This book analyses dissent and its manifestations in movements of social and political transformation across communities and cultures. It shows how these movements create ruptures in the structures of power, and social hierarchy; expressed through songs, slogans, poetry and performances. The chapters in the book explore these sites of transgression and the imprint they leave on culture, politics, beliefs and the collective society – via music and poetry as in the Bhakti movement or through feministic theories born in post-World War Europe. It also explores how these dynamic movements generate alternate spaces within which the self, identity and collective purpose take new forms and find new meanings as they travel. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities, literature, history, sociology, politics and culture studies.

Dissent and the Dynamics of Cultural Change: Lessons from the Underground Presses of the Late Sixties, examines alternative presses’ critique of culture at a time of infamous transformation and revolution in the United States. In this new study, author Matthew Pifer seeks to delineate the structure of dissent to better understand how cultural change is realized, and explores the relationships between the public and those cultural institutions that define the values and social norms that shaped daily life.