1913 Lockout Memorial Scholarship extended deadline

... until July 5th. NB you do not need to have been accepted for the course to apply but you do need to have applied for the course (sorry!)

"Marxism and social movements" published

Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky and Alf Nilsen, eds., (2013), Marxism and social movements. Leiden: Brill (Historical Materialism book series). ISBN 9789004211759.

Release date June 21 2013

  
---

Marxism and Social Movements is the first sustained engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. The chapters collected here, by leading figures in both fields, discuss the potential for a Marxist theory of social movements; explore the developmental processes and political tensions within movements; set the question in a long historical perspective; and analyse contemporary movements against neo-liberalism and austerity.

Exploring struggles on six continents over 150 years, this collection shows the power of Marxist analysis in relation not only to class politics, labour movements and revolutions but also anticolonial and anti-racist struggles, community activism and environmental justice, indigenous struggles and anti-austerity protest. It sets a new agenda both for Marxist theory and for movement research.

This book will be of interest to researchers and postgraduates studying social movements or Marxism within disciplines like sociology, history, anthropology or political science, as well as to movement activists and laypeople interested in popular politics.

Contents

·  “Marxism and social movements: an introduction”. Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky, Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Part I: theoretical frameworks

Marxism and social movements

·  “Class struggle and social movements”. Colin Barker

·  “What would a Marxist theory of social movements look like?” Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox

Social movement studies and its discontents

·  “The strange disappearance of capitalism from social movement studies”. Gabriel Hetland and Jeff Goodwin

·  “Marxism and the politics of possibility: beyond academic boundaries”. John Krinsky

Part 2: How social movements work

Developmental perspectives on social movements

·  “Eppur si muove: thinking ‘the social movement’”. Laurence Cox

·  “Class formation and the labor movement in revolutionary China”. Marc Blecher

·  “Contesting the postcolonial development project: a Marxist perspective on popular resistance in the Narmada valley”. Alf Gunvald Nilsen

The politics of social movements

·  “The Marxist rank-and-file / bureaucracy analysis of trade unionism: some implications for the study of social movement organisations”. Ralph Darlington

·  “Defending place, remaking space: social movements in Oaxaca and Chiapas”. Chris Hesketh

·  “Uneven and combined Marxism within South Africa’s urban social movements”. Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai and Trevor Ngwane

Part 3: Seeing the bigger picture

Comparative-historical perspective

·  “Thinking about (new) social movements: some insights from the British Marxist historians”. Paul Blackledge

·  “Right-wing social movements: the political indeterminacy of mass mobilisation”. Neil Davidson

·  “Class, caste, colonial rule, and resistance: the Revolt of 1857 in India”. Hira Singh

·  “The Black International as social movement wave: CLR James’ history of pan-African revolt”. Christian Høgsbjerg

Social movements against neoliberalism

·  “Language, Marxism and the grasping of policy agendas: neo-liberalism and political voice in Scotland’s poorest communities”. Chik Collins

·  “Organic intellectuals in the Australian global justice movement: the weight of 9/11”. Elizabeth Humphrys

·  “’Disorganization’ as social movement tactic: re-appropriating politics during the crisis of neoliberal capitalism”. Heike Schaumberg

·  “’Unity of the diverse’: working class formations and popular uprisings from Cochabamba to Cairo”. David McNally

This is the library version; books in this series will appear in an affordable edition with Haymarket next year. If you know a sympathetic librarian with a decent budget, the list price is €129 / $179 (discount €96.75 / $134.25) - it is 482 pages hardback! Order via brill.com/marxism-and-social-movements using discount code 50555 until 31.12.2013. Some chapters will be available on authors' websites in the near future, free.

About the editors

Colin Barker is honorary lecturer in sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He co-organizes the annual international conferences on Alternative Futures and Popular Protest. He has published many books and articles on social movements and revolutions and is an active socialist.

Laurence Cox co-directs the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at Maynooth. He co-edits the social movement journal Interface and has also published Understanding European Movements (Routledge 2013, with Cristina Flesher Fominaya).

John Krinsky is associate professor of political science at The City College of New York. He co-edits the journal Social Movement Studies, and published Free Labor: Workfare and the Contested Language of Neoliberalism (Chicago 2007).

