Challenging Authority

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School at the City University of New York and past president of the American Sociological Association. She is the author of several books, including The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism (2004) and Why Americans Still Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way (2000).

Frances Fox Piven has written yet another terrific book. Building on her previous work with Richard Cloward, she scales new heights in uncovering 'the dynamics of disruptive power.' Theoretically profound, yet immensely readable, with enormous comparative as well as historical range, she shows how 'the people-out-of-doors' have effected progressive policy reforms at critical junctures in American history. The practical relevance of this for politics in the USA today is clear on every page. And so are the lessons it has to teach social movement theorists as well as institutionalist political scientists and sociologists.

• Chapter 1 1 Challenging AuthorityChapter 2 2 The Nature of Disruptive PowerChapter 3 3 The Mob and the State: Disruptive Power and the Construction of American Electoral-Representative ArrangementsChapter 4 4 Dissensus Politics, or the Interaction of Disruptive Challenges with Electoral Politics: The Case of the Abolitionist MovementChapter 5 5 Movements and Reform in the American Twentieth CenturyChapter 6 6. The Times-In-BetweenChapter 7 Epilogue