Political activism / Political engagement Books

Book SynopsisThis original study examines women's activism against war in areas as far apart as Sierra Leone, India, Colombia and Palestine. It shows women on different sides of conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Israel addressing racism and refusing enmity and describes international networks of women opposing US and Western European militarism and the so-called 'war on terror'. These movements, though diverse, are generating an antimilitarist feminism that challenges how war and militarism are understood, both in academic studies and the mainstream anti-war movement. Gender, particularly the form taken by masculinity in a violent sex/gender system, is inseparably linked to economic and ethno-national factors in the perpetuation of war.Trade Review'Cynthia Cockburn is one of the most valuable and innovative thinkers/activists/writers helping us all to make sense of women's myriad forms of resistance to war and militarism. She shows how it is they who are crafting fresh thinking about how nationalism, masculinity, imperialism, racism, classism and misogyny each and together fuel militarism and its deadly outcomes. This is a book to open our eyes and move us to action.' Cynthia Enloe 'Cynthia Cockburn is one of the best gender researchers in the world. In this very important book she opens global perspectives on women's politics and the struggle for peace, linking activist experience with up-to-date gender analysis.' Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney '..the book is welcome in that it highlights the positive role of worldwide women-only groups in opposing war, racism and violence against women and children.' Jean Turner, Morning Star 'A vivid, comprehensive, and compelling account of the day-to-day efforts of women peacebuilders and leaves the reader enlightened and enriched.' Gender and DevelopmentTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Different wars, women's responses 2. Against imperialist wars: three transnational networks 3. Disloyal to nation and state: antimilitarist women in Serbia 4. A refusal of othering: Palestinian and Israeli women 5. Achievements and contradictions: WILPF and the UN 6. Methodology of women's protest 7. Towards coherence: pacifism, nationalism, racism 8. Choosing to be 'women': what war says to feminism 9. Gender and war: what feminism says to war studies Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWhat do 'Abu Sindi', 'Timothy Sean McCormack', 'Saro', and 'Commander Avo' all have in common? They were all aliases for Monte Melkonian. But who was Monte Melkonian? In his native California he was once a kid in cut-off jeans, playing baseball and eating snow cones. Europe denounced him as an international terrorist. His adopted homeland of Armenia decorated him as a national hero who led a force of 4000 men to victory in the Armenian enclave of Mountainous Karabagh in Azerbaijan. Why Armenia? Why adopt the cause of a remote corner of the Caucasus whose peoples had scattered throughout the world after the early twentieth century Ottoman genocides? Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother's road: a journey which began in his ancestors' town in Turkey and leading to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of Mountainous Karabagh. Monte's life embodied the agony and the follies bedevelling the end of the Cold War and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Yet, who really was this man? A terrorist or a hero? "My Brother's Road" is not just the story of a long journey and a short life, it is an attempt to understand what happens when one man decides that terrible actions speak louder than words.

