Download or read book Counterpower written by Tim Gee and published by New Internationalist. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book argues that no major movement has ever been successful without counterpower, or the power that the "have-nots" can use to remove the power of the "haves." Investigating the history and tactics of major movements of the past and today's global justice and human rights movements, Tim Gee demonstrates what works and what doesn't work. In showing how counterpower can be strategically applied, Gee has created an inspiration for activists and an invaluable resource for teachers and students of social change. Tim Gee is a writer and communications specialist working with campaigning organizations in the United Kingdom and worldwide.
Download or read book Communication Power written by Manuel Castells and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wide range of social and psychological theories, Castells presents original research on political processes and social movements. He applies this analysis to numerous recent events - the misinformation of the American public on the Iraq War,the global environmental movement to preventclimate change, the control of information in China and Russia, Barak Obama's internet-based presidential campaigns, and (in this new edition) responses to recent political and economic crises such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. On the basis of these case studies he proposes a newtheory of power in the information age based on the management of communication networks.
Download or read book Organizing for Autonomy written by Organization for a Free Society and published by . This book was released on 2020-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revolutionary handbook to radical theory and history as well as an organizing model for how we get free."How can we get free? How can we free ourselves, our communities, our environments, our society? Our present is infused with incredible possibilities for realizing a free association of social individuals, sustainably regulating our relations within nature. Yet the material possibilities for the realization of this freedom remain trapped within a present that summons all available weapons of repression to contain and suppress it"The question of freedom is central to all revolutionary movements. It is at the root of everyday struggles to resist and overcome oppression. Often, the realities we face constrain how we understand this question, so we ask it in pieces. How do we provide for each other? How do we protect, nurture, care, love, create? These questions of survival and perseverance ask how we liberate ourselves from the hardships of enclosure, exploitation, and dependency that are imposed on our minds, bodies, communities, and environments."By laying bare the mechanisms of capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, climate catastrophe, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, exploitation and dispossesion, and a range of other oppressive structures and countering them with a historical account of revolutionary movements from around the world, Organizing for Autonomynbsp; offers a brazen and determined articulation of a world that centers community, love, and justice.With an unparalleled breadth and by synthesizing innumerable sources of revolutionary thought and history, CounterPower presents the result of years of inquiry, struggle, and resistance. Bold, fearless, and radically original, Organizing for Autonomynbsp; imagines a decolonized, communist, alternative world order that is free from oppressive structures, state violence, and racial capitalism and helps us to get there.nbsp;nbsp;
Download or read book Networks of Outrage and Hope written by Manuel Castells and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Networks of Outrage and Hope is an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the social protests in Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere. While these and similar social movements differ in many important ways, there is one thing they share in common: they are all interwoven inextricably with the creation of autonomous communication networks supported by the Internet and wireless communication. In this new edition of his timely and important book, Manuel Castells examines the social, cultural and political roots of these new social movements, studies their innovative forms of self-organization, assesses the precise role of technology in the dynamics of the movements, suggests the reasons for the support they have found in large segments of society, and probes their capacity to induce political change by influencing people’s minds. Two new chapters bring the analysis up-to-date and draw out the implications of these social movements and protests for understanding the new forms of social change and political democracy in the global network society.
Download or read book Phenomena of Power written by Heinrich Popitz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Phenomena of Power, one of the leading figures of postwar German sociology reflects on the nature, and many forms of, power. For Heinrich Popitz, power is rooted in the human condition and is therefore part of all social relations. Drawing on philosophical anthropology, he identifies the elementary forms of power to provide detailed insight into how individuals gain and perpetuate control over others. Instead of striving for a power-free society, Popitz argues, humanity should try to impose limits on power where possible and establish counterpower where necessary. Phenomena of Power delves into the sociohistorical manifestations of power and breaks through to its general structures. Popitz distinguishes the forms of the enforcement of power as well as of its stabilization and institutionalization, clearly articulating how the mechanisms of power work and how to track them in the social world. Philosophically trained, historically informed, and endowed with keen observation, Popitz uses examples ranging from the way passengers on a ship organize deck chairs to how prisoners of war share property to illustrate his theory. Long influential in German sociology, Phenomena of Power offers a challenging reworking of one of the essential concepts of the social sciences.
Download or read book Social Media Politics and the State written by Daniel Trottier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contributions by social media scholars who explore the connection of social media with revolutions, uprising, protests, power and counter-power, hacktivism, the state, policing and surveillance. It shows how collective action and state power are related and conflict as two dialectical sides of social media power, and how power and counter-power are distributed in this dialectic. Theoretically focused and empirically rigorous research considers the two-sided contradictory nature of power in relation to social media and politics. Chapters cover social media in the context of phenomena such as contemporary revolutions in Egypt and other countries, populism 2.0, anti-austerity protests, the fascist movement in Greece's crisis, Anonymous and police surveillance.
