Table Of ContentCultural Sociology
Series Editors: Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, David Inglis, and Philip Smith
Cultural sociology is widely acknowledged as one of the most vibrant areas of inquiry in the
social sciences across the world today. The Palgrave Macmillan Series in Cultural Sociology
is dedicated to the proposition that deep meanings make a profound difference in social life.
Culture is not simply the glue that holds society together, a crutch for the weak, or a mystify-
ing ideology that conceals power. Nor is it just practical knowledge, dry schemas, or kno-
whow. The series demonstrates how shared and circulating patterns of meaning actively and
inescapably penetrate the social. Through codes and myths, narratives and icons, rituals and
representations, these culture structures drive human action, inspire social movements, direct
and build institutions, and so come to shape history. The series takes its lead from the cultural
turn in the humanities, but insists on rigorous social science methods and aims at empiri-
cal explanations. Contributions engage in thick interpretations but also account for behav-
ioral outcomes. They develop cultural theory but also deploy middle-range tools to challenge
reductionist understandings of how the world actually works. In so doing, the books in this
series embody the spirit of cultural sociology as an intellectual enterprise.
Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology and Co-Director
of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. From 1995–2010, he edited (with
Steven Seidman) the Cambridge Series on Cultural Social Studies and from 2004–2009 (with
Julia Adams, Ron Eyerman, and Philip Gorsky) Sociological Theory. Among his recent books
are The Civil Sphere and The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic
Struggle for Power.
Ron Eyerman is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology
at Yale University. His areas of research include social theory, trauma, and memory, and
he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on these topics. He is the author of The
Assassination of Theo van Gogh: From Social Drama to Cultural Trauma.
David Inglis is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He is founding editor of
the journal Cultural Sociology, published by Sage. His recent books include The Globalization
of Food and Cosmopolitanism.
Philip Smith is Professor and Co-Director of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. His
recent books include Why War?, Punishment and Culture, and Incivility: The Rude Stranger in
Everyday Life (coauthored) among others.
Interpreting Clifford Geertz
Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Philip Smith, and Matthew Norton
The Cultural Sociology of Political Assassination
Ron Eyerman
Constructing Irish National Identity
Anne Kane
Iconic Power
Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Dominik Bartmański, and Bernhard Giesen
Seeking Authenticity in Place, Culture, and the Self
Nicholas Osbaldiston
Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry
Richard Biernacki
Central Bank Independence
Carlo Tognato
Liberal Barbarism
Erik Ringmar
Social Tragedy
Stephanie Alice Baker
Meanings of Life in Contemporary Ireland
Tom Inglis
Performing Punk
Erik Hannerz
Global Injustice Symbols and Social Movements
Thomas Olesen
Global Injustice Symbols
and Social Movements
T O
HOMAS LESEN
GLOBAL INJUSTICE SYMBOLS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Copyright © Thomas Olesen, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48116-0
All rights reserved.
Thomas Olesen (2011). “Transnational Injustice Symbols and Communities:
The Case of al-Qaeda and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp,” Current
Sociology 59(6): 717–734.
Thomas Olesen (2012). “Global Injustice Memories: The case of Rwanda,”
International Political Sociology 6(4): 373–389.
Thomas Olesen (2014). “Dramatic Diffusion and Meaning Adaptation:
The Case of Neda Agha Soltan,” in Donatella della Porta and Alice
Mattoni (eds.), Spreading Protest: Social Movements in a Time of Crisis,
pp. 71–90. Colchester: ECPR Press.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-50279-0 ISBN 978-1-137-48117-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137481177
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olesen, Thomas, 1969–
Global injustice symbols and social movements / by Thomas Olesen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social movements. 2. Social justice. 3. Symbolism—
Political aspects. 4. Signs and symbols—Political aspects. I. Title.
HM881.O45 2015
303.48(cid:25)4—dc23 2014036603
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: April 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my girls—Lene, Alma, and Nora
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Contents
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. Global Injustice Symbols 1
2. Political Iconography 39
3. Grievance Communities 67
4. Moral Memories 91
5. Dramatic Diffusion 115
6. A Global Society? 139
Notes 159
References 169
Index 187
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Series Editor’s
Preface
We are all aware of powerful images of injustice that come
to us from outside of ourselves, circulating round the globe—a young
Iranian women, Neda Agha Soltan, lies murdered on the ground,
open-eyed, with blood streaming from her head; an incarcerated
African hero, Nelson Mandela, towers over the heads of his jail-
ers, seeing the future of his people’s triumph; the Rwanda genocide
becomes the Holocaust of contemporary time; Guantanamo Bay a
torture chamber of injustice.
All these are deeply moving, but until Thomas Olesen’s work, they
have gone unexplained. Olesen calls them “global injustice symbols,”
and he researches four cases of how they emerge and become cultural
powers on a global social scale. He also provides a sociological theory
that explains how this new form of global power comes about.
In these empirical and conceptual efforts, Olesen brings together
late Durkheim, the strong program of contemporary cultural sociol-
ogy, and a distinctive take on social movements. The contemporary
relevance of Durkheim’s religion theory has been limited by its focus
on simple societies. Olesen discovers how powerfully condensed sym-
bols can emerge from the more fragmented social terrains of contem-
porary societies, providing meaning and motivation for social groups
and communities of conviction, and on a global scale.
How exactly such global symbols emerge is Olesen’s special con-
cern. He looks at communicative infrastructure and cross-national
cultural schemas but his principal focus is activist groups. They are
the agents that make global symbols possible. They believe in the
symbols themselves, and they want the world to share their faith, not
