The Future of Social Movement Research: Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes(Social Movements, Protest and Contention)

Are the dynamics of contention changing? This is the question confronted by the contributors of this volume, among the most influential scholars in the field of social movements. The answers, arriving at a time of extraordinary worldwide turmoil, not only provide a wide-ranging and varied understanding of how social movements arise and persist, but also engender unanswered questions, pointing to new theoretical strands and fields of research.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Changing Dynamics of ContentionJacquelien van Stekelenburg and Conny RoggebandPart I. Grievances and Identities: The Demand Side of Participation1. The Dynamics of DemandBert Klandermans2. Is the Internet Creating New Reasons to Protest?Francesca Polletta, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes3. Social Movement Participation in the Global Society: Identity, Networks, and EmotionsVerta Taylor4. “Protest against whom?”: The Role of Collective Meaning Making in PoliticizationMarjoka van Doorn, Jacomijne Prins, and Saskia WelschenDiscussion: Opening the Black Box of Dynamics in Theory and Research on the Demand Side of ProtestMartijn van Zomeren Part II. Organizations and Networks: The Supply Side of Contention 5. The Changing Supply Side of Mobilization: Questions for DiscussionConny Roggeband and Jan Willem Duyvendak6. Bringing Organizational Studies Back into Social Movement ScholarshipSarah A. Soule7. Organization and Community in Social MovementsSuzanne Staggenborg8. Organizational Fields and Social Movement DynamicsMario Diani9. Social Movement Structures in Action: Conceptual Propositions and Empirical IllustrationDieter RuchtDiscussion: The Changing Supply Side of Mobilization: Impressions on a ThemeDebra Minkoff Part III. Dynamics of Mobilization10. Changing Mobilization of Individual Activists?Stefaan Walgrave11. Mobilizing for Change in a Changing SocietyJacquelien van Stekelenburg and Marije Boekkooi12. Ethnicity, Repression, and Fields of Action in Movement MobilizationPamela E. Oliver13. Identity Dilemmas, Discursive Fields, Identity Work, and Mobilization: Clarifying the Identity/Movement NexusDavid A. Snow14. Movements of the Left, Movements of the Right ReconsideredSwen Hutter and Hanspeter KriesiDiscussion: Mobilization and the Changing and Persistent Dynamics of Political ParticipationChristopher Rootes Part IV. The Changing Context of Contention15. The End of the Social Movement as We Know It?: Adaptive Challenges in Changed ContextsRuud Koopmans16. Social Movements and Elections: Toward a Broader Understanding of the Political Context of ContentionDoug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow17. Social Movements, Power, and Democracy: New Challenges, New Challengers, New Theories?Donatella della Porta18. Recent Trends in Public Protest in the U.S.A.: The Social Movement Society Thesis RevisitedJohn D. McCarthy, Patrick Rafail, and Ashley Gromis19. The “Contentious French” RevisitedNonna MayerDiscussion: Meaning and Movements in the New Millennium: Gendering DemocracyMyra Marx FerreeAfterwordBert Klandermans ContributorsIndex

About the Author :
Jacquelien van Stekelenburg is associate professor of sociology at VU-University, Amsterdam.

Review :
This is a major, very important work which brings together the leading lights in the international, interdisciplinary, invisible college of social movement scholars. The book combines thoughtful essays on the state of the art in the study of contentious politics with grounded speculation on the many still unanswered or incompletely answered questions. The authors do an excellent job of distinguishing what is based on solid empirical research and what would require additional research to answer with confidence. This does not prevent them from suggesting hypotheses and impressions which are based on reasonable and probable extensions of what we already know.—William Gamson, Boston College