Most research on social movements has ignored the significance of emotions. This edited volume seeks to redress this oversight and introduces new research themes and tools to the field of emotions and social movements. Sociologists and political activists around the world will find this volume to be of great interest due to its wide-ranging approach and its unique emphasis on the role of emotion in protest, dissent and social movements.

This volume presents the work of social scientists, public policy analysts, policy makers, and arts-funding decision makers. The contributors seek to address serious issues confronting the future of the arts in America by defining the role of social science research in the formulation of public policies. The chapters reflect the diverse disciplinary perspectives and methodologies which make up the broad enterprise of arts research and cover a wide array of current issues in arts research and public policy, including: the current state of arts and arts education research; arts participation by ethnic cultures, baby-boomers, and older adults; emerging patterns of aesthetic choice; public arts policy in the future, and conditions for the growth and effective use of arts research. Academics and students in political science, policy analysis, sociology, economics, arts administration, and education, policy makers, and arts administrators will find The Future of the Arts a valuable resource. The contributors conclude that the future of the arts in America will be shaped by a wide array of forces. The challenge is in avoiding passive reactiveness to these trends, assessing their short-term and long-term influences, and strategically developing policy options that are within the decision-making control of leadership sectors in the complex arts policy world. Until recently, the political context of public arts policy has hindered the development and utilization of arts research. In many ways, this book illustrates the promise of research-based policy formulation for the arts in America.

In this book, Goriunova offers a critical analysis of the processes that produce digital culture. Digital cultures thrive on creativity, developing new forces of organization to overcome repetition and reach brilliance. In order to understand the processes that produce culture, the author introduces the concept of the art platform, a specific configuration of creative passions, codes, events, individuals and works that are propelled by cultural currents and maintained through digitally native means. Art platforms can occur in numerous contexts bringing about genuinely new cultural production, that, given enough force, come together to sustain an open mechanism while negotiating social, technical and political modes of power. Software art, digital forms of literature, 8-bit music, 3D art forms, pro-surfers, and networks of geeks are test beds for enquiry into what brings and holds art platforms together. Goriunova provides a new means of understanding the development of cultural forms on the Internet, placing the phenomenon of participatory and social networks in a conceptual and historical perspective, and offering powerful tools for researching cultural phenomena overlooked by other approaches.

The Visual is Political examines the growth of feminist photography as it unfolded in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. This period in Britain was marked by instability following the collapse of the welfare state, massive unemployment, race riots, and workers’ strikes. However, this was also a time in which various forms of social activism emerged or solidified, including the Women’s Movement, whose members increasingly turned to photography as a tool for their political activism. Rather than focusing on the aesthetic quality of the images produced, Klorman-Eraqi looks at the application of feminist theory, photojournalism, advertising, photo montage, punk subculture and aesthetics, and politicized street activity to emphasize the statement and challenge that the photographic language of these works posed. She shows both the utilitarian uses of photography in activism, but also how these same photographers went on to be accepted (or co-opted) into the mainstream art spaces little by little, sometimes with great controversy. The Visual is Political highlights the relevance and impact of an earlier contentious, creative, and politicized moment of feminism and photography as art and activism.