Abstract
In a speech on worldwide student unrest, the executive secretary of the InterAgency Youth Committee Robert Cross in 1968 discerned five factors that separated current youthful unrest from its historical precedents. According to Cross, “quantitative growth, democratization of education, ‘post-modernism,’ the education explosion and the creation of a ‘youth class’” distinguished student activism at the end of the 1960s. Due to its global dimension and an increasing utilization of violence, governments worldwide suddenly paid attention to this phenomenon after years of polite yet largely unsuccessful requests for change voiced by the students. What was even more significant was that, in Cross’s view, students had formed the “first truly international generation”:
A steady stream of student activists have become internationally selfperpetuating and multiplying. […] The 1968-style international student movement is international not because it is organized but rather because young people in many countries are facing the same human problems and applying the same basic approaches to their solution. It is equally certain, however, that a great cross-fertilization, a very rapid and effective student grape-vine, functions. What happens in New York is known overnight in Paris and Manila. The speeches of Rudi Dutschke are in the hands of Mark Rudd faster than you can seem to get your mail delivered.1
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Notes
Robert Cross, “World-Wide Student Unrest,” Speech, Department of State, C/Y, 1968, in: RG 59, IAYC Records, Speeches (Material), Box 5, NA.
On U.S. government responses to student protest during the 1960/1970s, see Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
Nicholas John Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 233–292.
Martin Klimke, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Reinhild Kreis, Orte für Amerika: Deutsch-Amerikanische Institute und Amerikahäuser in der Bundesrepublik seit den 1960er Jahren (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2011).
For the analysis of “1968” by the French government, please see Maurice Vaïsse et al., eds., Mai 68 vu de l’étranger: les événements dans les archives diplomatiques françaises (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2008).
David A. Snow and Sarah Anne Soule, A Primer on Social Movements (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2010), 6f.
See also Michael Hanagan, Leslie Page Moch, and Wayne Te Brake, Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
Gary Bruce, Resistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany, 1945–1955 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
See Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
See Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 57–86.
Or more recently, A. Ross Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
On nuclear proliferation, see Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).
Lawrence Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).
For the other issues, see representatively Helen Yanacopulus, “Cutting the Diamond: Networking Economic Justice,” in Miles Kahler, ed., Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 67–78.
Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Ken Rutherford, Disarming States: The International Movement to Ban Landmines (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011).
See, e.g., Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 16–22.
Rose Macaulay, Told by an Idiot (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923), 117; Henry Fairlie, “Political Commentary,” The Spectator, September 23, 1955, 380, 1.
Henry Fairlie, “Political Commentary,” The Spectator, September 23, 1955, 380, 1.
Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders; A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems (London: F. Cass, 1965).
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
Henry Fairlie, “Evolution of a Term,” New Yorker, October 19, 1968, 173–185.
See also his Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations, edited by Jeremy McCarter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 68–91, 90.
John Andrew Simpson, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 405.
For an introduction to the ever-growing literature on social movements, see David A. Snow, Sarah Anne Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004).
Vincenzo Ruggiero and Nicola Montagna, eds, Social Movements: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2008).
Jeffrey Roger Goodwin and James M. Jasper, eds, The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, 2nd ed. (Oxford [etc.]: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Doug McAdam and David A. Snow, eds, Readings on Social Movements: Origins, Dynamics and Outcomes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 1768–2008 (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), 7.
See also Charles Tilly, Contention and Democracy in Europe: 1650–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Charles Tilly and Sidney G. Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
See the various contributions in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, eds, The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, 2nd ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 409–440, which also includes a section devoted to the influence of specific institutions on movements (311–370).
Doug McAdam and David A. Snow, ed., Readings on Social Movements: Origins, Dynamics and Outcomes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 659–734.
For the most recent collection, see Thomas Olesen, ed., Power and Transnational Activism (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
See Marco Giugni, “Was It Worth the Effort? The Outcomes and Consequences of Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 98 (1998): 371–393.
Jennifer Earl, “Methods, Movements, and Outcomes,” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 22 (2000): 9–13.
For public and national policy, see David S. Meyer, Valerie Jenness, and Helen M. Ingram, eds, Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
Felix Kolb, Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007).
Rory McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds, Repression and Mobilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
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© 2012 Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth, and Laura Wong
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Fahlenbrach, K., Klimke, M., Scharloth, J., Wong, L. (2012). Introduction. In: Fahlenbrach, K., Klimke, M., Scharloth, J., Wong, L. (eds) The Establishment Responds. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119833_1
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