Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos

by Chesters; Graeme

• ISBN13: 9780415344142
• ISBN10: 041534414X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book fuses two key concerns of contemporary sociology: globalization and its discontents and the "complexity turn" in social theory. The authors utilize complexity theory to analyze the shifting constellation of social movement networks that constitute opposition to neo-liberal globalization. They explore how seemingly chaotic and highly differentiated social actors interacting globally through computer mediated communications, face to face gatherings and protests constitute a "multitude" not easily grasped through established models of social and political change. Drawing upon extensive empirical research and utilizing concepts drawn from the natural and social sciences this book suggests a framework for understanding mobilization, identity formation and information flows in global social movements operating within complex societies. It suggests that this "movement of movements" exhibits an emergent order on the edge of chaos, a turbulence that is recasting political agency in the 21stcentury.

Author Biography

Ian Welsh is based in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Cardiff. Graeme Chesters is based in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vi
Acknowledgements	vii
Preface	viii
1 Introducing global movements	1	(21)
2 Prefiguration and emergence	22	(21)
3 Reflexive framing: identities, protest dynamics and technology	43	(24)
4 From carnival against capitalism to death at high noon: states fight back	67	(23)
5 Ecologies of action within global civil society	90	(17)
6 Shadow realm: beyond resistance to global nexus	107	(21)
7 The death of collective identity? Global movement as a parallelogram of forces	128	(19)
8 The map is not the territory	147	(17)
Notes	164	(7)
Bibliography	171	(13)
Index	184