Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization

Over the past twenty years, I have taught undergraduate social movements courses ten times. I used a variety of core texts over that period, including those by Klandermans, Tarrow, Snow-Soule-Kriesi, and Edwards. After having not taught the course for five years, I reviewed the latest core texts and have decided to use Almeida’s wonderful Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization in fall. This book, written by the leading scholar of Latin American social movements under globalization, is a perfect foundational text for an undergraduate social movements course.Almeida engages a traditional definition of social movements and has an optimistic tone throughout with abundant examples of how ordinary people can act collectively and make history. The book covers all of the theoretical dynamics of social movements (micro, meso, and macro) and provides a chapter on research methods. The role of technology and social media in protest is also stressed throughout. After the theoretical overview, there are chapters on emergence, framing, participation, and outcomes. Throughout these chapters, Almeida engages many historical and contemporary examples, including: the Fight for $15, protest music in Latin America, the 2017-2018 women’s marches, Occupy Wall Street, immigrant rights movements, the Arab Spring, the global economic justice movement, and the transnational movement for climate justice.Chapter 8 on social movements in the Global South is a unique contribution to this field. Here, Almeida applies the earlier chapters and overcomes the typical reliance on U.S. and European movements in these types of texts. His experience and expertise in the area (and on the concept of threat) is evident, but the chapter remains as accessible as the rest and balances perfectly with the others.The short concluding chapter contains important insights about the future of the field and society as a whole. The book is engaging throughout and contains numerous references and notes for readers interested in diving deeper. I am excited to see the student reaction to this timely work and highly recommend it!

I used this book for a class I'm new at teaching --with the first semester during the Spring of Covid-19. I believe this book helped make the class successful! The book is accessible and provided the basic elements of why Social Movements come to be, how they work publicly, and what explains their success or demise. Excellent treatment of theories related to social movements and the timely case studies provided deeper context.I rarely use textbooks -- this text has made me rethink that approach. An important introduction to Social Movements....highly recommended.

This was an interesting read and a great overview of social movements.

Pages aren’t numbered

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paul Almedia's book. The book represents massive work summarizing the classical and established literature on social movements, as well as presenting new data on social movements from around the world, and the most recent social movements here in the United States. The book is written in a straightforward, succinct, and organized manner. You can tell that the book is written with students in mind.I can see how students new to the subject of social movements would benefit from this book as it breaks down the main concepts and consistently applies and revisits them throughout the book. The book can be used as a textbook for a course in social movements.The book blew my mind because in just 180 pages the book managed to cover in depth so many concepts, and so many movements from around the world, including the most recent color revolutions, and protests in the US.I can see how the book can get students interested in studying social movements, but it also raises new interesting questions for experienced researchers.

Social movements come to life. I work in politics and found this to be incredibly helpful. I particularly found the chapters on framing processes and the individual recruitment and participation to be applicable to policy making and campaign work. A must read!

An amazing read! Couldn’t put it down, re-reading it again a second time.