ljwood


Lesley Wood

Photo of Lesley Wood

Associate Professor

Office: Vari Hall, 2150
Phone: 416-736-2100 Ext: 77993
Email: ljwood@yorku.ca

Media Requests Welcome

Lesley Wood is interested in how ideas travel, how power operates, how institutions change, how conversations influence practices, how people resist and how conflict starts, transforms and ends. Please see http://www.yorku.ca/ljwood/

Degrees

Ph.D., Sociology, Columbia University
M.Phil, Sociology, Columbia University
M.Sc. (Economics), Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science
B.A. (Hons), Sociology, Queen’s University

Appointments

Faculty of Graduate Studies

Professional Leadership

Elected Positions
Chair 2017-21, Department of Sociology, York University;

Editing

North American Editor: Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements http://www.interfacejournal.net/

Editorial Board member, Rose Series in Sociology (Russell Sage), American Sociological Association 2021 - 2024

Book Series Editorial Board Member - Engaged Studies in Social Movements, Pluto Press 2018-

Research Interests

Sociology , Politics and Government, social movements, political sociology, globalization, diffusion, global justice movement, transnational movements, civic engagement, internationalism, deliberation, repression, protest policing, militarization
  • 2008 John O’Neill Award for Teaching in Sociology, Sociology Undergraduate Students Association, York University - 2008
  • 2014 LA&PS Faculty Award for Distinction in Research, Emerging Researcher Category, York U - 2014
  • 2013 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award. Canadian Sociological Association. Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion. - 2013

Current Research Projects

Cataloguing Protest

    Summary:

    How best do we track the landscape of protest. This project evaluates the distinct picture generated via newspapers, social media and aggregators .

    See more
    Start Date:
      Month: Jun   Year: 2020

    Funders:
    2020 - LA&PS DARE Project - Dyllan Goldstein
Temporality and Social Movement Strategy

    Summary:

    How does the perception of time affect social movement strategy? I am currently writing a book on this topic.

    See more
    Role: PI

    Start Date:
      Month: Jul   Year: 2019

    Funders:
    2022 - Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Deans Award for Research Excellence – with Ayeda Khan $5000
    2022 - York University Small Research Grant
Peoples Global Action Oral History Project

    Summary:

    Peoples Global Action emerged as a decentralized network of grassroots social movements in 1997 in response to a call from Mexico’s EZLN for an ‘instrument of coordination’. It organized global conferences of movements, caravans and global days of action, with a peak of activity occurring between 1997-2005.
    In order to understand the lessons does this internationalist model offer for contemporary movements, activists and scholar activists have been collecting the stories from this formation.
    To date, 40 oral history interviews have been collected from organizers in Brazil, Bolivia, Ireland, India, the UK, Canada, US, Germany, Italy, Catalonia/Spain, Serbia, Switzerland. A digital archive will be made public in 2023.

    See more
    Start Date:
      Month: Jan   Year: 2015

    Funders:
    2015 - SSHRC Small Grant People’s Global Action Oral History Project.
    2016 - Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Grant, “People’s Global Action and the Alterglobalisation ‘Movement of Movements’: An Oral History of Transnational Organising for Today’s Struggles.” (co-applicant) Laurence Cox (National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland), Lesley Wood (York University, Toronto, ON, Canada) and Uri Gordon (Loughborough University, UK)
Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements

    Summary:

    An international journal for social movement activists and scholars.

    Description:

    The development and increased visibility of social movements in the last few years, has made it clear just how much knowledge movements generate. This knowledge is generated across the globe, and in many contexts and a variety of ways. We are activists from different movements and different countries, researchers working with movements, and progressive academics from various countries. We have been involved in many different projects to support and develop the recent knowledge generation processes around contemporary social movements. Through this work we have come to recognise how much we stand to learn from each other – from the specific experiences of movements, from the languages that have been developed within and around different movements, and from different places and times. The purpose of this journal is to learn from each other’s struggles: across movements and issues across continents and cultures across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. The journal will be a space for abstraction from and translation between movements. It will seek to develop analysis and knowledge by both movement participants and academics who are developing movement-relevant theory and research. The journal seeks to include material that can be used in concrete ways by movements. The material may do this through its content, but also through its language, purpose and form. We hope this process will allow generic lessons to be learned from specific movement processes and experiences. We hope to translate knowledge across and between different movement contexts. Movements have always generated knowledge, both internally and in alliance with other movements. We would like to continue the rich tradition already established by many activists, researchers and academics. It is the aim of this journal to add to and amplify the processes that already exist; the journal does not seek to substitute itself in any way for these already existing processes. Organisation Our vision is for a practitioner journal where activist and academic peers will review each other’s work as part of this process of translation. We will be seeking both formal research (qualitative and quantitative) and practically-grounded work on all aspects of social movements. We will be seeking work in a range of different formats, suited to the different voices speaking within the journal. These might range across (for example): conventional articles review essays facilitated discussions and interviews action notes teaching notes key documents and analysis book reviews …and beyond. Our focus in the editing process will be on bringing out and sharing the quality of each other’s knowledge from one movement to another. We will seek to assist authors to find ways of expressing their understanding, so that we all can be heard across geographical, social and political distances. The journal will be online, free, and multilingual, in order to make it as widely accessible as possible. Our hope is to have a number of semi-autonomous groups focussed in different regions of the world and on different languages. These groups would share a common vision and translate articles from and for each other, but with a wide degree of freedom in how they go about developing their own section of the journal.

