Protest Cultures

Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied social phenomenon, one that finds expression not only in modern social movements and political organizations but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. It constitutes a distinct cultural domain, one whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among other actors. Yet within social movement scholarship, such cultural considerations have been comparatively neglected. Protest Cultures: A Companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects. It combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on a remarkable array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.

Kathrin Fahlenbrach is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is the author of Audiovisual Metaphors: Embodied and Affective Aesthetics of Film and Television (2010) and co-editor of Media and Revolt: Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present (2014).

Martin Klimke is Associate Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is the author of The Other Alliance: Global Protest and Student Unrest in West Germany and the US, 1962–1972 (2010) and co-author of A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African‐American GIs, and Germany (2010).

Joachim Scharloth is a Professor at School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University, Japan. His publications include 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-1977 (2008) and Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980 (2011), both co-edited with Martin Klimke.

“This volume definitely provides an important starting point: It helps explain how different protest movements construct their own reality, use media in novel ways, organize actions across all spheres of public life, and involve various representations, their very own language, as well as different forms of rule breaking. And it repeatedly reminds us how much work there still is to be done—how little we actually know about why and how protest occurs.” • German Politics and Society