| | |  | Books | Home » » Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-Globalization Movement (Critical Issues in Crime and Society) | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | In November 1999, fifty-thousand anti-globalization activists converged on Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Meeting. Using innovative and network-based strategies, the protesters left police flummoxed, desperately searching for ways to control the crowds in Seattle and the emerging anti-corporate globalization movement. Faced with these network-based tactics, law enforcement agencies transformed their policing and social control mechanisms to manage this new threat. In Policing Dissent, sociologist Luis A. Fernandez provides a firsthand account of the changing nature of control efforts employed by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies when confronted with mass activism. Based on ethnographic research, and using an incisive, cutting-edge theoretical framework, Fernandez maps the use of legal, physical, and psychological approaches. Policing Dissent also offers readers the richness of experiential detail and engaging stories often lacking in studies of police practices and social movements. This book does not merely seek to explain the causal relationship between repression and mobilization. Rather, it shows how social control strategies act on the mind and body of protesters. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Luis Alberto Fernandez | | Paperback:
| 208 pages | | Publisher:
| Rutgers University Press | | Publication Date:
| February 04, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0813542154 | | Product Width:
| 183.25 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 211.0 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.55 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.4 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.6 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.5 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 2 reviews |
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Take the message to the streets... if you can!Nov 09, 2009
By Jarret S. Lovell
"Jarret"
Unhappy with war, the economy, global warming? Thinking about taking your message to the streets in protest? Think again. Before going out and raising your voice, first-time and even seasoned activists will want to read Luis Fernandez's important book. It details the myriad ways law enforcement prevent activists from raising awareness of issues otherwise excluded from public discourse. Through gripping first-hand observations, activist narratives and police interviews, Fernandez shows how protest zones, parade permits, public relations scare tactics and pre-emptive arrests strengthen the dominant capitalist paradigm while silencing those bent on creating a more equitable global landscape. Interestingly, the most telling aspect of the book is not its focus on "hard-line" police tactics (pepper spray, rubber bullets...) but what the author calls "soft-line" social control (the policing of space, surveillance, permits.) Although the book sometimes gets bogged down in theory, Fernandez places the greatest emphasis on activist voices. A great read - one that will hopefully lead to more strategizing by activists on how to truly reclaim our streets!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
An important book with a timely messageMar 24, 2009
By Randall Amster
Anyone interested in matters of social justice, policing of movements, and the viability of dissent will find this well-written and insightful work to be indispensable. In the post-9/11 era, the stakes are high and the urgency imperative, as Luis Fernandez alludes to in his colorful invocations of concepts such as colonizations, hypergrowth, privatization, and the globacracy in defining the parameters of the era we now occupy. Against this, Fernandez posits that the global justice movement itself prefigures the world that might yet be, portraying a vision based on decentralization, non-hierarchical forms of organizing, consensus decisionmaking, autonomy, solidarity, spontaneity, and mutual aid. It is, in short, largely an anarchist vision that Fernandez depicts, standing in stark contrast to the heavy-handed, repressive, and often violent tendencies of the state. Fernandez's groundbreaking work celebrates the creative and dynamic aspects of movement culture, reminding us that movements for global justice are succeeding on many levels, albeit slowly and sometimes almost imperceptibly, and that "the innovations of the anti-globalization movement will inspire another generation of young activists." While not a panacea, such impetuses are crucial for the maintenance of hope in troubled times, without which resistance scarcely has any chance of promoting a more just and sustainable world. By exposing the processes of control as well as the promise of contestation, Luis Fernandez - a trusted colleague and friend - has added his critical voice and impressive scholarship to the cause of realizing a better future for us all.
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