Books by Laurence Cox
Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements, 2024
This cutting-edge and authoritative Handbook covers a broad spectrum of social movement research ... more This cutting-edge and authoritative Handbook covers a broad spectrum of social movement research methodologies, offering expert analysis and detailed accounts of the ways in which research can effectively be carried out on social movements and popular protests.
Divided into three thematic sections, this stimulating Handbook dives deep into discussions relating to the methodological challenges raised by researching social movements, the technical questions of how such research is conducted, and then to more practical considerations about the uses and applications of movement research. Expert contributors and established researchers utilise real-world examples to explore the methodological challenges from a range of perspectives including classical, engaged, feminist, Black, Indigenous and global Southern viewpoints.
The extended (12,000-word) introduction is available free online at https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803922027/book-part-9781803922027-6.xml
This book explores how East Asian religions affect EU countries, both through Asian diaspora comm... more This book explores how East Asian religions affect EU countries, both through Asian diaspora communities and through European converts and sympathisers. East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam) and the EU are two of the planet's most dynamic regions economically, politically, and culturally. East Asian diasporas have a long history in Europe and represent a growing part of the EU's population. Meanwhile, Europeans have long been attracted to and interested in East Asian religion and are increasingly converting or incorporating elements of East Asian religiosities into their own identities. For the first time ever, this book presents the state of the art of research in this area, with chapters on most of the EU's 27 countries and on themes such as migration, Orientalism, gender and sexuality. It covers, among others, East Asian Buddhism and Christianity, Daoism and new religious movements, as well as martial arts and other looser forms of spirituality.
Place, Craft and Neurodiversity, Dec 13, 2023
For over four decades, Ruskin Mill Trust has worked with young people with special educational ne... more For over four decades, Ruskin Mill Trust has worked with young people with special educational needs and behavioural issues who learn traditional crafts and organic farming as part of an integrated curriculum of therapeutic education, overcoming barriers to learning and re-engaging with the wider world. This accessible and inspiring book showcases how an appreciation of place, traditional crafts, farming and transformative education offers a wider route to human well-being for all. The authors outline the different fields of the "Practical Skills Therapeutic Education" method, which includes developing practical skills, learning the ecology of the farm and understanding therapeutic education, holistic care, health and self-leadership.
Taking the reader on a tour of Ruskin Mill's many extraordinary provisions across Britain, and going deeper in conversation with its founder, Aonghus Gordon, this book is an outstanding story of creative thinking in an age of narrow focus on classrooms and written examinations, presenting a transformative perspective on education and care. Being grounded in work supporting young people with complex additional needs, it provides a rare insight into the work of one of the world's leading charities working with neurodiversity.
With its non-specialist language, Place, Craft and Neurodiversity offers ideas and resources for work in different areas of education and therapy. It will inspire parents, educators and care workers around the globe.
“La Gira Zapatista es un verdadero regalo para nosotros […] Nos alegra tenerlos aquí, paseando co... more “La Gira Zapatista es un verdadero regalo para nosotros […] Nos alegra tenerlos aquí, paseando con nosotros, haciéndonos preguntas, aprendiendo mutuamente de nuestras luchas”. Así cierra este libro su autor, al tiempo que le dice a lxs zapatistas: “gracias por venir”. En diálogo con ellos y con todxs lxs lectorxs de este texto, Laurence Cox nos convida a recorrer la ciudad de Dublín y las luchas de la República de Irlanda desde tiempos remotos hasta hoy en día. De esa manera nos invita a comprender por qué los zapatistas importan, les importan, nos importan.
Irish-themed reflection on the Zapatista Journey for Life to Europe. English-lang original of the... more Irish-themed reflection on the Zapatista Journey for Life to Europe. English-lang original of the Spanish-lang contribution to the 27-pamphlet series "Al Faro Zapatista", supporting the Journey.
The Irish Buddhist tells the story of U Dhammaloka, an extraordinary Irish emigrant, sailor, and ... more The Irish Buddhist tells the story of U Dhammaloka, an extraordinary Irish emigrant, sailor, and hobo who became one of the first Western Buddhist monks and an anti-colonial activist in early twentieth-century Asia. Born in Dublin in the 1850s, Dhammaloka energetically challenged the values and power of the British Empire and scandalized the colonial establishment of the 1900s. He rallied Buddhists across Asia, set up schools, published on a grand scale, and argued down Christian missionaries—often using Western atheist arguments. He was tried for sedition, tracked by police and intelligence services, and died at least twice. His story illuminates the forgotten margins and interstices of imperial power, the complexities of class, ethnicity, and religious belonging in colonial Asia, and the fluidity of identity in the high Victorian period.
Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism’s remaking as a world religion has been told “from above,” highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers, and ecclesiastical hierarchies. By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, Dhammaloka’s adventures “from below” highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. Through his story, authors Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements. Dhammaloka’s dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.
The year 1968 witnessed one of the great upheavals of the twentieth century, as social movements ... more The year 1968 witnessed one of the great upheavals of the twentieth century, as social movements shook every continent. Across the Global North, people rebelled against post-war conformity and patriarchy, authoritarian education and factory work, imperialism and the Cold War. They took over workplaces and universities, created their own media, art and humour, and imagined another world. The legacy of 1968 lives on in many of today's struggles, yet it is often misunderstood and caricatured.
Voices of 1968 is a vivid collection of original texts from the movements of the long 1968. We hear these struggles in their own words, showing their creativity and diversity. We see feminism, black power, anti-war activism, armed struggle, indigenous movements, ecology, dissidence, counter-culture, trade unionism, radical education, lesbian and gay struggles, and more take the stage.
Chapters cover France, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Japan. Introductory essays frame the rich material - posters, speeches, manifestos, flyers, underground documents, images and more - to help readers explore the era's revolutionary voices and ideas and understand their enduring impact on society, culture and politics today.
Social movements and popular struggle are a central part of today’s world, but often neglected ... more Social movements and popular struggle are a central part of today’s world, but often neglected or misunderstood by media commentary as well as experts in other fields. In an age when struggles over climate change, women’s rights, austerity politics, racism, warfare and surveillance are central to the future of our societies, we urgently need to understand social movements. Accessible, comprehensive and grounded in deep scholarship, "Why Social Movements Matter" explains social movements for a general educated readership, those interested in progressive politics and scholars and students in other fields. It shows how much social movements are part of our everyday lives, and how in many ways they have shaped the world we live in over centuries. It explores the relationship between social movements and the left, how movements develop and change, the complex relationship between movements and intellectual life, and delivers a powerful argument for rethinking how the social world is constructed. Drawing on three decades of experience, "Why Social Movements Matter" shows the real space for hope in a contested world.
THESE LETTERS AND POEMS are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indom... more THESE LETTERS AND POEMS are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death — to stay alive even in death. Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa evoked such intense memories of his resolute struggles against an oil behemoth and a deaf autocratic government. His crusade frames one of the most tumultuous periods of Nigeria’s history; his tragic story evokes anger and demands action to resolve the crises that first led the Ogoni people to demand that Shell clean up Ogoni or clear out of the territory. It was his leadership, in great part, that forced Shell out of Ogoni in January 1993. These letters are a testament of hope. Being one side of robust conversations between two persons that many would find unlikely as close friends, we learn the lessons that indeed ‘friends love at all times and brothers (and sisters) are born for adversity’, as a proverb in the Bible states. This is where we must applaud Sister Majella McCarron for preserving and making public these letters that Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote to her between 20 October 1993 and 14 September 1995.
We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and or... more We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this movement of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. 'We Make Our Own History’ responds to this crisis. The first systematic Marxist analysis of social movements, this book reclaims Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buddhism in Asia was transformed by the impact of colo... more In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buddhism in Asia was transformed by the impact of colonial modernity and new technologies and began to spread in earnest to the West. Transnational networking among Asian Buddhists and early western converts engendered pioneering attempts to develop new kinds of Buddhism for a globalized world, in ways not controlled by any single sect or region. Drawing on new research by scholars worldwide, this book brings together some of the most extraordinary episodes and personalities of a period of almost a century from 1860-1960. Examples include Indian intellectuals who saw Buddhism as a homegrown path for a modern post-colonial future, poor whites ‘going native’ as Asian monks, a Brooklyn-born monk who sought to convert Mussolini, and the failed 1950s attempt to train British monks to establish a Thai sangha in Britain. Some of these stories represent creative failures, paths not taken, which may show us alternative possibilities for a more diverse Buddhism in a world dominated by religious nationalisms. Other pioneers paved the way for the mainstreaming of new forms of Buddhism in later decades, in time for the post-1960s takeoff of ‘global Buddhism’.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Buddhism.
