This volume simultaneously attempts to consider and rethink contemporary models and concepts in the study of protest, and examine their applicability to different regional contexts. Asma Ali Farah finds the key strength of From Silence to Protest is it shifts attention towards aspects that are overlooked in social movement studies, like its consideration of “invisible” forms of activism

Farah, Asma Ali

LSE Research Online

13/07/2015Book Review: From Silence to Protest: InternationalPerspectives on Weakly Resourced Groupsblogs.lse.ac.uk /lsereviewofbooks/2015/07/13/book-review-from-silence-to-protest-international-perspectives-on-weakly-resourced-groups/This volume simultaneously attempts to consider and rethink contemporary models and concepts in thestudy of protest, and examine their applicability to different regional contexts. AsmaAli Farah finds the key strength of From Silence to Protest is it shifts attentiontowards aspects that are overlooked in social movement studies, like its consideration of “invisible” forms ofactivism.From Silence to Protest: International Perspectives on Weakly Resourced Groups. Edited by DidierChabanet and Frédéric Royall. Ashgate. 2014.In recent decades, social movement scholars have been paying closer attention to theincreasing diversification in the emergence, development, and outcomes of politicalcontention, resulting in a proliferation of academic works that seek to transcend existingboundaries and rethink the three major paradigms in the field, namely resourcemobilization, opportunity structures, and frame analysis. This edited volume is part of suchan endeavour, though whilst the various essays do adopt an original take on theseparadigms, they would have benefited from considering more deeply the internationalcontext of political contention.Silence to Protest – the outcome of a workshop that sought to test the validity of currentmainstream approaches to the study of protest – aims to take on two of the suggestionsproposed by the three leading figures in contentious politics in Dynamics of Contention(2001). It simultaneously attempts to consider and rethink contemporary models andconcepts in the study of protest, and examine their applicability to different regional contexts. To test their strengthsand weaknesses, the essays deal specifically with what the editors refer to as “weakly resourced groups”, thoughthe nature of the disadvantages vary considerably. For instance, whereas some authors deal with economically orfinancially weak groups, others focus instead on those who are more socially disadvantaged.In fact, this manuscript includes a wide range of actors: urban rioters in France and Great Britain; small-scalefarmers in France; precarious workers in Italy and Greece; unemployed individuals in Germany, Ireland andMorocco; the Roma in Italy and Finland; Muslims in European countries; collectives in Cuba; landless workers inBrazil; and transnational activists in Africa. To this can be added the brief insights on political mobilization bymarginalised groups and individuals in Russia, Iran, Egypt, and China, that are detailed in the last chapter. In sum,there is more variation in the type of actors than in the geographical localities of contention, for the focus ispredominantly on European countries. Thus, despite the editors’ recognition that some regions, such as Europe,have traditionally enjoyed more analytical focus, the volume overall reproduces this bias. As sub-fields incontentious politics such as social movement studies still suffer from a lack of engagement with political contentionin East Asia, more focus on this region would have been a useful addition. Notwithstanding this lacuna, themanuscript follows a logical structure, with chapters ordered according to similarity in terms of actors or politicalcontext. As such, studies that deal with farmers and precarious workers, the unemployed, and ethnic minorities areclustered together, as are studies that consider mobilization in an authoritarian milieu. Another strength of this bookis that some chapters adopt a cross-national comparative perspective, allowing the readers to appreciate howdifferent contexts affect similar challengers.1/3Image Credit: TheFAIR1 – Macedonia Protests, Wikipedia. CC-BY-SA 3.0.Yet, the most useful contribution of this volume remains its attention to neglected dimensions in social movementstudies, notably local level mobilization, non-conventional forms of protest, and overlooked actors. Chapter Nineargues that the methodological focus on nationwide street protest by the unemployed gives a misleading picture ofthe frequency and forms of mobilization of this group. Using the case of unemployed activists in constituencies inGermany, the author shows that political protest by this type of challenger is more frequent and continuous thanmight be assumed. In addition to shifting the level of analysis to the local level, there are further calls for examiningless mediatised forms of resistance to capture the many ways in which weakly resourced groups might expresspolitical opposition. Similarly, Chapter Twelve draws attention to the ways in which repressive political environmentsdilute the political character of resistance. Drawing on the case of various types of collectives in Cuba since the endof the Cold War, this demonstrates that the high cost of collective action made the cultural sphere a more suitableplatform to voice opposition and express dissatisfaction, especially in light of the improved freedom of speech in thisarea. Thus, cultural opportunities may be more significant for challengers in authoritarian regimes. This insightchallenges the well-established political opportunity perspective, with its emphasis on structural types ofopportunities. Another key contribution can be found in Chapter Two that – in addition to highlighting the need totake a more local level perspective – contends that although the political goals of (urban) rioters are not clear, theirviolent behaviour need not be dismissed as an irrational outburst, but instead should be understood in a politicalway. This is because riots should be conceptualised as a repertoire of contention that some disadvantaged groupsuse to convey a particular political message. To analyse this phenomenon, the author suggests amongst others, togo back to relative deprivation perspectives, which have been side-lined by scholars since their heyday a fewdecades ago.However, a key downside of this edited volume is that it tends to restrict the analysis to the state. A few chapters doconsider the supra-national context (e.g. Chapters Three and Six). However, this is not considered adequately inchapters where such an approach would have been especially relevant. For instance, though Chapter Eightcompares activism surrounding the Roma in Finland and Italy, ultimately opportunities for mobilization are mainlyassessed within the context of the national citizenship regime, with only brief references to the European context.National discursive and political opportunities are also emphasised in relation to activism by Muslims in sixEuropean countries (Chapter Seven), though given the external influences on domestic mobilization, it would havebeen interesting to consider how opportunities and threats at the European level affect the dynamics of local politicalcontention. This restriction to the national context to discuss discursive and/or political opportunities recurselsewhere (e.g. Chapters Ten and Eleven). Granted some authors might prefer to focus on specific or local levelopportunities, one cannot separate local level processes from their broader international context. In sum, thiscollection would have benefited from adopting a more internationalist take on the framing, resource mobilization and(political) opportunity frameworks.2/3To conclude, the key strength of this edited volume is that it shifts attention towards aspects that are overlooked insocial movement studies. Its consideration of “invisible” forms of activism is particularly useful, for the scholarship inthis field is guilty of adopting a narrow understanding of political mobilization by emphasising more visible andmediatised expressions of political resistance. As such, students and researchers in contentious politics would find itparticularly refreshing. However, it would have benefited from having more variety in terms of the geographicalscope of the studies and considered international influences in more detail.Asma Ali Farah is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, at Royal Holloway,University of London. She holds an MSc in International Relations from Royal Holloway. Her research interestsinclude political participation, political representation, government responsiveness to protest, and women’s rights.Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books3/3

Book review: from silence to protest: international perspectives on weakly resourced groups

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