Political Protest and Cultural Revolution

Political Protest and Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Barbara Epstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520084330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
From her perspective as both participant and observer, Barbara Epstein examines the nonviolent direct action movement which, inspired by the civil rights movement, flourished in the United States from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Disenchanted with the politics of both the mainstream and the organized left, and deeply committed to forging communities based on shared values, activists in this movement developed a fresh, philosophy and style of politics that shaped the thinking of a new generation of activists. Driven by a vision of an ecologically balanced, nonviolent, egalitarian society, they engaged in political action through affinity groups, made decisions by consensus, and practiced mass civil disobedience. The nonviolent direct action movement galvanized originally in opposition to nuclear power, with the Clamshell Alliance in New England and then the Abalone Alliance in California leading the way. Its influence soon spread to other activist movements—for peace, non-intervention, ecological preservation, feminism, and gay and lesbian rights. Epstein joined the San Francisco Bay Area's Livermore Action Group to protest the arms race and found herself in jail along with a thousand other activists for blocking the road in front of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. She argues that to gain a real understanding of the direct action movement it is necessary to view it from the inside. For with its aim to base society as a whole on principles of egalitarianism and nonviolence, the movement sought to turn political protest into cultural revolution.

Political Protest and Cultural Revolution

Political Protest and Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Barbara Epstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520084330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
From her perspective as both participant and observer, Barbara Epstein examines the nonviolent direct action movement which, inspired by the civil rights movement, flourished in the United States from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Disenchanted with the politics of both the mainstream and the organized left, and deeply committed to forging communities based on shared values, activists in this movement developed a fresh, philosophy and style of politics that shaped the thinking of a new generation of activists. Driven by a vision of an ecologically balanced, nonviolent, egalitarian society, they engaged in political action through affinity groups, made decisions by consensus, and practiced mass civil disobedience. The nonviolent direct action movement galvanized originally in opposition to nuclear power, with the Clamshell Alliance in New England and then the Abalone Alliance in California leading the way. Its influence soon spread to other activist movements—for peace, non-intervention, ecological preservation, feminism, and gay and lesbian rights. Epstein joined the San Francisco Bay Area's Livermore Action Group to protest the arms race and found herself in jail along with a thousand other activists for blocking the road in front of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. She argues that to gain a real understanding of the direct action movement it is necessary to view it from the inside. For with its aim to base society as a whole on principles of egalitarianism and nonviolence, the movement sought to turn political protest into cultural revolution.

The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China

The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China PDF Author: Guobin Yang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231520484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.

Protest with Chinese Characteristics

Protest with Chinese Characteristics PDF Author: Ho-fung Hung
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Ho-fung Hung charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. Hung samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor. He revisits rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, Hung shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and Hung's careful research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. As Hung makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. Hung's work ultimately establishes a framework others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics. His book fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.

Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China

Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China PDF Author: Jeffrey N Wasserstrom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429963378
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
This innovative and widely praised volume uses the dramatic occupation of Tiananmen Square as the foundation for rethinking the cultural dimensions of Chinese politics. Now in a revised and expanded second edition, the book includes enhanced coverage of key issues, such as the political dimensions of popular culture (addressed in a new chapter on Chinese rock-and-roll by Andrew Jones) and the struggle for control of public discourse in the post-1989 era (discussed in a new chapter by Tony Saich). Two especially valuable additions to the second edition are art historian Tsao Tsing-yuan's eyewitness account of the making of the Goddess of Democracy, and an exposition of Chinese understandings of the term ?revolution? contributed by Liu Xiaobo, one of China's most controversial dissident intellectuals. The volume also includes an analysis (by noted social theorist and historical sociologist Craig C. Calhoun) of the similarities and differences between the ?new? social movements of recent decades and the ?old? social movements of earlier eras.TEXT CONCLUSION: To facilitate classroom use, the volume has been reorganized into groups of interrelated essays. The editors introduce each section and offer a list of suggested readings that complement the material in that section.

