Otpor’s methods . . . have been adopted by democracy movements around the world. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the key to overthrowing a dictator who had held power for thirty years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.”—The New York Times“A clear, well-constructed, and easily applicable set of principles for any David facing any Goliath (sans slingshot, of course) . . . By the end of Blueprint, the idea that a punch is no match for a punch line feels like anything but a joke.”—The Boston Globe“An entertaining primer on the theory and practice of peaceful protest.”—The Guardian “With this wonderful book, Srdja Popovic is inspiring ordinary people facing injustice and oppression to use this tool kit to challenge their oppressors and create something much better. When I was growing up, we dreamed that young people could bring down those who misused their power and create a more just and democratic society. For Srdja Popovic, living in Belgrade in 1998, this same dream was potentially a much more dangerous idea. But with an extraordinarily courageous group of students that formed Otpor!, Srdja used imagination, invention, cunning, and lots of humor to create a movement that not only succeeded in toppling the brutal dictator Slobodan Milošević but has become a blueprint for nonviolent revolution around the world. Srdja rules!”—Peter Gabriel   “Blueprint for Revolution is not only a spirited guide to changing the world but a breakthrough in the annals of advice for those who seek justice and democracy. It asks (and not heavy-handedly): As long as you want to change the world, why not do it joyfully? It’s not just funny. It’s seriously funny. No joke.”—Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and Occupy Nation

    She connects conversations about corporeality in theology, political theory, and continental philosophy to show the relationship between the ways ancient Christian thinkers and modern Western philosophers conceive of the "body" and "flesh.” Her readings of the biblical writings of John and Paul as well as the work of Tertullian illustrate how Christian ideas of flesh influenced the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, and inform her readings of Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, and others. Rivera also furthers developments in new materialism by exploring the intersections among bodies, material elements, social arrangements, and discourses through body and flesh. By painting a complex picture of bodies, and by developing an account of how the social materializes in flesh, Rivera provides a new way to understand gender and race.

    In a departure from the expected histories of Palestine, this book illuminates dynamic class constructions that aimed to shape a pan-Arab utopia in terms of free trade, profit accumulation, and private property. And in so doing, it positions Palestine and Palestinians in the larger world of Arab thought and social life, moving attention away from the limiting debates of Zionist–Palestinian conflict.Reading Palestinian business periodicals, records, and correspondence, Sherene Seikaly reveals how capital accumulation was central to the conception of the ideal "social man." Here we meet a diverse set of characters—the man of capital, the frugal wife, the law-abiding Bedouin, the unemployed youth, and the abundant farmer—in new spaces like the black market, cafes and cinemas, and the idyllic Arab home. Seikaly also traces how British colonial institutions and policies regulated wartime austerity regimes, mapping the shortages of basic goods—such as the vegetable crisis of 1940—to the broader material disparities among Palestinians and European Jews. Ultimately, she shows that the economic is as central to social management as the political, and that an exclusive focus on national claims and conflicts hides the more complex changes of social life in Palestine.

    The copious scrutiny and commentary, however, has yet to result in any serious study of fluctuating gender roles in the Middle East. Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance is the first book to analyze the shifts in gender roles, relations, and norms that have occurred since the Arab Spring. With chapters written by scholars and activists from the countries affected, including Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria, this is an important addition to Middle Eastern gender studies.

    We hear lots of well-placed angst about the middle-class squeeze, wage stagnation, “sticky” poverty rates that are unresponsive to growth, and the immobility of those on the wrong side of the inequality divide. And yet . . . no one has articulated a thorough, robust agenda designed explicitly to reunite growth and prosperity. Until now.While many books on these issues spend most of their time on diagnosis and little on prescription, Jared Bernstein, former Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden and member of President Obama’s economics team, intentionally flips that ratio in The Reconnection Agenda: each chapter presents concrete policy solutions to the fundamental disconnect, including those that can get us to full employment, make monetary and fiscal policy work together more effectively, rebalance international trade, promote mobility, and break the “economic shampoo cycle” (bubble, bust, repeat) that has characterized our economy for decades. Bernstein’s last chapter explains why, even while powerful economic elites block commonsense solutions, the demand for a reconnection agenda is growing. What’s critical is that citizens recognize the difference between a policy set that will actually help and a phony one that will exacerbate the forces that for decades now have been preventing growth from reaching most Americans.If you’ve ever read an article or heard a radio report about the lack of enough good jobs, the rise of inequality, and/or the economic stressors facing the middle class and the poor—not to mention the endless squabbles of policy makers unable to do anything truly useful about these problems—and wished for a reader-friendly, even occasionally fun (really!) book that takes you through what’s gone wrong and how to fix it . . . Then The Reconnection Agenda is for you! Oh . . . and by the way . . . it’s also downloadable for free. How’s that for a whack at the forces of economic darkness?

    Building on recent research that has emphasized the plural origins of anarchist thought and practice, they reflect on the histories and cultures of the antistatist mutual aid movements of the last century beyond the boundaries of an artificially coherent Europe. At the same time, they reexamine the historical relationships between anarchism and communism without starting from the position of sectarian difference; rather, they look at how anarchism and communism intersected. Copublished the with Institute for Comparative Modernities, this collection includes contributions by Gavin Arnall, Mohammed Bamyeh, Bruno Bosteels, Raymond Craib, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Geoffroy de Laforcade, Silvia Federici, Steven J. Hirsch, Adrienne Carey Hurley, Hilary Klein, Peter Linebaugh, Barry Maxwell, David Porter, Maia Ramnath, Penelope Rosemont, and Bahia Shehab.

    Yet the accompanying rise of gay 'normality' has been disconcerting for activists with radical sympathies. Global in scope and drawing on a wide range of feminist, anti-racist and queer scholarship and analysis, Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism shows how the successive 'same-sex formations' of the past century and a half, corresponding to different phases of capitalist development, have led both to the emergence of today's 'homonormativity' and 'homonationalism' and to ongoing queer resistance. The book's second half summarises different sexual rebellions and the queer dimension of multifarious movements for social justice and transformation, seeing in them harbingers of a unified and powerful queer anti-capitalism.

    Their encounter affirms the enduring need for a coherent theory of the revolutionary subject in the era of global capitalism, based on a political pedagogy of subaltern hegemony, solidarity, and reciprocal education. Investigating the political and economic lineages and outcomes of the mass uprising of Tahrir Square, De Smet discusses the emancipatory achievements and hegemonic failures of the Egyptian workers and civil democratic movements from the perspective of their (in)ability to construct a genuine dialectical pedagogy."

    However, the story of women's part in the struggle's success only now receives comprehensive consideration in Michelle Chase's history of women and gender politics in revolutionary Cuba. Restoring to history women's participation in the all-important urban insurrection, and resisting Fidel Castro's triumphant claim that women's emancipation was handed to them as a "revolution within the revolution," Chase's work demonstrates that women's activism and leadership was critical at every stage of the revolutionary process.Tracing changes in political attitudes alongside evolving gender ideologies in the years leading up to the revolution, Chase describes how insurrectionists mobilized familiar gendered notions, such as masculine honor and maternal sacrifice, in ways that strengthened the coalition against Fulgencio Batista. But, after 1959, the mobilization of women and the societal transformations that brought more women and young people into the political process opened the revolutionary platform to increasingly urgent demands for women's rights. In many cases, Chase shows, the revolutionary government was simply formalizing popular initiatives already in motion on the ground thanks to women with a more radical vision of their rights.

    In this volume, top scholars in psychology, education, sociology, and related fields dissect the concept of color-blind racial ideology (CBRI), the widely-held belief that skin color does not affect interpersonal interactions, and that interpersonal and institutional racism therefore no longer exists in American society.Contributors survey the theoretical and empirical literature on racial color-blindness; discuss novel ways of assessing and measuring color-blind racial beliefs; examine related characteristics such as lack of empathy (among Whites) and internalized racism (among people of color); and assess the impact of CBRI in education, the workplace, and health care - as well as the racial disparities that such beliefs help foster. Finally, they recommend ways to counter color-blind racial beliefs by advocating for and implementing race-conscious policies and practices that aim to create equal access and opportunities for all.

    While well known that China is undergoing an unprecedented capitalist transformation, few have noted the new working class of China are also actively striving to alter their fate through labor struggles. Parry Leung lived for twelve months in the migrant worker dwelling sites, and kept close contact with the strike activists. Leung illuminates how strikes emerge and transform in an authoritarian state, by enhancing our understanding on the informal agency power of strike organizers in labor activism.