Understanding European Movements

New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest

European social movements have been central to European history, politics, society and culture, and have had a global reach and impact. Yet they have rarely been taken on their own terms in the English-language literature, considered rather as counterpoints to the US experience. This has been exacerbated by the failure of Anglophone social movement theorists to pay attention to the substantial literatures in languages such as French, German, Spanish or Italian – and by the increasing global dominance of English in the production of news and other forms of media.

This book sets out to take the European social movement experience seriously on its own terms, including:

• the European tradition of social movement theorising – particularly in its attempt to understand movement development from the 1960s onwards
• the extent to which European movements between 1968 and 1999 became precursors for the contemporary anti-globalisation movement
• the construction of the anti-capitalist "movement of movements" within the European setting
• the new anti-austerity protests in Iceland, Greece, Spain (15-M/Indignados), and elsewhere.

This book offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the key European social movements in the past forty years. It will be of interest for students and scholars of politics and international relations, sociology, history, European studies and social theory.