Maria Rovisco – författare

This book focuses on small-scale mobilisation and everyday social movements that take the form of grassroots resistance and solidarity initiatives. Through a series of case studies drawn from the UK, Europe, India, and Latin America, it examines the dynamics and role of micro-acts of resistance, with attention to a range of themes including organisational issues, the construction of collective identity, strategies, tactics and participation, and media representations and public perception of small-scale social movements. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media and communication and politics with interests in social movements, political mobilisation and activism.

This book focuses on small-scale mobilisation and everyday social movements that take the form of grassroots resistance and solidarity initiatives. Through a series of case studies drawn from the UK, Europe, India, and Latin America, it examines the dynamics and role of micro-acts of resistance, with attention to a range of themes including organisational issues, the construction of collective identity, strategies, tactics and participation, and media representations and public perception of small-scale social movements. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media and communication and politics with interests in social movements, political mobilisation and activism.

Although emerging scholarship in the social sciences suggests that religion can be a potential catalyst of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, few attempts have been made to bring to the fore new theoretical positions and empirical analyses of how cosmopolitanism -- as a philosophical notion, a practice and identity outlook -- can also shape and inform concrete religious affiliations. Key questions concerning the significance of cosmopolitan ideas and practices – in relation to particular religious experiences and discourses -- remain to be explored, both theoretically and empirically.

This book takes as its starting point the emergence of cosmopolitanism -- as a major interdisciplinary field -- as a springboard for generating a productive dialogue among scholars working within a variety of intellectual disciplines and methodological traditions. The chapter contributions offer a serious attempt to critically engage both the limitations and possibilities of cosmopolitanism as an analytical and critical tool to understand a changing religious landscape in a globalizing world, namely, the so-called ‘new religious diversity’, religious conflict, and issues of migration, multiculturalism and transnationalism vis-à-vis the public exercise of religion. The contributors’ work is situated in a range of world sites in Africa, India, North America, Latin America, and Europe.

This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of globalization, religion and politics, and the sociology of religion.

Although emerging scholarship in the social sciences suggests that religion can be a potential catalyst of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, few attempts have been made to bring to the fore new theoretical positions and empirical analyses of how cosmopolitanism -- as a philosophical notion, a practice and identity outlook -- can also shape and inform concrete religious affiliations. Key questions concerning the significance of cosmopolitan ideas and practices – in relation to particular religious experiences and discourses -- remain to be explored, both theoretically and empirically.

This book takes as its starting point the emergence of cosmopolitanism -- as a major interdisciplinary field -- as a springboard for generating a productive dialogue among scholars working within a variety of intellectual disciplines and methodological traditions. The chapter contributions offer a serious attempt to critically engage both the limitations and possibilities of cosmopolitanism as an analytical and critical tool to understand a changing religious landscape in a globalizing world, namely, the so-called ‘new religious diversity’, religious conflict, and issues of migration, multiculturalism and transnationalism vis-à-vis the public exercise of religion. The contributors’ work is situated in a range of world sites in Africa, India, North America, Latin America, and Europe.

This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of globalization, religion and politics, and the sociology of religion.

Artists, Cosmopolitanism, and the Civic Imagination unpacks the political agency of artists by looking at artists as moral, reflexive, and political agents. Do artists play a role in civil society? Can artists “make a difference” in the world? In what ways do artists act politically? To address these questions, this book moves away from a focus on social organisation and the production of art, to ask how artists attach meaning to their interventions in social and political conditions.

Maria Rovisco draws from in-depth interviews with UK-based visual artists and theatre practitioners with a migrant background, and semiotic analysis of a theatre play, visual artworks, and film texts, to argue that artists are quintessential cosmopolitans who care deeply about changing society for the better. By explaining how artists get involved in cross-cultural encounters, this book reveals the processes of listening, reflection, imagination, social learning, and moral intentionality through which artists imagine and realise their visions of a better world. In so doing, it offers a new direction in thinking about the intersection of art and politics, by showing how artists play a crucial role in building a civic culture outside traditional sites of political participation.

This book will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities with interests in migration, citizenship and the public sphere, cultural sociology, media and culture, cosmopolitanism, and art.

Artists, Cosmopolitanism, and the Civic Imagination unpacks the political agency of artists by looking at artists as moral, reflexive, and political agents. Do artists play a role in civil society? Can artists “make a difference” in the world? In what ways do artists act politically? To address these questions, this book moves away from a focus on social organisation and the production of art, to ask how artists attach meaning to their interventions in social and political conditions.

Maria Rovisco draws from in-depth interviews with UK-based visual artists and theatre practitioners with a migrant background, and semiotic analysis of a theatre play, visual artworks, and film texts, to argue that artists are quintessential cosmopolitans who care deeply about changing society for the better. By explaining how artists get involved in cross-cultural encounters, this book reveals the processes of listening, reflection, imagination, social learning, and moral intentionality through which artists imagine and realise their visions of a better world. In so doing, it offers a new direction in thinking about the intersection of art and politics, by showing how artists play a crucial role in building a civic culture outside traditional sites of political participation.

This book will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities with interests in migration, citizenship and the public sphere, cultural sociology, media and culture, cosmopolitanism, and art.