Highly recommended. . . . Presented here is a critique of the major ways in which social movements have been conceptualized and interpreted. . . . An excellently documented work, featuring a useful set of references and a good index.

Choice

A book to provoke and unsettle, a book of enormous intellectual and moral ambition.

Contemporary Sociology

Brilliantly reconceptualizing social movements from a historical perspective, Foss and Larkin critically review the major theories in social movements. They analyze the mechanisms of the reproduction of social privilege to examine the underlying contradicitons in society which give rise to collective dissidence and conclude with some intriguing speculations as to the possibility of social revolution in the U.S. Essential reading for all social scientists, and for courses in social movements, contemporary social theory, and political sociology.