    See more
    Role: Regional Editor

Policing Protest: the diffusion of new tactics

    Summary:

    A study of the changes to the policing of protest in Canada and the United States, 1995-2010

    See more
Books

Publication
Year

Tilly, Charles, Ernesto Castañeda, and Lesley J. Wood. Social Movements, 1768-2018. Routledge, 2019.

2019

Mater la Meute (french translation of Crisis and Control) Lux Editeur.

2015

Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing. Pluto.

2014

Social Movements 1768-2012, with Charles Tilly. Paradigm Publishers

2012

Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action after the WTO Protests in Seattle. Series: Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press.

2012

Social Movements 1768-2008. Co-authored with Charles Tilly. Paradigm Publishers.

2008

Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Counterprotest and Anti-Racist Solidarity in the Trump Era.” in Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Repertoires of Criminalization and Resistance.” Ed. Donatella della Porta and Elias Steinhilper. Routledge. Sept 2021

2021

“Social Movements as Essential Services” in Social Movements and the Coronavirus, Edited by Geoffrey Pleyers and Breno Bringel, Bristol University Press.

2021

“Counterprotest and Anti-Racist Solidarity in the Trump Era.” In Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Repertoires of Criminalization and Resistance. Pp. 195-213. Ed. Donatella della Porta and Elias Steinhilper. Routledge. Sept 2021.

2021

“Anarchist Gatherings,” in Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001. Edited by Emily Hobson and Dan Berger, University of Georgia Press

2020

“Policing and the Police” in We Resist. Cynthia Levine-Rasky and Lisa Kowalchuk. McGill-Queen’s Press.

2020

“Repression, Solidarity and Transnational Escalation” in Rule and Resistance beyond the Nation State: Contestation, Escalation, Exit. Edited by F. Anderl/ C. Daase/ N. Deitelhoff/ V. Kempf/ J. Pfister/P. Wallmeier. Rowman & Littlefield International. Oct 2019

2019

“The Political Economy of Social Movements” in Change and Continuity: Rethinking the New Canadian Political Economy. Edited by Mark Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli. McGill – Queen’s University Press

2019

“Fighting Back and Building Another World: Contention in the 21st century,” in Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives. Pp. 296-99. Edited by Patricia Albanese and Lorne Tepperman, Emily Alexander. Oxford University Press

2018

“Neither Cooptation nor Charity” in Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?. Edited by Michael Truscello and Ajamu Nanwaya. AK Press.

2017

“Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect and the Social Relations of Diffusion” in Spontaneous Combustion. Jason DelGandio and AK Thompson, eds. SUNY Press

2017

“Consent and Coercion - The Criminalization of Dissent” with Craig Fortier in Organizing Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice., 2nd edition. William Carroll and Kanchan Sarkar, eds. Arbeiter Ring Press

2016

“Uncooperative Movements, Militarized Protest Policing and the Social Movement Society.” In Protest and Politics: The Promise of Social Movement Societies. Edited by Kathleen Rogers and Howard Ramos. UBC Press, May 2015.

2015

“Everything is Different Now: Protest policing, 1995-2010.” In Putting the State on Trial: The Policing of Protest during the G20 Summit. Margaret E. Beare, Nathalie Des Rosiers, and Abigail C. Deshman, eds., UBC Press. June 2015

2015

“Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” in Building Bridges Across Great Divides: Social Forums from the Local to the Global. Edited by Scott Byrd, Ellen Reese, Jackie Smith and Elizabeth Smythe.

2011

“Surveying the Landscape: Local Protesters and Global Summits” with Glenn J. Stalker in The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest. Edited by Tom Malleson and David Wachsmith. Between the Lines Press

2011

2005/2009 "Taking to the Streets Against Neoliberalism: Global Days of Action and Other Strategies” Transforming Globalization: Challenges and Opportunities in the Post 9/11 Era. Edited by Bruce Podobnik & Thomas Reifer. Brill Academic Press. Paperback release, Haymarket Press, 2009

2009

2005 "Public Deliberation after 9/11." In Recovering from September 11th: The Social Effects of the World Trade Center Tragedy, edited by Nancy Foner. Russell Sage. By Francesca Polletta and Lesley Wood.

2005

2004 “Bridging the Chasms: The Case of People’s Global Action” in Coalitions Across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neo-Liberal Order. Pp. 95-117. Edited by Joe Bandy and Jackie Smith, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

2004

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

Review of Alf Gunvald Nilsen’s Dispossession and Resistance in India. In Interface: a journal by and for social movements.