""Buddhism and Ireland explores the long encounter between Ireland and Buddhism, overturning many... more ""Buddhism and Ireland explores the long encounter between Ireland and Buddhism, overturning many common assumptions. Over the past 14 centuries, Buddhism has meant many different things to Irish people: travellers’ tales, information for traders and civil servants, an alternative to Christianity, a form of anti-colonial solidarity, “going native” in Asia or immigration from Buddhist countries - as well as movies, museum pieces, newspaper stories and meditation retreats.
This study uses a world-systems approach to explore the real complexities of the transmission of world religions in a country which (like most) is neither homogenous nor neatly bounded but shaped by colonialism, contested borders, enormous diasporas, competing ethno-religious cultures and widespread immigration and where simple stories of a monolithic past do not hold water. Part I traces how knowledge of Buddhist Asia reached the western end of Europe between the seventh and the nineteenth centuries. Part II explores Buddhism and Theosophy as alternatives to the mainstream ethno-religious allegiances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland. Part III discusses Buddhism’s recent growth from counter-culture via immigration to Ireland’s third-largest religion.
Buddhism and Ireland combines a critical analysis of the politics of religion in Ireland, a detailed exploration of the lives of remarkable and courageous people and an eye for unexpected connections. The only published history of Buddhism in Ireland, it will be widely read by students of Buddhism in the west as well as by those interested in the changing role of religion in Irish society."
See attached flyer for special offer ($22.46 / £14.99 pbk for 320pp plus illustrations)"
""This book offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the key European social move... more ""This book offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the key European social movements in the past 40 years, including “new social movements” from the 70s to the early 90s, global justice struggles from 1999 to the mid-2000s, and contemporary anti-austerity protests. Part I is a ground-breaking analysis of the relationship between European social theory and Europe’s history of social movement struggles. Part II explores new social movements from French anti-nuclear power movements via Italian autonomous politics to British anti-roads protest as precursors to the global justice movement, highlighting historical continuities and national specificities. Part III examines the cultural processes involved in constructing the anti-capitalist global justice movement, including collective memory, processes of international diffusion, activist mobility and the specifics of the East European experience. Part IV looks at the “European Spring” of anti-austerity protest and indignados, including the interaction between the Tunisian revolution and Greek protests, the “saucepan revolution” in Iceland and the dramatic 15-M mobilizations in Spain. The conclusion discusses the European “Occupy” events and the future of movements in Europe. The book stands alone in its combination of historical analysis of European movement development with ethnographic attention to the specifics of national and regional movement contexts.
Download flyer for 20% discount (£64 / $114.40)"
Now viewable through Google Books and Amazon Look Inside."
Three chapters available under "Papers", below.
""Marxism and Social Movements is the first su... more Three chapters available under "Papers", below.
""Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.
Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research."
Download flyer for 25% discount offer."
The letters and poems of Nigerian human rights, environmental and indigenous campaigner Ken Saro-... more The letters and poems of Nigerian human rights, environmental and indigenous campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa sent to solidarity activist Majella McCarron before his execution by the military dictatorship. Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 executed men were involved in opposing Shell's activities in the Niger Delta.
New and expanded, open-access edition thanks to Firoze Manji (Daraja Press) and Helen Fallon (Maynooth Library).
"Until recently, Irish religion has been seen as defined by Catholic power in the South and secta... more "Until recently, Irish religion has been seen as defined by Catholic power in the South and sectarianism in the North. In recent years, however, both have been shaken by widespread changes in religious practice and belief, the rise of new religious movements, the revival of magical-devotionalism, the arrival of migrant religion and the spread of New Age and alternative spirituality.
This book is the first to bring together researchers exploring all these areas in a wide-ranging overview of new religion in Ireland. Chapters explore the role of feminism, Ireland as global ‘Celtic’ homeland, the growth of Islam, understanding the New Age, evangelicals in the Republic, alternative healing, Irish interest in Buddhism, channelled teachings and religious visions."
The Buddha and the barcode is a short (85-page) introduction to contemporary Buddhism. Beautifull... more The Buddha and the barcode is a short (85-page) introduction to contemporary Buddhism. Beautifully designed by artist Bernadette Acht, its chapters cover the basics of Buddhism, its rise in popularity in the west, Buddhism and the modern world, the benefits of Buddhist practice and Buddhism as a media phenomenon. Rather than trying to convert readers or give an academic account, the book focusses on what ordinary people across the world do with Buddhism in their own lives.
