Description
Book SynopsisAlthough living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest. Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest examines some of those problems, progressing from methodological issues, to discussions of the part that the mass media plays in protest, finally to several case studies of protests in different contexts.
Trade ReviewThis edited volume makes a useful addition to the literature on protest. * Political Studies Review *
A useful volume on methods for analyzing protest events, chiefly but not exclusively treating the question of data sources, especially commercial mass media. * Mobilization *
Acts of Dissent is a timely review of methodological questions, with intriguing applications to protests in states ranging from the former Soviet Union to South Africa. . . . The organizers/editors of the volume . . . have successfully invigorated international scholarly networks . . . the diversity of applications has called forth a variety of solutions. * Contemporary Sociology *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Protest as a Subject of Empirical Research Part 2 Methodological Issues Chapter 3 Studying Contentious Politics: From Event-ful History to Cycles of Collective Action Chapter 4 Methodological Issues in Collecting Protest Event Data: Units of Analysis, Sources and Sampling, Coding Problems Chapter 5 The Use of Protest Event Data in Comparative Research: Cross-National Comparability, Sampling Methods and Robustness Part 6 Protest and the Mass Media Chapter 7 Electronic and Print Media Representations of Washington, DC Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991: A Demography of Description Bias Chapter 8 Determining Selection Bias in Local and National Newspaper Reports on Protest Events Chapter 9 Unpacking Protest Events: A Description Bias Analysis of Media Records with Systematic Direct Observations of Collective Action-The 1995 March for Life on Washington, DC Part 10 Applications: Protest in Different Contexts Chapter 11 “Plus ça change, moins ça change.” Demonstrations in France During the Nineteen-Eighties Chapter 12 Radical Protest in Switzerland Chapter 13 Comparative Event Analysis: Black Civil Rights Protest in South Africa and the United States Chapter 14 Event Analysis in Transitional Societies: Protest Mobilization in the Former Soviet Union Chapter 15 Protest Event Analysis in the Study of Democratic Consolidation: Poland, 1989-1993
