Forfatter billede
1 Work 256 Members 5 Reviews

Værker af Paul Engler

Satte nøgleord på

Almen Viden

There is no Common Knowledge data for this author yet. You can help.

Medlemmer

Anmeldelser

Des de les protestes sobre el canvi climàtic i els drets dels immigrants fins a Ocupa Wall Street, la Primavera Àrab i #BlackLivesMatter, una nova generació està desencadenant accions d’estratègia no-violenta per influir en el debat públic i forçar el canvi polític. Quan els moviments en massa apareixen a la pantalla dels nostres televisors, els mitjans s’entesten a definir-los com a espontanis i imprevisibles. En aquest llibre, però, Mark Engler i Paul Engler analitzen l’art que s’amaga darrere d’aquests esclats de protesta i examinen els principis bàsics que s’han utilitzat per provocar i guiar els moments transformadors. Amb idees incisives d’activistes contemporanis, així com noves revelacions sobre l’activitat de figures revolucionàries com Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Gene Sharp i Frances Fox Piven, els germans Engler demostren que les persones amb pocs recursos i poca influència convencional són les que organitzen les convulsions que estan transformant la política contemporània. 'Manual de desobediència civil' demostra que la no-violència es pot utilitzar com a mètode de conflicte polític, disrupció i escalada, i argumenta que si els esclats de rebel·lió sempre ens agafen per sorpresa, deixem passar l’oportunitat de comprendre un fenomen crucial, i també d’aprofitar el seu poder per crear el canvi necessari.… (mere)
 
Markeret
bcacultart | 4 andre anmeldelser | Nov 30, 2022 |
Political analysts Mark and Paul Engler uncover the organization and well-planned strategies behind outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest. The author's trace the evolution of civil resistance, providing new insights into the contributions of early experimenters such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., groundbreaking theorists such as Gene Sharp and Frances Fox Piven, and contemporary practitioners who have toppled repressive regimes.… (mere)
 
Markeret
PAFM | 4 andre anmeldelser | Oct 19, 2019 |
This is a pretty interesting book that mostly tells a bunch of stories about what it calls "momentum-driven organizing" - basically large strategic nonviolent protests. This is laid out as separate from "structure-based" organizing, in the tradition of unions, community organizations, etc. The book argues that both of these traditions are necessary to create lasting and meaningful social change, and can complement or detract from each other depending on a variety of factors.

It lays out a few tenets for successful campaigns and goes through several case studies, including Otpor, ACT UP, the SCLC, and others.

I found this book informative and inspirational - it really helped focus my thinking about the limited amount of activism I have done, and will continue to shape my thinking going into the future.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
haagen_daz | 4 andre anmeldelser | Jun 6, 2019 |
Both an intellectual history of strategic nonviolence and a tour through what makes it in/effective, this is a timely read. To win, activists don’t need to convert their direct opponents, and it can be counterproductive to try to love your enemy; instead, you convince others to support you by provoking conflicts that make onlookers sympathize and join. The authors contrast the organization ideology, as theorized by Saul Alinsky, that looks to build political strength within existing structures and sustain itself through small victories on concrete policy issues, with the movement ideology, which looks to create transformational change, as theorized by Frances Fox Piven. Piven argues that poor people especially have few resources for regular political activism; their power instead largely comes from the ability to withdraw consent and disrupt the regular operations of the system—rent strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, parades through streets. More modern theorists include Erica Chenoweth, who has calculated that active engagement of 3.5 percent of the population is enough to make big social changes. Building that committed minority has to be a priority; it’s through them that movements change public opinion. Active engagement means (1) showing up for marches, phone banks, etc.; (2) voting and prioritizing the movement’s issues in voting; and (3) persuading others through conversation/argument/action in whatever way is available to them.

The goal isn’t to persuade everyone, especially not with kindness—ACT UP, for example, was offensive to many (they interrupted meetings and threw blood on people) but still put AIDS on the public agenda, and a majority of whites thought that the Birmingham protests were a bad idea. ACT UP’s outrageous tactics kept the movement in the public eye, exposing the fundamental injustices of official policy, which made the backlash ultimately less important than the cultural change. Indeed, backlash was part of a necessary polarization in which fence-sitters decided which way they were going to jump, activists became more commmitted, and opponents also became more extreme and isolated from the mainstream. Having a radical group also made the moderate groups seem more reasonable. (The scary thing is how much of this the right in the US has understood, I hope not too late for us; post-November 2016, it’s pretty distressing now to read how conservatives are in an “impossible bind” because anti-immigrant statements energize the base but turn off more mainstream voters.)

It was particularly interesting to read about contemporary activists’ reactions to MLK in Birmingham and Gandhi’s Salt March—in both cases, they accepted tiny substantive concessions and activists thought these were defeats, but the effect on the public agenda vastly overwhelmed the minimal substance. The perception of success can be more important than success itself, which is why it can be useful for the movement to set and exceed its own goals (X marchers, a bigger march next year, etc.). Media coverage matters a lot, too. Successfully grabbing the spotlight often requires disruption of the usual, sacrifice of some sort by the protestors (such as going to jail; suffering makes onlookers pick a side and galvanizes previously lukewarm supporters), and escalation (bigger protests, bigger demands). This can produce serious injuries or even deaths, but as one advocate of strategic nonviolent protest pointed out, “Ché Guevara didn’t abandon guerilla warfare because people were getting killed.” Helpful to all of this is a “culture of mass training,” where new members are instructed on the relevant principles. Bill Moyers, believe it or not, also wrote about the importance of psychology: activists have to feel like they’re doing something, especially in the down times after big protests where the euphoria has dwindled.

Movements that use violence are empirically substantially less likely to succeed in the long term, but there’s an important caveat: what matters is whether the wider society considers an action to be violent. And we know which groups get the benefit of the doubt about whether they’re violent and which are perceived as violent or incipiently violent just because they exist in public. The authors argue that because violence can taint an entire cause, it’s not a good idea to mix and match tactics. But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be more radical subsets of activists—ACT UP wasn’t violent, it was just a lot more confrontational.

How do you go from movement to lasting change? Not everyone can, as Egyptian protestors discovered to their sorrow. The authors suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood, though well established as opposition, didn’t lead the protests against Mubarak because they were doing ok under the existing system—they had something to lose by being more confrontational. But once Mubarak was gone, the Muslim Brotherhood’s organizational strength allowed it to influence the new governing bodies that were put into place.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
rivkat | 4 andre anmeldelser | Sep 25, 2018 |

Lister

Måske også interessante?

Associated Authors

Bill McKibben Foreword

Statistikker

Værker
1
Medlemmer
256
Popularitet
#89,547
Vurdering
4.0
Anmeldelser
5
ISBN
9
Sprog
2

Diagrammer og grafer