This thesis falls into two parts. The first (chapters one to three) states the problematic of the... more This thesis falls into two parts. The first (chapters one to three) states the problematic of the research, develops a critique of the dominant “social movements” literature as unhelpful for understanding the counter culture and argues that the latter can more effectively be theorised in terms of the implicit theory of social movement found within agency-oriented Western Marxism and socialist feminism. This latter theory is developed as an understanding of movement as direction, developing from the local rationalities of everyday life through articulated but partial campaigns to a “movement project” which attempts to deploy such local rationalities to restructure the social whole. Within these terms, it argues for an understanding of counter culture as a movement project from below within disorganised capitalism. This mode of analysis is seen as that of a historical sociology geared to the production of open concepts which can be used by participants to theorise the context of their own choices.
The second part (chapters four to eight) theorises the issues involved in researching social movements within this perspective, entailing the need to engage with tacit knowledge, to thematise conflicts and collusion between researcher and participants. The findings chapters use qualitative interviews from a Dublin movement milieu to develop an analysis, grounded in participation, of the local rationalities of the counter culture. In this section the key findings are a rationality of autonomy as self-development, which is shown to underlie processes of distancing and problems of commitment, and a rationality of radicalised reflexivity, which resolves the problem of institutionalisation through the deployment of a wide range of “techniques of the self”. The analysis attempts to locate this reading within the life-histories of participants but also within the historical development of the counter culture, examplifying the ability of the concepts developed in this thesis to engage with the problems facing participants.
Papers on counter culture in Ireland, other oppositional cultures and the relationship between ag... more Papers on counter culture in Ireland, other oppositional cultures and the relationship between agency and strategy.
Book chapters by Laurence Cox
Minority Discontent in Nigeria Since Independence, 2024
Foreword to Samuel Udogbo, Minority Discontent in Nigeria Since Independence: the Ogoni People’s ... more Foreword to Samuel Udogbo, Minority Discontent in Nigeria Since Independence: the Ogoni People’s Resistance in Perspective. Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2024.
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Books by Laurence Cox
Divided into three thematic sections, this stimulating Handbook dives deep into discussions relating to the methodological challenges raised by researching social movements, the technical questions of how such research is conducted, and then to more practical considerations about the uses and applications of movement research. Expert contributors and established researchers utilise real-world examples to explore the methodological challenges from a range of perspectives including classical, engaged, feminist, Black, Indigenous and global Southern viewpoints.
The extended (12,000-word) introduction is available free online at https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803922027/book-part-9781803922027-6.xml
Taking the reader on a tour of Ruskin Mill's many extraordinary provisions across Britain, and going deeper in conversation with its founder, Aonghus Gordon, this book is an outstanding story of creative thinking in an age of narrow focus on classrooms and written examinations, presenting a transformative perspective on education and care. Being grounded in work supporting young people with complex additional needs, it provides a rare insight into the work of one of the world's leading charities working with neurodiversity.
With its non-specialist language, Place, Craft and Neurodiversity offers ideas and resources for work in different areas of education and therapy. It will inspire parents, educators and care workers around the globe.
Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism’s remaking as a world religion has been told “from above,” highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers, and ecclesiastical hierarchies. By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, Dhammaloka’s adventures “from below” highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. Through his story, authors Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements. Dhammaloka’s dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.
Voices of 1968 is a vivid collection of original texts from the movements of the long 1968. We hear these struggles in their own words, showing their creativity and diversity. We see feminism, black power, anti-war activism, armed struggle, indigenous movements, ecology, dissidence, counter-culture, trade unionism, radical education, lesbian and gay struggles, and more take the stage.
Chapters cover France, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Japan. Introductory essays frame the rich material - posters, speeches, manifestos, flyers, underground documents, images and more - to help readers explore the era's revolutionary voices and ideas and understand their enduring impact on society, culture and politics today.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Buddhism.
This study uses a world-systems approach to explore the real complexities of the transmission of world religions in a country which (like most) is neither homogenous nor neatly bounded but shaped by colonialism, contested borders, enormous diasporas, competing ethno-religious cultures and widespread immigration and where simple stories of a monolithic past do not hold water. Part I traces how knowledge of Buddhist Asia reached the western end of Europe between the seventh and the nineteenth centuries. Part II explores Buddhism and Theosophy as alternatives to the mainstream ethno-religious allegiances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland. Part III discusses Buddhism’s recent growth from counter-culture via immigration to Ireland’s third-largest religion.
