States and Social Movements

Since the late eighteenth century, politics, protest, and the state have evolved together, each shaping the other in significant ways. This engaging and succinct treatment of protestÐstate interaction shows how the modern national state developed in tandem with social movement mobilization, arguing that to understand the state fully, you cannot ignore the role of political protest.  Today, social movements are an integral part of politics: modern democratic states are, in reality, social movement societies, and protest mobilization permeates how politics is regularly accomplished. States and Social Movements presents a balanced and comprehensive assessment of various theories of social movements, engaging both state-centered approaches, and cultural and agency-based perspectives. Hank Johnston takes a broad view, analyzing democratic transitions and revolutions, how protest occurs in repressive states, and concluding with an exploration of the emerging repertoire of global social movements, where these movements come from, and if they spell the end of the modern state as we know it.   States and Social Movements cuts to the core of how social movements interact with all types of state system to produce variable outcomes such as democracy, policy reform, repression, insurrection, and revolution. As such, it is essential reading for students and scholars of sociology and political science interested in the important research area of contentious politics.

Politics & Social Sciences

Johnston, Hank

Social Sciences

Polity

What is a Social Movement? (What is Sociology?)

Social movements play a central role in the scope and direction of social change. They were instrumental in the creation of the modern state and, today, are major forces in politics and culture. Environmentalism, gay rights, alterglobalization, and Islamic fundamentalism are all movements with far-reaching impacts on contemporary society.   What is a Social Movement? traces how the study of movements such as these - of their structures, their ideas, and their repertoires of protest - have grown in recent years to become a major focus in the social sciences. It deftly navigates the organizational, ideational, and cultural complexity of political and social movements, and offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of the hows, whys, and wheretofores of studying them. The book analyzes how politics and culture frequently intersect as people participate in movements that call for change and pursue group interests. By focusing on movement organizations and networks, on what they do, and how they articulate their ideas of justice and collective interests, What is a Social Movement? lays the essential groundwork for understanding this significant and exciting field of research, where it came from, and where it is headed.   

Social movements play a central role in the scope and direction of social change. They were instrumental in the creation of the modern state and, today, are major forces in politics and culture. Environmentalism, gay rights, alterglobalization, and Islamic fundamentalism are all movements with far-reaching impacts on contemporary society. What is a Social Movement? traces how the study of movements such as these - of their structures, their ideas, and their repertoires of protest - have grown in recent years to become a major focus in the social sciences. It deftly navigates the organizational, ideational, and cultural complexity of political and social movements, and offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of the hows, whys, and wheretofores of studying them. The book analyzes how politics and culture frequently intersect as people participate in movements that call for change and pursue group interests. By focusing on movement organizations and networks, on what they do, and how they articulate their ideas of justice and collective interests, What is a Social Movement? lays the essential groundwork for understanding this significant and exciting field of research, where it came from, and where it is headed.

Sociology

During the Franco regime in Spain, Catalans mounted a national opposition movement, demanding national symbols and national autonomy. Sociologist Hank Johnston's study of Catalan nationalism is based on interviews with labor, student, nationalist, and leftist militants. He asks how nationalist and ethnic mobilization can re-emerge after decades of state repression, a question of particular importance in light of Soviet nationalist movements. 
When the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, Franco dismantled all regional political institutions and repressed the Catalan language. Catalans developed ingenious stategies to keep alive their ethnic identity. An oppositional culture took shape. By the 1960s, Catalanism came into the open. During the mass mobilization of the 1970s, Catalans who had not been active joined the movement. 
Catalans are a diverse group, including working class people, middle class people, and many immigrants from elsewhere in Spain. Nonetheless, they mobilized as a unified group, despite traditional antagonisms. Nationalists overcame their dislike for the Left, many Catholics became Marxists, and working-class immigrants mobilized alongside the middle class. Johnston argues that traditional enemies achieved accommodation by processes that were cultural and symbolic.
To show how cultural meanings were changed over time, Johnston applies discourse analysis to ethnic mobilization. This approach "seeks to understand and explain the production and interpretation of naturally occurring speech and textual materials." Such an approach is commonly used by sociologists of language and linguistic anthropologists, but Johnston is the first to use it to study a political movement. In their own words the Catalans spoke to Johnston of their childhood and family experiences with repression, of how they were recruited and participated in the movement, and of the meaning of the movement for them. Through their interpretations of everyday life we come to understand how the Catalan opposition progressed from the covert state into which it was forced by Francoist repression to a mass mobilization. 
For studies of social movements to date, the dominant perspective has been resource mobilization theory. Sociologists are now moving away from this toward an analysis of culture. Johnston joins this trend, as he focuses on the role of cultural forces in the Catalan movement. For him, culture is more important than the participants' rational calculations of political power and resources.
This book is a study of ethnic mobilization in Catalonia, using recently developed approaches and methods. On another level, it is a study of mobilization, resistance, repression, and political change that has relevance far beyond Catalonia. Throughout the manuscript, and especially in the concluding chapter, Johnston compares the events in Catalonia to events in the Basque region and to the emergent nationalist oppositions in the Soviet Union.

Tales of Nationalism: Catalonia, 1939-1979

History

Americas

Rutgers University Press

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Social Movements and Culture (Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Vol 4)

Univ of Minnesota Pr

A full-length analysis of social movements from a cultural perspective. This work considers the different approaches to culture, how movements are affected by their cultural environment and internal cultures within the movements themselves.

Social Movements and Culture (Volume 4) (Social Movements, Protest and Contention)

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Univ. of Minnesota Press

An account of the logging industry in California's redwood forests between the 1880s-1910.

They Felled the Redwoods: A Saga of Flumes and Rails in the High Sierra

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Trans-Anglo Books

History of the San Joaquin and Eastern Railroad, built in 157 days to bring men and materials to the Big Creek project, then the world's largest hydroelectric power plant. Over 240 black and white photos and illustrations show off the railroad, the locomotives, and the rolling stock. With maps, schematics, timetables, and equipment rosters. 128 pages.

The Railroad That Lighted Southern California

Stauffer Publishing

400 photographs and illustrations, equipment drawings for the model maker, 25,000 word text, full-color dust jacket and inside plate, endpaper map.

Railroads of the Yosemite Valley

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnston, Hank. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Johnston, Hank

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnston, Hank. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

States and Social Movements

States and Social Movements

What is a Social Movement? (What is Sociology?)

What is a Social Movement? (What is Sociology?)

Tales of Nationalism: Catalonia, 1939-1979

Social Movements and Culture (Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Vol 4)

Social Movements and Culture (Volume 4) (Social Movements, Protest and Contention)

They Felled the Redwoods: A Saga of Flumes and Rails in the High Sierra

The Railroad That Lighted Southern California

Railroads of the Yosemite Valley