2011

Review of Erika Summers Effler’s Laughing Saints and Righteous Heroes: Emotional Rhythms in Social Movement Groups. In Contemporary Sociology

2011

2009 Review of Jeffrey S. Juris’s Networking Futures in Canadian Journal of Sociology

2009

2008 Review of Suzanne Staggenborg’s Social Movements in Canadian Journal of Sociology

2008

2005 Review of Janet M. Conway’s Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization. Canadian Journal of Sociology online, January – February 2005

2005

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

CATALOGING PROTEST: NEWSPAPERS, NEXIS UNI, OR TWITTER?*
Lesley J. Wood; Dyllan Goldstein
Mobilization: An International Quarterly (2023) 28 (3): 343–358.
https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-28-3-343

2023

(Dis)Assembling Event Identities: Anarchists, Liberals, Socialists and Feminists - Toronto’s G20 Protests. Poetics. With Glenn S. Stalker. Volume 85, April 2021.

2021

"The Seattle Model,” “Seattle+20: Movements at the Millennium.”
Socialism and Democracy 34:1

2020

“Policing Counter-protest,” Sociology Compass.

2020

“Anarchist Gatherings 1986-2017.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. September.

2019

“Eventful Events: Local Outcomes of G20 Summit Protests in Pittsburgh and Toronto,” Co-authored by Lesley Wood, Suzanne Staggenborg, Glenn Stalker and Rachel Kutz-Flammenbaum. Social Movement Studies

2017

“Idle No More, Diffusion and Facebook.” Social Movement Studies May 2015

2015

"Policing with Impunity,” Socialist Register 2016

2015

2012 “Reaching Beyond the Net: Political Circuits and Participation in Toronto’s G20 Protests.” With Glenn J. Stalker. Social Movement Studies.

2012

2011 “Editorial” Interface. Special Issue on Repression and Social Movements.

2011

2011 “Communities Converging: A Story and a Strategy of the G20 protests in Toronto”, Upping the Anti 10

2011

2010 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” Journal of World Systems Research Special Issue. (Volume XVI, Number 1, 2010) pp 48-62.

2010

2008 “The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis,” with Luis A. Fernandez, Amory Starr, Randall Amster and Manuel J. Caro. Qualitative Sociology. Special Issue on Political Violence, 31:3 September 2008.

2008

2007 “Breaking the Wave: Repression, Identity and the Seattle Tactics” Mobilization 12:4. December 2007. 377-388.

2007

2004 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” Journal of World-Systems Research, pp. 3-23. Special issue: ‘Global Social Movements Before and After 9/11.

2004

2003 “Contentious Connections” in Social Movements and Networks. Relational Approaches to Collective Action. Pp. 147-172. Edited by Mario Diani and Doug McAdam, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York. By Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood.

2003

2002 “Target Practice: Community Activism in a Global Era.” in From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community-Building in the Era of Globalization. Pp. 21-34. Edited by Ronald Hayduk and Benjamin Shepard. Verso Publications, London. By Lesley Wood and Kelly Moore.

2002

Professional Journal Articles

Publication
Year

“G20 Policing in Toronto: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” Toronto Media Co-op, reprinted in Linchpin.ca

2010

2010 “Activist Lawsuits and Funding the Movement” Left Turn. Co-authored with Meredith Slopen, Daniel Lang, Joseph Phelan and Mac Scott.

2010

2008 “Activist Theorizing: Resources for Teaching, Research, and Political Work” Critical Mass: Section Newsletter of the Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section of the American Sociological Society. Fall 2008

2008

2008 “Remembering Charles Tilly,” Social Movement Studies, 7:225–246

2008

2007 “Grassroots Strategizing and The World Social Forum.” Upping the Anti 4.

2007

2006 “Roundtable on the Anti-War Movement” Upping the Anti 1.

2006

2004 “Capacity Building for Revolution,” New Socialist Magazine. With Mac Scott.

2004

2004 Coordinator and editor, “Organizing Against the Occupation: --US and Canadian anti-war activists speak out,” Social Movement Studies. Volume 3, Number 2, October 2004, pp. 241-257(17)

2004

2004 “Spaces of Solidarity - Infoshops, the Suburbs and the French Revolution,” New Formulation 2:2

2004

2003 “Where Have all the Detainees Gone?” in Left Turn Magazine, May/June Issue.

2003

Conference Papers

Publication
Year

2011 “Urine in Supersoakers: Intelligence Led Policing, Police Organizations, and the Militarization of Protest Policing.” European Sociological Association Meetings. Geneva, Switzerland.

2011

2011 Summit Protests and Local Contexts. Collective Behavior and Social Movements Workshop, American Sociological Association, Las Vegas.

