Francesca Polletta's Books

It Was Like a Fever

Storytelling in Protest and Politics

By: Francesca Polletta

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It Was Like a Fever

Storytelling in Protest and Politics

By: Francesca Polletta

Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960 four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month sit-ins spread to thirty cities in seven states. Student participants told stories of impulsive, spontaneous action—this despite all the planning that had gone into the sit-ins. “It was like a fever,” they said. Francesca Polletta’s It Was Like a Fever sets out to account for the power of storytelling in mobilizing political and social movements. Drawing on cases ranging from sixteenth-century tax revolts to contemporary debates about the future of the World Trade Center site, Polletta argues that stories are politically effective not when they have clear moral messages, but when they have complex, often ambiguous ones. The openness of stories to interpretation has allowed disadvantaged groups, in particular, to gain a hearing for new needs and to forge surprising political alliances. But popular beliefs in America about storytelling as a genre have also hurt those challenging the status quo. A rich analysis of storytelling in courtrooms, newsrooms, public forums, and the United States Congress, It Was Like a Fever offers provocative new insights into the dynamics of culture and contention.

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Page Count

258

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226673774

ISBN 13

9780226673776

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Democracy in American Social Movements

By: Francesca Polletta

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Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Democracy in American Social Movements

By: Francesca Polletta

This “excellent study of activist politics in the United States over the past century” challenges the conventional wisdom about participatory democracy (Times Literary Supplement). Freedom Is an Endless Meeting offers vivid portraits of American experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta upends the notion that participatory democracy is worthy in purpose but unworkable in practice. Instead, she shows that social movements have often used bottom-up decision making as a powerful tool for political change. Polletta traces the history of democracy from early labor struggles and pre-World War II pacifism, through the civil rights, new left, and women’s liberation movements of the sixties and seventies, and into today’s faith-based organizing and anti-corporate globalization campaigns. In the process, she uncovers neglected sources of democratic inspiration—such as Depression-era labor educators and Mississippi voting registration workers—as well as practical strategies of social protest. Polletta also highlights the obstacles that arise when activists model their democracies after nonpolitical relationships such as friendship, tutelage, and religious fellowship. She concludes with a call to forge new kinds of democratic relationships that balance trust with accountability, respect with openness to disagreement, and caring with inclusiveness. For anyone concerned about the prospects for democracy in America, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting will offer abundant historical, theoretical, and practical insights.

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297

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226924289

ISBN 13

9780226924281

Inventing the Ties That Bind

Imagined Relationships in Moral and Political Life

By: Francesca Polletta

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Inventing the Ties That Bind

Imagined Relationships in Moral and Political Life

By: Francesca Polletta

At a time of deep political divisions, leaders have called on ordinary Americans to talk to one another: to share their stories, listen empathetically, and focus on what they have in common, not what makes them different. In Inventing the Ties that Bind, Francesca Polletta questions this popular solution for healing our rifts. Talking the way that friends do is not the same as equality, she points out. And initiatives that bring strangers together for friendly dialogue may provide fleeting experiences of intimacy, but do not supply the enduring ties that solidarity requires. But Polletta also studies how Americans cooperate outside such initiatives, in social movements, churches, unions, government, and in their everyday lives. She shows that they often act on behalf of people they see as neighbors, not friends, as allies, not intimates, and people with whom they have an imagined relationship, not a real one. To repair our fractured civic landscape, she argues, we should draw on the rich language of solidarity that Americans already have.

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258

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022673434X

ISBN 13

9780226734347

It Was Like a Fever

Storytelling in Protest and Politics

By: Francesca Polletta

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It Was Like a Fever

Storytelling in Protest and Politics

By: Francesca Polletta

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N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

258

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226673774

ISBN 13

9780226673776

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Democracy in American Social Movements

By: Francesca Polletta

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Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Democracy in American Social Movements

