LibGuides: Activism &amp; Social Movements: Books & eBooks

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Athlete Activism: Contemporary Perspectives This book examines the phenomenon of athlete activism across all levels of sport, from elite and international sport, to collegiate and semi-pro, and asks what this tells us about the relationship between sport and wider society. With contributions from scholars around the world, the book presents a series of fascinating case studies, including the activism of world-famous athletes such as Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe and Raheem Sterling. Covering a broad range of sports, from the National Football League (NFL) and Australian Rules, to fencing and the Olympic Games, the book sheds important light on some of the most important themes in the study of sport, including gender, power, racism, intersectionality and the rise of digital media. It also considers the financial impact on athletes when they take a stand and the psychological impact of activism and how that might relate to sports performance. It has never been the case that 'sport and politics don't mix', and now, more than ever, the opposite is true. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the politics or sociology of sport, the politics of protest, social movements or media studies.
Great Events from History: Human Rights A new, updated version of a reference work originally published in 1992. This new edition includes significant updates and a number of new articles that address human rights issues over the past 30 years. This 4-volume work traces the path of civil liberties and natural rights through history, from ancient codes to modern movements through pivotal events that have directly affected people and their freedoms. In the nearly 28 years since the first edition of Human Rights was published, much has changed in the history of human rights, both in terms of human rights denial and human rights advances. One key change concerns the evolving nature of a government's accountability for its country's human rights record. The rise of Internet technology in recent years has expedited government accountability faster than during any earlier time period. For this reason, this edition covers a rather wide range of human rights categories, including atrocities and war crimes, children's rights, civil rights, health and medical rights, peace movements and organizations, reproductive freedom, voting rights, women's rights, and worker's rights. Great Events from History: Human Rights documents the progression, regression, and overall history of human rights through pivotal events. Here is a sampling of just some of the modern milestones chronicled in this thought-provoking set: 2001: The U.S. Launches a "War on Terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan in Response to 9/11; 2004: The First Same-Sex Marriage is Performed in Massachusetts; 2006: The Global Internet Consortium is Founded 2006: WikiLeaks Gives Whistleblowers a New Platform; 2013: The Dominican Republic Deports and Denies Nationality to Haitians; 2014: ISIS Comes to Power in Iraq and Syria; 2015: China Revokes One-Child Policy; 2017: Gay Chechens are Purged; 2018: Peace Talks Begin on the Korean Peninsula; 2018: Separating Immigrant Families at the Border. More than 100 photographs and other images are included, such as news photos and photographic portraits, book and magazine covers, book title pages, government documents, and fliers. Essays not only describe and contextualize significant events in the history of human rights, but also discuss their current and future impact.
Hacktivism Looks at articles, political speeches, essays, and research on the issue of hacktivism or the act of misusing a computer system or network for a socially or politically motivated reason.
Also available in print: HM851 .H235 2023
How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don't Discover how those who change the world do so with this thoughtful and timely book. Why do some changes occur, and others don't? What are the factors that drive successful social and environmental movements, while others falter? How Change Happens examines the leadership approaches, campaign strategies, and ground-level tactics employed in a range of modern social change campaigns. The book explores successful movements that have achieved phenomenal impact since the 1980s--tobacco control, gun rights expansion, LGBT marriage equality, and acid rain elimination. It also examines recent campaigns that seem to have fizzled, like Occupy Wall Street, and those that continue to struggle, like gun violence prevention and carbon emissions reduction. And it explores implications for movements that are newly emerging, like Black Lives Matter. By comparing successful social change campaigns to the rest, How Change Happens reveals powerful lessons for changemakers who seek to impact society and the planet for the better in the 21st century. Author Leslie Crutchfield is a writer, lecturer, social impact advisor, and leading authority on scaling social innovation. She is Executive Director of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative (GSEI) at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, and co-author of two previous books, Forces for Good and Do More than Give. She serves as a senior advisor with FSG, the global social impact consulting firm. She is frequently invited to speak at nonprofit, philanthropic, and corporate events, and has appeared on shows such as ABC News Now and NPR, among others. She is an active media contributor, with pieces appearing in The Washington Post. Fortune.com, CNN/Money and Harvard Business Review.com. Examines why some societal shifts occur, and others don't. Illustrates the factors that drive successful social and environmental movements. Looks at the approaches, strategies, and tactics that changemakers employ in order to effect widescale change. Whatever cause inspires you, advance it by applying the must-read advice in How Change Happens--whether you lead a social change effort, or if you're tired of just watching from the outside and want to join the fray, or if you simply want to better understand how change happens, this book is the place to start.