2011

Context and Contradictions in Policing Toronto’s G20 Protests. Collective Behavior and Social Movements Workshop, American Sociological Association, Las Vegas

2011

“Context and Contradictions of Policing Toronto’s G20 Protests” Alternative Futures, Manchester UK

2011

2010 “Narratives of Weakness and Strategies for Endurance – An exploration of the US Anti-War Movement” Panel on Social Movement Theory, Canadian Sociological Association, Montreal.

2010

2009 “Activists After 9/11: Changed Conversations, Different Tactics” Alternative Futures, Manchester UK

2009

2009 “Spectacular Failures - Protest Policing and the Diffusion of Pepper Spray” Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting, San Francisco

2009

2008 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” International Studies Association, San Francisco

2008

2008 “Moments of Openness: The Receptivity of Social Movement Organizations to New Ideas,” Roundtables on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting. Boston.

2008

2007 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion ” CBSM Workshop, American Sociological Association, Hofstra University

2007

2006 “Does Surveillance Chill? The Impacts of Government Surveillance on Progressive Political Activity in the US, 1998-2006” Panel on Privacy, Surveillance and Civil Liberties. ASA Annual Meeting, Montreal. Co-author.

2006

2006 “Repressing Deliberation – Police Impacts on Activist Debates in New York and Toronto 1998-2002” Roundtables on Collective Action and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting.

2006

2006 “Shifting the Struggle: The World Festival for Youth and Students (1947 to 2005).” Panel on Transnational Activism. Americal Political Science Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia.

2006

2005 “We Who Resist: Deliberation, Codification and the Diffusion of Direct Action Tactics” Roundtables on Collective Action and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia

2005

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” Colloque du GERMM “Les mobilizations altermondialistes,” Association francaise de science politique. Paris, France.

2003

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets,” Panel on Globalization, Protest, and Transnational Mobilization, ASA Annual Meeting, Atlanta

2003

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” History Matters Conference, New School University, New York

2003

2003 “Reclaiming the City, Changing the System,” Panel on Imagining Social Justice in the City: Theory and Research. Society for the Study of Social Problems Annual Meeting, Atlanta

2003

2002 “Bridging the Chasms, the Case of People’s Global Action”, Panel Participant in Coalitions Across Borders, International Studies Assn. Meetings, New Orleans

2002

2001 “Building an Oppositional Transnational Network” Panel Presentation, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC

2001

1999 “From A to Z: Transnational Solidarity and the Zapatistas”, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago

1999

Conference Proceedings

Publication
Year

“Alt-right and Antifa: Movement-countermovement dynamics in the Trump Era” in The Future of Social Movements in Canada. Ed. Robert Brym and Anna Slavina. Proceedings from the S.D. Clark Symposium. Rocks Mills Press

2019

Public Lectures

Publication
Year

“Temporary Autonomous Zones: Anarchist Gatherings, 1988-2017", Anarchism and the City, The City Talks Lecture Series; University of Victoria

2017

“Disruptive Strategies - Protest and Policing in the 21st century” Association for Monitoring Equal Rights, Istanbul

2016

“Anti-Immigrant Protests, Past and Present,” York Circle, York University

2016

“Being Useful” Graduate Student Workshop on Scholar Activism, Brock University

2016

46th annual Sorokin Lecture, “World on Fire: Waves of Protest Transforming Communities.” University of Saskatchewan

2015

Porter Lecture, "Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion." Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brock University, May 2014

2014

States, Social Movements and Beyond. International Conference “Sociology and History in the Works of Charles Tilly,” El Colegio de México, Mexico City. 28 May 2014.

2014

“Criminalizing Dissent: Democracy and the Security State” hosted by Ryerson Faculty Association.

2011

“Protest Policing in an Age of Empire”, Empire Workshop, York University

2011

Anarchism in the 21st century - power, praxis, process. Opening Plenary, North American Anarchist Studies Conference, Toronto.

2011

“Social movements, globalization and policing", Panel on Human Rights and Social Justice: Research Matters Series, Dean’s Office, York University

2011

“Policing protest and Criminalizing Dissent - the G20 and Beyond” Laurentian University, Sudbury

2010

“Communities Converging: A Story and a Strategy of the G20 protests in Toronto”, Guest lecture, University of Pittsburgh

2010

“Squats, Street Theatre and Radical Marching Bands, Don Heights Unitarian Congregation. Toronto.

2010

Approach to Teaching


A friend once told me that you can't teach anyone anything, you can only show them how you learn, and help them to learn. Along these lines, four things are central to how I learn.. First, I believe that people already know a great deal. I try to connect people's experience and knowledge of the world with existing theory and research. Second, I believe that theory and method are intimately connected. Third, I believe that ordinary people can and do change the world through collective action. Understanding collective action is thus central to my approach. Fourth, I believe that most of our education is about learning how to read and write effectively, and that these are lifelong skills.