Buddhism and Ireland combines a critical analysis of the politics of religion in Ireland, a detailed exploration of the lives of remarkable and courageous people and an eye for unexpected connections. The only published history of Buddhism in Ireland, it will be widely read by students of Buddhism in the west as well as by those interested in the changing role of religion in Irish society."
See attached flyer for special offer ($22.46 / £14.99 pbk for 320pp plus illustrations)"
Download flyer for 20% discount (£64 / $114.40)"
Now viewable through Google Books and Amazon Look Inside."
""Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.
Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research."
Download flyer for 25% discount offer."
New and expanded, open-access edition thanks to Firoze Manji (Daraja Press) and Helen Fallon (Maynooth Library).
This book is the first to bring together researchers exploring all these areas in a wide-ranging overview of new religion in Ireland. Chapters explore the role of feminism, Ireland as global ‘Celtic’ homeland, the growth of Islam, understanding the New Age, evangelicals in the Republic, alternative healing, Irish interest in Buddhism, channelled teachings and religious visions."
The second part (chapters four to eight) theorises the issues involved in researching social movements within this perspective, entailing the need to engage with tacit knowledge, to thematise conflicts and collusion between researcher and participants. The findings chapters use qualitative interviews from a Dublin movement milieu to develop an analysis, grounded in participation, of the local rationalities of the counter culture. In this section the key findings are a rationality of autonomy as self-development, which is shown to underlie processes of distancing and problems of commitment, and a rationality of radicalised reflexivity, which resolves the problem of institutionalisation through the deployment of a wide range of “techniques of the self”. The analysis attempts to locate this reading within the life-histories of participants but also within the historical development of the counter culture, examplifying the ability of the concepts developed in this thesis to engage with the problems facing participants.
Book chapters by Laurence Cox
Divided into three thematic sections, this stimulating Handbook dives deep into discussions relating to the methodological challenges raised by researching social movements, the technical questions of how such research is conducted, and then to more practical considerations about the uses and applications of movement research. Expert contributors and established researchers utilise real-world examples to explore the methodological challenges from a range of perspectives including classical, engaged, feminist, Black, Indigenous and global Southern viewpoints.
The extended (12,000-word) introduction is available free online at https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803922027/book-part-9781803922027-6.xml
Taking the reader on a tour of Ruskin Mill's many extraordinary provisions across Britain, and going deeper in conversation with its founder, Aonghus Gordon, this book is an outstanding story of creative thinking in an age of narrow focus on classrooms and written examinations, presenting a transformative perspective on education and care. Being grounded in work supporting young people with complex additional needs, it provides a rare insight into the work of one of the world's leading charities working with neurodiversity.
With its non-specialist language, Place, Craft and Neurodiversity offers ideas and resources for work in different areas of education and therapy. It will inspire parents, educators and care workers around the globe.
Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism’s remaking as a world religion has been told “from above,” highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers, and ecclesiastical hierarchies. By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, Dhammaloka’s adventures “from below” highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. Through his story, authors Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements. Dhammaloka’s dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.
Voices of 1968 is a vivid collection of original texts from the movements of the long 1968. We hear these struggles in their own words, showing their creativity and diversity. We see feminism, black power, anti-war activism, armed struggle, indigenous movements, ecology, dissidence, counter-culture, trade unionism, radical education, lesbian and gay struggles, and more take the stage.
Chapters cover France, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Japan. Introductory essays frame the rich material - posters, speeches, manifestos, flyers, underground documents, images and more - to help readers explore the era's revolutionary voices and ideas and understand their enduring impact on society, culture and politics today.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Buddhism.
This study uses a world-systems approach to explore the real complexities of the transmission of world religions in a country which (like most) is neither homogenous nor neatly bounded but shaped by colonialism, contested borders, enormous diasporas, competing ethno-religious cultures and widespread immigration and where simple stories of a monolithic past do not hold water. Part I traces how knowledge of Buddhist Asia reached the western end of Europe between the seventh and the nineteenth centuries. Part II explores Buddhism and Theosophy as alternatives to the mainstream ethno-religious allegiances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland. Part III discusses Buddhism’s recent growth from counter-culture via immigration to Ireland’s third-largest religion.
