For a long time, the origin of the term État-providence in French was ascribed to late Second Empire liberals who apparently coined it in a negative sense. In reality, though, the notion reaches further back to the generation of 1848, where it emerged as a response to working-class demands. Understood in this way, the expression regains its legitimacy.
Do consumers have any kind of real countervailing power in the age of neoliberal globalisation? A new book analyses the political role of boycotting and of exercising economic power “from below”.
In September 2011, Ocupa Sampa, a Brasilian activist movement started to occupy Sao Paulo’s center, adopting the same strategy as 15M in Spain or Occupy Wall Street in New York. Analyzing the use of web activism in the organization of this movement, this essay focuses on the role of Ocupa Sampa as a possible precursor to the June Days, which started two years later.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
In June 2013, Brazil faced an unprecedented wave of protests. First denouncing the rising fare of public transportation, the June protests gained momentum, showing that Brazilians craved for no less than a complete political reform. Assessing the legacy of this social movement, this essay points to the limits of citizen participation as it was implemented in Brazil in the preceding decades.
Has Russia, amidst rising social discontent and pervasive economic crisis, rediscovered collective mobilization? In this essay, Carine Clément emphasizes the potential for self-organization evident in mobilization “from below,” which is rapidly expanding in daily life.
In order to better grasp protests and social movements in China, whose number has impressively swollen in recent years, Books&Ideas presents a dossier on the evolution of social mobilization and on the representation of social instability in this country.
Lee Ann Banaszak examines the case of the ‘feminist insiders’ who fought for the feminist cause both inside and outside the American state. Her study questions the assumption that protest activism always regards the state as a target.
