspeter Kriesi, U of Geneva; Gary T. Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and U of Colorado, Boulder; John McCarthy, Catholic U of America; Clark McPhail, U of Illinois; Fernando Reinares, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid; Robert Reiner, London School of Economics; David Schweingruber; P. A. J. Waddington, U of Reading, UK; Martin Winter, U of Halle, Germany; Dominique Wisler, U of Geneva.

In Policing Protest Paul A. Passavant explores how the policing of protest in the United States has become increasingly hostile since the late 1990s, moving away from strategies that protect protesters toward militaristic practices designed to suppress protests. He identifies reactions to three interrelated crises that converged to institutionalize this new mode of policing: the political mobilization of marginalized social groups in the Civil Rights era that led to a perceived crisis of democracy, the urban fiscal crisis of the 1970s, and a crime crisis that was associated with protests and civil disobedience of the 1960s. As Passavant demonstrates, these reactions are all haunted by the figure of black insurrection, which continues to shape policing of protest and surveillance, notably in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Ultimately, Passavant argues, this trend of violent policing strategies against protesters is evidence of the emergence of a post-democratic state in the United States.

An exploration of how the Iranian people have renewed their longtime struggle for freedom

The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising is only the latest manifestation of a century-long struggle for liberation in Iran. This ongoing movement for justice has encompassed two revolutions against domestic dictatorship and foreign imperialism, as well as a series of uprisings since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which was followed by a new era of repression. Post/Revolutionary Conditions: Renewed Visions of the Iranian Freedom Struggle offers an intersectional analysis of how progressive and radical movement builders have reenvisioned liberation in the post-’79 era, despite new forms of oppression under the Islamic Republic and from US and other foreign imperial powers. Bringing together a diverse array of sources, including oral histories with Iranian labor, student, and gender justice organizers, as well as resistance literature and art, Alborz Ghandehari challenges narratives that treat working-class, feminist, queer, and oppressed ethnic minorities’ movements as separate from one another. Post/Revolutionary Conditions demonstrates how such potent reimaginings of collective liberation and a radically democratic future have been shaped by multiple generations of protest and kindred struggles globally.

An excellent and lucid introduction to the study of political rhetoric

The decade of the 1960s was a time of passionate politics and resounding rhetoric. The “resounding rhetoric,” from Kennedy’s celebrated inaugural address, to the outlandish antics of the Yippies, is the focus of this book. The importance of this volume is its consideration of both people in power (presidents) and people out of power (protesters), and its delineation of the different rhetorical bases that each had to work from in participating in the politics of the 1960s.

Presidents and Protesters places rhetorical acts within their specific political contexts, changing the direction of previous rhetorical studies from the sociological to the historical-political. Above all, this is an intellectual history of the 1960s as seen through the rhetoric of the participants, which ultimately shows that the major participants utilized every form of political discourse available and, consequently, exhausted not only themselves but the rhetorical forms as well.
 

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Portland made national news with nightly social justice protests, often met with violent response by counter protestors and law enforcement. Though frequently regarded as a progressive hub, Portland has a long history of racial inequality and oppression, and the city’s entrenched divisions gained new attention during the Trump years. The photos in Protest City present a visceral visual record of this significant moment in Portland’s history.  

Rian Dundon, who has been photographing the rise of extreme politics on the West Coast since 2016, lived only a short walk from the protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd. For one hundred days, Dundon enmeshed himself in the demonstrations with an unobtrusive point-and-shoot camera. The result is a graphic portrayal of how social movements become politicized, how spectacle serves as a subtext to change in the digital age, and how modern protests blur distinctions among performance, ritual, and surveillance. As he follows the progress of Portland’s conflicts, Dundon draws connections to Oregon’s legacy as a stronghold of white supremacist extremism and interrogates the role of whiteness in racial justice movements.  

Most of the photographs in the book were taken between May and October 2020, but the collection also includes photos from protests in late 2020 and 2021 around various related issues, including the Red House eviction blockade, rightwing demonstrations on January 6 and 17, and the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Dundon’s striking photos recreate the immediacy and impact of the protests, while essays by historian Carmen Thompson and journalist Donnell Alexander contextualize the uprising’s sociopolitical background. A chronology and author’s note are also featured.  

The publisher and author would like to thank the Magnum Foundation, Documentary Arts, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project for their generous support of this publication. Additional funding has been provided by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

Protest in Belgrade addresses one of the most important social movements of this decade - the civil and student peace demonstrations which took place in Belgrade during the winter of 1996/97. The demonstrations, the largest ever in history, were in response to Milošević’s nullifying of the results of local elections in fourteen towns in Serbia which created global media attention and attracted worldwide sympathy.

 

This in-depth study of a society calling for democracy is based on interviews with over 1000 civilians and students. The book is unique because much of the research was carried out and completed while the demonstrations were still in progress and before the outcome of events was known. A chronology of events is also included.

 

The book provides an abundance of valuable information for analysts of post-socialist transformation, researchers of social movements and social change, and for all those concerned with the tragic events in Southeast Europe.