Political Aesthetics of Global Protest

Pnina Werbner is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, Keele University, and author of ‘The Manchester Migration Trilogy’, including The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (Berg Publishers (1990/2002), Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims (2002) and Pilgrims of Love: the Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (2003). In 2008 she edited Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives (2008), and is the editor of several theoretical collections on hybridity, multiculturalism, migration and citizenship. She has researched in Britain, Pakistan, and Botswana, and has directed major research projects on the Muslim South Asian, Filipino and African diasporas. Her forthcoming book is The Making of an African Working Class: Law, Politics and Cultural Protest (Pluto). Martin Webb is Lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests cross anthropology and development studies, with a particular focus on citizenship, transparency, accountability and urban anti-corruption activism. He carried out his doctoral research in Delhi, India, focusing on the role of class, social connection, and the politics of urban space in the city's transparency and accountability activism scene. He has published the role of rhetoric, representation and authenticity in activism and movement politics in India (Contemporary South Asia), and on transparency activism in India (Political and Legal Anthropology Review). His most recent publication on anti-corruption activism in India is (2013) Disciplining the Everyday State and Society? Anti-corruption and Right to Information Activism in Delhi. Contributions to Indian Sociology 47(3): 363–393. Kathryn Spellman Poots is Associate Professor at Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations in London and Visiting Associate Professor at Columbia University and Academic Program Director for the MA in Islamic Studies. Her research interests include Muslims in Europe and North America, the Iranian diaspora, transnational migration and gender studies.

• Timeline; Preface; Introduction, Pnina Werbner, Martin Webb and Kathryn Spellman-Poots; Part I: The Arab Spring: Uprisings and Their Aftermath; Teargas, Flags, and the Harlem Shake: Images of and for Revolution in Tunisia and the Dialectics of the Local in the Global, Simon Hawkins; Singing the Revolt in Tahrir Square: Euphoria, Utopia and Revolution, Dalia Wahdan; ‘I Dreamed of Being a People’: Egypt's Revolution, the People, and Critical Imagination, Hanan Sabea; The Body of the Colonel: Caricature and Incarnation in the Libyan Revolution, Igor Cherstich; Poetry of Protest: Tribes in Yemen’s ‘Change Revolution’, Steven C. Caton, Hazim Al-Eriyani, and Rayman Aryani; Part II: Beyond the Arab Spring: Asia and Africa; A Fractured Solidarity: Communitas and Structure in the Israeli 2011 Social Protest, Oren Livio and Tamar Katriel; ‘Gandhi, Camera, Action!’ Anna Hazare and the 'Media Fold' in Twenty-First Century India, Christopher Pinney; Short Circuits: The Aesthetics of Protest, Media and Martydom in Indian Anti- Corruption Activism, Martin Webb; The Mother of all Strikes: Popular Protest Culture and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in the Botswana Public Service Unions’ Strike, 2011, Pnina Werbner; Part III: Beyond the Arab Spring: American and European Protests; Vernacular Culture and Grassroots Activism: Non-violent Protest and Progressive Ethos at the 2011 Wisconsin Labor Rallies, Christine Garlough; Occupy Wall Street: Carnival Against Capital? Carnivalesque as Protest Sensibility, Claire Tancons; Subversion through Performance: Performance Activism in London, Paula Serafini; Spain's Indignados and the Mediated Aesthetics of Nonviolence, John Postill; The Poetics of Indignation in Greece: Anti-Austerity Protest and Accountability, Dimitrios Theodossopoulos; About the Contributors.

This powerful collection of essays captures the breath-taking scale and creative depth of the wave of popular mobilisations which shook the world in 2011, illuminating aspects of these massive social movements which have been neglected in other accounts. The wide range of the case studies creates an invaluable comparative framework for future research.