People Power: Resistance, Protest and Revolution

Catalog description

The Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 brought renewed attention to the power of ordinary citizens to collectively overthrow their governments. This course introduces theories of collective action, resistance, protest, and revolutions. It addresses the following questions: How do aggrieved citizens make claims against their governments, especially in non-democratic contexts? When and why do people act collectively to make those claims? How do governments respond to various forms of protest? What constitutes a revolution? Why do some succeed and others fail? We pay particular attention to different forms of workers' mobilization and to the role of labor and other social classes in revolutions.