Description
Book SynopsisWith austerity’s disproportionately heavy impact on women now apparent, this engaging book considers activism against it from a feminist perspective. Emma Craddock goes deep inside activist culture to explore the many cultural and emotional dimensions of political participation. She questions what motivates and sustains protest, considering the enabling aspects of solidarity and empathy, as well as the constraining factors of negative emotions and gendered barriers associated with activism, examining the role of gender and emotion within protest. This is a lived-in study that gets to the heart of what it means to be an anti-austerity activist and an important addition to social justice debate.
Trade Review“Emma Craddock has written a candid and sophisticated account of the existential tensions involved in anti-austerity activism.” Steve Fuller, University of Warwick
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Establishing Context A Critical Review of Social Movement Theory: Gender and Emotion in Activist Cultures The Empirical and Political Context of Anti-Austerity Activism Part II: Doing Activism: Enabling and Constraining Factors The Affective, the Normative and the Everyday: Exploring What Motivates and Sustains Anti-Austerity Activism Barriers to Doing Activism PART III: Being Activist: The Activist Identity and Its Problems The Authentic and Ideal Activist Identities: Having the ‘Right’ Motivation and Doing ‘Enough’ of the ‘Right’ Type of Activism The Dark Side of Activist Culture and its Gendered Dimension Part IV: Concluding Remarks Subverting/Reinforcing Neoliberal Capitalism: The Complex Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Activism References Appendix
