Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky
and Alf Nilsen,
eds., (2013), Marxism and
social
movements. Leiden: Brill (Historical
Materialism book series). ISBN 9789004211759.
Release date June 21 2013
---
Marxism
and Social Movements is the first
sustained
engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches
to collective
action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both
fields, discuss
the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore
the
developmental processes and political tensions within movements;
set the question
in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary
movements against
neo-liberalism and austerity.
Exploring struggles on six continents over
150 years, this
collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not
only to class
politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anticolonial
and
anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental
justice, indigenous
struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both
for Marxist
theory and for movement research.
This book will be of interest to
researchers and
postgraduates studying social movements or Marxism within
disciplines like
sociology, history, anthropology or political science, as well
as to movement
activists and laypeople interested in popular politics.
Contents
· “Marxism
and
social movements: an introduction”. Colin Barker, Laurence Cox,
John
Krinsky, Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Part I: theoretical frameworks
Marxism and social movements
· “Class
struggle
and social movements”. Colin Barker
· “What
would a Marxist theory of social movements look like?” Alf Gunvald
Nilsen and
Laurence Cox
Social movement studies and its discontents
· “The
strange disappearance of capitalism from social movement studies”.
Gabriel
Hetland and Jeff Goodwin
· “Marxism
and
the politics of possibility: beyond academic boundaries”. John
Krinsky
Part 2: How social movements work
Developmental perspectives on social movements
· “Eppur
si
muove: thinking ‘the social movement’”. Laurence Cox
· “Class
formation
and the labor movement in revolutionary China”. Marc Blecher
· “Contesting
the
postcolonial development project: a Marxist perspective on popular
resistance in the Narmada valley”. Alf Gunvald Nilsen
The politics of social movements
· “The
Marxist rank-and-file / bureaucracy analysis of trade unionism:
some
implications for the study of social movement organisations”.
Ralph Darlington
· “Defending
place,
remaking space: social movements in Oaxaca and Chiapas”. Chris
Hesketh
· “Uneven
and
combined Marxism within South Africa’s urban social movements”.
Patrick
Bond, Ashwin Desai and Trevor Ngwane
Part 3: Seeing the bigger picture
Comparative-historical perspective
· “Thinking
about
(new) social movements: some insights from the British Marxist
historians”. Paul Blackledge
· “Right-wing
social
movements: the political indeterminacy of mass mobilisation”. Neil
Davidson
· “Class,
caste,
colonial rule, and resistance: the Revolt of 1857 in India”. Hira
Singh
· “The
Black International as social movement wave: CLR James’ history of
pan-African revolt”.
Christian Høgsbjerg
Social movements against neoliberalism
· “Language,
Marxism
and the grasping of policy agendas: neo-liberalism and political
voice
in Scotland’s poorest communities”. Chik Collins
· “Organic
intellectuals
in the Australian global justice movement: the weight of 9/11”.
Elizabeth Humphrys
· “’Disorganization’
as
social movement tactic: re-appropriating politics during the
crisis of
neoliberal capitalism”. Heike Schaumberg
· “’Unity
of
the diverse’: working class formations and popular uprisings from
Cochabamba
to Cairo”. David McNally
This is the library version; books in this
series will appear in an affordable edition with Haymarket next year. If
you know a sympathetic librarian with a decent budget, the list price
is €129 / $179 (discount €96.75 / $134.25) - it is 482 pages hardback!
Order via
brill.com/marxism-and-social-movements using discount code 50555
until
31.12.2013. Some chapters will be available on authors' websites
in the near future, free.
About the editors
Colin Barker is honorary lecturer in sociology
at Manchester
Metropolitan University. He co-organizes the annual international
conferences
on Alternative Futures and Popular Protest. He has published many
books and
articles on social movements and revolutions and is an active
socialist.
Laurence Cox co-directs the MA in Community
Education,
Equality and Social Activism at Maynooth. He co-edits the social
movement
journal Interface and
has also
published Understanding
European
Movements (Routledge 2013, with Cristina Flesher Fominaya).
John Krinsky is associate professor of
political science at
The City College of New York. He co-edits the journal Social Movement Studies, and published Free Labor: Workfare and the Contested Language of
Neoliberalism
(Chicago 2007).
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is associate professor of
sociology at
the University of Bergen. He co-edits the
journal Interface
and has
published widely on social movements. He is the author of Dispossession and Resistance in India (Routledge
2010).
Online: brill.com/marxism-and-social-movements