The Art of Protest

The Art of Protest PDF Author: T. V. Reed
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452958653
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
A second edition of the classic introduction to arts in social movements, fully updated and now including Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and new digital and social media forms of cultural resistance The Art of Protest, first published in 2006, was hailed as an “essential” introduction to progressive social movements in the United States and praised for its “fluid writing style” and “well-informed and insightful” contribution (Choice Magazine). Now thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition of T. V. Reed’s acclaimed work offers engaging accounts of ten key progressive movements in postwar America, from the African American struggle for civil rights beginning in the 1950s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. Reed focuses on the artistic activities of these movements as a lively way to frame progressive social change and its cultural legacies: civil rights freedom songs, the street drama of the Black Panthers, revolutionary murals of the Chicano movement, poetry in women’s movements, the American Indian Movement’s use of film and video, anti-apartheid rock music, ACT UP’s visual art, digital arts in #Occupy, Black Lives Matter rap videos, and more. Through the kaleidoscopic lens of artistic expression, Reed reveals how activism profoundly shapes popular cultural forms. For students and scholars of social change and those seeking to counter reactionary efforts to turn back the clock on social equality and justice, the new edition of The Art of Protest will be both informative and inspiring.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History

The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History PDF Author: Joseph Esherick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804753494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung PDF Author: Mao Tse-Tung
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1446545318
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung' is a volume of selected statements taken from the speeches and writings by Mao Mao Tse-Tung, published from 1964 to 1976. It was often printed in small editions that could be easily carried and that were bound in bright red covers, which led to its western moniker of the 'Little Red Book'. It is one of the most printed books in history, and will be of considerable value to those with an interest in Mao Tse-Tung and in the history of the Communist Party of China. The chapters of this book include: 'The Communist Party', 'Classes and Class Struggle', 'Socialism and Communism', 'The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among The People', 'War and Peace', 'Imperialism and All Reactionaries ad Paper Tigers', 'Dare to Struggle and Dare to Win', et cetera. We are republishing this antiquarian volume now complete with a new prefatory biography of Mao Tse-Tung.

The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution PDF Author: Michel Oksenberg
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472038354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China’s economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China’s foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions.

Challenging the Mandate of Heaven

Challenging the Mandate of Heaven PDF Author: Elizabeth J. Perry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317475135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Social science theories of contentious politics have been based almost exclusively on evidence drawn from the European and American experience, and classic texts in the field make no mention of either the Chinese Communist revolution or the Cultural Revolution -- surely two of the most momentous social movements of the twentieth century. Moreover, China's record of popular upheaval stretches back well beyond this century, indeed all the way back to the third century B.C. This book, by bringing together studies of protest that span the imperial, Republican, and Communist eras, introduces Chinese patterns and provides a forum to consider ways in which contentious politics in China might serve to reinforce, refine or reshape theories derived from Western cases.

Salt of the Earth

Salt of the Earth PDF Author: Ralph Thaxton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520203181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
On October 1, 1949, a rural-based insurgency demolished the Nationalist government of Chiang-kai Shek and brought the Chinese Communists to national power. How did the Chinese Communists gain their mandate to rule the countryside? In this pathbreaking study, Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., provides a fresh and strikingly original interpretation of the political and economic origins of the October revolution. Salt of the Earth is based on direct interviews with the village people whose individual and collective protest activities helped shape the nature and course of the Chinese revolution in the deep countryside. Focusing on the Party's relationship with locally esteemed non-Communist leaders, the author shows that the Party's role is best understood in terms of its intimate connections with local collective activism and with existing modes of local protest, both of which were the product of rural people acting on their own grievances, interests, and goals. The author's collection and use of oral histories--from the last remaining eyewitnesses--and written corroborative materials is a remarkable achievement; his new interpretation of why China's rural people supported and joined the Communists in their quest for state power is dramatically different from what has come before. This book will stimulate debates on the genesis of popular mobilization and the growth of insurgency for decades to come. On October 1, 1949, a rural-based insurgency demolished the Nationalist government of Chiang-kai Shek and brought the Chinese Communists to national power. How did the Chinese Communists gain their mandate to rule the countryside? In this pathbreaking study, Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., provides a fresh and strikingly original interpretation of the political and economic origins of the October revolution. Salt of the Earth is based on direct interviews with the village people whose individual and collective protest activities helped shape the nature and course of the Chinese revolution in the deep countryside. Focusing on the Party's relationship with locally esteemed non-Communist leaders, the author shows that the Party's role is best understood in terms of its intimate connections with local collective activism and with existing modes of local protest, both of which were the product of rural people acting on their own grievances, interests, and goals. The author's collection and use of oral histories--from the last remaining eyewitnesses--and written corroborative materials is a remarkable achievement; his new interpretation of why China's rural people supported and joined the Communists in their quest for state power is dramatically different from what has come before. This book will stimulate debates on the genesis of popular mobilization and the growth of insurgency for decades to come.