Acts of Dissent New Developments in the Study of Protest

by Rucht, Dieter; Koopmans, Ruud; Niedhardt, Friedhelm; Beissinger, Mark R.; Crishock, Louis J.; Ekiert, Grzegorz; Fillieule, Olivier; Gentile, Pierre; Hocke, Peter; Kubik, Jan; McCarthy, John D.; McPhail, Clark; Olivier, Johan L.; Olzak, Susan; Schweingrube

• ISBN13: 9780847698561
• ISBN10: 0847698564
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-03
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Although living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest. Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest examines some of those problems, progressing from methodological issues, to discussions of the part that the mass media plays in protest, finally to several case studies of protests in different contexts.

Author Biography

Beissinger, Mark R., Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Crishock, Louis J., Department of Sociology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., USA. Ekiert, Grzegorz, Department of Government/Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Fillieule, Olivier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CRESAL, Saint Etienne, France, and Institute of Political Studies (IEP), Paris, France. Gentile, Pierre, Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, Switzerland. Hocke, Peter, Research Unit "Social Movements and the Public Sphere," Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany. Koopmans, Ruud, Research Unit "Social Movements and the Public Sphere," Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany. Kubik, Jan, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. McCarthy, John D., Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park McPhail, Clark, Department of Sociology, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Neidhardt, Friedhelm, Research Unit "Social Movements and the Public Sphere," Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany. Olzak, Susan, Department of Sociology, Stanford University, California, USA. Olivier, Johan L., Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa. Rucht, Dieter, Research Unit "Social Movements and the Public Sphere," Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany. Schweingruber, David, Department of Sociology, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Smith, Jackie, Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook Tarrow, Sidney, Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Protest as a Subject of Empirical Research	7	(33)
Dieter Rucht
Ruud Koopmans
Friedhelm Neidhardt
I. Methodological Issues
Studying Contentious Politics: From Event-ful History to Cycles of Collective Action	33	(32)
Sidney Tarrow
Methodological Issues in Collecting Protest Event Data: Units of Analysis, Sources and Sampling, Coding Problems	65	(25)
Dieter Rucht
Friedhelm Neidhardt
The Use of Protest Event Data in Comparative Research: Cross-National Comparability, Sampling Methods and Robustness	90	(23)
Ruud Koopmans
II. Protest and the Mass Media
Electronic and Print Media Representations of Washington, D.C. Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991: A Demography of Description Bias	113	(18)
John D. McCarthy
Clark McPhail
Jackie Smith
Louis J. Crishock
Determining the Selection Bias in Local and National Newspaper Reports on Protest Events	131	(33)
Peter Hocke
Unpacking Protest Events: A Description Bias Analysis of Media Records with Systematic Direct Observations of Collective Action - The 1995 March for Life in Washington, D.C.	164	(35)
Clark McPhail
David Schweingruber
III. Applications: Protest in Different Contexts
``Plus ca change, moins ca change.'' Demonstrations in France During the Nineteen-Eighties	199	(28)
Olivier Fillieule
Radical Right Protest in Switzerland	227	(26)
Pierre Gentile
Comparative Event Analysis: Black Civil Rights Protest in South Africa and the United States	253	(31)
Susan Olzak
Johan L. Olivier
Event Analysis in Transitional Societies: Protest Mobilization in the Former Soviet Union	284	(33)
Mark R. Beissinger
Protest Event Analysis in the Study of Democratic Consolidation: Poland, 1989-1993	317	(32)
Grzegorz Ekiert
Jan Kubik
The Authors	349