"Protest campaigns against large-scale public works usually take place within a local context. However, since the 1990s new forms of protest have been emerging. This book analyses two cases from Italy that illustrate this development: the environmentalist protest campaigns against the TAV (the building of a new high-speed railway in Val de Susa, close to the border with France), and the construction of the Bridge on the Messina Straits (between Calabria and Sicily). Such mobilizations emerge from local conflicts but develop as part of a global justice movement, often resulting in the production of new identities. They are promoted through multiple networks of different social and political groups, that share common claims and adopt various forms of protest action. It is during the protest campaigns that a sense of community is created."--BOOK JACKET.

Since the 2008 financial crash the expansion of neoliberalism has had an enormous impact on nature-society relations around the world. In response, various environmental movements have emerged opposing the neoliberal restructuring of environmental policies using arguments that often bridge traditional divisions between the environmental and labour agendas. The Right to Nature explores the differing experiences of a number of environmental-social movements and struggles from the point of view of both activists and academics. This collection attempts to both document the social-ecological impacts of neoliberal attempts to exploit non-human nature in the post-crisis context and to analyse the opposition of emerging environmental movements and their demands for a radically different production of nature based on social needs and environmental justice. It also provides a necessary space for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics and activists and aims to motivate further academic-activist collaborations around alternative and counter-hegemonic re-thinking of environmental politics. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in environmental policy, environmental justice, social and environmental movements.

In Democracy in the Making, Kathleen M. Blee provides an in-depth look at modern grassroots activism, and reveals its simultaneous power and fragility. In the process, she examines the struggle between democratic vision and strategic reality that shapes each organization's trajectory and determines its ultimate success or failure.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for theory, research and practice with regard to environment and communication, and it does this from a perspective which is both international and multi-disciplinary in scope. Offering comprehensive critical reviews of the history and state of the art of research into the key dimensions of environmental communication, the chapters of this handbook together demonstrate the strengths of multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding the centrality of communication to how the environment is constructed, and indeed contested, socially, politically and culturally. Organised in five thematic sections, The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication includes contributions from internationally recognised leaders in the field. The first section looks at the history and development of the discipline from a range of theoretical perspectives. Section two considers the sources, communicators and media professionals involved in producing environmental communication. Section three examines research on news, entertainment media and cultural representations of the environment. The fourth section looks at the social and political implications of environmental communication, with the final section discussing likely future trajectories for the field. The first reference Handbook to offer a state of the art comprehensive overview of the emerging field of environmental communication research, this authoritative text is a must for scholars of environmental communication across a range of disciplines, including environmental studies, media and communication studies, cultural studies and related disciplines.

Hardly a day goes by without South Africans going on a rampage over the provision of basic municipal services such as water, electricity, sanitation and other municipal obligations. This book connects the critical issue of community protests to the equally precarious issue of political trust in local governance in South Africa by using comparative analysis of grassroots activism in predominantly black communities and predominantly white communities.

Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.

The global phenomenon of political consumerism is known through such diverse manifestations as corporate boycotts, increased preferences for organic and fairtrade products, and lifestyle choices such as veganism. It has also become an area of increasing research across a variety of disciplines. Political consumerism uses consumer power to change institutional or market practices that are found ethically, environmentally, or politically objectionable. Through such actions, the goods offered on the consumer market are problematized and politicized. Distinctions between consumers and citizens and between the economy and politics collapse. The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism offers the first comprehensive theoretical and comparative overview of the ways in which the market becomes a political arena. It maps the four major forms of political consumerism: boycotting, buycotting (spending to show support), lifestyle politics, and discursive actions, such as culture jamming. Chapters by leading scholars examine political consumerism in different locations and industry sectors, and in consideration of environmental and human rights problems, political events, and the ethics of production and manufacturing practices. This volume offers a thorough exploration of the phenomenon and its myriad dilemmas, involving religion, race, nationalism, gender relations, animals, and our common future. Moreover, the Handbook takes stock of political consumerism's effectiveness in solving complex global problems and its use to both promote and impede democracy.