What happens when enemies work to advance similar goals? Who wins, who loses, and why? In Frenemies, Nancy Whittier addresses this question through a study of feminist and conservative opposition to pornography, campaigns against child sexual abuse, and engagement on the Violence Against Women Act. Drawing on extensive research, Whittier shows how feminist and conservative activists interacted with each other and with the federal government, how their interaction affected them, an...

hy do social movements take the forms they do? How do activists' efforts and beliefs interact with the cultural and political contexts in which they work? Why do activists take particular strategic paths, and how do their strategies affect the course and impact of the movement? Social Movements aims to bridge the gap between "political opportunities" theorists who look at the circumstances and effects of social movement efforts and "collective identity theorists" who focus on the ...

This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed-from an earlier emphasis on collective behavior, to the resource mobilization approach, and currently to analyses that emphasize culture, ideology, and collective identity. Top social scientists combine insiders' insights with critical analyses to examine a wide variety of social movements active in the most recent U.S. cycle of protest....

This ambitious volume brings together original essays on the U.S. women's movement with analyses of women's movements in other countries around the world. A comparative perspective and a common theme-feminism in social movement action-unite these voices in a way that will excite students and inspire further research. From the grassroots to the global, the significance of the U.S women's movement in the international arena cannot be denied. At the same time, the way in which international f...

Now in a second edition, Social Movements offers a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the field's historical background and major theories. Key issues are explored in the context of specific social movements and counter movements active within Canada and around the world, showing how these movements originate, mobilize participants, and bring about social change. Chapters on the women's, Aboriginal, gay and lesbian, environmental, and global justice movements reveal exactly how these g...

Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities--from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime--stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake ...

This "excellent study of activist politics in the United States over the past century" challenges the conventional wisdom about participatory democracy ( Times Literary Supplement).Freedom Is an Endless Meeting offers vivid portraits of American experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta upends the notion that partic...

First published in 1989, The Undeserving Poor was a critically acclaimed and enormously influential account of America's enduring debate about poverty. Taking stock of the last quarter century, Michael B. Katz's new edition of this classic is virtually a new book. As the first did, it will force all concerned Americans to reconsider the foundations of our policies toward the poor, especially in the wake of the Great Recession that began in 2008. Katz highlights how throughout Amer...

What is the real story behind the fight over affirmative action at colleges? Veteran journalist Peter Schmidt exposes truths that will outrage readers and forever transform the debate. He reveals how:* colleges use affirmative action to mask how much they cater to the country club crowd and to solicit support from the big corporations they steer minority students toward;* conservatives have used opposition to affirmative action to advance a broader agenda that includes guttin...

In this groundbreaking book, sociologist Andrew Perrin shows that rules and institutions, while important, are not the core of democracy. Instead, as Alexis de Tocqueville showed in the early years of the American republic, democracy is first and foremost a matter of culture: the shared ideas, practices, and technologies that help individuals combine into publics and achieve representation. Reinterpreting democracy as culture reveals the ways the media, public opinion polling, and changing...

Drawing on original research, Kristin A. Goss examines how women's civic place has changed over the span of more than 120 years, how public policy has driven these changes, and why these changes matter for women and American democracy. Suffrage, which granted women the right to vote and invited their democratic participation, provided a dual platform for the expansion of women's policy agendas. As measured by women's groups' appearances before the U.S. Congress, women's collective politica...

**A veteran activist tackles urgent questions about where the gay movement should go and what the movement wants with a unique combination of visionary politics and hard-earned pragmatism."A valuable, encyclopedic compendium of the gay movement’s modern history and challenges." —San Francisco Chronicle**Since the decade to lift the ban on gays in the military, the emergence of gay conservatives, and the onslaught of antigay initiatives across America, the gay and l...