Play, Creativity and Social Movements: If I Can't Dance, It's not My Revolution Benjamin Shepard … "Activism" and "social movements" typically conjure up images of serious encounters and debates, dour meetings, and endless strategy sessions, or what often appear to be sophomoric attempts to unsettle the status quo with no particular strategy behind them. But the images here are something else: they are moments of play that are endemic to social movements. Play is the experimental and sometimes joyful quality of activism in which participants imagine and enact new selves, social relationships, and means of politics. It can include self-conscious forms of playing – laughter and humor, theater and music - the spontaneous moments of resistance and liberation in the face of danger or victory, and the "making up" of new selves and forms of politics. Largely ignored by both the "rationalist" approaches that have dominated the study of American social movements, and the post-liberal "identity" frameworks that have characterized an essential part of all social movements… This book demonstrates the importance of play for understanding the trajectories and significance of contemporary social movements. Highly theorized but written in an accessible fashion, Play, Creativity and Social Movements illustrates the inventive and experimental qualities of activism…