This volume analyses and historicises the memory of 1968 (understood as a marker of an emerging will for social change around the turn of that decade, rather than as a particular calendar year), focusing on cultural memory of the powerful signifier '68' and women’s experience of revolutionary agency. After an opening interrogation of the historical and contemporary significance of "1968" – why does it still matter? how and why is it remembered in the contexts of gender and geopolitics? and what implications does it have for broader feminist understandings of women and revolutionary agency? – the contributors explore women’s historical involvement in "1968" in different parts of the world and the different ways in which women’s experience as victims and perpetrators of violence are remembered and understood. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of protest and violence in the fields of history, politics and international relations, sociology, cultural studies, and women’s studies.

This book is about protest politics and social movements led by a group of women, the “Mothers,” who were inadvertently drawn into South Korea’s democratization movement from the 1970s to the 2000s. The Mothers were female family members of political dissidents of varying backgrounds and ages—college students, political and religious leaders, writers, and factory workers. Women who initially had very little in common developed a bond as the days of their families’ detentions accumulated and their ordeals continued. This led them to form a quasi-organization prayer meeting group in the 1970s, which eventually developed into permanent Mothers’ organizations in the mid-1980s. The Mothers in this book include both the early- and late-comers to the movement, as the membership has undergone many changes since its inception in the 1970s. While the individual Mothers are the primary focus, this book explores beyond their individual concerns and activities. It discusses various methods the individual Mothers employed to promote their causes and attempts to study how the activities of the organizations founded by the inexperienced Mothers have affected the process of Korea’s democratization and how they remain active decades later.

Despite increased international rhetoric in support of women's equality, women currently comprise a disproportionate share of the world's illiterate, poor, displaced, underpaid, underemployed, and underrepresented populations. And though women have gained visibility and influence in a wide array of political and economic arenas, their position and status in society are still far from equal to those of men. On the other hand, since the post-World War II era, there has been a global explosion of women's activism on behalf of equality, liberation, and better living conditions--women are standing up not only for themselves, but also for other disempowered groups. Participation and Protest provides an overview of the ways in which women participate in institutionalized politics, social movements, and revolutionary movements. It discusses key policy issues that affect women, such as equality in the workforce, maternity and family leave policies, and reproductive rights. Exploring the critical concerns that confront women in the world community--including economic development, war, and international law--the book analyzes the role of women in nationalist and fundamentalist movements, and also considers women's rights in the broader context of international human rights. Offering global coverage of this important subject, Participation and Protest examines the impact of women in politics--and politics' impact on women--from a cross-national, comparative perspective.

The western economic and financial crisis began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and led the European Union countries into recession. After this, governments started to implement austerity measures, such as cuts in public spending, including public subsidies and jobs, and rising prices. In this context, Europe started to experience a wave of protest movements. Individuals started to use the manifold interactive digital media environment to both fight against the austerity measures and find alternative ways of claiming their democratic rights. Inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York (USA), the Occupy LSX encampment in Central London (UK), The Outraged (Los Indignados)/ 15M encampment in Central Madrid (Spain), the Syntagma Square’s Outraged movement in Athens (Greece) and the March 12th Movement in Lisbon (Portugal), although short-lived, epitomize an emerging alternative politics and participation via the media. This wave has promoted a debate on how the realm of politics is changing, as citizens broaden their ideas of what political issues and participation mean. Beyond the Internet examines the technological dimension of the recent wave of protest movements in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland. Offering an opportunity to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics between society, politics and technology, this volume questions the essentialist attributes of the Internet that fuel the techno-centric discourse. The contributors illustrate how all these protest movements were active in the social media and garnered high levels of media attention and public visibility, in spite of their failure to achieve their political goals. As intra-elite dissent was pivotal in understanding the Arab uprisings, the coalition of national ruling elites with European institutions in terms of austerity strategy is essential in understanding the limits of media/technology power and, therefore, the dissociation between communication and representative power.

This is an open access book. The start of the 21st century has seen the world shaken by protests, from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests, from the Occupy movement to the social uprisings in Latin America. There are periods in history when large numbers of people have rebelled against the way things are, demanding change, such as in 1848, 1917, and 1968. Today we are living in another time of outrage and discontent, a time that has already produced some of the largest protests in world history. This book analyzes almost three thousand protests that occurred between 2006 and 2020 in 101 countries covering over 93 per cent of the world population. The study focuses on the major demands driving world protests, such as those for real democracy, jobs, public services, social protection, civil rights, global justice, and those against austerity and corruption. It also analyzes who was demonstrating in each protest; what protest methods they used; who the protestors opposed; what was achieved; whether protests were repressed; and trends such as inequality and the rise of women’s and radical right protests. The book concludes that the demands of protestors in most of the protests surveyed are in full accordance with human rights and internationally agreed-upon UN development goals. The book calls for policy-makers to listen and act on these demands.

Explains the character of contemporary protest politics through a micro-mobilization analysis of participation in street demonstrations.

This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. In light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society, it seeks to map both theoretically and empirically contemporary forms of global political agency. This book reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. More specifically, it empirically analyses a range of different forms of political agency and explores their significance for understanding and enacting global politics. Reflecting the efforts of scholars from a variety of disciplines from political theory and Sociology to Geography and International Relations, it brings into conversation a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches including Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism and historical institutionalism. The contributors compare a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them. Demonstrating an innovative and interdisciplinary approach Contemporary Political Agency will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory.