Description: Protest has become an everyday part of modern societies, one of the few recognized outlets for voicing and discussing basic moral commitments. Protest movements shape our thinking about social change and human agency. At a time when schools, the media, and even religious institutions offer little guidance for our moral judgments, protest movements have become a central source for providing us with ethical visions and creative ideas.

In "The Art of Moral Protest", James Jasper integrates diverse examples of protest -- from nineteenth-century boycotts to recent antinuclear, animal-rights, and environmental movements -- into a distinctive new understanding of how social movements operate. Jasper highlights their creativity, not only in forging new morals but in adopting courses of action and inventing organizational forms. The work stresses the role of individuals, both as lone protesters and as key decision-makers, and it emphasizes the open-ended nature of strategic choices as protesters, their opponents, their allies, and the government respond to each other's actions.

Drawing on lengthy interviews, historical materials, surveys, and his own participation in protests, Jasper offers a unique systematic overview of the field of social movements. He weaves together accounts of large-scale movements with individual biographies, placing the movements in cultural perspective and focusing on individuals' experiences. Few books have ever presented such a rich picture of protest dynamics.

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