Routledge Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements

Crazy for Democracy vividly shows, through the lives of six women in the United States and South Africa, just what can be and is being accomplished to change our lives. At a time when we're depressed about democracy, pessimistic about race relations, and anxious about feminism, Crazy for Democracy vividly shows, through the lives of six women in the United States and South Africa, just what can be and is being accomplished to change our lives. In building real social movements to achieve a safe environment, win human rights, and safeguard their homes, these grassroots feminist leaders have been creating democratic institutions to achieve social justice for us all. Review "A delightfully refreshing account of what is so often not said about women's participation in movements for social change...Read this book for the excellent histories of the struggle at Love Canal, the birth of the environmental justice movement in the South, and the fight for housing and an end to apartheid in South Africa. Read it for inspiration when despondent about the seeming inevitability of pollution and toxic waste dumps in your communities. Above all, read it for the well-told and inspiring stories of ordinary women who rose to the challenge of extraordinary circumstances, thus paving the way for future efforts at redeeming the land and preserving our common environment." -- The Green Pages "Temma Kaplan's Crazy for Democracy: Women in GrassrootsMovements is written the way all history should be written, with passionate humanity. It provides an intellectual framework for understanding these movements in context, and in addition is a work that honors not only the historical; but the moral imagination." -- Mary Gordon "In this dramatic and timely study of six courageous women activists, Temma Kaplan at last puts women at the center of citizens' movements for social change and human rights, where they belong. Kaplan's narrative is riveting, her analysis sophisticated, her prose vigorous, her book original and important." -- Alix Kates Shulman, author of Drinking the Rain "Crazy for Democracy is a wonderful book. At once scholarly and personal, it tells the human story behind some of the most pathbreaking social movements of our time. Kaplan's incisive analysis shows us how women's social activism grows out of the gendered construction of women's lives. She has given us a vivid ethnography of social struggle as it is being waged on planet earth in the late twentieth century." -- Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York, Binghamton "[A]n engaging read ... Crazy for Democracy is an important contribution in the fields of women's studies, history, and political science. It challenges dominant frameworks for understanding democracy that focus almost exclusively on electoral politics." -- Political ScienceQuarterly "Crazy for Democracy breaks new ground by focusing specifically on women leaders of grassroots movements. [Kaplan's] lively and detailed accounts of movement activities reveal the complexity of activists' experiences defy the dichotomous theotetical frameworks that have been used to categorize women's activities." -- American Anthropologist From the Back Cover By weaving the personal testimonies of six women activists from the United States and South Africa with newspaper accounts, government reports, feminist theory, and social philosophy, Crazy for Democracy shows that women's movements have been transforming the possibilities for democracy all over the world. In community-based social movements, women are reviving civil society by making claims to a better world for all of us. To save their neighborhoods and resist callous and oppressive governments, women have formed local citizens' organizations, demanding satisfaction of basic human needs for housing, a clean environment, and human rights as part of democracy. By bringing these women to life, Temma Kaplan affirms that acti