Current Courses

Term Course Number Section Title Type
Winter 2024 GS/SOCI6711 3.0 M Social Movements SEMR
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/SOCI1020 6.0 A Pleasure and Trouble LECT
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/SOCI4100 6.0 A Field Placement SEMR


Lesley Wood is interested in how ideas travel, how power operates, how institutions change, how conversations influence practices, how people resist and how conflict starts, transforms and ends. Please see http://www.yorku.ca/ljwood/

Degrees

Ph.D., Sociology, Columbia University
M.Phil, Sociology, Columbia University
M.Sc. (Economics), Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science
B.A. (Hons), Sociology, Queen’s University

Appointments

Faculty of Graduate Studies

Professional Leadership

Elected Positions
Chair 2017-21, Department of Sociology, York University;

Editing

North American Editor: Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements http://www.interfacejournal.net/

Editorial Board member, Rose Series in Sociology (Russell Sage), American Sociological Association 2021 - 2024

Book Series Editorial Board Member - Engaged Studies in Social Movements, Pluto Press 2018-

Research Interests

Sociology , Politics and Government, social movements, political sociology, globalization, diffusion, global justice movement, transnational movements, civic engagement, internationalism, deliberation, repression, protest policing, militarization

Awards

  • 2008 John O’Neill Award for Teaching in Sociology, Sociology Undergraduate Students Association, York University - 2008
  • 2014 LA&PS Faculty Award for Distinction in Research, Emerging Researcher Category, York U - 2014
  • 2013 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award. Canadian Sociological Association. Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion. - 2013

Current Research Projects

Cataloguing Protest

    Summary:

    How best do we track the landscape of protest. This project evaluates the distinct picture generated via newspapers, social media and aggregators .

    Project Type: Self-Funded
    Start Date:
      Month: Jun   Year: 2020

    Funders:
    2020 - LA&PS DARE Project - Dyllan Goldstein
Temporality and Social Movement Strategy

    Summary:

    How does the perception of time affect social movement strategy? I am currently writing a book on this topic.

    Project Type: Self-Funded
    Role: PI

    Start Date:
      Month: Jul   Year: 2019

    Funders:
    2022 - Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Deans Award for Research Excellence – with Ayeda Khan $5000
    2022 - York University Small Research Grant
Peoples Global Action Oral History Project

    Summary:

    Peoples Global Action emerged as a decentralized network of grassroots social movements in 1997 in response to a call from Mexico’s EZLN for an ‘instrument of coordination’. It organized global conferences of movements, caravans and global days of action, with a peak of activity occurring between 1997-2005.
    In order to understand the lessons does this internationalist model offer for contemporary movements, activists and scholar activists have been collecting the stories from this formation.
    To date, 40 oral history interviews have been collected from organizers in Brazil, Bolivia, Ireland, India, the UK, Canada, US, Germany, Italy, Catalonia/Spain, Serbia, Switzerland. A digital archive will be made public in 2023.

    Project Type: Funded
    Start Date:
      Month: Jan   Year: 2015

    Funders:
    2015 - SSHRC Small Grant People’s Global Action Oral History Project.
    2016 - Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Grant, “People’s Global Action and the Alterglobalisation ‘Movement of Movements’: An Oral History of Transnational Organising for Today’s Struggles.” (co-applicant) Laurence Cox (National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland), Lesley Wood (York University, Toronto, ON, Canada) and Uri Gordon (Loughborough University, UK)
Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements

    Summary:

    An international journal for social movement activists and scholars.

    Description:

    The development and increased visibility of social movements in the last few years, has made it clear just how much knowledge movements generate. This knowledge is generated across the globe, and in many contexts and a variety of ways. We are activists from different movements and different countries, researchers working with movements, and progressive academics from various countries. We have been involved in many different projects to support and develop the recent knowledge generation processes around contemporary social movements. Through this work we have come to recognise how much we stand to learn from each other – from the specific experiences of movements, from the languages that have been developed within and around different movements, and from different places and times. The purpose of this journal is to learn from each other’s struggles: across movements and issues across continents and cultures across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. The journal will be a space for abstraction from and translation between movements. It will seek to develop analysis and knowledge by both movement participants and academics who are developing movement-relevant theory and research. The journal seeks to include material that can be used in concrete ways by movements. The material may do this through its content, but also through its language, purpose and form. We hope this process will allow generic lessons to be learned from specific movement processes and experiences. We hope to translate knowledge across and between different movement contexts. Movements have always generated knowledge, both internally and in alliance with other movements. We would like to continue the rich tradition already established by many activists, researchers and academics. It is the aim of this journal to add to and amplify the processes that already exist; the journal does not seek to substitute itself in any way for these already existing processes. Organisation Our vision is for a practitioner journal where activist and academic peers will review each other’s work as part of this process of translation. We will be seeking both formal research (qualitative and quantitative) and practically-grounded work on all aspects of social movements. We will be seeking work in a range of different formats, suited to the different voices speaking within the journal. These might range across (for example): conventional articles review essays facilitated discussions and interviews action notes teaching notes key documents and analysis book reviews …and beyond. Our focus in the editing process will be on bringing out and sharing the quality of each other’s knowledge from one movement to another. We will seek to assist authors to find ways of expressing their understanding, so that we all can be heard across geographical, social and political distances. The journal will be online, free, and multilingual, in order to make it as widely accessible as possible. Our hope is to have a number of semi-autonomous groups focussed in different regions of the world and on different languages. These groups would share a common vision and translate articles from and for each other, but with a wide degree of freedom in how they go about developing their own section of the journal.

