04 September 2009

Some new books

Donatella Della Porta, ed., Democracy in Social Movements. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 304 pp. $US 90.00 hardcover (978-0-230-21883-3).

Publisher's blurb: This collection explores conceptions and practices of democracy of social movement organizations involved in global protest. Focusing on the global justice movement this book shows how they adopt radical new democratic approaches and thus provide a fundamental critique of conventional politics.

Table of contents: http://us.macmillan.com/democracyinsocialmovements#toc

Jeffrey Ayres and Laura MacDonald, eds., Contentious Politics in North America: National Protest and Transnational Collaboration under Continental Integration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 272 pp. $US 85.00 hardcover (978-0-230-22427-8)

Publisher's blurb: This is the only book of its kind devoted to exploring contentious politics from a North American perspective including protests, social movements, transnational contention, and emergent regional governance processes between Canadian, U.S. and Mexican state and civil society actors.

Table of contents: http://us.macmillan.com/contentiouspoliticsinnorthamerica#toc

Kiran Asher. Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the Pacific Lowlands. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, 272 pp. $US 22.95 paper (978-0-8223-4483-4), $US 79.95 hardcover (978-0-8223-4487-2)

Publisher's blurb: In Black and Green, Kiran Asher provides a powerful framework for reconceptualizing the relationship between neoliberal development and social movements. Moving beyond the notion that development is a hegemonic, homogenizing force that victimizes local communities, Asher argues that development processes and social movements shape each other in uneven and paradoxical ways. She bases her argument on ethnographic analysis of the black social movements that emerged from and interacted with political and economic changes in Colombia’s Pacific lowlands, or Chocó region, in the 1990s. more

Victoria Squire. The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum: Migration, Minorities and Citizenship. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 272 pp. $US 85.00 hardcover (978-0-230-21659-4)

Publisher's blurb: This critique of the securitization and criminalization of asylum seeking challenges the claim that asylum seekers 'threaten' receiving states. It analyzes recent policy developments in relation to their wider historical, political and European contexts and argues that the UK response effectively renders asylum seekers as scapegoats.

Table of contents: http://us.macmillan.com/theexclusionarypoliticsofasylum#toc