Download or read book Reflections on Empire written by Antonio Negri and published by Polity. This book was released on 2008-07-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book from Antonio Negri, one of the most influential political thinkers writing today, provides a concise and accessible introduction to the key ideas of his recent work. Giving the reader a sense of the wider context in which Negri has developed the ideas that have become so central to current debates, the book is made up of five lectures which address a series of topics that are dealt with in his world-famous books empire, globalization, multitude, sovereignty, democracy. Reflections on Empire will appeal to anyone interested in current debates about the ways in which the world is changing today, to the many people who are followers of Negri's work and to students and scholars in sociology, politics and cultural studies.
Download or read book Black Flame written by Lucien Van der Walt and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part one of a two-part history of the non-Marxist, libertarian form of socialism, aka anarchism. From its origins in the 18th century and the conflicts with Marx in the First International to insurrections, trade unions and specific anarchist organisations, the hidden history of an alternative tradition is revealed. The ideas about socialism so prevalent today, that it equates with state ownership, that is the perogative of the Party, that it has somehow failed, are all dismantled in this scholarly engagement with a complex ideology.
Download or read book Monstrous Society written by David Collings and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Monstrous Society problematizes competing representations of reciprocity in England in the decades around 1800. It argues that in the eighteenth-century moral economy, power is divided between official authority and the counter-power of plebeians. This tacit, mutual understanding comes under attack when influential political thinkers, such as Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and T.R. Malthus, attempt to discipline the social body, to make state power immune from popular response. But once negated, counter-power persists, even if in the demands of a debased, inhuman body. Such a response is writ large in Gothic tales, especially Matthew Lewis's The Monk and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and in the innovative, embodied political practices of the mass movements for Reform and the Charter. By interpreting the formation of modern English culture through the early modern practice of reciprocity, David Collings constructs a "nonmodern" mode of analysis, one that sees modernity not as a break from the past but as the result of attempts to transform traditions that, however distorted, nevertheless remain broadly in force."--Jacket.
Download or read book Counter Democracy written by Pierre Rosanvallon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is established as a generally uncontested ideal, while regimes inspired by this form of government fall under constant criticism. Hence, the steady erosion of confidence in representatives that has become one of the major political issues of our time. Amidst these challenges, the paradox remains that while citizens are less likely to make the trip to the ballot box, the world is far from entering a phase of general political apathy. Demonstrations and activism abound in the streets, in cities across the globe and on the internet. Pierre Rosanvallon analyses the mechanisms used to register a citizen's expression of confidence or distrust, and then focuses on the role that distrust plays in democracy from both a historical and theoretical perspective. This radical shift in perspective uncovers a series of practices - surveillance, prevention, and judgement - through which society corrects and exerts pressure.
Download or read book Essays on Evolutions in the Study of Political Power written by Giulio M. Gallarotti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the most important developments in the study of political power over the last four decades. From the writings of the great Greek philosophers of antiquity to the present, the idea of power has been the major subject in the study of politics. Indeed, some would say it defines the very field of politics itself as a social science. Penned by the leading scholars in the field, this collection gives a broad overview of the most important issues in the study of political power, tracing the evolution of scholarly thinking about them and in doing so revealing crucial innovations therein. This will be a major contribution in the understanding of the concepts and practices of how power manifests itself across social and political contexts. This book will be of great interest to scholars, students and individuals who wish to understand the very foundations of social and political life. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Power, volume 14, issue 1 (2021).
Download or read book Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence Horror and Power written by Erdem, M. Nur and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individuals seek ways to repress the sense of violence within themselves and often resort to medial channels. The hunger of the individual for violence is a trigger for the generation of violent content by media, owners of political power, owners of religious power, etc. However, this content is produced considering the individual’s sensitivities. Thus, violence is aestheticized. Aesthetics of violence appear in different fields and in different forms. In order to analyze it, an interdisciplinary perspective is required. The Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence, Horror, and Power brings together two different concepts that seem incompatible—aesthetics and violence—and focuses on the basic motives of aestheticizing and presenting violence in different fields and genres, as well as the role of audience reception. Seeking to reveal this togetherness with different methods, research, analyses, and findings in different fields that include media, urban design, art, and mythology, the book covers the aestheticization of fear, power, and violence in such mediums as public relations, digital games, and performance art. This comprehensive reference is an ideal source for researchers, academicians, and students working in the fields of media, culture, art, politics, architecture, aesthetics, history, cultural anthropology, and more.