Buddhism and Ireland combines a critical analysis of the politics of religion in Ireland, a detailed exploration of the lives of remarkable and courageous people and an eye for unexpected connections. The only published history of Buddhism in Ireland, it will be widely read by students of Buddhism in the west as well as by those interested in the changing role of religion in Irish society."
See attached flyer for special offer ($22.46 / £14.99 pbk for 320pp plus illustrations)"
Download flyer for 20% discount (£64 / $114.40)"
Now viewable through Google Books and Amazon Look Inside."
""Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.
Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research."
Download flyer for 25% discount offer."
New and expanded, open-access edition thanks to Firoze Manji (Daraja Press) and Helen Fallon (Maynooth Library).
This book is the first to bring together researchers exploring all these areas in a wide-ranging overview of new religion in Ireland. Chapters explore the role of feminism, Ireland as global ‘Celtic’ homeland, the growth of Islam, understanding the New Age, evangelicals in the Republic, alternative healing, Irish interest in Buddhism, channelled teachings and religious visions."
The second part (chapters four to eight) theorises the issues involved in researching social movements within this perspective, entailing the need to engage with tacit knowledge, to thematise conflicts and collusion between researcher and participants. The findings chapters use qualitative interviews from a Dublin movement milieu to develop an analysis, grounded in participation, of the local rationalities of the counter culture. In this section the key findings are a rationality of autonomy as self-development, which is shown to underlie processes of distancing and problems of commitment, and a rationality of radicalised reflexivity, which resolves the problem of institutionalisation through the deployment of a wide range of “techniques of the self”. The analysis attempts to locate this reading within the life-histories of participants but also within the historical development of the counter culture, examplifying the ability of the concepts developed in this thesis to engage with the problems facing participants.
The struggle for justice exists at many levels, with differing capacity to act and reflect; and struggle is a developmental process. Finding, or creating, relevant learning (from past movements, movements elsewhere or on other issues) is always a challenge; but movements also move. How can we know what social transformation might be possible, beyond today?
Movements generate different kinds of knowledge – agitational, educational and organisational. But as our own spaces for thinking have declined and other kinds of institutions mediate between us, thinking from and for our own needs becomes harder.
This piece asks how to think about specific movements’ knowledge needs; how well these are met by existing spaces for thinking; and how different kinds of people can help the development of “really useful knowledge”. It finishes with a concrete example of a movement learning project.
Different movements face very different challenges in this respect, dependent not only on the social situation of their core participants (with the emphasis variously on physical and social survival, movement-relevant skills and resources, or emotional sustainability) but also on how movements interface with social routines (workplace-based movements, community-based movements, professional / full-time activism and “leisure” activism) and the relationship of movement cultures with the wider society (long-standing movement presence, whole classes or cultures which support participation, moments of generational transformation and newly-formed or culturally marginal movements).
The chapter further discusses some of the strategies and theorisations adopted within different social movements in relation to activist sustainability: what aspects of sustainability do different movements prioritise, how do they tackle the problem, and how do they think about the issue? Examples range from survival-oriented solidarity, via strategies geared to developing organisational capacity, to prefigurative approaches. Socialist, community, radical-democratic, feminist, ecological and radical-spiritual variants are explored. Beyond this again, activist sustainability represents the challenge of how people lacking power, wealth or cultural privilege can become and remain active and radical political subjects.
This article uses the lens of Irish and British converts and sympathisers in Asia and Europe in the late C19th and early C20th centuries to explore the European situation – one with fewer Asian missionaries and different relationships between society and religion than those in North America. It explores the sources of their various versions of Buddhism; their organising techniques and repertoires of “Buddhist” activity, their audiences and how they defined “Buddhism” in relation to politics, ethnicity and colonialism. It argues that meditation (and “practice”) became central to European Buddhism because it solved a crucial organisational problem: what could Buddhist globalisers offer to turn audiences into Buddhists?
This paper situates recent Irish movements against austerity in the longer context of movement landscapes since 1968 – themselves shaped by changing class relationships and hegemonic alliances, shifts in popular culture, state incorporation of movement organisations of all kinds and events in the North. The rise of the non-institutional social movement left in the early 2000s marked a significant break with the statist old left; since 2007 an important concern of the latter has been to use the crisis to return discussion to its preferred terrain of economics and state policy while implicitly positioning itself – as social-democratic policy expert, as vanguard party or as various kinds of radical theorist – as central to a resolution of the problem. This, however, has not resolved the underlying problem of agency which the rise of the non-institutional left had made visible, and the results of traditional strategies have been poor, both in terms of effective resistance and in terms of sustaining mobilisation.