By: Francesca Polletta

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Page Count

297

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226924289

ISBN 13

9780226924281

The Racialization of Sexism

Men, Women and Gender in the Populist Radical Right

By: Francesca Scrinzi

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The Racialization of Sexism

Men, Women and Gender in the Populist Radical Right

By: Francesca Scrinzi

Populist radical right (PRR) parties are questioning women’s rights and sexual democracy. Yet paradoxically they appropriate issues of gender+ equality to attack migrants and to mobilize a growing number of women as voters and members, based on a ‘racialization of sexism’ discourse. This book engages with these puzzling developments in order to investigate the evolving ideologies of PRR parties and their understudied membership from a gender perspective. Why do men and women join these parties? How do they negotiate the gendered propaganda of their organizations? Do these parties mobilize their members in gender-specific ways? How is the PRR achieving growing political legitimacy through such renewed gendered ideologies? And how does its mainstreaming strategy articulate with gendered social change and the advent of new generations of activists? Drawing on a two-year comparative and intersectional study of the Lega (Nord) in Italy and the Front national (now Rassemblement national) in France, and based on life histories of over 100 activists, The Racialization of Sexism tackles how gender, at the interplay with class, ethnicity, age and religion, shapes the parties’ strategies as well as their activists’ experiences; and how gender relations are transformed in unconventional ways within these parties. This book will be of interest to those studying gender, as well as nationalism, racism, social movements, radical politics and party politics.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351623222

ISBN 13

9781351623223

The Propagandists' Playbook

How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy

By: Francesca Bolla Tripodi

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The Propagandists' Playbook

How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy

By: Francesca Bolla Tripodi

An examination of what algorithmic polarization means for society and how conservative elites use media literacy tactics to spread propaganda The Propagandists’ Playbook peels back the layers of the right-wing media manipulation machine to reveal why its strategies are so effective and pervasive, while also humanizing the people whose worldviews and media practices conservatism embodies. Based on interviews and ethnographic observations of two Republican groups over the course of the 2018 Virginia gubernatorial race—including the author’s firsthand experience of the 2017 Unite the Right rally—the book considers how Google algorithms, YouTube playlists, pundits, and politicians can manipulate audiences, reaffirm beliefs, and expose audiences to more extremist ideas, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Francesca Tripodi argues that conservatives who embody the Christian worldview give authoritative weight to original texts and interrogate the media using the same tools taught to them in Bible study—for example, using Google to “fact check” the news. The result of this practice, tied to conservative marketing tactics, is more than a reaffirmation of existing beliefs: it is a radicalization of content and a changing of narratives adopted by the media. Tripodi also demonstrates the pervasiveness of white supremacy in the conservative media ecosystem, as well as its mainstream appeal, scope, and spread.

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Page Count

287

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300269102

ISBN 13

9780300269109

The Difficult Art of Giving

Patronage, Philanthropy, and the American Literary Market

By: Francesca Sawaya

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The Difficult Art of Giving

Patronage, Philanthropy, and the American Literary Market

By: Francesca Sawaya

The Difficult Art of Giving rethinks standard economic histories of the literary marketplace. Traditionally, American literary histories maintain that the post-Civil War period marked the transition from a system of elite patronage and genteel amateurism to what is described as the free literary market and an era of self-supporting professionalism. These histories assert that the market helped to democratize literary production and consumption, enabling writers to sustain themselves without the need for private sponsorship. By contrast, Francesca Sawaya demonstrates the continuing importance of patronage and the new significance of corporate-based philanthropy for cultural production in the United States in the postbellum and modern periods. Focusing on Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, and Theodore Dreiser, Sawaya explores the notions of a free market in cultural goods and the autonomy of the author. Building on debates in the history of the emotions, the history and sociology of philanthropy, feminist theory, and the new economic criticism, Sawaya examines these major writers' careers as well as their rich and complex representations of the economic world. Their work, she argues, demonstrates that patronage and corporate-based philanthropy helped construct the putatively free market in literature. The book thereby highlights the social and economic interventions that shape markets, challenging old and contemporary forms of free market fundamentalism.

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Page Count

259

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812290038

ISBN 13

9780812290035

Book's by Francesca Polletta

It Was Like a Fever

It Was Like a Fever

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Inventing the Ties That Bind

Inventing the Ties That Bind

It Was Like a Fever

It Was Like a Fever

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting

The Racialization of Sexism

The Racialization of Sexism

The Propagandists' Playbook

The Propagandists' Playbook

The Difficult Art of Giving

The Difficult Art of Giving

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