Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics

by Sidney Tarrow

Book Overview

Social movements have an elusive power but one that is altogether real. From the French and American revolutions to the Arab Spring, and to ethnic and terrorist movements of today, contentious... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521629470
• ISBN13: 9780521629478
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Perfect conditions but not so fast

the book was in perfect conditions, but they took forever to send it. I am used to get them right away, and that was definitely not the case here. Once they finally shipped it, it took a day or two to arrive, so it was not a problem on the mail's part. However, I did get the book within the estimated period of delivery, so technically I cannot complain. The thing is that in general other providers send their products faster.

A Strong Focus on Politicized Social Movements

Aside from some introductory matter on the various schools of thought in social movement research, here Tarrow mostly focuses on the influence of political structures on the formation of popular movements. This includes both external political and social influences, plus developments in the interactions between movements and the states/regimes they are confronting. Tarrow mostly uses movements that have had strong political effects in various nations (mostly Europe) as examples for his theories, and utilizes the concept of "cycles of contention" to elaborate on the evolution of movements over time. This specialized focus does lead to some interesting results, such as Tarrow's reconstruction of the disparate revolutions in Europe in 1848 as a widespread movement, or coverage of how states can co-opt a movement's message as a means of control. He has a nearly Marxist conception of such trends, but mostly avoids the tiresome pontificating that is usually fostered by Marxist theorizing. Another bonus is the final chapter of the main text, dealing with new phenomena in globalized or transnational social movements. The book does lose steam frequently as Tarrow gets distracted with long histories of the movements he uses as examples (including way too much repetitive information on the 1848 phenomenon), while his generally strong writing does occasionally lapse into diffuse professor-speak, which sadly is unavoidable in this field. But in the long run, this book offers mostly powerful coverage of politicized social movements, and the study thereof. [~doomsdayer520~]

Ideal for the social movement student

I had to read an earlier edition of that book for a course on social movements. It was one of my first contacts with social movements literature. Since then, I plug almost everything I read on social movement to the theoretical framework described in this book. I guess the main quality of this book is that the author recognise the contributions made by different schools of thought on social movements and tries to situate them in a larger framework rather then dismiss them. Therefore, anyone working within a specific area of social movement studies can gain something from the reading of this book. However, the major contribution of this book is probably the theorization of the "cycles of contentions" based on changing political opportunity structure. As the opportunity structure open for a social movement, the movement is on the rise... when it close, for example because of a change in the public opinion caused by a rise in insecurity and violence, the movement disolve. Although a very simple theory, it appers very effective in understanding the rise and fall of social movements.As any student of social movements would argue, this book does not cover all aspect of social movements (e.g. identity, emotions, ...) but Tarrow does leave enough space for other approaches while developing is how theoretical approach to social movements. An excellent book!