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Popular Media in Kenyan History
by George OgolaThe book examines popular fiction columns, a dominant feature in Kenyan newspapers, published in the twentieth century and examines their historical and cultural impact on Kenyan politics. The book interrogates how popular cultural forms such as popular fiction engage with and subject the polity to constant critique through informal but widely recognized cultural forms of censure. The book further explores the ways we see and experience how the African subaltern, through the everyday, negotiate their rights and obligations with the self, society and the state. Through these columns and their writers, the book examines the tensions that characterize such relationships, how the formal and informal interpenetrate, how the past and present are reconciled, and how the local and transnational collide but also collude in the making of the Kenyan identity.
Popular Medievalism in Romantic-Era Britain
by Clare A. SimmonsThrough the consideration of canonical authors such as Blake, Scott, and Wordsworth and of lesser-studied works such as radical press writings and popular drama, this study explores the imaginative appeal of the social structures and literary forms of the Middle Ages, and how they raised awareness of Britain's tradition of freedom.
Popular Memory and Franco's 'Disappeared' in Spain: Telling Stories of Mourning, Resistance, and Activism (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)
by Francie Cate“Francie Cate’s Popular Memory and Franco’s ‘Disappeared’ is an obra magistral, an opus magnum, a masterwork. It is an in-depth and broad study in which further research on memory, imposed forgetting, counter-memory, and the dynamics of cultural memory will be rooted.” – Maureen Tobin Stanley, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA This book examines a "people's history" of the Spanish Civil War's anti-fascists who lost their 1936-1939 fight against far right military insurgents. The book argues that the regime’s “disappeared” have in fact since 1936 been the most visible protagonists safeguarded in the shared collective memory of the war’s losers. Narratives about Franco’s up to 150,000 civilian shooting victims—stories told in the form of memoirs, political speeches, visual art, film, novels, and oral testimonies—form the centerpiece of this study. How have these narratives told by the war’s losers--focused explicitly on the figure of the dead body—been mobilized in periods of political upheaval from 1936 to the present, including WWII; the 1950s and 60s of the Cold War; the 1970s and 80s Spanish Transition; ongoing mass media “culture wars” that have polarized the Right and the Left since public exhumations of unmarked graves began in the year 2000? Through fieldwork in the province of Cádiz, the authorhas also recorded interviews with family members of citizens who were murdered. Through oral narratives, an entire community—violently punished during the years of the dictatorship—succeeded in keeping alive an alternative history of the pre-war enterprise to establish the 1931 Spanish democratic Republic and to build a modern nation bound by constitutional law. The discursive commonalities identified in the wide-ranging testimonies—including pioneering researchers’ publications beginning in the 1970s—constitute a fascinating textual topography of popular cultural memory. This book argues that this treasure trove of storytelling preserved an initially clandestine counter narrative of anti-Francoist resistance, as well as dreams of justice for the dead.
Popular Movements and Democratization in the Islamic World (New Horizons in Islamic Studies)
by Masatoshi KisaichiEver since the terrorist incident of September 11th a general understanding seems to have arisen among people that the challenges posed by Islam have now acquired human and global dimensions. Popular Movements and Democratization in the Islamic World contains case studies of people’s movements in diverse areas and periods, and it seeks to develop a comparative view of Islam and democracy that goes beyond the usual stereotype of Islam being incompatible with democracy. Unravelling the complexities that have arisen between Islam and democracy is the principal task of Islamic scholars, and this book will undoubtedly prove a starting point for all such endeavours. While primarily intended for students and scholars, this timely and important text will prove of interest even to general readers with interests in Islamic studies.
Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán
by Jennie PurnellIn Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico Jennie Purnell reconsiders peasant partisanship in the cristiada of 1926-29, one episode in the broader Mexican Revolution and the last major popular rebellion in Mexican history. While some scholars have argued that the Mexican Revolution was a people's rebellion that aimed to destroy the political and economic power of the elites to the benefit of the peasants, others claim that the Revolution was a struggle between elites that left little room for popular participation. Neither approach, however, explains why thousands of peasants sided with the Church against the state and its program of agrarian reform--reform that was presumably in the best interest of the peasants. Nor do they explain why so many peasants who considered themselves devout Catholics took up arms against the Church. Rather than viewing the cristeros (supporters of the Church) as victims of false consciousness or as religious fanatics, as others have done, Purnell shows that their motivations--as well as the motivations of the agraristas (supporters of the revolutionary state)--stem from local political conflicts that began decades, and sometimes centuries, before the Revolution. Drawing on rich but underutilized correspondence between peasants and state officials written over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Purnell shows how these conflicts shaped the relationships between property rights, religious practice, and political authority in the center-west region of Mexico and provides a nuanced understanding of the stakes and interests involved in subsequent conflicts over Mexican anticlericalism and agrarian reform in the 1920s.
Popular Movements in Autocracies
by Guillermo TrejoThis book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of U.S. Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories.
Popular Music Industries and the State: Policy Notes (Routledge Studies in Popular Music)
by Martin Cloonan Shane Homan Jennifer CattermoleThis volume studies the relationships between government and the popular music industries, comparing three Anglophone nations: Scotland, New Zealand and Australia. At a time when issues of globalization and locality are seldom out of the news, musicians, fans, governments, and industries are forced to reconsider older certainties about popular music activity and their roles in production and consumption circuits. The decline of multinational recording companies, and the accompanying rise of promotion firms such as Live Nation, exemplifies global shifts in infrastructure, profits and power. Popular music provides a focus for many of these topics—and popular music policy a lens through which to view them. The book has four central themes: the (changing) role of states and industries in popular music activity; assessment of the central challenges facing smaller nations competing within larger, global music-media markets; comparative analysis of music policies and debates between nations (and also between organizations and popular music sectors); analysis of where and why the state intervenes in popular music activity; and how (and whether) music fits within the ‘turn to culture’ in policy-making over the last twenty years. Where appropriate, brief nation-specific case studies are highlighted as a means of illuminating broader global debates.
Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe (Music and Politics)
by Melanie Schiller Mario DunkelThis book focuses on the role of popular music in the rise of populism in Europe, centring on the music-related processes of sociocultural normalisation and the increasing prevalence of populist discourses in contemporary society. In its innovative combination of approaches drawing from (ethno)musicology, sociology, and political science, as well as media and cultural studies, this book develops a culture-oriented approach to populism. Based on shared research questions, an original theoretical framework and a combination of innovative methodologies that pay attention to the specific socio-historical contexts, taking into account musical material as well as processes of reception, the five chapters in this volume offer detailed analyses of the nexus of popular music and populism in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Germany. All of these countries have seen a marked increase in populist parties and discourses over the last years, as well as significant interactions between populism and popular music. This book will be essential reading for those investigating popular music as a crucial aspect in the study of populism as a cultural phenomenon in Europe.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics (British Politics and Society)
by James Thomas'IT'S THE SUN WOT WON IT', was the famous headline claim of Britain's most popular newspaper following the Conservative party's victory over Labour in the 1992 general election. The headline referred to a virulent press campaign against Neil Kinnock's Labour party, and dramatically highlighted one of the chief features of British politics during the twentieth century - the conflict between a socialist Labour party and a capitalist popular press. Labour's frequent complaints of the political and electoral unfairness of newspaper bias meant that some commentators considered that this dispute had a heritage as old as the party itself. Others, including the Labour leadership at the time, argued that despite past tensions, the 1992 election marked the culmination of an unprecedented campaign of vilification against the party. Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics assesses these competing claims, looking not only at 1992 but both back and forward to examine the continuities and changes in newspaper coverage of British politics and the Labour party over the twentieth century. The book explores whether the popular press has lived up to its claim of being a democratic 'fourth estate', or has merely, as Labour politicians have argued been a powerful 'fifth column' distorting the democratic process. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources this book offers the first original and comprehensive history of a fascinating aspect of British politics from Beaverbrook to Blair.James Thomas is a lecturer at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, and has published articles and esays exploring the relationship between the popular press and British politics.
