Conceptualizing contexts or contextualizing concepts? On some issues of the modeling of relational spaces in the study of collective action

Abstract

ABSTRACT The growing attention paid to the relational spaces of collective action is good news. It owes a lot to the legacy of interactionism and allows us to more accurately grasp the relevant contexts of protest that cannot be subsumed solely under big contexts such as political opportunity structure, economy, and so on. One can however worry about the never-ending succession of paradigms – more often acronyms – in the subfield of social movement studies. ‘Context’ issues are in fact linked to the very status of explanation in social sciences, and to the unequal nomological (or conversely more historical) ambitions of social sciences – a debate that is far from being settled. This article insists on this underlying epistemological debate, before highlighting different aspects of what is at stake in the way relational contexts of collective action should be considered: relational understanding of strategies, the link between mobilizations and transformations in and between social spaces, and the role and types of differentiation of society. Here, the classical (but barely translated) work of Michel Dobry appears as particularly useful in order to better understand contexts, if we consider them at the same time through interactions and the differentiation of society. But far from pleading for a new magic bullet, the article intends to support a more historically contextualized approach of social movements that is less interested in the establishment of laws than the understanding of the consequences of specific forms of social differentiations. This understanding could ultimately lead to a good definition of what relevant context of collective action might be.