From Contention to Democracy - Tapa dura

This is a good book. It advances our understanding of social movements. * International Social Science Review * The book succeeds in addressing an important deficit in the literature by bringing specific theoretical issues on social movement outcomes out from behind the shadow of research on movement origins. . . . this is a joint venture with an intellectual purpose behind it that is sustained throughout the volume. * Canadian Journal of Political Science *

From Contention to Democracy addresses a crucial aspect of contemporary societies: the role of social movements for political and social change. The volume gathers together essays written by prominent social theorists who have been asked to reflect on the relationship between movements and processes of social, political and cultural change. Three broad types of movement-change nexus are distinguished and discussed: incorporation, transformation, and democratization. The chapters in this book all point to the place of social movements in relation to these three processes of change, while discussing the history and well-known events of social movements. Individual occurrences such as the protest of French students in 1968 or Chilean shantytown dwellers are examined. The final essay looks ahead, wondering: what is the future of social movements?