Online Communities As Agents of Change and Social Movements The growing presence of social media and computer use has caused significant changes to community engagement. With the ubiquity of these technologies, there is increasing engagement in social and political policies and changes. Online Communities as Agents of Change and Social Movements is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on relevant theoretical and practical frameworks regarding online communities and social media as agents of social and political change. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as computer use, online engagement, and collective action, this publication is an ideal resource for researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of social psychology, social network analysis, media studies, information systems, and political science.
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor Adrienne Maree Brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has complex politics of its own. Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, Brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!
Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces This reference explores the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. It also highlights relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging.
Speaking Truths: Young Adults, Identity, and Spoken Word Activism The twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry--and young people's participation in it--contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation's attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love.   Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story of a diverse group of young adults from Washington, D.C. who use spoken word to create a more just and equitable world. Outlining the contours of this approach, she interrogates spoken word activism's emphasis on personal storytelling and "truth," the strategic uses of aesthetics and emotions to politically engage across difference, and the significance of healing in sustainable movements for change. Weaving together their poetry and personally told stories, Chepp shows how poets tap into the beautiful, emotional, personal, and therapeutic features of spoken word to empathically connect with others, advance intersectional and systemic analyses of inequality, and make social justice messages relatable across a diverse public. By creating allies and forging connections based on friendship, professional commitments, lived experiences, emotions, artistic kinship, and political views, this activist approach is highly integrated into the everyday lives of its practitioners, online and face-to-face.   Chepp argues that spoken word activism is a product of, and a call to action against, the neoliberal era in which poets have come of age, characterized by widening structural inequalities and increasing economic and social vulnerability. She illustrates how this deeply personal and intimate activist approach borrows from, builds upon, and diverges from previous social movement paradigms. Spotlighting the complexity and mutual influence of modern-day activism and the world in which it unfolds, Speaking Truths contributes to our understanding of contemporary social change-making and how neoliberalism has shaped this political generation's experiences with social injustice.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements The most up-to-date and thorough compendium of scholarship on social movements. This second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements features forty original essays from the field. With contributions from both established and ascendant scholars, the Companion seeks to present current research on social movements in all its diversity. It is the most up-to-date, comprehensive volume of social science research on social movements available today. The essays address: facilitative and constraining contexts and conditions; social movement organizations, fields, and dynamics; strategies and tactics; micro-structural and social psychological dimensions of participation; consequences and outcomes; and various thematic intersections, including the intersection of social movements and social class, gender, race and ethnicity, religion, human rights, globalization, political extremism and more. Offers an illuminating guide to understanding the dynamics and operation of social movements within the modern, global world. Covers a diverse range of topics in the field of social movement studies. Offers original, state-of-the-art essays by internationally recognized scholars. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements is recommended for graduate seminars on social movement and for scholars of social movements worldwide. It is also an excellent text for college and university libraries, especially with graduate programs in the social sciences.

Featured Print Books

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All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement- leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States-scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race-and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society. Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save.
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these "solutions" do not match the problem: the police cannot be reformed. In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing. Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings. Here, Purnell argues that police cannot be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.
Dissent and Protest (1637-2017) Dissent & Protest studies crucial documents from various protests, dissents, revolts, riots, and revolutions throughout American history, from the American Revolution to the Black Lives Matter Movement of today. This text closely studies more than eighty primary source documents to deliver a thorough examination of issues so important to Americans that they took action, exercised their rights and stood up to protest. Defining Documents in American History: Dissent & Protest provides detailed thought-provoking analysis of speeches and documents surrounding: American Revolution; Native American Dissent; Women's Rights; Worker's Rights; Abolitionism; Slave Rebellions; State Rights; Political & War Protests; Whiskey Rebellion; Racism; Poverty and Civil Rights. Each in-depth chapter guides readers with historical insight and comprehension. Written by historians and teachers, several elements explain the document's historical impact and provide thoughtful critical analysis, including a Summary Overview, Defining Moment, Author Biography, Document Analysis, and Essential Themes. Plus, a historical timeline and bibliography of important supplemental readings will support readers in understanding the broader historical events covered. The documents included highlight America's commitment to stand up and fight for the issues they believe in.
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation The eruption of mass protests in the wake of the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have challenged the impunity with which officers of the law carry out violence against Black people and punctured the illusion of a post-racial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists. In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation.
The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions In The Future of Change, Ray Brescia identifies a series of "social innovation moments" in American history. Through these moments during which social movements have embraced advances in communications technologies, he illuminates the complicated, dangerous, innovative, and exciting relationship between these technologies, social movements, and social change. Brescia shows that, almost without fail, developments in how we communicate shape social movements, just as those movements change the very technologies themselves. From the printing press to the television, social movements have leveraged communications technologies to advance change. In this moment of rapidly evolving communications, it's imperative to assess the role that the Internet, mobile devices, and social media can play in promoting social justice. But first we must look to the past, to examples of movements throughout American history that successfully harnessed communications technology, thus facilitating positive social change. Such movements embraced new communications technologies to help organize their communities; to form grassroots networks in order to facilitate face-to-face interactions; and to promote positive, inclusive messaging that stressed their participants' shared dignity and humanity. Using the past as prologue, The Future of Change provides effective lessons in the use of communications technology so that we can have the best communicative tools at our disposal both now and in the future.
