The Tea Party. The Occupy Movement. Idle No More. Around the world, popular social movements are challenging the status quo. Yet most democracies are seeing a decline in voter turnout. Protest and Politics examines this shift in political participation, as well as the blurring of social movements and mainstream politics, through the lens of the social movement society thesis. Analyzing historical and contemporary social movements in Canada in comparison to those in the US and in the transnational sphere, the authors argue that our understanding of the boundaries between politics and protest needs to evolve.

Howard Ramos' profile page

Kathleen Rodgers' profile page

Howard Ramos is an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University. He researches issues of social justice. He is the co-author, with Karen Stanbridge, of Seeing Politics Differently: A Brief Introduction to Political Sociology and co-author, with Suzanne Staggenborg, of Social Movements (3rd Canadian edition).

Kathleen Rodgers is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa. Her current research areas include political sociology, social movements, and digital media. Her most recent project is focused on indigenous responses to large-scale mining projects. She is the author of Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia.

This high-quality collection … makes an important empirical contribution, especially because of the many chapters that deal with aspects of activism that are not often canvassed in Canadian scholarship.

BC Studies