Why Social Movements Matter

Laurence Cox is one of Europe’s leading social movement researchers, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and Associate Researcher at the Collège d’Etudes Mondiales, Paris. He has published widely on different aspects of social movements, including We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism, Voices of 1968: Documents from the Global North, Understanding European Movements, Marxism and Social Movements and Silence Would Be Treason: Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Cox cofounded andcoedits the activist/academic social movements journal Interface. He hasbeen involved in many different kinds of movement since the 1980s, includingecological, international solidarity, human rights and organising againstrepression, antiwar, community activism, radical media, self-organised spaces,alternative education and the alter-globalisation ‘movement of movements’.

This is the book we all were waiting for! Laurence Cox is an experienced scholar-activist, who writes in a concise, clever and accessible style. Cox argues that social movements are part of everyday life and help to shape the world but we don’t notice. They also escape the social scientist's analysis. In this intervention, Cox makes us aware of what social movements are and are not, what is their relation with society as a whole, with institutional politics, with intellectuals and with the Left. The book is a must for both those who want to know more about social movements, and those who teach and learn political sociology and social movement studies.

• Introduction; 1. We Need Movements; 2. Movements Made the World We Live In; 3. The Social Movement as a Whole; 4. The Philosophers Have Only Interpreted The World; 5. Movements and Intellectual Activity; Conclusion; Resources; Notes