Mobilization as a Macrosociological Conception

Abstract

mobilization. The concept first was employed to refer to the shifting of resource control from private-civilian to public-military hands. More recently it has been applied to a society's or some other collectivity's deliberate change in the control-of other resources, such as new nations' mobilization for development, regional organizations' mobilization for political unification, and the civil rights movement's mobilization of apathetic citizens. The common characteristic of all these processes is that they entail a transformation of the social unit involved. As mobilization advances, as the unit commands more resources, and as more of the available total resources are used jointly rather than individually, the unit increases its ability to act collectively. Capacity to utilize resources, not legal ownership or title to benefits, is what really matters. (A mere increase in resources of members or sub-units or even of the unit does not make for mobilization, though it increases the mobilization potential; only mobilization is the process through which resources, old or new, are made available for collective action, by changing their control. An affluent unit might be thus less mobilized and less able to act than one poor in resources.) * Amitai Etzioni B.A. M.A. PH.D. Professor of Sociology, Columbia University t This article is an outgrowth of a project conducted under a Social Science Research Council grant. The subject is explored within the context of a theory more fully presented in the author's The Active Society: a Theory of Societal and Political Processes (New York: Free Press, 1968)