Globalization and Resistance brings together cutting-edge theory and research about how global economics and politics alter the way ordinary people engage in contentious political action. The cases range from nineteenth-century Irish immigrant networks, to protests against World Bank projects in the Amazon, to contemporary transnational organizing for the environment, to the 'battle of Seattle.' The volume illuminates the reciprocal effects between globalization processes and social movements.

In was the summer of 2001 when political scientists and sociologists gathered at the University of Virginia to present new information and assess the status of study about political mobilization and political repression. The 10 papers presented and printed here focus on interactions between protesters and police; case studies come from Germany, the

Cultural changes have led to a proliferation of new social movements in Europe and the United States. This book helps to redefine the field of social movements, and offer an understanding of them through cross-cultural research, comparison with older movements, and examine the dimensions of identity individual, collective, and melding of the two.

Social movements play a central role in the scope and direction of social change. They were instrumental in the creation of the modern state and, today, are major forces in politics and culture. Environmentalism, gay rights, alterglobalization, and Islamic fundamentalism are all movements with far-reaching impacts on contemporary society.

What is a Social Movement? traces how the study of movements such as these - of their structures, their ideas, and their repertoires of protest - have grown in recent years to become a major focus in the social sciences. It deftly...