Since industrialization, two major theoretical perspectives have accompanied the vibrant practice of social change. The first, hegemony, emerged as a less deterministic route to revolution from Marxist theory, and forms the common sense of social movement today. Within hegemonic resistance, rhetoric links issues, ideas, and identities to form a recognizable collective agent, whose aim is to transform the status quo into its vision of the world. The second major mode of resistance, transgression, grows from anarchist and autonomous resistance to capitalism. Transgression attempts to free...

What Democracy Looks Like is a compelling and timely collection which combines two distinct but related theories in rhetoric and communication studies, while also exploring theories and ideas espoused by those in sociology, political science, and cultural studies.

Recent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like...