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"Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing" is a compilation of primary writings by Black women involved in the American communist movement between 1919 and 1956. The editors argue that these writings offer valuable insights into practical and theoretical lessons for contemporary organizers. The book focuses on the material conditions and experiences of Black workers, highlighting issues such as working conditions, discrimination, and economic hardships. It avoids anachronistic links to contemporary concepts and instead emphasizes a materialist analysis centered on structural change. This book would be of interest to researchers and those interested in grassroots organizing and the impact of race on mobilization. [Extracted from the article]

Robert M. Fishman has devoted a great deal of time to the study of the culture and politics of two societies that are so close, but at the same time so dissimilar, as those of Spain and Portugal. Robert M. Fishman's contributions to the study of the cultural foundations of the dynamics of contention in Spain and Portugal have served as a platform on which many of us have based our analyses of the emergence, development and impact of social movements in those countries. Fishman not only does good sociology but also writes impressively. [Extracted from the article]

Nuevos Movimientos Sociales: de la calle a los ayuntamientos [New social movements: from the street to town councils]: by Pedro Ibarra Güell, Salvador Martí i Puig, Mercè Cortina-Oriol and Ariel Scribman Mittelman, Barcelona, Icaria Publishers/ collection: Más Madera, 2018, 81 pp., €17 (paperback), ISBN 978 84 9888 842 3 Nuevos Movimientos Sociales: de la calle a los ayuntamientos [New social movements: from the street to town councils ], by Pedro Ibarra Güell, Salvador Martí i Puig, Mercè Cortina-Oriol and Ariel Scribman Mittelman Barcelona, Icaria Publishers/ collection: Más Madera, 2018, 81 pp., €17 (paperback), ISBN 978 84 9888 842 3 This book, written by a well-known group of Spanish and Catalan academic-activists, is a useful overview of the origins and development of the first two years in power of the alternative political parties and independent citizen platforms who governed Spanish cities between 2015 and 2019. Perhaps because the book is directed to the general public, many chapters also appear not to ground their analysis in the literature of previous radical social movements in Spain or Latin America. [Extracted from the article]

Social movements, law and liberal imagination: by Radha D'Souza, London, Pluto Press, 2019, xv + 255 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 0 7453 3549 7; £19.00 (paperback), ISBN 978 0 7453 3541 4. including notes and indices Today, rights discourses socially and institutionally produce a fictitious legal person bearing abstract rights (p. 69), like the right to land. The International Criminal Court (ICC) socially and legally protects "victims rights", enabling the expansion of imperial state influence over "undesirable" political leaders in the Third World, uniquely subject to the ICC's scrutiny and sanctions (pp. 121-122);. [Extracted from the article]

Herein lies one of several dilemmas King addresses in the book, namely the fundamental tension that exists between practices seeking autonomy and escape from the state, and representational practices seeking to engage the state and transform it. Although early in the book King says she does not want to rely on a single theory to understand the diverse no borders movement (p. 9), and doubts the usefulness of the social movement studies lens for grappling with the diversity of the movement (p. 27), social movement scholars will nevertheless be familiar with the autonomy-engagement dilemma highlighted by King. Also like Melucci, King shows how in contrast to more visible movements seeking political inclusion, subterranean communities striving to retain their autonomy rely on remaining invisible, and that the autonomy of migration is undermined when they become visible (p. 128). [Extracted from the article]

A large part of the stimulus for this event came from the anti-Olympics campaign group based in Los Angeles: NOlympics LA, which Jules Boykoff explores in his fourth book on the Olympic Games. In the summer of 2019, a group of activists from Los Angeles flew to Tokyo for the first ever anti-Olympics summit, along with organizers from Paris, Pyeongchang and Rio de Janeiro, marking the end of a decade that has seen significant increases in anti-Olympic activism. In an increasingly globalizing world, the struggles of anti-Olympics organizers to bridge transnational divides offers important lessons for activists in a range of other contexts. [Extracted from the article]

