Conscious Acts and the Politics of Social Change: Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community and Power. Edited by Robin L. Teske and Mary Ann Tétreault. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. 320p. $34.95.

Extract

Rarely does a political science book undertake the simultaneous task of contributing to both scholarship and activism. This edited volume explores the theory and practice of social movements, examining “success” stories, such as the struggle for women's suffrage in the United States, as well as “failures,” embodied in this case by an ill-conceived attempt to carry out a charity program in early 1990s Russia. This lens on the lived realities of activism makes it an instructive and unusual book. The volume also discusses how feminist theory and practices influence social movements and power relations. The explicit intention of the editors is to contribute to theory-building, as well as to help design more effective activism. To that end, the contributors include social change activists as well as academics, several of whom combine both identities.