Alf Gunvald Nilsen is associate professor of sociology at the University of Bergen. He co-edits the  journal Interface and has published widely on social movements. He is the author of Dispossession and Resistance in India (Routledge 2010).

Online: brill.com/marxism-and-social-movements

1913 Lockout Memorial Scholarship

1913 Lockout Memorial scholarship

NUIM MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism

Deadline Monday, July 1st - please circulate

 
A scholarship covering full course fees for the MA CEESA at Maynooth, awarded on the basis of practitioner excellence in community education, action for equality and / or social movements.

The MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at NUI Maynooth has now completed three very successful years in the course of which we have worked with a wide range of social movement activists and community educators who are using the course to reflect on their own experience, develop their practice and build links across movements with others committed to equality and social justice. 

To mark this, and in keeping with the course’s own commitment to equality, we are offering a scholarship for one student entering the course this autumn. The scholarship is named after the Dublin Lockout of 1913, which marks a historical moment in the encounter between social movements and Irish society, and a landmark in struggles for equality. It has also become a key reference point in community education and popular culture. 

The 1913 Lockout Memorial scholarship is innovative in form, representing the course’s status as a practitioner course and the University’s commitment to community engagement. Rather than duplicate the various scholarships based on academic criteria, this scholarship is awarded on the basis of practitioner excellence in the field and by a committee comprising both practitioners and scholars in the area.
 
Terms and Conditions of the Scholarship

Award: The scholarship award provides full course fees for full-time study on the MA Community Education, Equality and Social Activism programme commencing in September 2013. It is not open to students who are in full-time employment during the period of the course.
 
Eligibility: Any EU applicants who satisfy the course entry criteria may apply. A 2.1 grade minimum in an undergraduate Bachelor’s degree is required. 

Award criteria: The scholarship will be awarded for overall practitioner excellence in community education, action for equality or social movements. This is assessed on the basis of a personal statement (of NO MORE than 1,500 words). 

Contact details of two referees who may be contacted for verification are requested.

The statement may be in any format but should include specific examples of your practice in community education and / or social activism and evidence of your commitment to the broader picture of equality and social justice.

Applications may come from any area within the three fields of practice mentioned above. The scholarship is not restricted to the movements associated with the Lockout (or to Dublin). Length of practice / experience is not a criterion; rather the award will be made on the basis of excellence relative to an applicant’s level of experience.

Deadline and submission: The deadline for receipt of submissions is Monday, July 1st. Applications are confidential and can be sent to Graduate Studies Office, 3^rd Floor John Hume Building, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare.  

Scholarship Committee: The scholarship committee will include the Dean of Graduate Studies, the Dean of Social Sciences, one team member from the Department of Sociology and the Department of Adult and Community Education, a leading practitioner in the field and one past student. The Graduate Studies Office will check the eligibility of candidates before submitting to the Scholarship committee for consideration and approval.  

Assessment

The award will be made to the best applicant, based on the following criteria:

1                     Overall practitioner excellence in community education, action for equality or social activism relative to level of experience (50 marks)

2                     Evidence of commitment to the broader picture of equality and social justice (50 marks)

Application Process

Application forms may be downloaded in word format from the Graduate Studies website: http://graduatestudies.nuim.ie/scholarship; via email: graduatestudies@nuim.ie or tel. 01-7086018.

Submitting an application

All applications must be submitted in hard copy to the Graduate Studies Office, 3^rd Floor John Hume Building, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare.  All required fields must be completed. 

Payment of Scholarships

The award will be announced in August 2013.The decision will be posted on the Graduate Studies and Departmental websites and a confirmation letter will be sent to the successful applicant. The fees will be paid following registration in September 2013. 

Deferrals and Acceptance

The Award cannot be deferred.

Where an applicant does not, in fact, achieve the results required for admission to the programme, the applicant will not be eligible to receive the Award. If an awardee does not take up a place or accept the award then the award may be made available to the next ranked candidate at the discretion of the Scholarship Committee.  

Closing Date

Completed and signed applications should be submitted by post or by hand in hard paper copy only to the Graduate Studies Office no later than 5pm on the 1st July 2013.

Late applications will not be accepted.

Enquiries

Enquiries regarding the scholarship and the Masters programme can be sent by email to sociology.department@nuim.ie or graduatestudies@nuim.ie