Escaping the Global Village: Media, Language, and Protest

In the face of expanding global media, Europe's linguistic minorities have begun to resist the homogenizing forces of television. Escaping the Global Village documents and analyzes various campaigns by indigenous minority language advocates throughout Europe for alternative language television services. Niamh Hourigan uses social movement theory as the framework for her comparison of indigenous minority language protest groups such as the Welsh, Basque, Scots Gaelic, Catalan, and Irish. She offers penetrating accounts of the campaigns' strategies, obstacles, and successes, and insight into the television services achieved. Escaping the Global Village not only reveals an emerging modern form of social protest but also situates it within broader patterns of social change, particularly globalization.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Social Movement Theory Chapter 3 Linguistic Minorities and Television Chapter 4 Indigenous Minority Language Media Campaigns Chapter 5 The Campaign for Irish Language Television Chapter 6 Minority Language Television Services

About the Author :
Niamh Hourigan is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland.

Review :
This is a fine read. The analysis is comparative in the best sense-combining detailed and subtly nuanced accounts of particular 'national' stories with an overview of how the question of minority language issues is now changed, in the broader context of the new European mediascape. The book offers a sophisticated account of the contradictory effects of globalisation in the sphere of culture. In doing so it also illuminates the ways in which social movements have been able, in some instances, to take good advantage of the changing 'political opportunity structure' created by the relative decline in the regulatory powers of the nation-state. Even those concerned with minority television in other regions-or other languages-will find this a very useful study. Hourigan's attempt to fuse elements from competing paradigms is both interesting and useful. For all the recent hype on the role of media, social movements, language, and national and minority identities in contemporary society, works explicitly integrating all these different dimensions are still in short supply. Escaping the Global Village nicely contributes to filling this gap. It will be widely read-and well received-by social scientists across a range of disciplinary fields.