A World to Win

Description

In this time of economic, ecological and social crises, a diverse array of collective movements carry the possibilities of deep democratization and alternative futures. A World to Win brings these movements alive as agents of history-in-the-making. It situates Quebec student strikers, Indigenous resistance and resurgence, Occupy, workers, migrant, feminist and queer movements and many others in their struggle against the hegemonic institutions of capitalism. Using theory and case studies, this book articulates the particular histories and structures facing social movements while also building bridges to comprehensive analyses of our current era of crisis and change—in Canada and the world.

Sujets

• Queer

Informations

• Publié par: Arbeiter Ring Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781894037778
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A WORLD TO WIN

Copyright 2016 William K. Carroll and Kanchan Sarker
ARP Books (Arbeiter Ring Publishing)
201 E -121 Osborne Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R 3L 1 Y 4
arpbooks.org
Cover by S bastien Aubin.
Typeset by Relish New Brand Experience.
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens on paper made from 100% recycled post-consumer waste.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This book is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and is subject to royalty.

ARP Books acknowledges the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program of Manitoba Culture, Heritage, and Tourism.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
A world to win : contemporary social movements and counter-hegemony / edited by William K. Carroll and Kanchan Sarker.
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-894037-73-0 (paperback).-- ISBN 978-1-894037-77-8 (pdf)
1. Social movements. I. Carroll, William K., author, editor II. Sarker, Kanchan, editor
CONTENTS
SURVEYING THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF DISSENT
Social Movements and Counter-Hegemony
William K. Carroll
Political Economy and Culture in Mobilizing for Change
Barry D. Adam
Neoliberalism and Its Discontents: Austerity and Resistance in an Age of Crisis
David McNally
Political Ecology and Counter-Hegemonic Politics
Laurie Adkin
Globalization, Movements and the Decentred State
Warren Magnusson
Consent, Coercion and the Criminalization of Dissent
Lesley Wood and Craig Fortier
The Political Vocabulary of the Post-New Left: How Activists Articulate Their Politics and Why It Matters
Steve D Arcy
MOVEMENT STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES-SOME KEY CASES
Infrastructure of Dissent: The Case of the Qu bec Student Movement
Xavier Lafrance and Alan Sears
Not Just Another Social Movement: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence
Elaine Coburn and Cliff (Kam ayaam/Chachim multhnii) Atleo
Placing Disability Politics: Uneven Sitings of Dissenting Bodies
Pamela Moss, Michael J. Prince, Beth DeVolder and Catriona Johnson
From Resisting Police Raids to Charter Rights: Queer and AIDS Organizing in the 1980s
Gary Kinsman
The Power of Fossil Fuel Divestment (and Its Secret)
James Rowe, Jessica Dempsey and Peter Gibbs
Blame Canada: Environmental Movements, National Media and Canada s Reputation as a Climate Villain
Mark C.J. Stoddard, Jillian Smith and David B. Tindall
No One Is Illegal: Undoing Borders
Harsha Walia
ON SOLIDARITY AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY
Internationalizing the Struggle: From Slogans to Class Politics
Sam Gindin
Does Direct Action Get the Goods? The Possibilities and Limits of Solidarity Networks
Matthew Corbeil and Jordan House
Solidarity with Whom? Occupy Wall Street and Responsibility to the Other(s)
Michael Bueckert
Synergy between Feminism and the Left: Two Moments in the Genealogy of Feminism as a Political Movement
Jacinthe Michaud
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
SURVEYING THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF DISSENT
Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
-MAO TSE-TUNG
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY
William K. Carroll
A lthough its various chapters are entirely contemporary and (with two exceptions 1 ) previously unpublished, this volume has a longish history. Organizing Dissent (Carroll, 1997), a collection published in two editions in the 1990s, brought together some of the same authors featured here in an effort to distill theoretical and practical insights on movement activism in a Canadian context. Like that book, this one speaks to activists, to students and to critical scholars interested not only in understanding the world, but in changing it. But while Organizing Dissent redressed the lack of book-length treatments of social movements in Canada, two decades later there is no such dearth. Rather, the field is now divided between traditionally academic overviews that centre around sociological theories (Staggenborg, 2012; Smith, 2014; Ramos Rodgers, 2015) and texts that largely avoid theory in favour of practical analyses of direct use to activists and concerned citizens (Choudry, Hanley Shragge, 2012; Harden, 2013; Shragge, 2013). Both genres have value, but what is needed-by activists and by students and scholars with a critical bent-is a less segmented approach.
