Courageous Citizens: How Culture Generates Social Change

This book highlights the change-making capacity of culture by exploring the intellectual and practical interventions of "courageous citizens." These citizens can be thinkers, artists, activists, and collectives—those whose thoughts, ideas and actions play a pivotal role in the struggle for just societies. It is these change-makers who, through their everyday efforts, work toward a collective future and complex societal reconfigurations. Looking back at the past decade, this book identifies three themes which have been, and continue to be, relevant to social change: identity and diversity; culture, communities, and democracies; and solidarity and fragmentation. Courageous citizens have activated cycles of thinking and rethinking, doing and changing, which have altered the way we view the world. Combining theoretical perspectives with case studies, this book aims to demonstrate exactly how cultural actors generate positive social change. With texts by John Akomfrah, Rosi Braidotti, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Bojana Cveji, Fatima El-Tayeb, Pascal Gielen, Stuart Hall, David Harvey, Ivan Krastev, Wietske Maas, Marina Naprushkina, Lia Perjovschi, Saskia Sassen, Ana Vujanovi, Katherine Watson, and Forensic Architecture. Edited by Bas Lafleur, Wietske Maas, and Susanne Mors Designed by Elisabeth Klement and Jan Tomson Published by Pia Pol and Astrid Vostermans / Valiz, 2018 Softcover, 272 pages, 20 color images, 6.75 × 9 inches ISBN: 978-9-49-209551-0