Street Politics in the Age of Austerity

The past few years have seen an unexpected resurgence of street-level protest movements around the world, from the uprisings of the Arab Spring to the rise of the anti-austerity Indignados in Spain and Greece to the global spread of the Occupy movement. This collection is designed to offer a comparative analysis of these movements, setting them in international, socio-economic, and cross-cultural perspective in order to help us understand why movements emerge, what they do, how they spread, and how they fit into both local and worldwide historical contexts. As the most significant wave of mass protests in decades continues apace, this book offers an authoritative analysis that could not be more timely.

Marcos Ancelovici is Professor of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He has won the 2008 Georges Lavau Dissertation Award and the 2013 Frank L. Wilson Best Paper Award, both from the American Political Science Association. In 2009-10, he was a Junior Fellow in the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). He works on social movements, labor politics, globalization, and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, and is currently studying anti-austerity protests in France and Spain. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on social movements and labor politics. Pascale Dufour is Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Montreal and Director of the Research Center on Politics and social development (www.cpds.umontreal.ca). She works on social movements and collective action in comparative perspective. Her emerging research examines student 2012 mobilizations in Quebec (Canada). Her work has been published in Research in Social Movement, Conflict and Change, European Political Science review, Social Movement Studies, French Politics, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Mobilization, and Social Science Quarterly. Her last book was published in 2013, Trois espaces de protestation mondiale. France, Canada, Québec, Montreal: PUM. Héloïse Nez (PhD in Sociology, Université de Paris 8/Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) is Assistant Professor (Maître de conferences) of Sociology at the Université de Tours (France), Researcher in the UMR CITERES (Cities, Territories, Environment and Societies) and Associate Researcher in the Center for the Study of Social Movements in Paris (CEMS-EHESS). The main topics of her research are social movements, participatory democracy, and citizen competence Among her last publications: Savoirs citoyens et démocratie urbaine (ed. with A. Deboulet), Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013; "The struggle for a voice: associations versus citizens in participatory budgeting" (with E. Ganuza and E. Morales), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, published online (Early View) in 2013; "Délibérer au sein d'un mouvement social. Ethnographie des assemblées des Indignés à Madrid", Participations, 3, 2012, 79-101.