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Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements Bill Moyer with JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley and Steven Soifer Philadelphia and Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2002.
Bill Moyer, the primary author of Doing Democracy, is a long time U.S. activist who has spent a good deal of time involved with and thinking about social movements in his country. He has worked with, among others, the anti-nuclear, anti-violence movements and with groups acting in solidarity with Aboriginal causes. He has also had long connections with George Lakey and the Movement foi a New Society organization based in Philadelphia. I became familiar with his work in the late 1980s when a housing advocacy organization brought him up to the Toronto area for a workshop to explore social housing as a social movement. At that point he had published two little pieces outlining, some ideas on successful social movements. While that material had some utility for academics-I and others have used it various classes-it was primarily a tool for social activists to ground their work and provide them with analytical perspective. He used both at the workshop and my memory is that we found them useful in assisting us to reflect on social movements in general and our activities in particular. The book he and his fellow authors have now produced has enlarged on the earlier work and seems to be aimed at a wider audience, including academics. There is some attention to connecting social movements to a theory base.
The first part covers the same areas that Moyer offered in his previous writings. It outlines what he calls the MAP theory which, while more description than explanatory, provides a clear and useful outline of the major issues and themes addressed throughout the rest of the book. A second chapter outlines four roles of social...
