Rebel Friendships: "Outsider" Networks and Social Movements - Hardcover

by Benjamin Shepard (Author)

Rebel Friendships considers the interplay between individuals and their friendships with social movements. The intersections between individual and community, the ways we experiment with social change, explore, create, and reduce the harms of modern living are the work of social movements. Yet, the process is rarely simple. Through auto-ethnographic reflections of experiences with the Beats, ACT-UP, Occupy Wall Street, anti-consumer, queer rights, and non-polluting transportation movements Shepard explores the way friendship infuses social movements with the social capital necessary to move bodies of ideas forward. Such innovation is rarely seen in more institutionalized social arrangements. Rebel Friendships offers a new take on the ties between friends who are connected through affinity and efforts aimed at social change.

Author Biography

Benjamin Shepard is Associate Professor at New York City College of Technology at the City University of New York, USA.