Download or read book The Platform Society written by José van Dijck and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individuals all over the world can use Airbnb to rent an apartment in a foreign city, check Coursera to find a course on statistics, join PatientsLikeMe to exchange information about one's disease, hail a cab using Uber, or read the news through Facebook's Instant Articles. The promise of connective platforms is that they offer personalized services and contribute to innovation and economic growth, while bypassing cumbersome institutional or industrial overhead. In The Platform Society, Van Dijck, Poell and De Waal offer a comprehensive analysis of a connective world where platforms have penetrated the heart of societies-disrupting markets and labor relations, circumventing institutions, transforming social and civic practices and affecting democratic processes. This book questions what role online platforms play in the organization of Western societies. First, how do platform mechanisms work and to what effect are they deployed? Second, how can platforms incorporate public values and benefit the public good? The Platform Society analyzes intense struggles between competing ideological systems and contesting societal actors-market, government and civil society-raising the issue of who is or should be responsible for anchoring public values and the common good in a platform society. Public values include of course privacy, accuracy, safety, and security, but they also pertain to broader societal effects, such as fairness, accessibility, democratic control, and accountability. Such values are the very stakes in the struggle over the platformization of societies around the globe. The Platform Society highlights how this struggle plays out in four private and public sectors: news, urban transport, health, and education. Each struggle highlights local dimensions, for instance fights over regulation between individual platforms and city governments, but also addresses the level of the platform ecosystem as well as the geopolitical level where power clashes between global markets and (supra-)national governments take place.
Download or read book Contemporary Radical Film Culture written by Steve Presence and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising essays from some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this is the first book to investigate twenty-first century radical film practices across production, distribution and exhibition at a global level. This book explores global radical film culture in all its geographic, political and aesthetic diversity. It is inspired by the work of the Radical Film Network (RFN), an organisation established in 2013 to support the growth and sustainability of politically engaged film culture around the world. Since then, the RFN has grown rapidly, and now consists of almost 200 organisations across four continents, from artists’ studios and production collectives to archives, distributors and film festivals. With this foundation, the book engages with contemporary radical film cultures in Africa, Asia, China, Europe, the Middle East as well as North and South America, and connects key historical moments and traditions with the present day. Topics covered include artists’ film and video, curation, documentary, feminist and queer film cultures, film festivals and screening practices, network-building, policy interventions and video-activism. For students, researchers and practitioners, this fascinating and wide-ranging book sheds new light on the political potential of the moving image and represents the activists and organisations pushing radical film forward in new and exciting directions. For more information about the Radical Film Network, visit www.radicalfilmnetwork.com.
Download or read book Digital Political Radical written by Natalie Fenton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital, Political, Radical is a siren call to the field of media and communications and the study of social and political movements. We must put the politics of transformation at the very heart of our analyses to meet the global challenges of gross inequality and ever-more impoverished democracies. Fenton makes an impassioned plea for re-invigorating critical research on digital media such that it can be explanatory, practical and normative. She dares us to be politically emboldened. She urges us to seek out an emancipatory politics that aims to deepen our democratic horizons. To ask: how can we do democracy better? What are the conditions required to live together well? Then, what is the role of the media and how can we reclaim media, power and politics for progressive ends? Journeying through a range of protest and political movements, Fenton debunks myths of digital media along the way and points us in the direction of newly emergent politics of the Left. Digital, Political, Radical contributes to political debate on contemporary (re)configurations of radical progressive politics through a consideration of how we experience (counter) politics in the digital age and how this may influence our being political.
Download or read book Power in the Global Age written by Ulrich Beck and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brilliant new book by one of Europe's leading social thinkers throws light on the global power games being played out between global business, nation states and movements rooted in civil society. Beck offers an illuminating account of the changing nature of power in the global age and assesses the influence of the ever-expanding counter-powers. The author puts forward the provocative thesis that in an age of global crises and risks, a politics of "golden handcuffs" - the creation of a dense network of transnational interdependencies - is exactly what is needed in order to regain national autonomy, not least in relation to a highly mobile world economy. It is imperative that the maxim of nation-based realpolitik - that national interests have necessarily to be pursued by national means - be replaced by the maxim of cosmopolitan realpolitik. The more cosmopolitan our political structures and activities, Beck suggests, the more successful they will be in promoting national interests, and the greater our individual power in this global age will be.
Download or read book Social Media and European Politics written by Mauro Barisione and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates the role of social media in European politics in changing the focus, frames and actors of public discourse around the EU decision-making process. Throughout the collection, the contributors test the hypothesis that the internet and social media are promoting a structural transformation of European public spheres which goes well beyond previously known processes of mediatisation of EU politics. This transformation addresses more fundamental challenges in terms of changing power relations, through processes of active citizen empowerment and exertion of digitally networked counter-power by civil society, news media, and political actors, as well as rising contestation of representative legitimacy of the EU institutions. Social Media and European Politics offers a comprehensive approach to the analysis of political agency and social media in European Union politics, by bringing together scholarly works from the fields of public sphere theory, digital media, political networks, journalism studies, euroscepticism, political activism and social movements, political parties and election campaigning, public opinion and audience studies.
