Global movements : action and culture /

McDonald (sociology, Univ. of Melbourne) offers a useful survey of global movements: Direct Action and related movements with roots in the US and Europe; Mexico's Zapatista movement; Falun Gong in China and beyond; and global Islam. He provides a particularly thorough and engaging theoretical introduction, evaluating the literature on globalization and social movements in US and European traditions and stressing the obsolescence of a focus on either structure and organization, or representation and identity. McDonald favors a paradigm derived from the literature on embodiment, suggesting that in these movements, action is best understood in its somatic manifestations: healing, touching, seeing, moving, etc. The case studies are well presented, though this reviewer questions how uniformly relevant a focus on embodiment may be (particularly with the Zapatista movement--the treatment of Maya perspectives here is rather essentialized) and whether the break with "old" and "new" ways of protest and association is as thoroughgoing as suggested. This volume would complement specific treatments of some of these sorts of movements, such as Ronald Niezen's The Origins of Indigenism (CH, Jun'03, 40-5869). ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate collections. C. J. MacKenzie University of Lethbridge