    Project Type: Self-Funded
    Role: Regional Editor

Policing Protest: the diffusion of new tactics

    Summary:

    A study of the changes to the policing of protest in Canada and the United States, 1995-2010

    Project Type: Funded

All Publications


Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Counterprotest and Anti-Racist Solidarity in the Trump Era.” in Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Repertoires of Criminalization and Resistance.” Ed. Donatella della Porta and Elias Steinhilper. Routledge. Sept 2021

2021

“Social Movements as Essential Services” in Social Movements and the Coronavirus, Edited by Geoffrey Pleyers and Breno Bringel, Bristol University Press.

2021

“Counterprotest and Anti-Racist Solidarity in the Trump Era.” In Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Repertoires of Criminalization and Resistance. Pp. 195-213. Ed. Donatella della Porta and Elias Steinhilper. Routledge. Sept 2021.

2021

“Anarchist Gatherings,” in Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001. Edited by Emily Hobson and Dan Berger, University of Georgia Press

2020

“Policing and the Police” in We Resist. Cynthia Levine-Rasky and Lisa Kowalchuk. McGill-Queen’s Press.

2020

“Repression, Solidarity and Transnational Escalation” in Rule and Resistance beyond the Nation State: Contestation, Escalation, Exit. Edited by F. Anderl/ C. Daase/ N. Deitelhoff/ V. Kempf/ J. Pfister/P. Wallmeier. Rowman & Littlefield International. Oct 2019

2019

“The Political Economy of Social Movements” in Change and Continuity: Rethinking the New Canadian Political Economy. Edited by Mark Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli. McGill – Queen’s University Press

2019

“Fighting Back and Building Another World: Contention in the 21st century,” in Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives. Pp. 296-99. Edited by Patricia Albanese and Lorne Tepperman, Emily Alexander. Oxford University Press

2018

“Neither Cooptation nor Charity” in Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?. Edited by Michael Truscello and Ajamu Nanwaya. AK Press.

2017

“Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect and the Social Relations of Diffusion” in Spontaneous Combustion. Jason DelGandio and AK Thompson, eds. SUNY Press

2017

“Consent and Coercion - The Criminalization of Dissent” with Craig Fortier in Organizing Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice., 2nd edition. William Carroll and Kanchan Sarkar, eds. Arbeiter Ring Press

2016

“Uncooperative Movements, Militarized Protest Policing and the Social Movement Society.” In Protest and Politics: The Promise of Social Movement Societies. Edited by Kathleen Rogers and Howard Ramos. UBC Press, May 2015.

2015

“Everything is Different Now: Protest policing, 1995-2010.” In Putting the State on Trial: The Policing of Protest during the G20 Summit. Margaret E. Beare, Nathalie Des Rosiers, and Abigail C. Deshman, eds., UBC Press. June 2015

2015

“Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” in Building Bridges Across Great Divides: Social Forums from the Local to the Global. Edited by Scott Byrd, Ellen Reese, Jackie Smith and Elizabeth Smythe.

2011

“Surveying the Landscape: Local Protesters and Global Summits” with Glenn J. Stalker in The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest. Edited by Tom Malleson and David Wachsmith. Between the Lines Press

2011

2005/2009 "Taking to the Streets Against Neoliberalism: Global Days of Action and Other Strategies” Transforming Globalization: Challenges and Opportunities in the Post 9/11 Era. Edited by Bruce Podobnik & Thomas Reifer. Brill Academic Press. Paperback release, Haymarket Press, 2009

2009

2005 "Public Deliberation after 9/11." In Recovering from September 11th: The Social Effects of the World Trade Center Tragedy, edited by Nancy Foner. Russell Sage. By Francesca Polletta and Lesley Wood.

2005

2004 “Bridging the Chasms: The Case of People’s Global Action” in Coalitions Across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neo-Liberal Order. Pp. 95-117. Edited by Joe Bandy and Jackie Smith, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

2004

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

Review of Alf Gunvald Nilsen’s Dispossession and Resistance in India. In Interface: a journal by and for social movements.

2011

Review of Erika Summers Effler’s Laughing Saints and Righteous Heroes: Emotional Rhythms in Social Movement Groups. In Contemporary Sociology

2011

2009 Review of Jeffrey S. Juris’s Networking Futures in Canadian Journal of Sociology

2009

2008 Review of Suzanne Staggenborg’s Social Movements in Canadian Journal of Sociology

2008

2005 Review of Janet M. Conway’s Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization. Canadian Journal of Sociology online, January – February 2005

2005

Books

Publication
Year

Tilly, Charles, Ernesto Castañeda, and Lesley J. Wood. Social Movements, 1768-2018. Routledge, 2019.

