The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts

This third edition of the highly–successful Social Movements Reader builds on its selection of “classic” texts and core readings from recent decades with the latest research on contemporary movements in the US and around the world, including the Arab spring, Occupy, and the global justice movement.  With its unique blend of cases, concepts, and essential scholarship, the Reader addresses commonly asked questions about these and many other movements, including: Why do movements arise? Who joins them? Why do they use particular tactics? And what do movements accomplish? Requiring no prior knowledge about social movements, this new edition combines the strengths of both a reader and a textbook, supplementing the most important and readable articles and book selections on social movements with definitions of key concepts, biographies of exemplary leaders, new developments in the field, and timelines of several ongoing social movements.

Jeff Goodwin is Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (2001). James M. Jasper is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has written many books, including The Animal Rights Crusade (1992) and The Art of Moral Protest (1997), and Getting Your Way (2006). Together they have edited two previous editions of The Social Movements Reader (2003, 2009) Passionate Politics (2001) and Contention in Context (2012).