We would do well, however, to appreciate that existentialist antifascism is not readymade; Shaw engages in a realignment of the tradition to adequately flesh out its foundations for antifascism. In his provocative book, philosopher Devin Shaw aims to provide an existential framework for militant antifascism in order "to prepare the terrain for movement building" (p. 5). [Extracted from the article]

As the traditionally sociological study of social movements is increasingly gaining the attention of political scientists in the context of resurgent populism of the left and right and so-called "movement-parties" the literature on the relationships between movements and parties is growing. Specifically, she recommends restructuring government bureaucracy to combine racial and gender initiatives, enhance employment and pay-equality and promote state funding of advocacy in order to restructure the relationship between state and society. [Extracted from the article]

This is shown in the book by describing how social movements' autonomy has always been possible thanks to involvements with the environment and other non-human actors. Fifteen years on, I Experimental Practice i takes a step forward in challenging the "social" in I Social Movement Studies i by exploring the long ignored post-human entanglements of social movements. I Experimental Practice i begins raising the concern that social movements since 2006 seem to have failed in achieving their demands for social justice. [Extracted from the article]

In the face of a draconian immigration bill that would have dramatically increased the criminalization of immigrants, millions of Latinos in the United States took to the streets to fight for their rights on 1 May 2006. Regardless of one's previous knowledge around Latino Politics or immigration, Zepeda-Millán does an excellent job of contextualizing the history, the response, and the aftermath of the 2006 mobilizations. Latino mass mobilization: immigration, racialization, and activism: Chris Zepeda-Millán, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2017, xii + 295 pp., index, $105.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9781107076945, $29.99 (paperback), ISBN: 9781107434127. [Extracted from the article]

The central point Tarlau convincingly makes is that social movements can work with the state without being co-opted. Rebecca Tarlau's I Occupying Schools, Occupying Land i is a brilliant and important book for anyone interested in the relationship between social movements and the state. [Extracted from the article]

Makers of democracy: a transnational history of the middle classes in Colombia: by A. Ricardo López-Pedreros, Durham, Duke University Press, 2019, xvii+261 pp., appendices, notes, index, $104.95 (hardback), ISBN 9781478001775; $27.95 (paperback), ISBN 9781478002857 López-Pedreros' most valuable contributions come in later chapters, in which he contests the ubiquitous argument that a passive middle class was successfully co-opted by the FN and Americanized by US-sponsored programs. This provocative book demands that we rethink not only researchers' portrayal of the middle classes in Latin America but also that we question the conflation of middle-class societies and democracy globally. [Extracted from the article]

In Part I, entitled "Renewing methods, renewing sites", it is argued that Romani activism should be analyzed in the historical and sociopolitical context in which it emerges and unfolds, with particular attention to local dynamics but also on the relations of local with national and international contexts. This book responds to this context and these conflicts, analyzing the multiple facets, contradictions and potential of Roma activism, starting from a clear methodological posture: that of public or engaged anthropology/sociology, adopted by Nicolae Gheorghe (1946-2013), a Romanian Roma activist and intellectual that several authors of this book knew, and to whom the book is dedicated. Reimagining power and knowledge: edited by Sam Beck and Ana Ivasiuc, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2018, xvi+226 pp., $90.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-78533-948-6; $29.95/£23.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-78920-847-4. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the books "Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America" by Eduardo Silva and "Rural Social Movements in Latin America" edited by Carmen Diana Deere and Frederick S. Royce.

The article reviews the book "The Coming Insurrection," by The Invisible Committee.