2019

Mater la Meute (french translation of Crisis and Control) Lux Editeur.

2015

Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing. Pluto.

2014

Social Movements 1768-2012, with Charles Tilly. Paradigm Publishers

2012

Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action after the WTO Protests in Seattle. Series: Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press.

2012

Social Movements 1768-2008. Co-authored with Charles Tilly. Paradigm Publishers.

2008

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

CATALOGING PROTEST: NEWSPAPERS, NEXIS UNI, OR TWITTER?*
Lesley J. Wood; Dyllan Goldstein
Mobilization: An International Quarterly (2023) 28 (3): 343–358.
https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-28-3-343

2023

(Dis)Assembling Event Identities: Anarchists, Liberals, Socialists and Feminists - Toronto’s G20 Protests. Poetics. With Glenn S. Stalker. Volume 85, April 2021.

2021

"The Seattle Model,” “Seattle+20: Movements at the Millennium.”
Socialism and Democracy 34:1

2020

“Policing Counter-protest,” Sociology Compass.

2020

“Anarchist Gatherings 1986-2017.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. September.

2019

“Eventful Events: Local Outcomes of G20 Summit Protests in Pittsburgh and Toronto,” Co-authored by Lesley Wood, Suzanne Staggenborg, Glenn Stalker and Rachel Kutz-Flammenbaum. Social Movement Studies

2017

“Idle No More, Diffusion and Facebook.” Social Movement Studies May 2015

2015

"Policing with Impunity,” Socialist Register 2016

2015

2012 “Reaching Beyond the Net: Political Circuits and Participation in Toronto’s G20 Protests.” With Glenn J. Stalker. Social Movement Studies.

2012

2011 “Editorial” Interface. Special Issue on Repression and Social Movements.

2011

2011 “Communities Converging: A Story and a Strategy of the G20 protests in Toronto”, Upping the Anti 10

2011

2010 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” Journal of World Systems Research Special Issue. (Volume XVI, Number 1, 2010) pp 48-62.

2010

2008 “The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis,” with Luis A. Fernandez, Amory Starr, Randall Amster and Manuel J. Caro. Qualitative Sociology. Special Issue on Political Violence, 31:3 September 2008.

2008

2007 “Breaking the Wave: Repression, Identity and the Seattle Tactics” Mobilization 12:4. December 2007. 377-388.

2007

2004 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” Journal of World-Systems Research, pp. 3-23. Special issue: ‘Global Social Movements Before and After 9/11.

2004

2003 “Contentious Connections” in Social Movements and Networks. Relational Approaches to Collective Action. Pp. 147-172. Edited by Mario Diani and Doug McAdam, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York. By Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood.

2003

2002 “Target Practice: Community Activism in a Global Era.” in From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community-Building in the Era of Globalization. Pp. 21-34. Edited by Ronald Hayduk and Benjamin Shepard. Verso Publications, London. By Lesley Wood and Kelly Moore.

2002

Professional Journal Articles

Publication
Year

“G20 Policing in Toronto: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” Toronto Media Co-op, reprinted in Linchpin.ca

2010

2010 “Activist Lawsuits and Funding the Movement” Left Turn. Co-authored with Meredith Slopen, Daniel Lang, Joseph Phelan and Mac Scott.

2010

2008 “Activist Theorizing: Resources for Teaching, Research, and Political Work” Critical Mass: Section Newsletter of the Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section of the American Sociological Society. Fall 2008

2008

2008 “Remembering Charles Tilly,” Social Movement Studies, 7:225–246

2008

2007 “Grassroots Strategizing and The World Social Forum.” Upping the Anti 4.

2007

2006 “Roundtable on the Anti-War Movement” Upping the Anti 1.

2006

2004 “Capacity Building for Revolution,” New Socialist Magazine. With Mac Scott.

2004

2004 Coordinator and editor, “Organizing Against the Occupation: --US and Canadian anti-war activists speak out,” Social Movement Studies. Volume 3, Number 2, October 2004, pp. 241-257(17)

2004

2004 “Spaces of Solidarity - Infoshops, the Suburbs and the French Revolution,” New Formulation 2:2

2004

2003 “Where Have all the Detainees Gone?” in Left Turn Magazine, May/June Issue.

2003

Conference Papers

Publication
Year

2011 “Urine in Supersoakers: Intelligence Led Policing, Police Organizations, and the Militarization of Protest Policing.” European Sociological Association Meetings. Geneva, Switzerland.

2011

2011 Summit Protests and Local Contexts. Collective Behavior and Social Movements Workshop, American Sociological Association, Las Vegas.

2011

Context and Contradictions in Policing Toronto’s G20 Protests. Collective Behavior and Social Movements Workshop, American Sociological Association, Las Vegas

2011

“Context and Contradictions of Policing Toronto’s G20 Protests” Alternative Futures, Manchester UK

2011

2010 “Narratives of Weakness and Strategies for Endurance – An exploration of the US Anti-War Movement” Panel on Social Movement Theory, Canadian Sociological Association, Montreal.

