Protest and Politics: The Promise of Social Movement Societies - Tapa dura

The Tea Party. The Occupy Movement. Idle No More. Around the world, popular social movements are challenging the status quo. Yet most democracies are seeing a decline in voter turnout. Protest and Politics examines this shift in political participation, as well as the blurring of social movements and mainstream politics, through the lens of the social movement society thesis. Analyzing historical and contemporary social movements in Canada, in comparison to those in the US and in the transnational sphere, the authors argue that our understanding of the boundaries between politics and protest needs to evolve.

Howard Ramos is an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University. He is the co-author, with Karen Stanbridge, of Seeing Politics Differently: A Brief Introduction to Political Sociology and co-author, with Suzanne Staggenborg, of Social Movements (3rd Canadian edition).