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Palgrave Macmillan

Extinction Rebellion and Climate Change Activism

Breaking the Law to Change the World

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  • © 2020

Overview

  • Engages with both the forms and discourses of protest and the broader political economy that these protests act within and against
  • Provides a timely critical engagement with broad appeal about a timely, issue and fills a key gap in the climate mobilization literature
  • Offers new audiences an engagement with the tactics and strategies of climate change activism in a historical and political context

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book summarises and critiques Extinction Rebellion (XR) as a social movement organisation, engaging with key issues surrounding its analysis, strategy and tactics. The authors suggest that XR have an underdeveloped and apolitical view of the kind of change necessary to address climate change, and that while this enables the building of broad movements, it is also an obstacle to achieving the systemic change that they are aiming for.

The book analyses different forms of protest and the role of civil disobedience in their respective success or failure; democratic demands and practices; and activist engagement with the political economy of climate change. It engages with a range of theoretical perspectives that address law-breaking in protest and participatory forms of democracy including liberal political theory; anarchism and forms of historical materialism, and will be of interest to students and scholars across politics, international relations, sociology, policy studies and geography, as well as those interested in climate change politics and activism. 

Reviews

"We rarely witness the formation of a new social movement. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion surprised the world with its radical action against climate change.  But does the movement understand global capitalism and the political economy of climate change? Find out about the challenges that XR face in the new war over the meaning of sustainability, in this exhaustive critical exploration of XR."-Dr Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Reader in Sociology, University of Bath


Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Oscar Berglund, Daniel Schmidt

About the authors

Oscar Berglund is Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy at the University of Bristol, UK.

Daniel Schmidt is a MSc graduate in Public Policy from the University of Bristol, UK.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Extinction Rebellion and Climate Change Activism

  • Book Subtitle: Breaking the Law to Change the World

  • Authors: Oscar Berglund, Daniel Schmidt

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48359-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-48358-6Published: 10 September 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-48361-6Published: 11 September 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-48359-3Published: 09 September 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VIII, 109

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Political Sociology, Environmental Policy

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