Popular Political Participation and the Democratic Imagination in Spain: From Crowd to People, 1766-1868
by Pablo Sánchez LeónThis book addresses the changing relationships among political participation, political representation, and popular mobilization in Spain from the 1766 protest in Madrid against the early Bourbon reforms until the citizen revolution of 1868 that first introduced universal suffrage and led to the ousting of the monarchy. Popular Participation and the Democratic Imagination in Spain shows that a notion of the “crowd” internally dividing the concept of “people” existed before the advent of Liberalism, allowing for the enduring subordination of popular participation to representation in politics. In its wider European and colonial American context, the study analyzes semantic changes in a range of cultural spheres, from parliamentary debate to historical narrative and aesthetics. It shows how Liberalism had trouble reproducing the legitimacy of limited suffrage and traces the evolution of an imagination on democracy that would allow for the reconfiguration of an all-encompassing image of the people eventually overcoming representative government.“Focused on the nation and identities, Spanish historiography had a pending debt with that other historical subject of modernity, the people. With this book, Pablo Sánchez León starts cancelling the debt with an innovative methodology combining conceptual history with social and political history. Brilliantly, this books also proposes a novel chronology for modern history and renewed categories of analysis. In many senses, this is an extraordinarily renovating senior work.”—José María Portillo Valdés, University of the Basque Country, Spain “This book by Pablo Sánchez León is an original and detailed study of one of the essential components of modernity, the relation between the concepts of plebe and pueblo. The author shows that plebe and people were shaped in a process of mutual differentiation and how the enduring tension between them deeply marked out the evolution of Spanish politics from the end of the Old Regime and throughout the 19th century. As the author brilliantly argues, such tension is tightly imbricated with the enduring dilemma between representation and participation underlying modern political systems. Through a historical analysis of the influence of people and plebe over Spanish, the book makes clear the degree to which the power of language contributes to shape political actors and institutional frames.”—Miguel Ángel Cabrera — Professor, University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain “Most accounts of Spain’s transition to modern democracy begin with the popular uprising against the French invasion in 1808, the creation of a national parliament and the promulgation of an advanced Liberal constitution in 1812. Pablo Sánchez León begins the story half a century earlier in the mass street protests in Madrid and other cities in 1766 sparked by Charles III’s sweeping reform programme. Sánchez León focuses unrepentantly on plebeian groups and crowd action – how they are described and conceived by contemporaries – as a key to understanding Spain’s precocious and troubled passage from absolutism to the promulgation of universal male suffrage in September 1868. This audacious and highly original interpretation will surely strike a chord with students of modern Spain.”—Guy Thomson, University of Warwick, UK “This is a book for exploring (from current needs) the history of political participation in Spanish society in order to rethink the very notion of modern citizenship.”—María Sierra, University of Seville, Spain “Motivated by the current crisis in political representation in parliamentary democracies, this work by Pablo Sánchez León departs from the process of construction of modern citizenship. Representation, participation and mobilization are put into play as an interactive triad whose dynamics and changing conceptualization have the key to the social, political and cultural chang
Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade 1787-1807
by J.R. OldfieldIn 1792, 400,000 people put their signature to petitions calling for the abolition of the slaves trade. This work explains how this remarkable expression of support for black people was organized and orchestrated, and how it contributed to the growth of popular politics in Britain.
Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico: Manuel Lozada and La Reforma, 1855-1876
by Zachary BrittsanThe political conflict during Mexico's Reform era in the mid-nineteenth century was a visceral battle between ideologies and people from every economic and social class. As Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico develops the story of this struggle, the role of one key rebel, Manuel Lozada, comes into focus. The willingness of rural peasants to take up arms to defend the Catholic Church and a conservative political agenda explains the bitterness of the War of Reform and the resulting financial and political toll that led to the French Intervention. Exploring the activities of rural Jalisco's residents in this turbulent era and Lozada's unique position in the drama, Brittsan reveals the deep roots of colonial religious and landholding practices, exemplified by Lozada, that stood against the dominant political current represented by Benito Juarez and liberalism. Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico also explores the conditions under which a significant segment of Mexican society aligned itself with conservative interests and French interlopers, revealing this constituency to be more than a collection of reactionary traitors to the nation. To the contrary, armed rebellion--or at least the specter of force--protected local commercial interests in the short run and enhanced the long-term prospects for political autonomy. Manuel Lozada's story adds a necessary layer of complexity to our understanding of the practical and ideological priorities that informed the tumultuous conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century.
Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico: Manuel Lozada and La Reforma, 1855-1876
by Zachary BrittsanThe political conflict during Mexico's Reform era in the mid-nineteenth century was a visceral battle between ideologies and people from every economic and social class. As Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico develops the story of this struggle, the role of one key rebel, Manuel Lozada, comes into focus. The willingness of rural peasants to take up arms to defend the Catholic Church and a conservative political agenda explains the bitterness of the War of Reform and the resulting financial and political toll that led to the French Intervention. Exploring the activities of rural Jalisco's residents in this turbulent era and Lozada's unique position in the drama, Brittsan reveals the deep roots of colonial religious and landholding practices, exemplified by Lozada, that stood against the dominant political current represented by Benito Juarez and liberalism. Popular Politics and Rebellion in Mexico also explores the conditions under which a significant segment of Mexican society aligned itself with conservative interests and French interlopers, revealing this constituency to be more than a collection of reactionary traitors to the nation. To the contrary, armed rebellion--or at least the specter of force--protected local commercial interests in the short run and enhanced the long-term prospects for political autonomy. Manuel Lozada's story adds a necessary layer of complexity to our understanding of the practical and ideological priorities that informed the tumultuous conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century.
Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa
by William Beinart & Marcelle C DawsonAn examination of post-apartheid politicsThis volume explores some of the key features of popular politics and resistance before and after 1994. It looks at continuities and changes in the forms of struggle and ideologies involved, as well as the significance of post-apartheid grassroots politics. Is this a new form of politics or does it stand as a direct descendent of the insurrectionary impulses of the late apartheid era? Posing questions about continuity and change before and after 1994 raises key issues concerning the nature of power and poverty in the country. Contributors suggest that expressions of popular politics are deeply set within South African political culture and still have the capacity to influence political outcomes. The introduction by William Beinart links the papers together, places them in context of recent literature on popular politics and 'history from below' and summarises their main findings, supporting the argument that popular politics outside of the party system remain significant in South Africa and help influence national politics. The roots of this collection lie in post-graduate student research conducted at the University of Oxford in the early twenty-first century.
Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy (Princeton Studies In Global And Comparative Sociology Ser.)
by Mohammad Ali KadivarA groundbreaking account of how prolonged grassroots mobilization lays the foundations for durable democratizationWhen protests swept through the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Yet with the failure of many of these uprisings, it has become clearer than ever that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Mohammad Ali Kadivar examines the conditions leading to the success or failure of democratization, shedding vital new light on how prodemocracy mobilization affects the fate of new democracies.Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, Kadivar shows how the longest episodes of prodemocracy protest give rise to the most durable new democracies. He analyzes more than one hundred democratic transitions in eighty countries between 1950 and 2010, showing how more robust democracies emerge from lengthier periods of unarmed mobilization. Kadivar then analyzes five case studies—South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia—to investigate the underlying mechanisms. He finds that organization building during the years of struggle develops the leadership needed for lasting democratization and strengthens civil society after dictatorship.Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization.
Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China (Routledge Contemporary China Series)
by Hans Steinmüller Susanne BrandtstädterThe rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the People’s Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization of collective goods with a new quest for justice. Although China has remained a censorial society under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, state-society relations are being remade by interventions of emergent publics through word and action. In this book, a group of anthropologists, specializing in Chinese society, examine various facets of popular politics, which are animated by the pursuit of justice, fairness and good government. The ethnographic chapters collectively analyse how ‘the political’ arises in particular judicial situations, provoking public judgements or other forms of critical engagement. Focusing on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law and between speech and action, the contributors in this book explore how such engagements are changing Chinese society from the bottom-up. As the first systematic exploration of the relationship between popular politics, emergent publics and notions of justice in contemporary China, this book will be useful for students of Chinese Studies, Politics and Anthropology.
Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East
by John ChalcraftThe waves of protest ignited by the self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi in Tunisia in late 2010 highlighted for an international audience the importance of contentious politics in the Middle East and North Africa. John Chalcraft's ground-breaking account of popular protest emphasizes the revolutionary modern history of the entire region. Challenging top-down views of Middle Eastern politics, he looks at how commoners, subjects and citizens have long mobilised in defiance of authorities. Chalcraft takes examples from a wide variety of protest movements from Morocco to Iran. He forges a new narrative of change over time, creating a truly comparative framework rooted in the dynamics of hegemonic contestation. Beginning with movements under the Ottomans, which challenged corruption and oppression under the banners of religion, justice, rights and custom, this book goes on to discuss the impact of constitutional movements, armed struggles, nationalism and independence, revolution and Islamism. A work of unprecedented range and depth, this volume will be welcomed by undergraduates and graduates studying protest in the region and beyond.
Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China: Second Edition (Politics In Asia And The Pacific, Interdisciplinary Perspectives Ser.)
by Jeffrey N WasserstromThis innovative and widely praised volume uses the dramatic occupation of Tiananmen Square as the foundation for rethinking the cultural dimensions of Chinese politics. Now in a revised and expanded second edition, the book includes enhanced coverage of key issues, such as the political dimensions of popular culture (addressed in a new chapter on Chinese rock-and-roll by Andrew Jones) and the struggle for control of public discourse in the post-1989 era (discussed in a new chapter by Tony Saich). Two especially valuable additions to the second edition are art historian Tsao Tsing-yuan's eyewitness account of the making of the Goddess of Democracy, and an exposition of Chinese understandings of the term ?revolution? contributed by Liu Xiaobo, one of China's most controversial dissident intellectuals. The volume also includes an analysis (by noted social theorist and historical sociologist Craig C. Calhoun) of the similarities and differences between the ?new? social movements of recent decades and the ?old? social movements of earlier eras.TEXT CONCLUSION: To facilitate classroom use, the volume has been reorganized into groups of interrelated essays. The editors introduce each section and offer a list of suggested readings that complement the material in that section.
Popular Protest and Public Order: Six Studies in British History, 1790–1920 (Routledge Library Editions: Political Protest #17)
by R. Quinault and J. StevensonThis book, first published in 1974, examines the diverse nature of popular protest in Britain. Movements varied immensely from one another in their objectives, their social composition, their tactics and the geographical milieu.
Popular Protest in China (Harvard Contemporary China Series #15)
by Kevin J. O'BrienDo our ideas about social movements travel successfully beyond the democratic West? Unrest in China, from the dramatic events of 1989 to more recent stirrings, offers a rare opportunity to explore this question and to consider how popular contention unfolds in places where speech and assembly are tightly controlled. The contributors to this volume, all prominent scholars of Chinese politics and society, argue that ideas inspired by social movements elsewhere can help explain popular protest in China. Drawing on fieldwork in China, the authors consider topics as varied as student movements, protests by angry workers and taxi drivers, recruitment to Protestant house churches, cyberprotests, and anti-dam campaigns. Their work relies on familiar concepts—such as political opportunity, framing, and mobilizing structures—while interrogating the usefulness of these concepts in a country with a vastly different history of class and state formation than the capitalist West. The volume also speaks to “silences” in the study of contentious politics (for example, protest leadership, the role of grievances, and unconventional forms of organization), and shows that well-known concepts must at times be modified to square with the reality of an authoritarian, non-western state.
