Bringing Down Divides: Special Issue Commemorating the Work of Gregory Maney (1967 - 2017)

The 43rd Volume of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change continues the series’ tradition of publishing peer reviewed chapters, which advance our understanding of peace, political contention, and social change, by offering new ways to research and theorize attempts to challenge divides. Dedicated to the memory of Gregory M. Maney, Bringing Down Divides engages with and continues Maney’s work on international conflicts, peace and justice movements, and community-based research.

The volume is organized around three types of divides:

Attributional divides, meaning the quality or feature of people around which resources, rights, and powers are distributed unequally, such as race, gender, and ethno-nationality.
Ideological divides which encompass the systems of meaning, ideas, and beliefs that split and polarize people, such as conservative vs. progressive and antiwar vs. pro-war. Epistemological divides, namely the types, productions, and usages of knowledge over which conflicts occur, such as the academic-activist divide.

The contributions to each of these sections focus on a variety of global issues, including the changing nature of political murals in Northern Ireland; armed actors’ responses to civilian demands in Colombian peace territories; boundary-blurring in Turkey’s leftwing-Islamist movement; and community-based action research. This makes Bringing Down Divides essential reading for those working and researching within the social movement field.