2010

2009 “Activists After 9/11: Changed Conversations, Different Tactics” Alternative Futures, Manchester UK

2009

2009 “Spectacular Failures - Protest Policing and the Diffusion of Pepper Spray” Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting, San Francisco

2009

2008 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion” International Studies Association, San Francisco

2008

2008 “Moments of Openness: The Receptivity of Social Movement Organizations to New Ideas,” Roundtables on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting. Boston.

2008

2007 “Horizontalist Youth Camps and the Bolivarian Revolution: A Story of Blocked Diffusion ” CBSM Workshop, American Sociological Association, Hofstra University

2007

2006 “Does Surveillance Chill? The Impacts of Government Surveillance on Progressive Political Activity in the US, 1998-2006” Panel on Privacy, Surveillance and Civil Liberties. ASA Annual Meeting, Montreal. Co-author.

2006

2006 “Repressing Deliberation – Police Impacts on Activist Debates in New York and Toronto 1998-2002” Roundtables on Collective Action and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting.

2006

2006 “Shifting the Struggle: The World Festival for Youth and Students (1947 to 2005).” Panel on Transnational Activism. Americal Political Science Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia.

2006

2005 “We Who Resist: Deliberation, Codification and the Diffusion of Direct Action Tactics” Roundtables on Collective Action and Social Movements, ASA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia

2005

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” Colloque du GERMM “Les mobilizations altermondialistes,” Association francaise de science politique. Paris, France.

2003

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets,” Panel on Globalization, Protest, and Transnational Mobilization, ASA Annual Meeting, Atlanta

2003

2003 “Breaking the Bank and Taking to the Streets” History Matters Conference, New School University, New York

2003

2003 “Reclaiming the City, Changing the System,” Panel on Imagining Social Justice in the City: Theory and Research. Society for the Study of Social Problems Annual Meeting, Atlanta

2003

2002 “Bridging the Chasms, the Case of People’s Global Action”, Panel Participant in Coalitions Across Borders, International Studies Assn. Meetings, New Orleans

2002

2001 “Building an Oppositional Transnational Network” Panel Presentation, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC

2001

1999 “From A to Z: Transnational Solidarity and the Zapatistas”, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago

1999

Conference Proceedings

Publication
Year

“Alt-right and Antifa: Movement-countermovement dynamics in the Trump Era” in The Future of Social Movements in Canada. Ed. Robert Brym and Anna Slavina. Proceedings from the S.D. Clark Symposium. Rocks Mills Press

2019

Public Lectures

Publication
Year

“Temporary Autonomous Zones: Anarchist Gatherings, 1988-2017", Anarchism and the City, The City Talks Lecture Series; University of Victoria

2017

“Disruptive Strategies - Protest and Policing in the 21st century” Association for Monitoring Equal Rights, Istanbul

2016

“Anti-Immigrant Protests, Past and Present,” York Circle, York University

2016

“Being Useful” Graduate Student Workshop on Scholar Activism, Brock University

2016

46th annual Sorokin Lecture, “World on Fire: Waves of Protest Transforming Communities.” University of Saskatchewan

2015

Porter Lecture, "Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion." Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brock University, May 2014

2014

States, Social Movements and Beyond. International Conference “Sociology and History in the Works of Charles Tilly,” El Colegio de México, Mexico City. 28 May 2014.

2014

“Criminalizing Dissent: Democracy and the Security State” hosted by Ryerson Faculty Association.

2011

“Protest Policing in an Age of Empire”, Empire Workshop, York University

2011

Anarchism in the 21st century - power, praxis, process. Opening Plenary, North American Anarchist Studies Conference, Toronto.

2011

“Social movements, globalization and policing", Panel on Human Rights and Social Justice: Research Matters Series, Dean’s Office, York University

2011

“Policing protest and Criminalizing Dissent - the G20 and Beyond” Laurentian University, Sudbury

2010

“Communities Converging: A Story and a Strategy of the G20 protests in Toronto”, Guest lecture, University of Pittsburgh

2010

“Squats, Street Theatre and Radical Marching Bands, Don Heights Unitarian Congregation. Toronto.

2010

Approach to Teaching


A friend once told me that you can't teach anyone anything, you can only show them how you learn, and help them to learn. Along these lines, four things are central to how I learn.. First, I believe that people already know a great deal. I try to connect people's experience and knowledge of the world with existing theory and research. Second, I believe that theory and method are intimately connected. Third, I believe that ordinary people can and do change the world through collective action. Understanding collective action is thus central to my approach. Fourth, I believe that most of our education is about learning how to read and write effectively, and that these are lifelong skills.


Current Courses

Term Course Number Section Title Type
Winter 2024 GS/SOCI6711 3.0 M Social Movements SEMR
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/SOCI1020 6.0 A Pleasure and Trouble LECT
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/SOCI4100 6.0 A Field Placement SEMR