Popular Protest in East Germany: Judgements On The Street (Routledge Advances in European Politics)
by Gareth DaleAn incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990. The author, an active participant both in the 'Citizens' Movement' and in the street protests of that year, draws upon a vast array of sources including interviews, documents from the archives of the old regime and the Citizens' Movement and his own diary entries, to explore the causes and processes of the East German revolution. The book is at once a lucid and vibrant narrative history and a pioneering contribution to research in this field.
Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns
by Samuel K. Cohn Jr.Contrary to received opinion, revolts and popular protests in medieval English towns were as frequent and as sophisticated, if not more so, as those in the countryside. This groundbreaking study refocuses attention on the varied nature of popular movements in towns from Carlisle to Dover and from the London tax revolt of Longbeard in 1196 to Jack Cade's Rebellion in 1450, exploring the leadership, social composition, organisation and motives of popular rebels. The book charts patterns of urban revolt in times of strong and weak kingship, contrasting them with the broad sweep of ecological and economic change that inspired revolts on the continent. Samuel Cohn demonstrates that the timing and character of popular revolt in England differed radically from revolts in Italy, France and Flanders. In addition, he analyses repression and waves of hate against Jews, foreigners and heretics, opening new vistas in the comparative history of late medieval Europe.
Popular Protest, Political Opportunities, and Change in Africa (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Edalina Rodrigues SanchesThis book offers a fresh analysis of third wave popular protests in Africa, shedding light on the complex dynamics between political change and continuity in contemporary Africa. The book argues that protests are simultaneously products and generators of change in that they are triggered by micro-and-macrosocial changes, but they also have the capacity to transform the nature of politics. By examining the triggers, actors, political opportunities, resources and framing strategies, the contributors shed light onto tangible (e.g. policy implementation, liberal reforms, political alternation) and intangible (e.g. perceptions, imagination, awareness) forms of change elicited by protests. It reveals the relevant role of African protests as engines of democracy, accountability and collective knowledge. Bringing popular protests in authoritarian and democratic settings into discussion, this book will be of interest to scholars of African politics, democracy and protest movements.
Popular Religion in Modern China: The New Role of Nuo
by Lan LiSince the early 1980s, China's rapid economic growth and social transformation have greatly altered the role of popular religion in the country. This book makes a new contribution to the research on the phenomenon by examining the role which popular religion has played in modern Chinese politics. Popular Religion in Modern China uses Nuo as an example of how a popular religion has been directly incorporated into the Chinese Community Party's (CCP) policies and how the religion functions as a tool to maintain socio-political stability, safeguard national unification and raise the country's cultural 'soft power' in the eyes of the world. It provides rich new material on the interplay between contemporary Chinese politics, popular religion and economic development in a rapidly changing society.
Popular Representations of Development: Insights from Novels, Films, Television and Social Media (Rethinking Development)
by David Lewis Michael Woolcock Dennis RodgersAlthough the academic study of development is well established, as is also its policy implementation, less considered are the broader, more popular understandings of development that often shape agendas and priorities, particularly in representative democracies. Through its accessible and provocative chapters, Popular Representations of Development introduces the idea that while the issue of ‘development’ – defined broadly as problems of poverty and social deprivation, and the various agencies and processes seeking to address these – is normally one that is discussed by social scientists and policy makers, it also has a wider ‘popular’ dimension. Development is something that can be understood through studying literature, films, and other non-conventional forms of representation. It is also a public issue, one that has historically been associated with musical movements such as Live Aid and increasingly features in newer media such as blogs and social networking. The book connects the effort to build a more holistic understanding of development issues with an exploration of the diverse public sphere in which popular engagement with development takes place. This book gives students of development studies, media studies and geography as well as students in the humanities engaging with global development issues a variety of perspectives from different disciplines to open up this new field for discussion.