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Book SynopsisDespite the frequency with which the word 'solidarity' is invoked the concept itself has rarely been subjected to close scrutiny. In this original and stereotype-busting work, David Featherstone helps redress this imbalance through an innovative combination of archival research, activist testimonies and first-hand involvement with political movements. Presenting a variety of case studies, from anti-slavery and anti-fascist organizing to climate change activism and the boycotts of Coca-Cola, Featherstone unearths international forms of solidarity that are all too often marginalized by nation-centred histories of the left and social movements. Timely and wide-ranging, this is a fascinating investigation of an increasingly vital subject.Trade ReviewBreaks new ground through Featherstone's critical, rigorous and highly engaging exploration of the forging of solidarity between disparate actors struggling to transform their lifeworlds. Through powerful and productive case studies, Featherstone illuminates solidarity as an ongoing - and potentially transformative - political relationship rather than merely a thing to be achieved. Well-written, knowledgeable, and provocative, this original work is a vital contribution to contemporary attempts not only to map and describe the fabric of social justice struggle but to explore what it means and why it matters. * Alex Khasnabish, assistant professor, Mount Saint Vincent University *Dave Featherstone evokes the restless energy of international solidarity actions as they repeatedly emerge in unexpected spaces, and are constantly reinvented in struggles against oppression. With impressive historical range, he shows us this has been going on for much longer than is often thought. * Jeremy Anderson, head of strategic research, International Transport Workers' Federation *This book does much more than recover precious negated histories of solidarities built in the course of struggles against oppression. Solidarity is a timely, significant contribution to the theorizing of subaltern cosmopolitanisms that, without negating different histories and positioning, find common ground in strivings for equality, redistribution, and justice. * Nina Glick Schiller, director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures and professor of social anthropology, University of Manchester *This book is alive with ideas, politics and possibilities. It traces solidarities to oppression and grievance, but also to curiosity, imagination and sociability, and in all this it finds and communicates inspiration and hope. * Richard Phillips, professor of human geography, University of Sheffield *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Thinking solidarity politically Part I: Theorizing solidarity 1 Solidarity: theorizing a transformative political relation 2 Rethinking internationalism Part II: Colonial and anti-colonial internationalisms 3 'Labour with a white skin will never emancipate itself while labour with a black skin is in bondage': maritime labour and the uses of solidarity 4 'Your liberty and ours': black internationalism and anti-fascism Part III: Solidarity and Cold War geopolitics 5 'No trade with the junta': political exile and solidarity after the Chilean coup 6 'Beyond the barbed wire': European nuclear disarmament and non-aligned internationalism Part IV: Solidarity in the shadow of neoliberalism 7 'Our resistance is as transnational as capital': the counter-globalization movement and prefigurative solidarity 8 'If the climate were a bank it would be bailed out': solidarity and the making of climate justice Conclusion: Solidarity without guarantees Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisDespite the frequency with which the word 'solidarity' is invoked the concept itself has rarely been subjected to close scrutiny. In this original and stereotype-busting work, David Featherstone helps redress this imbalance through an innovative combination of archival research, activist testimonies and first-hand involvement with political movements. Presenting a variety of case studies, from anti-slavery and anti-fascist organizing to climate change activism and the boycotts of Coca-Cola, Featherstone unearths international forms of solidarity that are all too often marginalized by nation-centred histories of the left and social movements. Timely and wide-ranging, this is a fascinating investigation of an increasingly vital subject.Trade ReviewBreaks new ground through Featherstone's critical, rigorous and highly engaging exploration of the forging of solidarity between disparate actors struggling to transform their lifeworlds. Through powerful and productive case studies, Featherstone illuminates solidarity as an ongoing - and potentially transformative - political relationship rather than merely a thing to be achieved. Well-written, knowledgeable, and provocative, this original work is a vital contribution to contemporary attempts not only to map and describe the fabric of social justice struggle but to explore what it means and why it matters. * Alex Khasnabish, assistant professor, Mount Saint Vincent University *Dave Featherstone evokes the restless energy of international solidarity actions as they repeatedly emerge in unexpected spaces, and are constantly reinvented in struggles against oppression. With impressive historical range, he shows us this has been going on for much longer than is often thought. * Jeremy Anderson, head of strategic research, International Transport Workers' Federation *This book does much more than recover precious negated histories of solidarities built in the course of struggles against oppression. Solidarity is a timely, significant contribution to the theorizing of subaltern cosmopolitanisms that, without negating different histories and positioning, find common ground in strivings for equality, redistribution, and justice. * Nina Glick Schiller, director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures and professor of social anthropology, University of Manchester *This book is alive with ideas, politics and possibilities. It traces solidarities to oppression and grievance, but also to curiosity, imagination and sociability, and in all this it finds and communicates inspiration and hope. * Richard Phillips, professor of human geography, University of Sheffield *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Thinking solidarity politically Part I: Theorizing solidarity 1 Solidarity: theorizing a transformative political relation 2 Rethinking internationalism Part II: Colonial and anti-colonial internationalisms 3 'Labour with a white skin will never emancipate itself while labour with a black skin is in bondage': maritime labour and the uses of solidarity 4 'Your liberty and ours': black internationalism and anti-fascism Part III: Solidarity and Cold War geopolitics 5 'No trade with the junta': political exile and solidarity after the Chilean coup 6 'Beyond the barbed wire': European nuclear disarmament and non-aligned internationalism Part IV: Solidarity in the shadow of neoliberalism 7 'Our resistance is as transnational as capital': the counter-globalization movement and prefigurative solidarity 8 'If the climate were a bank it would be bailed out': solidarity and the making of climate justice Conclusion: Solidarity without guarantees Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisA new movement of 'anti-globalists', in Time Magazine's words (24 April 2000), now 'oppose corporate dominion over the planet's poor and disfranchised'. Naming the Enemy is the first systematic documentation of this international resistance to transnational corporations and globalization which has so recently burst into the public gaze with the street protests in Seattle, Washington, London and Prague. A wide and heterogeneous range of social movements now oppose the very fundamentals of market capitalism. Their challenge is beginning, Amory Starr shows, to amount to a sweeping critique of its purposes and practice. She explains how these movements understand their enemies and what sort of future they envision. There are, she suggests, three basic types: Movements trying to constrain corporate power through democratic institutions and direct action; Movements attempting a completely different kind of 'globalization from below' in which corporations will be reshaped in the service of new international democratic structures that will be populist, participatory and just; Movements seeking to delink their localities and communities from the global economy and rebuild instead small-scale socieites in which large corporations have no role at all. This new phenomenon has received scant media or scholarly attention. But it is likely to become much more important politically as the globalized economy dominated by giant corporations and institutions like the World Bank and IMF fails to deliver on jobs, social justice, Third World development and the environment. The course of this new kind of political struggle will have huge implications for human welfare and civil liberties. This unique and important book is relevant to activists as well as students and scholars of globalization, new social movements and political economy.Trade Review'A bold, encyclopaedic survey and analysis of international anti-corporate movements... Written succinctly and with flair.' Gordon Laxer, University of AlbertaTable of Contents Introduction 1. Structure and Anti-Structure in the Face of Globalization 2. Contestation and Reform 3. Globalization from Below 4. Delinking, Relocalization and Sovereignty 5. PopCulture versus AgriCulture & Other Reflections on the Anti-Corporate Movement A Partial List of Organizations Sources Index

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Book SynopsisThis text looks at the process by which the Arab community of Haifa was transformed during a crucial period in the history of modern Palestine by British mandatory rule, the advent of Zionism and internal dynamics. The author considers the social and economic structure of Haifa before 1918 and examines the process of change which took place. She looks at the attempts by the Arab community to cope with increasingly unfavourable economic and political conditions, showing how the impotence of the leadership and hardship caused popular grievances and culminated in the revolt of 1936-1939 which had its breeding ground in Haifa.

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Book SynopsisAdam Habib, vice-chancellor of Wits University and the most prominent and outspoken university official during the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa's university campuses in this new book. He focuses on the student protests at Wits, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiations with the students, and records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banner #FeesMustFall, dicusses how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off, and reimagines the future of South African higher education. Rebels and Rage is both a historical account of a tempestuous time and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up from Habib's perspective not only as a high-ranking member of university management, but also as a political scientist and intellectual.

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