This book strives for a unity of theory and practice-that is, a praxis- oriented examination of social movements-of value to activists whose interventions can be sharpened through theoretical reflection, and to students/scholars who may find in these chapters pathways into the world of activism. Our contributors draw upon yet reach beyond extant conceptual frameworks, to situate movements in an era of crisis and change-in Canada and the world. A defining feature of this book is its emphasis on the ways in which contemporary movements contest dominant political-economic and cultural-psychological formations, as agencies of counter-hegemony . We read movements as agents of history-in-the-making that face ongoing challenges from hegemonic institutions-capital, state, media, etc.-and from the increasing resort to the repression of dissent. As collective responses to a deepening economic, ecological and indeed civilizational crisis, in which liberal-democratic values and institutions seem increasingly hollow, movements are potential agencies of deep democratization. They contest the sedimented practices that sustain injustice, and they sometimes prefigure alternative futures.
Throughout, we strive to make good on Marx s suggestion that the point in socio-political analysis is not simply to comprehend the world but to participate in its transformation. A World to Win offers a wide-ranging collection of reflections and resources for engaged students and scholars who seek not only to interpret the world, but to change it. As Kurt Lewin, a founder of action research, claimed, there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Greenwald, 2012: 99). Theory is what enables us to move beyond the concrete particulars of one specific situation, to see things in a wider context, to connect the dots between events in a meaningful way, opening the prospect for effective practice. To keep things centred upon the issue of praxis, my presentation below of contemporary perspectives in social movement studies is selective and attuned to their main implications for political practice. In this, I follow Saul Alinsky (1971), whose Rules for Radicals attempted to distil practical lessons for those coming of age in the 1960s wave of activism. But unlike Alinsky, I use social science as a critical cognitive resource. Our praxis-oriented approach asks how theoretical insights can inform strategies for resisting hegemony and building counter-hegemony.
This Introduction presents three paradigms within which social movements and activism can be comprehended. The first two-the pragmatic-reformist and the epochal-interpretive-represent the main traditions in social movement studies; the third applies the historical materialism of Marx and Gramsci, enriched with insights from the first two. At the close of each presentation I provide five key lessons for activists. These are offered not as doctrine or as logical deductions from abstract theory, but as strategic pointers that may be helpful in fashioning effective praxis. In the last section, I introduce subsequent chapters, noting how each conveys a distinct perspective from which we can understand social movements and the politics of counter-hegemony, in contemporary Canada and the wider world.
The first two paradigms have shaped the field of mainstream social movement studies since the 1970s. Pragmatic-reformist approaches focus on how movements emerge and pursue collective action, whereas epochal-interpretive formulations focus on why specific forms of activism have appeared in late modernity. The former offer often intricate insights on the dynamics of contention but tend to take the historical context of movements as given; the latter are sensitized to the macro-sociological transformations and emergent cultural, political and economic contexts of collective action. In presenting historical materialism as a third paradigm, I argue that key insights from the first two can be brought together in a wider view that offers strategic resources to critical movements, and clarifies what is at stake.
The Pragmatic-Reformist Paradigm
This approach begins from the premises of our contemporary order-the division of social space into separate economic, political and cultural spheres (the market, the state and civil society respectively), the conflicting interests that stem from unequal power relations within these spheres and the observed tendency for aggrieved groups to organize themselves into social movements and to press for change, often through the institutional apparatuses of the liberal-democratic state. Although specific models have been developed to account for certain political outcomes, 2 the broad perspective that proceeds from these givens is known as resource-mobilization theory (RMT). Movement mobilization is a process by which resources useful to a group s collective action are brought under collective control. It is this pooling of resources that enables a group