Annotated list of popular movement literature

Pariah movements

Charles Tilly: Persistent Inequality, Archive 2000

The primer on how inequality is supported by references to in and of themselves insignificant categories such as descent, gender, etc. According to Tilly, it is easier for a capitalist or bureaucrat to legitimize inequality in the workplace by linking it to outside differences, than if he is forced to create the inequality himself.

David M. Gordon et al: Segmented work, divided workers, Cambridge University Press 1982

An illustration of Tilly’s thesis through America’s ethnically divided labor market.

Anthony Marx: Lessons of struggle -- South African internal opposition 1960-1990, Oxford University Press 1992

Account of mainly Black Consciousness, the UDF and the trade union movement from an ideological perspective, i.e. with a focus on how they thought and argued rather than on what they did. Well, the most important of the latter is of course also included, and it actually depicts quite well how management went from the first to the second to the third as a result of how each was able to form a strategy that suited a given situation but became outmoded when movement and repression had developed a piece to where the next took over with a strategy that suited better.

Tom Ledge (ed): All here and now -- Black politics in South Africa in the 1980s, Hurst 1992

Complements the above with facts from the struggle, what people did in townships and workplaces to confront the apartheid state. Unfortunately, it only begins in about 1983, but then it depicts the various stages -- the campaign against the proposed tricameral parliament which grew into the UDF, the rent revolt in 1984, the dual power in 1985-86, the state of emergency and the crushing of the UDF, and the union’s takeover of the resistance leadership. The history is supplemented with some interviews with participants.

William Cobbett & Robin Cohen: Popular struggles in South Africa. Review of African Political Economy 1987

About the popular movements that defeated apartheid. Perhaps overemphasizes the importance of union organizing and underemphasizes Black Consciousness and neighborhood organizing in the UDF. But since the union organization was ultimately the one that made the decision, it’s ok.

Alison Brysk: From tribal village to global village, Stanford University Press 2000

Probably the most content-rich book on Indian movements, even if it only covers South and Central America Here you can read about how the carpet weaving in the Teotitlán Valley in Mexico, which lives on tourists, nevertheless becomes a stronghold for local autonomy and how the consistent theme of the Bolivian Indian movement is the defense of coca cultivation against the United States drug authorities. Plus countless other details -- it’s almost like the whole disappears. Most dubious is probably what is the book’s main theme -- that the movement is completely dependent on global contacts.

Stephen Cornell: Return of the native, Oxford University Press 1988

About North American Indians, their subjugation in five stages and their resistance to the subjugation. Perhaps the funniest is the description of the concept of “tribe” -- an organization that is by no means particularly original but was formed much like a trade union in the attempts to survive the onslaught of the Europeans.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: Oppressed but not defeated, UNRISD 1987

About Bolivia’s Indian movement and its development out of the peasant movement, as an opposition movement against the paternalistic rule of the Creole middle class in the peasant organizations.

Marc Becker: Indians and leftists in the making of Ecuador's modern indigenous movements, Duke University Press 2008

On the background of the Indian movement in a peasant movement for land reform. Becker especially deals with the strong position of Indians in the political opposition in general in Ecuador from the beginning of the 20th century - for example, at least one Indian farmer leader was involved in forming the Communist Party in the early 20th century, and from the very beginning “Indian” was included in self-understanding and thematization . It was therefore close at hand to revalue this when both communist parties and land reform were devalued.

Christopher Parker: Resignation or revolt. I.B.Tauris 1999

About the development in Palestine after the Oslo agreement and how the “Palestinian Authority”, i.e. the PLO, has chosen security and privileges rather than fighting for equal rights for the Palestinians. Of interest to all popular movements because the phenomenon of functionary egoism is hardly unique to the PLO.

Sion Charsley & G. K. Karanth: Challenging untouchability -- Dalit initiative and experience from Karnataka, Sage 1998

The primarily culturally focused rebellion of the Indian Dalits, i.e. the casteless, against the caste system. As the title sounds, it is not very comprehensive and ignores e.g. from “sub-caste politics” in other movements, but this is what there is.

William Joseph et al: New perspectives on the cultural revolution, Harvard 1991.

The Cultural Revolution as an interaction between Mao’s peasant democratic conscience and uprisings from out-groups in the Chinese client base. Perhaps the most fascinating thing is how Western liberals so obviously side with the communist party puppets against their victims when the latter try to fight back.

John Hope Franklin: From slavery to freedom, Alfred A. Knopf 1947 etc

The standard work on black history in the United States, which has gone through several editions since its inception. Unfortunately a rather unofficial success story, depicts more as a group patriotic black would like to see it, hardly as it actually happened. But the data from the civil rights movement is probably right.

Cedric Robinson: Black movements in America, Routledge 1997

Complements the above in such a way that it also gives space to strategic conflicts within the movements and reports mistakes and failures and indulges in drawing conclusions. Like Franklin, Robinson goes back to the 18th century and gives a very moderate space to the more well-known post-World War II movement.

Harvard Sitkoff: The struggle for black equality 1954-1980, Hill and Wang 1981

This is the book that complements the above. It describes how the civil rights movement began as a peaceful and liberal movement for integration and how along the way broad black groups lost faith in and even the desire to be integrated into the treacherous, ignorant and racist white United States. In the meantime, you get an insight into the strategies and practical actions of the various parts of the movement.

Thomas F. Jackson: The state, the movement and the urban poor, in Michael B. Katz: The underclass debate, Princeton University Press 1993

About why the black civil rights movement of the 60s got bogged down in ‘grassroots behavior’ and ebbed away, unable to coalesce into a national policy. Also shows the conflict of interest of the white workers who from the 30s had tended to support the demands of blacks: white educated workers profited from the Vietnam War boom, while uneducated blacks lost from the cut social budgets, which is why planned joint actions for full employment never materialized.

Mike Brake: The sociology of youth culture and youth subcultures, Routledge 1980

Gives an understanding of youth movements with a history that unfortunately becomes a bit skewed as middle-class youth movements are depicted fairly internationally (at least in the industrialized world) while working-class youth movements are depicted only for England. But the praiseworthy thing is that the book distinguishes the former’s focus on resistance to Puritan career pursuits, while the latter is primarily aimed at “them”, interpreted not only as the authority, represented by e.g. of the school, but also anyone who threatens the solidarity of the local community: what is often interpreted as racism is in reality just neighborhood gangs in an ethnically segregated city.

Christoph Conti: Abschied vom Bürgertum, Rowohlt 1984

About the resistance to the authoritarian bourgeois society in Germany around 1900, as it expressed itself mainly in various youth environments. It’s amazing how all the themes that came up again in youth environments in the 1970s are already there then: collective, interest in nature, non-toxic food, anarchism, home-woven.