Social Movements.

For this book, I was interested less in the historical examples than I was in the lessons learned from these examples. For instance, I was interested in the analyses of the anatomy of the social movement, for instance the idea introduced in chapter 1 and explored through the book of a social movement consisting of campaign, repertoire, and display.

That last element, the WUNC display (worthiness, unity, numbers, commitment), I found most thoughtful; it seems like too often members of a movement fail to be thoughtful of how individual appearance and action affects public perception of the group, either for good or ill. I am curious to see if this concept applies usefully outside of activism as well -- for instance, can subcultures be measured by their displays of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment?

Not all in the book I agreed with, however. For one, I disagree with his statements on page 131 that increased internationalization is making difficult the growth of current social movements by taking power away from the necessary local and national levels. I believe just the opposite: if the goal of a social movement is, ultimately, internationalism, then modern international technology -- that is, the internet -- makes it easy to begin immediately at the international level, bypassing the lower levels needed in the past due to slower communication technology.

Though a bit of a slow read, the book, in all, contained much good information, undoubtedly useful to the activist and, in my opinion, worth considering outside that setting into other fields.