Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 2

George Katsiaficas

Description

Ten years in the making, this magisterial work—the second of a two-volume study—provides a unique perspective on uprisings in nine Asian nations in the past five decades. While the 2011 Arab Spring is well known, the wave of uprisings that swept Asia in the 1980s remain hardly visible. Through a critique of Samuel Huntington’s notion of a “Third Wave” of democratization, the author relates Asian uprisings to predecessors in 1968 and shows their subsequent influence on uprisings in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. By empirically reconstructing the specific history of each Asian uprising, significant insight into major constituencies of change and the trajectories of these societies becomes visible.

This book provides detailed histories of uprisings in nine places—the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia—as well as introductory and concluding chapters that place them in a global context and analyze them in light of major sociological theories. Profusely illustrated with photographs, tables, graphs, and charts, it is the definitive, and defining, work from the eminent participant-observer scholar of social movements.

Sujets

• Working class
• Popular Power
• Labor history
• Rebellion
• Révolution
• Insurrection
• Résistance
• Libération

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604868562
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

"This book about people’s power movements in Asia over the last sixty years makes the case, convincingly, that they should be seen as part of the worldwide new left. Reading it will broaden the perspective of activists and analysts in North America and Europe, a very important task." Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar, Yale University
"Visionary historian George Katsiaficas writes like a novelist with the eye for detail of a poet and the moral weight of a philosopher. He has circled the globe applying his seminal theory of the Eros Effect. Asia’s Unknown Uprisings is the latest chapter of his grand epic. Like Pablo Neruda’s Canto General, Katsiaficas’s works are a blueprint for hope for ‘all the peoples struggling for freedom.’" Richard Cambridge, author of One Shot News Poetry of Conscience
"In Asia’s Unknown Uprisings, George Katsiaficas inspires readers with an exciting yet scholarly examination of the rise and interlinking of mass revolutionary waves of struggle. In no way Pollyannaish, Katsiaficas presents readers with an analysis of the successes and failures of these late twentieth-century movements. In view of the phenomenal Arab democratic uprisings begun in late 2010 and early 2011, Katsiaficas’s analysis is profoundly relevant in helping us understand how the metaphorical flight of a butterfly in one part of the planet can contribute to a hurricane thousands of miles away." Bill Fletcher, Jr., coauthor of Solidarity Divided, and BlackCommentator.com editorial board member
"George Katsiaficas is America’s leading practitioner of the method of ‘participant-observation,’ acting with and observing the movements that he is studying. This study of People Power is a brilliant narrative of the present as history from below. It is a detailed account of the struggle for freedom and social justice, encompassing the different currents, both reformist and revolutionary, in a balanced study that combines objectivity and commitment. Above all, he presents the beauty of popular movements in the process of self-emancipation." James Petras, author of The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack
"George Katsiaficas has written a majestic account of political uprisings and social movements in Asia an important contribution to the literature on both Asian studies and social change that is highly recommended reading for anyone concerned with these fields of interest. The work is well-researched, clearly argued, and beautifully written, accessible to both academic and general readers." Carl Boggs, author of The Crimes of Empire and Imperial Delusions, and professor of social sciences, National University, Los Angeles
"With a characteristic discipline, which typifies the intellectual fabric of great minds, George Katsiaficas shares a family resemblance with Herbert Marcuse, the greatest revolutionary thinker of the twentieth century. Like Marcuse before him, Katsiaficas imbues us with eros for revolutions and respect for meaningful facts. As he surveys the Asian world from Burma to China, activists will be guided by his vision, historians will be informed by his mastery of world history, sociologists will find his fertile imaginations arresting, and ordinary readers will be enticed by the literary flow of this great work. This is a great read by a major thinker, destined to be a classic about the revolutions and passions of the Asian world." Teodros Kiros, professor of philosophy and English at Berklee College of Music and a non-resident Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University
"Through Katsiaficas’s study of Asia’s uprisings and rebellions, readers get a glimpse of the challenge to revolutionaries to move beyond representative democracy and to reimagine and reinvent democracy. This book shows the power of rebellions to change the conversation." Grace Lee Boggs, activist and coauthor of Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century
"The work of George Katsiaficas reveals the sinews of social revolution not the posturing of political parties, but the impulse that rises from the grassroots which tap into an ever-present tendency in history, that of the self-organization of citizens." Dimitrios Roussopoulos, author of Participatory Democracy: Prospects for Democratizing Democracy
"The heartbeat of the eros effect only grows stronger in this expansive work, as George Katsiaficas lovingly details the élan vital of do-it-ourselves rebellions, and in places too long ignored. His sweeping account not only helps us take better pulse of and better engage in today’s directly democratic uprisings but also charts their direct lineage in revolts waged outside nationalist, hierarchical structures. In fully embracing the complexity, surprise, messiness, cross-pollination, and power of revolutions in which people experiment in forms of freedom together, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings grasps the promise of a shared future in such egalitarian yearnings." Cindy Milstein, Occupy Philly and co-collaborator of Paths toward Utopia: Explorations in Everyday Anarchism

Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia, 1947-2009 George Katsiaficas © George Katsiaficas This edition © 2013 PM Press All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-488-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2011917551
Cover: John Yates / www.stealworks.com Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
For Shin Eun-jung, 1972–2012 Activist, filmmaker, and author My partner and inspiration
The anonymous people
WE Are the anonymous people No photos No paintings To record our pasts Our forefathers Collected no stamps No public wall Bears our names No awards for us In public games
WE Are the anonymous people Our forefathers were the same Age’s suffering Connects us to the past No memories of us But our world is vast
WE Are the anonymous people Silence is our mask
Basil Fernando (1970)
Contents
List of Tables
List of Charts and Graphs
List of Photographs
List of Abbreviations
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1 A World of Uprisings
Asia’s People Power Insurgencies
Civil Insurgencies from 1968 to 1998
Global People Power
From 1968 to 1989: The Fall of Soviet Communism
Rethinking Huntington’s Third Wave
What Is Democracy?
Ideology and Science
Evaluating Uprisings
The Continuing Wave
CHAPTER 2 The Philippines
The Marcos Regime
The Assassination of Benigno Aquino
The Snap Election
The Mutiny inside the Military
People Power Emerges
The Final Battle
International Effects of People Power 1
The Aquino Government
From Ramos to Estrada
People Power 2: From Estrada to Arroyo
EDSA 3: Poor People Power
CHAPTER 3 Burma
8-8-88
Councils Come to Power
Thermidor: The Iron Fist Comes Down
Long Road Since 1988
The Economics of Military Rule
The 2007 "Saffron Revolution"
CHAPTER 4 Tibet
The 1959 Uprising
Exile and Occupation
The Late 1980s
Continuing Resistance
CHAPTER 5 China
The Cultural Revolution’s Contribution to the Movement of 1989
Economic Reform
The 1989 Crisis
Students Take the Initiative
Students Under Attack
The Hunger Strikers’ Coup d’État
"Commander-in-Chief of the Headquarters of Tiananmen Square"
From Martial Law to the Bloodshed of June 4
The Aftermath of the Uprising
China’s Prosperity amid Repression
Continuing Resistance and State Incorporation
CHAPTER 6 Taiwan
The 1947 Uprising and Massacre
From the "Silent Generation" to the Kaohsiung Incident
Grassroots Protests and the End of Martial Law
Democratization Upsurge
The Wild Lily Student Movement
Toward a Democratic Transition
CHAPTER 7 Nepal
Nepali Civil Society
Preparing the Jana Andolan
Political Parties and People’s Movement
Liberated Patan
The Uprising’s Climax
Negotiations and Compromise
Unfinished Character of Jana Andolan
The Uprising’s Renewal of Civil Society
The Interim Government
The Maoist Impetus
October 4, 2002, Royal Coup d’État
Jana Andolan 2 The 2006 Loktantra Andolan
A Difficult Harvest
Who’s in Power?
CHAPTER 8 Bangladesh
Bangladesh’s Bloody Birth
Students to the Fore
Bangladeshi Student Power
The Democratic Breakthrough
Women’s Movement
Class Struggles of Garment Workers
CHAPTER 9 Thailand
Nation, Religion, King
The 1973 Student Revolution
The Postuprising Surge
The 1976 Massacre of Students
Neoliberalism’s Thai Face
1992 "Black May"
Showdown on May 17
The Outcome of Black May
"Cell Phone Mob"
The 1997 People’s Constitution
The 1997 IMF Crisis
Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts
CHAPTER 10 Indonesia
The IMF Crisis
The 1998 Student Uprising
The Reformasi Era
CHAPTER 11 People Power and Its Limits
The Global Imperative
From 1968 to Uprisings 2.0
The Arab Spring
Revisiting the Eros Eff