Media practices, social movements and performativity: transdisciplinary approaches: edited by Susanne Foellmer, Margaret Lünenborg and Christoph Raetzsch, New York, Routledge, 2017, VI + 211 pp., index £87.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1138210134 Media practices, social movements and performativity: transdisciplinary approaches, edited by Susanne Foellmer, Margaret Lünenborg and Christoph Raetzsch New York, Routledge, 2017, VI + 211 pp., index £87.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1138210134 This edited collection contributes to a growing interdisciplinary field of scholarship which focuses on re-defining the ideas of the public sphere and social participation through the lens of theories of practice relating to technology, identity, performance and media. Following the interdisciplinary approach of practice theory which emphasises the bond between social structures and social actors, the second section analyses the dynamics of change in individual media practices. [Extracted from the article]

In stressing the originality of Revueltas' notions, Draper may have overstated the differences between him and early-twentieth-century European Marxists with a libertarian bent who also criticized the statist versions of communism. Draper also briefly challenges some political prescriptions by the US-based scholar and community activist, George Ciccariello-Maher. Like Draper, these writers argue that most social-movement scholarship today highlights the decisions of leaders of social movement organizations (who are typically men) and their dreams of transforming, overthrowing, or controlling the state. [Extracted from the article]

Williams' work is a fantastic read for those familiar with anarchism and anarchist movements as well as for those within the subfield of sociology generally interested in social movements, but who are unfamiliar with anarchism. In the latter two chapters of the first section of the book Williams carries out a micro- and meso- structural analysis of contemporary anarchist movements. Ultimately Williams concludes that social movements scholars have had a preference for studying social movements that use the state as a tool for social change. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on original qualitative data, the book provides a comparative analysis of third wave feminisms in Britain and the US, focusing on challenges feminist activists face on both sides of the Atlantic. It shows that while feminist activists in Britain are more willing to pursue their goals through the state, feminists in the US seek to maintain their autonomy from the state, often mobilizing in opposition to the state. It also demonstrates that there are important differences between feminist discourses and activisms across the US and Britain, questioning the usefulness of the term "Anglo-American feminism". [Extracted from the article]

Rossi offers two main concepts to make sense of the movement's trajectory: "stock of legacies" and "repertoire of strategies". The former is understood as the sedimentation of experiences among activists, whose previous struggles shape the available strategies that their movements can deploy. Rossi scrutinizes the ways in which social movements take advantage of "horizontal" and "vertical" opportunities, seen respectively as the exploitation of divisions within policy realms and the establishment of alliances with authorities at different political scales (municipal, provincial, or national). [Extracted from the article]

Theorizing cultures of political violence in times of austerity: studying social movements in comparative perspective: by Joanna Rak, New York, Routledge, 2018, x + 196pp., index, ISBN: 978-0-8153-8360-4 (hardback), £105.00, ISBN: 978-1-351-20575-7 (ebook), £36.99 Theorizing cultures of political violence in times of austerity: studying social movements in comparative perspective, by Although Rak exhaustively examines the relations between the culture of political violence and wider political cultures, some of her other ideas require further elaboration. [Extracted from the article]

In a novel application of religious studies to the science of social movements, Sarah M. Pike emphasizes the vital role that emotion and ritual play in the making of protest. In a deconstruction of movement community-building efforts, affective protests, framing techniques, and the childhood histories of activists, she argues that activism takes on a spiritual quality. These examples show that the characterization of animal rights activism as religious can be confusing, and it is not clear how far and how literally Pike wishes to push the relevance of religiosity to secular activism. [Extracted from the article]

The United States maintains a large global network of military bases; at times, it elicits local resistance from political elites and activists. This is because in Manta, the US' military frame resonated more with residents as the benefits of the base were tangible whereas anti-base frames did not align with their daily experiences of the base presence. In addition to the inaccuracy of some activist claims, Manta residents resisted anti-base frames because the sources were typically from elsewhere in Ecuador or the transnational anti-base movement. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the book "Making Rights a Reality? Disability Rights Activists and Legal Mobilization," by Lisa Vanhala.

The article reviews the book "Make Poverty History: Political Communication in Action," by Nicolas Sireau.

The article reviews the book "Mobilities," by John Urry.

The article reviews the book "Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s" by Daniel Burton-Rose.

The article reviews the book "Laughing Saints and Righteous Heroes. Emotional Rythms in Social Movement Groups," by Erika Summers Effler.