Thinking about social movements and obstacles to protesting globally: lessons from Palestine
Paola, RivettiORCID: 0000-0002-1794-0504
(2022)
Thinking about social movements and obstacles to protesting globally: lessons from Palestine.
European Political Science, 22
.
pp. 363-367.
ISSN 1680-4333
Books reviewed:
The Palestinian Prisoners Movement, by Julie M. Norman, and Palestinian Women
and Popular Resistance, by Liyana Kayali, are important books that contribute innovative empirics and theoretical observations to conversations that take place in the
disciplines of sociology and political science, in particular, between scholars who
research social movements and contentious politics.
Looking at the trajectory of anti-occupation and national liberation movements
in Palestine since the establishment of the state of Israel, with a focus on the two
decades preceding the Oslo agreements and those after, Norman and Kayali discuss
what happens when the opportunities for mobilisation gradually foreclose and, consequently, what shape do social movements take in such circumstances.
To do so, they focus on prisoners and non-activist women. Both authors examine
the negative influence that the post-Oslo consolidation of the occupation has had on
these two populations but, at the same time, highlight how the political work of prisoners and politically unaffliated Palestinian women—seemingly at the margins of
anti-occupation movements—has created innovative strategies of mobilisation, quite
central to larger dynamics of contentious politics.