Books in the Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics series

In Democracy in the Making, Kathleen M. Blee provides an in-depth look at modern grassroots activism, and reveals its simultaneous power and fragility. In the process, she examines the struggle between democratic vision and strategic reality that shapes each organization's trajectory and determines its ultimate success or failure.

Democratic Practice explains why democracies diverge in their de facto commitment to political inclusion. The book extracts large lessons from the comparison of Spain and Portugal, showing how cultural legacies of national pathways to democracy have shaped assumptions about political conduct, which generate multiple consequences in economic, cultural and political life.

Despite being one of the world's most vibrant democracies, vigilantism is regularly practiced in South Africa. Based on twenty months of field work, Contradictions of Democracy shows why, explores what South Africa reveals about vigilantism in other democracies, and uses vigilantism to explore the contradictions of democracy more generally.

After 9/11, American officials authorized torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, military commissions, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. This book analyses the role of human rights and humanitarian legal norms in shaping these practices. By strategically manipulating legal rules, policymakers and their lawyers successfully normalized abuses and secured impunity for human rights violations.

The Human Right to Dominate investigates the Israel/Palestine conflict to account for how human rights - generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices - are increasingly being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize their domination.

What does it mean for men to join with women in preventing sexual assault and domestic violence? This book, based on life history interviews with men and women anti-violence activists, illuminates both the promise of men's violence prevention work, as well as the strains and tensions that inhere, both for men as feminist allies, and for the women they work with.

Women in War provides an in-depth analysis of women's experiences in the FMLN guerrilla army in El Salvador, and examines the consequences of those experiences for their post war lives. It also develops a new model for investigating and understanding micro-level mobilization processes that has applications to many social movement settings.

In Nonviolent Revolutions, Sharon Erickson Nepstad analyzes civilian insurrections in China, East Germany, Panama, Chile, Kenya, and the Philippines.

In Democracy in the Making, Kathleen M. Blee provides an in-depth look at modern grassroots activism, and reveals its simultaneous power and fragility. In the process, she examines the struggle between democratic vision and strategic reality that shapes each organization's trajectory and determines its ultimate success or failure.

In Contentious Rituals, Jonathan S. Blake focuses on Protestant parades in the streets of Northern Ireland and why people choose to participate in them. Drawing on rich interviews, survey data, and ethnographic observations, Blake presents a new look at the conflict in Northern Ireland and offers findings that illuminate contested symbols everywhere.

Fire in the Heart presents an in-depth study of the processes through which white Americans become activists for racial justice. Warren shows how activists in community organizing, education and criminal justice reform develop a commitment to racial justice not just because it is the right thing to do but because they embrace the cause as their own.

Among the violent acts perpetrated by radical Islamist groups in Europe, the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris has been one of those that has challenged established categories of public debate the most. Through a multifaceted and detailed analysis of the public discourse around the Charlie Hebdo episode in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures offers an in-depth analysis of how political groups and religious organizations have reacted to the event, which claims they have made in the public sphere, and how they have justified such claims. Drawing on newspaper sources and discourse analysis, the authors navigate the complexities caused by politicalviolence. They develop a threefold comparison that considers how the debate differs across countries; how it evolved over time; and how it varies when one looks at mainstream media compared to social movement arenas. Based on a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative analyses, the volume paysparticular attention to radical left, radical right and religious actors and to issues related to migration and integration, secularism and cultural diversity, security and civil rights. In particular, they focus on the way in which transformative events act as critical junctures within different public spheres. Starting from the nefarious attacks on January 2015, this highly relevant, theoretically compelling, and methodologically sophisticated study of public debates in Europe adds substantially to the growing body of research into critical junctures as discursive turning points and gives insights into into a number of debates ranging including citizenship and political violence.

In 1995, Toulon became the largest city in Europe to come under the far right since the end of World War II. This book asks what led up to the far right's win; how it governed for six years; and what we learn from mainstream politicians who are keeping it weak. Empire's Legacy delves into a latent far right affinity in French society, traces the deep roots of this affinity, and explains why it has become a factor in French politics.

Sex, Politics, and Putin investigates how gender stereotypes and sexualization have been used as tools of political legitimation in contemporary Russia. Despite their enmity, regime allies and detractors alike have wielded traditional concepts of masculinity, femininity, and homophobia as a means of symbolic endorsement or disparagement of political leaders and policies.