عنوان

When a dam bursts :

Number

TLets557488

Title Proper

When a dam bursts :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Wellbrook, Christopher

Title Proper by Another Author

an anarchist approach to social movements

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Hay, Colin ; Sleat, Matt

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Sheffield

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2011

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Sheffield

Text preceding or following the note

2011

Text of Note

This thesis addresses the inability of existing approaches in the field to reach an adequate understanding of social movements. It shows existing approaches to be reliant on a civic conception of social movements (articulated as a relationship between individual and state), overly-reliant on a priori theorising and frequently foreclosing the content of social movement activity. It argues that at the heart of the problem is the presentation of the political internal to these perspectives – as a representational practice. Moreover, it is a principal contention of this thesis that social movement behaviour proves difficult to account for is because it challenges and undermines this presentation. Anarchist literature provides both the means to understand – in the form of the objections to idealisation, abstraction and determinism in political thought – as well as the foundations to address – in the objectives of a de-alientated intellectual enquiry and a unique view of the political – this issue. It also provides the outline for the development of a unique methodology to the study of social movements. It was the aim not only to establish new and better methods for documenting and analysing social movements but also seek to apply this to a particular case study, the December unrest in Greece of 2008, in an attempt to provide a richer, more holistic account of these events.

Wellbrook, Christopher

Hay, Colin

Sleat, Matt

University of Sheffield

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y