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"This book is both about social movements and collective actions, and about the discipline of sociology and prevailing concepts of Indian society. Presenting a post-modernist critique of the study of social movements, Professor Rajendra Singh maintains that it is these movements which truly represent the contemporary nature of Indian society. He thus challenges the dominant view that these struggles are expressions of disruption and a breakdown of the established social order. The author goes on to argue for the need for a post-sociology, based on broader perspectives drawn from all the social science disciplines, to fully grasp the realities of present-day Indian society."--BOOK JACKET.
Social movements have played a vital role in Indian politics since well before the inception of India as a new nation in 1947. During the Nehruvian era, poverty alleviation was a foundational standard against which policy proposals and political claims were measured; at this time, movement activism was directly accountable to this state discourse. In the first volume to focus on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements, a group of leading India scholars shows how social movements have had to change because poverty reduction no longer serves its earlier role as a political template. With distinctive chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology, Social Movements in India will be attractive to students and researchers in many different disciplines.
Questions of the extent to which social movements are capable of deepening democracy in India lie at the heart of this book. In particular, the authors ask how such movements can enhance the political capacities of subaltern groups and thereby enable them to contest and challenge marginality, stigma, and exploitation. The work addresses these questions through detailed empirical analyses of contemporary fields of protest in Indian society – ranging from gender and caste to class and rights-based legislation. Drawing on the original research of a variety of emerging and established international scholars, the volume contributes to an engaged dialogue on the prospects for democratizing Indian democracy in a context where neoliberal reforms fuel a contradictory process of uneven development.
This book explores new forms of popular organisation that emerged from strikes in India and Brazil between 2011 and 2014. Based on four case studies, the author traces the alliances and relations that strikers developed during their mobilisations with other popular actors such as students, indigenous peoples, and people displaced by dam projects. The study locates the mass strikes in Brazil’s construction industry and India’s automobile industry in a global conjuncture of protest movements, and develops a new theory of strikes that can take account of the manifold ways in which labour unrest is embedded in local communities and regional networks. “Jörg Nowak has written an ambitious, wide-ranging and very important book. Based on extensive empirical research in Brazil and India and a thorough analysis of the secondary literature, Nowak reveals that numerous labour conflicts develop in the absence of trade unions, but with the support of kinship networks, local communities, social movements and other types of associations. This impressive work may well become a major building block for a new interpretation of global workers’ struggles.” —Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands “Nowak’s book meticulously details the trajectory of strikes and its resultant new forms of organisations in India and Brazil. The central focus of this analytically rich and thought provoking book is to search for a new political alternative model of organising workers. A very good deed indeed!” —Nandita Mondal, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India “Jörg Nowak analyses with critical sense forms of popular organization that often remain invisible. It is an indispensable book for all those who are looking for more effective analytical resources to better understand the present situation and the future promises of the workers’ movements.” —Roberto Véras de Oliveira, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil “In this timely and important study, Nowak convincingly challenges the dominant Eurocentric approach to labour conflict and calls for a new theory of strikes. He stresses the need to engage in a wider perspective that includes social reproduction, neighbourhood mobilisations, and the specific traditions of struggles in the Global South.” —Edward Webster, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Every day around the world there are dozens of protests both large and small. Most groups engage the local police, some get media attention, and a few are successful. Who are these people? What do they want? What do they do to get it? What effects do they ultimately have on our world? In this lively and compelling book, James Jasper, an international expert on the cultural and emotional dimensions of social movements, shows that we cannot answer these questions until we bring culture squarely into the frame. Drawing on a broad range of examples, from the Women's Movement to Occupy and the Arab Spring, Jasper makes clear that we need to appreciate fully the protestors' points of view - in other words their cultural meanings and feelings - as well as the meanings held by other strategic players, such as the police, media, politicians, and intellectuals. In fact, we can't understand our world at all without grasping the profound impact of protest. Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements is an invaluable and insightful contribution to understanding social movements for beginners and experts alike.
"Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity" is the summary of a workshop convened in December 2013 by the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement to explore the lessons that may be gleaned from social movements, both those that are health-related and those that are not primarily focused on health. Participants and presenters focused on elements identified from the history and sociology of social change movements and how such elements can be applied to present-day efforts nationally and across communities to improve the chances for long, healthy lives for all. The idea of movements and movement building is inextricably linked with the history of public health. Historically, most movements - including, for example, those for safer working conditions, for clean water, and for safe food - have emerged from the sustained efforts of many different groups of individuals, which were often organized in order to protest and advocate for changes in the name of such values as fairness and human rights. The purpose of the workshop was to have a conversation about how to support the fragments of health movements that roundtable members believed they could see occurring in society and in the health field. Recent reports from the National Academies have highlighted evidence that the United States gets poor value on its extraordinary investments in health - in particular, on its investments in health care - as American life expectancy lags behind that of other wealthy nations. As a result, many individuals and organizations, including the Healthy People 2020 initiative, have called for better health and longer lives.
With the elevation of Islam and Muslim transnational networks in international affairs, from the rise of Al Qaeda to the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, the study of Diasporas and transnational identities has become more relevant. Using case studies from Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa, this book explores the diaspora identities and impact of social movements on politics and nationalism among indentured Indian diaspora. It analyses the way in which diasporas are defined by themselves and others, and the types of social movements they participate in, showing how these are critical indicators of the threat they are perceived to pose. The book examines the notions of national and transnational identity, and how they are determined by the placement of Diasporas in the transnational locality. It argues that the transnationality intrinsic to diaspora identities mark them as others in the nation-state, and simultaneously separates them from the perceived motherland, thus displacing them from both states and situating them in a transnational locality. It is from this placement that social movements among Diasporas gain salience. As outsiders and insiders, they are well placed to offer a formidable challenge to the host state, but these challenges are limited by their hybrid identities and perceived divided loyalties. Providing an in-depth analysis of Indian Diasporas, the book will be of interest to those studying South Asian Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies.
Social movements and popular struggle are a central part of today’s world, but often neglected or misunderstood by media commentary as well as experts in other fields. In an age when struggles over climate change, women’s rights, austerity politics, racism, warfare and surveillance are central to the future of our societies, we urgently need to understand social movements. Accessible, comprehensive and grounded in deep scholarship, Why Social Movements Matter explains social movements for a general educated readership, those interested in progressive politics and scholars and students in other fields. It shows how much social movements are part of our everyday lives, and how in many ways they have shaped the world we live in over centuries. It explores the relationship between social movements and the left, how movements develop and change, the complex relationship between movements and intellectual life, and delivers a powerful argument for rethinking how the social world is constructed. Drawing on three decades of experience, Why Social Movements Matter shows the real space for hope in a contested world.
The contributions to this volume explore movements against capital and the state in contemporary rural India in three complementary ways. First, the simultaneous material and cultural claims of dispossession the movements make in particular rural contexts. Second, the new forms of organization that shape contemporary claim-making practices as well as political subjectivities in rural India. Third, the way the academia situates itself with respect to these movements, their organizations, activists, and participants. By delving into these relatively new and pertinent questions in the study of social movements in contemporary India, the contributors analyze the politics of subaltern agency, translocal activism, and academic knowledge-production in different, albeit interlinked, locations. The volume puts forth the argument that these are modes of political action that share complex relationships with each other, and may complement each other at times and yet contradict or even cancel out another at other times.