Interpreting Protest and Social Movements

Theories of protest and social movements have long incorporated culture, yet many of its central questions about meaning, interpretation and emotion remain underexplored. How do movements define grievances, identify victims and villains and communicate their cause to wider publics? And how do these processes shape outcomes across political arenas?

This interdisciplinary book develops a new strategic–interactionist perspective on social movements, focusing on how multiple ‘players’ interpret themselves. Bringing emotion more fully into cultural analysis, it examines how mobilization unfolds through storytelling, symbols, media, discourse and interaction across diverse arenas.

Featuring contributions from leading international scholars, the book offers a rich, multi-perspective account of how meaning is made, contested and transformed within contemporary movements.