Protest and organization in the alternative globalization era

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Catherine Raissiguier

""Raissiguier makes a passionate and rigorus contribution to the contemporary debate on how traditionally universalist France treats and defines subjects who do not fall neatly within republican categoris. This is a compelling and timely study about who the right or power to symbolize Frenchness, showing exactly, how a Western democracy is forced to reevaluate its core values as it seeks to respond to significant changes in its social fabric."--Mireille Rosello, University of Amsterdam "What a smart, engaging book, By taking seriously the experiences, ideas, and strategties of African women in France, Raissiguier makes visible the women activists inside the vibrant sans-papiers immigrant rights movement. She shows us why social movements cannot be understood without a feminist curiosity."--Cynthiaenloe, Clark University "This book provides an insightful and much needed analysis of the sans-papiers-the women of the sans-papiers movement. Raissiguier persuasively argues for the exclusionary nature of French republicanism by exposing the links between the struggles of the sans-papieres and chose for parite and Pactes Civils de Solidarite; in the process, she shows how racism, homophobia, and sexism work together to create outsiders within."--Miriam Ticktin, The New School Early one morning in 1996, the sanctuary of a Parisian church was suddenly disrupted by a police raid. A group of undocumented immigrant families had taken refuge in the church under threat of deportation due to the French state's increasingly restrtictive immigration policies. Rather than disperse and hide, these sans-papeirs--literally, people without papers--came together to bring to light the deep contradictions in the French states immigration policies and practices. Reinventing the Republic chronicles the struggle of the sans-papiers to become rights- bearing citizens, and links different social movements to reveal the many ways in which concepts of citizenship and nationality intersect with debates over gender, sexuality, and immigration. Drawing on in-depth interviews and a variety of texts, this disquieting book provides new insights into how exclusion and discrimination operate and influence each other in the world today."--Jacket

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Patrick M. Garry

A Nation of Adversaries: How the Litigation Explosion Is Reshaping America brilliantly examines why our culture has been increasingly crowding courthouses and fueling the growth of the lawyer population, pitting us against each other. Dr. Patrick Garry, an expert on the effect of the courts on American society, insightfully points out that our growing litigant-oriented mindset is reinforcing a self-centered culture of undue expectation and entitlement. The workplace, the classroom, the bedroom, and even the playground are becoming more combative. With increasing gridlock, acrimony, and ideological warfare, the political arena has especially come to resemble more a courtroom than an arena for concordance. The values supporting democracysuch as compromise and consensus - have been subverted by tenacity and aggressiveness. In light of the new litigation democracy, the individual's right to sue is valued more than his or her right to vote. The author also analyzes how the publicity bestowed upon specific lawsuits "teaches" the public to identify and assert new ways of being a victim. As a result, employees are victims of their employers, children victims of their parents, and students victims of their teachers. In encouraging new types of victim-plaintiffs and promising lucrative rewards to potential victims, litigation also fuels the fire of therapy culture. For a society obsessed with psychic healing and emotional recovery, litigation is seen as a logical continuation of the healing process begun in a therapist's office. Increasingly open to novel theories of psychological injuries, the courts are reinforcing the therapeutic bent so prevalent in sensationalistic talk shows and recovery programs. A Nation of Adversaries is a candid look at litigation's invasion into our once formally mindful society, and is a shrewd commentary on the creation of a new culture of identity in America.

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Susan Leigh Foster

Corporealities vivifies the study of bodies through a consideration of bodily reality, not as natural or absolute given but as tangible and substantial category of cultural experience. The essays in this volume summon up bodies engaged in practices as diverse as pageantry, physical education, festivals and exhibitions, tourism, social and theatrical dance, and post-colonial and psychoanalytic encounters. They bring these bodies to life, quivering with all the political, gendered, social, racial, sexual, and aesthetic resonances of which bodily motion is capable.

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Gudrun Lachenmann and Petra Dannecker

"Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies explores the negotiation processes of global development concepts such as gender equality, human rights, and poverty alleviation. It focuses on three countries that are undergoing different Islamization processes: Senegal, Sudan, and Malaysia. While much has been written about the hegemonic production and discursive struggle of development concepts globally, this book analyzes the negotiation of these development concepts locally and translocally. This comparative study examines the ways the activities of women's organizations and groups constitute new spaces by transferring and negotiating global development concepts, networking, and interactions with different local and translocal actors. Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies broadens the understanding of the relationship between gender, development, and Islam and the meanings of development in different cultural contexts in a globalizing world."--Jacket.