[lbo-talk] insurgency, opposition, and tactical innovation

[shag carpet bomb]

This is an old article by Doug McAdam, a sociologist of social movements, 
who I have often referred to on-list. McAdam argued in Freedom Summer, for 
instance, that while Freedom Summer may have, at times, felt like a 
failure, it was during this experiment that people learned organzing skills 
they took with them to ignite or contribute to other efforts such as free 
speech movement, women's liberation, and so forth.

In this article, from 1983, McAdam shows how tactical innovations among 
insurgents emerged only to be supressed by opponents. It's a pattern with 
which we are all familiar but is given a longer historical view here:

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy428/McAdam83.pdf

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