Contention in Context: Political Opportunities and the Emergence of Protest

ISBN 10: 0804776121 / ISBN 13: 9780804776127

Published by Stanford University Press, 2011

About this Item

pp. 360.

Seller Inventory # 263579498

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Contention in Context: Political Opportunities and the Emergence of Protest
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804776121
• ISBN 13: 9780804776127
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Despite extensive theoretical debates over the utility of "political opportunities" as an explanation for the rise and success of social movements, there have been surprisingly few serious empirical tests. Contention in Context provides the most extensive effort to date to test the model, analyzing a range of important cases of revolutions and protest movements to identify the role of political opportunities in the rise of political contention.

With evidence from more than fifty cases, this book explores the role of the state in protest, the frequent overemphasis on political opportunities in recent research, and the extent to which opportunity models ignore the cultural and emotional triggers for collective action. By examining new directions in the study of protest and contention, this book shows that although political opportunities can help explain the emergence of certain kinds of movements, a new strategic language can ultimately tell us far more.

About the Author

Jeff Goodwin is Professor of Sociology at New York University. James M. Jasper is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. They are coeditors of The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts (2009) and The Contexts Reader (2007).