LGBTQ Social Movements in America LGBTQ Social Movements in America looks at social change movements in the country's LGBTQ history, including the Stonewall riots that started the modern gay rights movement and die-ins that pressured the US government to take note of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Features include a glossary, further readings, websites, source notes, and an index.
The Persuaders: At the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people's minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts. In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans' fatalism about one another. As the book's subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don't agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.
Reference Shelf: Book Bans and Censorship Is there such a thing as forbidden knowledge? Are some ideas too dangerous for members of a society to handle? This is the idea behind book banning and censorship, methods meant to create a degree of social control by restricting access to ideas or art or other kinds of expression. Recently, American conservatives have been engaging in this activity again in an effort to limit access to information about race relations, gender politics, and sexuality. Drawing from recent journalism and political writing, this volume of The Reference Shelf looks at the political debate and the social movements behind this resurgence in authoritarianism.
Songs of Social Protest: International Perspectives Songs of Social Protest is a comprehensive companion guide to music and social protest globally. Bringing together scholars from a range of fields, it explores a wide range of examples of, and contexts for, songs and their performance that have been deployed as part of local, regional and global social protest movements, both in historical and contemporary times. Topics covered include: Aesthetics Authenticity African American Music Anti-capitalism Community & Collective Movements Counter-hegemonic Discourses Critical Pedagogy Folk Music Identity Memory Performance Popular Culture By placing historical approaches alongside cutting-edge ethnography, philosophical excursions alongside socio-political and economic perspectives, and cultural context alongside detailed, musicological, textual, and performance analysis, Songs of Social Protest offers a dynamic resource for scholars and students exploring song and singing as a form of protest.
The Voices Of #MeToo: From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar, this book is a timely analysis of how marginalized voices are engaged or silenced in one of the most successful social media projects in recent history. Accessibly written, this book unravels the ideas and practices of activism throughout the #MeToo movement from its inception to its current viral moment. The movement went viral with a tweet from Alyssa Milano after the avalanche of sexual harassment and assault allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag, however, got its start from African-American, grassroots activist Tarana Burke a decade earlier. Taking this as her starting place, Gieseler focuses on the marginalized communities that are often ignored once a movement goes mainstream. With chapters on black female activism, the LGBTQ+ community and disability, toxic masculinity, and international responses, The Voices of #MeToo issues a call for all movements to become more inclusive as they seek empowerment and resistance against oppressive and abusive forces. Perhaps in exploring issues of social justice through an intersectional lens, we may all begin to hear and amplify the voices that are often silenced in the louder, viral roar.
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong's Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement Filling a gap in the scholarship of American history, V.P. Franklin crafts the first full-length history of the children and teen activists who participated in and led key protests during the Civil Rights Movement"--Provided by publisher Some of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement are those of young people engaged in social activism: the Little Rock Nine being escorted into Central High School in 1957 by soldiers, or children and teenagers being attacked in 1963 by police in Birmingham with dogs and water hoses. While the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the NAACP, and the Student Nonvoilent Coordinating Committee have been well chronicled, the crucial roles of children and teens are now placed at the forefront in The Young Crusaders. V.P. Franklin delivers a thorough reexamination of the efforts of children and teenagers to challenge legal segregation, employment discrimination, educational inequality, and racialized violence beginning in the 1930s. His groundbreaking narrative draws on examples in nearly fifty cities and fifteen states, from Alabama to Wisconsin. Franklin details the student activism behind the successful civil rights campaigns that brought about the end of Jim Crow practices throughout the nation. For instance, the largest civil rights demonstration in US history was not the famous March on Washington in August 1963 but the system-wide school boycott in New York City on February 3, 1964, when over 360,000 elementary and secondary school students went on strike and thousands attended "freedom schools." Multiracial community groups organized the school boycotts in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities, and African American, Puerto Rican, and white students participated, calling for the desegregation of public and private education and public accomodations. In addition, children and teenagers mounted their own walkouts, marches, and civil rights demonstrations demanding "Freedom Now." This account of the courageous actions of these unheralded young people fundamentally transforms how we understand the Civil Rights Movement and serves as a playbook for youth-oriented protest movements such as the Climate Strike, March for Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter, reigniting in the twenty-first century the next wave of social and political activism.