Contemporary Protest and the Legacy of Dissent - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1783481757 ISBN 13: 9781783481750

Casa editrice: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

Riassunto

Contemporary protest, often presented in media forms as a dramatic ritual played out in an iconic public space has provided a potent symbol of the widespread economic and social discontent that is a feature of European life under the rule of "austerity." Yet, beneath this surface activity, which provides the headlines and images familiar from mainstream news coverage, lies a whole array of deeper structures, modes of behavior, and forms of human affiliation.

Contemporary Protest and the Legacy of Dissent offers a vibrant and insightful overview of modern protest movements, ideologies, and events. Written by academics and activists familiar with the strategies, values, and arguments of those groups and individuals responsible for shaping the modern landscape of protest, it reveals the inside story of a number of campaigns and events. It analyzes the various manifestations of dissent-on and offline, visible and obscure, progressive and reactionary-through the work of a number of commentators and dedicated "academic activists," while reassessing the standard explanatory frameworks supplied by contemporary theorists. In doing so, it offers a coherent account of the range of academic and theoretical approaches to the study of protest and social movements.

Contributions by: David Bates, Mark Bergfeld, Vincent Campbell,Claire English, Ingrid M. Hoofd, Soeren Keil, Matthew Ogilvie, Stuart Price, Anandi Ramamurthy, Ruth Sanz Sabido, Lee Salter, Cassian Sparkes-Vian, and Thomas Swann.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sugli autori

Stuart Price is Professor of Media and Political Discourse at De Montfort University. Ben Harbisher is a senior lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Ruth Sanz Sabido is Reader in Media and Social Inequality at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

Contemporary Protest and the Legacy of Dissent

By Stuart Price, Ruth Sanz Sabido

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2015 Stuart Price, Ruth Sanz Sabido and Contributors
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-175-0

CHAPTER 1

The Legacy of Dissent

Stuart Price

Class, Gender and Austerity

INTRODUCTION: PROTEST AS CLASS RESISTANCE

A vast procession of demonstrators, protesting against a law designed to undermine workers' rights, made its way through the streets of a European capital. Prevented from marching to the nation's Parliament buildings, which had been surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers, water-cannon and police, the crowd passed in front of "a number of big banks and finance houses", at which point thousands of people began to chant the slogan "the bankers must pay" (Brinton 2004, 26). This incident was not, however, part of the recent wave of unrest that has greeted the imposition of 'austerity' in Europe, but one brief moment within an event that is now almost forgotten. The Belgian General Strike, which erupted in the winter of 1960/61, was a response to the proposed introduction of the 'Unity Law', a programme of public sector cuts drafted by the governing Christian Peoples' Party. In an age when the terms spontaneous and grassroots are overused, these protestors, who voiced a demand that resonates powerfully with modern activists, formed part of a genuine and widespread working-class revolt.

Like any event of this kind, when whole sectors of a working population are drawn into open conflict with established authority, economic resistance is accompanied by, and mediated through, wider forms of social rebellion. In Belgium, at least at the beginning of that titanic struggle, the movement was led by strike committees that worked without the support of trade union officials, and which operated beyond the control of the mainstream Left (Dache 2010). Eventually, nearly a million people walked out of their workplaces, and by January 1961 the strike had brought down the government (Brinton 2004). Then, in a familiar pattern, formal authority was reconstituted through the mechanism of the electoral process, and a new coalition, dominated by the same party that had led the previous administration, came to power.

In March 1968, just over seven years after the end of the Belgian strike, students at the Paris annex of the University of Nanterre broke into administrative offices, where they "sat down and formed themselves spontaneously into a sort of students' council" (Seale and McConville 1968, 19). This act of protest was carried out in response to the arrest of five young men who, opposed to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, had used explosive charges to destroy the plate-glass windows of American-owned banks and businesses. In expressing solidarity with a handful of anti-war activists, the Nanterre students could not have known that their action would initiate a much more extensive revolt, directed against the overcrowded and chaotic French higher education system itself. The form taken by this protest — the occupation of public, private and productive space — may remind modern campaigners of their own practices. Then, as now, this radical form of political intervention was opposed by those who held positions of formal authority. On 3 May 1968 Jean Roche, the Chancellor of the 'elite' University of the Sorbonne, declared that it was "absolutely necessary to expel students who were occupying parts of the university" (Seidman 2004, 94).

His intervention allowed the police to make mass arrests. As the conflict between an intransigent Government and the student

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Rowman & Littlefield
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1783481757
• ISBN 13: 9781783481750
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 246
• Redattore: Price Stuart, Sabido Ruth Sanz
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile