The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) [Paperback]

Sidney Tarrow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521616778 | ISBN-13: 978-0521616775 | Publication Date: August 1, 2005

From labor organizers to immigrant activists, from environmentalists to human rights campaigners, from global justice protesters to Islamic militants, this book shows how ordinary people gain new perspectives, experiment with new forms of action, and sometimes emerge with new identities through their contacts across borders. It asks to what extent transnational activism changes domestic actors, their forms of claim making, and their prevailing strategies. Does it simply project the conflicts and alignments familiar from domestic politics onto a broader stage, or does it create a new political arena in which domestic and international contentions fuse? And if the latter, how will this development affect internationalization and the traditional division between domestic and international politics?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Sidney Tarrow draws on his broad knowledge and sympathetic preoccupation with social movements to illuminate the new frontier of transnational contention. This book is a must read for social movement scholars!" Frances Fox-Piven, City University of New York

"Tarrow's tour de force persuasively specifies the processes that link actors and institutions across the local, national and global public spheres. The New Transnational Activism compares an impressively broad array of cases and regions to produce an impressive balance between analytical breadth and depth. Tarrow's conceptual contribution reminds political scientists that the borders between comparative and international relations subfields are increasingly obsolete." Jonathan Fox, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Tarrow is a wonderful tour guide through a world in which rooted cosmopolitansa are blending domestic, international, and transnational political action in complicated new ways." William Gamson, Boston College

"The New Transnational Activism is a fine study that crosses the obsolete boundaries among comparative politics, international politics, and transnational relations. Sidney Tarrow shows vividly how "rooted cosmopolitans" engage in transnational contention, within structures largely created by states, and thereby affect the politics of our time. " Robert O. Keohane, Princeton University

"The New Transnational Activism is Sidney Tarrow at his contentious best. Globalization, he shows, has hardly transformed the face of radical politics. The sources of the change that have taken place are not transnational visionaries, but rather "rooted cosmopolitans" whose mobilizations for global justice, though increasingly fused with internationalist movements, never lose contact with coalitional partners at home. The thesis is illustrated with priceless vignettes and an engaging style." David D. Laitin, Stanford University

"This major contribution to the literature on transnational movements and organizations is also a wonderful read. Lively, literate, and full of arresting material, it uses the past to help illuminate the present. It uses the present to help understand where we are and where we might be going. Tarrow takes us around the world and makes us sensitive to and cognizant of similar mechanisms and processes at work in a dizzying array of places and groups." Margaret Levi, University of Washington

"Jewish sages emphasized that there are four types of students: the sponge absorbs everything, the funnel passes everything, the strainer retains the sediment and lets the fine wine pass, and the sifter retains the wheat and lets the chaff pass. Tarrow's strength is wisdom and judgment. He sifted through the growing literature on transnational activism, retained the important parts, and then erected a new political process theory of world politics. His approach to transnational contention represents the next major theoretical challenge to the fields of international relations and comparative politics." Mark Lichbach, University of Maryland

"This is a superlative work, and should be required reading for all students of social movements, globalization and world politics." Choice

"The New Transnational Activism will prove a watershed in the analysis of global activism, even despite the notoriety of its author. Read it now and be prepared for the onslaught of studies that it will most certainly spawn." Karen Stanbridge, Memorial University of Newfoundland, for Canadian Journal of Sociology Online

"The New Transnational Activism is engagingly written, appropriate for advanced undergraduates, graduate students--and activists. All can learn from its conceptual formulations and the many apt examples with which Tarrow illustrates his argument. For scholars, the book is pregnant with ideas. Without doubt, its clear conceptual formulations and theoretical eclecticism will produce numerous hypotheses about the causes and consequences of transnationalism. The New Transnational Activism is a major addition to the transnational relations and social movements literatures." International Studies Review

"...this is an important book, one that does an excellent job of making clear what a mechanisms-concatenated-into-processes approach to contention can give us. By formalizing process, rather than deducing outcomes from interests, the book provides a set of analytical tools that, when carefully used, can be very powerful." Mobilization Margaret E. Keck, Johns Hopkins University

Book Description

The New Transnational Activism shows how even the most prosaic activities -- like immigrants bringing remittances back to their families -- can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then -- if at all -- on more distant transnational links.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521616778
• ISBN-13: 978-0521616775
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tarrow on global protest, January 9, 2006

By 

MUNSoc - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) (Paperback)

In The New Transnational Activism, Sidney Tarrow extends his familiar "political opportunities model" to the global realm toward understanding the contours of global protest. He makes the case that, just as political structures present at the national and subnational levels shape the activities of local, regional and national protestors, international structures condition the emergence, nature, and ultimately the outcomes of global protest movements. While globalization processes may evoke the grievances that serve as the basis for movement activity, it is internationalism - the networks of formal and informal institutions created by horizontal and vertical relations between state and nonstate actors operating at international, national, and subnational levels - that generates the barriers and openings that prevent or encourage people to encounter others like themselves and act on those sensibilities.

How this general process actually plays out in the real world is predictably complex. Tarrow examines a wide array of case studies of movements engaged in global protest issues and identifies six ways in which the local can engage with the international, only two of which provide for the possibility of prolonged domestic-international fusion. The volatility of international politics, the difficulties associated with establishing and maintaining long-distance trusting relationships between members, and the extent to which local motivating concerns must be "stretched" to coincide with international issues all militate against long-term cooperation between local forces. Tarrow concludes that, while the conditions of internationalism have certainly provided opportunities for transnational activism and some movement success, there is little indication so far that transnational activism signals the beginning of a new and transformative "social movement society." Modern activists may be inspired by global issues and be more likely to connect and mobilize outside their own societies than in the past. But they remain firmly rooted in their own local conditions and concerns, circumstances that can limit the sustained common cause required for enduring translocal cooperation.

Anyone looking for broad pronouncements on transnational activism will be disappointed with this book. Those concerned with how real grass-roots activists establish and maintain international alliances, and how they negotiate the very real constraints and opportunities provided by internationalism to achieve their ends, will, however, appreciate Tarrow's approach. For social movements researchers particularly, his classificatory scheme of "six processes of transnational contention" (along with a plethora of other new terms and concepts) will prove useful in providing the bases for further case studies of translocal and transnational movements.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Social Movements, February 10, 2007

By 

J. Aragon "Feminist Educator" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) (Paperback)

Tarrow's book provides another sound, well written contribution to the SM genre that so many of use in Sociology, Poli Sci and Women's Studies. Admittedly, other fields refer to SM theories, as well.

I enjoyed the case analyses in this book. While I bought the book for use with a specific project, I found that the book's scope allowed me to refer to it in my lectures and for another project.

This is an academic book and the target audience is definitely for those already familiar with SM theories.