The Social and Political Psychology of Protest Across and Within Cultures

This topical book explores the phenomenon of when and why people protest. Based on social and political psychology, the book takes a comparative approach across and within cultures and examines how human motivation and political and cultural contexts affect protests.

Showcasing state-of-the-art chapters from a new generation of social protest researchers, the book offers an overview of research into contemporary social change over the last decade. It draws on interdisciplinary research from social and political psychology across and within cultures to increase the scope of the phenomenon of social protest. The chapters feature different international examples and discuss diverse manifestations of social protest. Each chapter explicitly connects key insights to the practice and real-life relevance of social protest.

The book offers a unique perspective of the when and why of social protest, and will be essential reading for students and academics in the fields of social psychology, political psychology, politics, and sociology, as well as anyone in behavioural and social sciences interested in social movements, social protest, and social change.

Martijn van Zomeren is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He holds a chair in the political and cultural psychology of social relationships. His research interests fall broadly in the domain of human motivation and social behavior, and he is well known for his integrative theoretical and empirical work on core motivations for social protest.