In this sense the water charges protests, coming after the collapse of the organisational alliance which was supposed to be organising them, represent a return of movement as against organisations: they have raised much wider issues, seen massive participation and a sharp radicalisation of methods. The complex relationship between this movement and the various bodies – informal community groups, trade unions, left parties and others – involved in coordination remains in flux and subject to the usual logics of “organisational patriotism” as against “the interests of the movement as a whole”. In this context it is important, both theoretically and practically, to find adequate means of articulating the “movement as a whole”, in its diverse and changing aspects, rather than insist on the a priori primacy of one or another moment. The paper concludes with some reflections on a series of events in early 2015 aimed at articulating this wider sense of movement, the differing analyses they represent and the different perspectives they open up.
In Ireland we can see this from the Whiteboys and the Land League up to the struggle here in Erris, the anti-fracking movement or the fight against water charges. Around the world community is central to indigenous struggles from the Ogoni to First Nations and Native American resistance to Keystone XL and other tar sands projects, but also to the movements of shack-dwellers in South Africa, farmers in the Narmada valley, No TAV in Italy and so on.
So in this talk I will look at the difficulties involved, the history and where there might be some hope.
It proposes an analysis of such waves as occurring within one or more regions of the capitalist world-system and involving an organic crisis of a particular regime of accumulation – entailing a growing popular capacity for action, the detachment of subaltern elements of the previously hegemonic coalition and a declining elite capacity to either offer significant concessions or to mobilise effective repression. By placing the analysis at this level it avoids the superficial requirement that such waves share a common popular actor or set of demands – what similarities exist in terms of leading popular actors and modes of organisation are to be explained by this broader situation (notably, the difficulties experienced by the existing regime of accumulation in accommodating given needs and social groups). It also makes it clear that a revolutionary outcome is by no means a given, nor is it a requirement for a “real” wave. However the historical experience has often been that even where a given regime was able to recover temporarily in the longer term a new set of hegemonic arrangements, incorporating some movement demands, has been necessary.
In relation to the present crisis, with its multiple popular actors, this analysis suggests particular attention to the weaknesses of neoliberalism in securing continued hegemony – and to demands, and popular institutions, which accentuate this. It notes in particular the length of this crisis, which is historically unusual and politically encouraging, as is the narrowness of neoliberal orthodoxy and the difficulties experienced in finding new modes of organisation to incorporate popular pressures. It concludes with some suggestions as to what movements can do in this situation.
The paper starts by relating Gramsci’s Sardinia to Ireland and Mayo in particular, in the experiences of peripherality, local nationalism, clientelist power relations and popular culture (as well as noting Gramsci’s few comments on Ireland). It proceeds to discuss two commonly misused Gramscian categories (intellectuals and hegemony) and one underused one (good sense) to sketch out a processual theory of movement capable of accounting for movements-become-states (as in Ireland) as well as movements-from-below and the co-optation of movements.
Exploring the historical formations of Irish hegemony, the paper notes how rarely Irish social movements writing attempts serious comparison of Irish movements with those abroad, and suggests some key specificities which can be accounted for in Gramscian terms. In particular, it notes the combination of movement-become-state (Catholic nationalism), the extent of continued popular mobilisation in nationalist and religious institutions during the “Irish counter-revolution” (historically parallel to continental fascism), the subordination of other movements to developmentalist nationalism (shared with much of Latin America), and the combination of practical cooperation with sotto voce critique - contrasted with the dramatic ruptures of the independence movement.
A shift in hegemonic relations came with the feminist challenge to religious and gendered power structures and the massive local assertions of urban working-class communities in the 1970s and 1980s, along with the ecological confrontation with developmentalism at Carnsore. This broke the localist, religious and mobilising aspects of earlier state policy and ushered in a shift where these movements came to accept the leadership of modernising technocratic elites in return for limited policy gains and (crucially) funding. Irish social partnership thus comes to seem less a late outlier from the continental pattern of Keynesian neo-corporatism and rather a holding pattern parallel to the limited “democratisations” of Latin American states post-dictatorships.
While this period created scope for the development of radical movements outside this consensus, their mobilising power was substantially constrained by the broader pattern of co-optation. The attack on partnership from above, and subsequent recession, is in the process of creating a strange new movement landscape. On the one hand, NGO and union leaderships are keen to retain elements of partnership at any cost, in a dog-eat-dog process shaped by the dependence of professional elites on state funding for survival. On the other hand, radical forces are finding that the attack from above on the earlier hegemony creates scope for enlargement, but in a situation where they lack the organisational capacity to make the necessary connections.
The paper concludes by contrasting three possibilities. One is that of an Irish “M-15”, Icelandic or Tahrir Square experience of mass popular mobilisation against failed elites. The second is that of Ireland following the East European and post-Soviet model of substantial demobilisation following the collapse of authoritarian power structures which claimed to speak for the mass of the people. Finally, the paper returns to Mayo and the Rossport struggle, arguing that as in Latin America over the last ten years it is the direct confrontation with specific nexuses of power relations which is most likely to prove a strategic source of change.
While the Irish left has discussed the economic side of the crisis ad nauseam, little serious attention (in politics or academia) has been given to understanding this situation, which is rather taken as a given. This paper attempts an answer to the question of why responses to the crisis have been so restricted to organisational fixes. It starts with a broad analysis of the shaping of popular agency in Ireland via the long-term effects of nationalism, the channelling of popular hopes through state-led modernisation and the institutionalisation of self-organisation, with particular attention to the unresolved issues of "carceral Catholicism" in the South and war in the North. Discussing left parties, unions, community activism and social movements, the paper explores Ireland's "Piven and Cloward" moment in the failure of organisational substitutionalism through electoralism, social partnership, clientelism and populism.
If modernisation and social partnership together represented a form of passive revolution, constructing a new hegemony in the wake of the collapse of nationalist autarky, the underlying relations constructed in this period seem remarkably unshaken by state withdrawal from this programme. In this context it argues that casual reference to counter-hegemony as a simple collection of moments of cultural opposition is a wilful misunderstanding of the problem, politically and intellectually, and that the real challenge is to construct a coherent alternative which has the capacity of becoming hegemonic in its turn in both these dimensions.
Given this analysis of the context of Irish movement activity, what can or should organisers do, in the historically new situation created after the end of the "Celtic Tiger"? The paper argues that simple alliances between the leaderships of organisations which in practice privilege their engagement with existing institutional arrangements over popular self-organisation will not be enough, and explores the outcomes of attempts at alliance-building in three arenas: unions, social movements and community groups; electoral politics; and street protest.
supporting their fellow-activists and preventing burnout. It is also of importance to researchers attempting to understand how movements continue in the face of everything that is thrown at their participants. This paper represents some extended notes attempting to rethink, and restructure, a problematic whose contours are extremely slippery. It may, I hope, also be of some use to activists who are facing these problems but not (currently) overwhelmed by them.
We start by outlining what is at stake and asking what "winning" means: what actually happens when a social movement project from below achieves its goal of constructing "another world"? We explore the step- by-step processes through which the movement of movements is currently developing the "insurgent architecture" involved in this construction, and noting how this presents a challenge for the powers that be.
We then turn to the massive opposition that the movement has been meeting from above - from multinational institutions, states and corporations. We explore the nature of these responses and argue that while they have failed to defeat the movement, they have brought about something of a temporary stalemate. We ask how the movement can get beyond this stalemate, not by adopting the logic and methods of its opponents, but by taking qualitative steps forward in its own development, according to its own logic.
The paper finishes with some brief discussion of the most important practical steps in constructing another world, and the nature of the moments of confrontation that lie ahead.
We’re looking for short pieces (1500-2500 words) that we can turn around as quickly as possible about movements in your country, city, region, neighbourhood… Tell us about
Movements already going on before the virus
Lessons learned from previous collective actions that inform how activists respond to the crisis
Civil society struggles to get states to take action
Campaigning to get the specific needs of particular groups / communities taken into account
Solidarity economy and mutual aid initiatives and their connections to other movements
Struggles developing within the crisis
Longer-term perspective: what might the crisis mean for movements and the possibility of a better world?
Full details on https://www.interfacejournal.net/
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The November 2016 issue of the open-access, online, copyleft academic/activist journal Interface: a journal for and about social movements will focus on the theme of social movement auto/biographies.
As always, contributions on other themes are also welcome.
The deadline for submissions is May 1st 2016.
Please circulate this to anyone you think may be interested.