Reconceptualizing Social Movement Abeyance: The Role of Internal Processes and Culture in Cycles of Movement Abeyance and Resurgence

Abstract

Questions of social movement emergence and decline have long been of interest to social movement analysts, but discussions related to social movement endurance are relatively new to the field. In this work, we explicitly adapt Verta Taylor's concept of abeyance to a local grassroots social movement organization (SMO), Solutions to Issues of Concern to Knoxvillians (SICK), that has endured for 18 years and achieved success in multiple campaign issues. Arguing that an unfavorable external political climate is not the only reason for an SMO to decline in mass membership and mass-based challenges, we use the concept of abeyance to explain the SMO's continuity as a product of internal SMO processes and organizational culture. Our findings indicate that the grassroots organization emerged, won considerable victories, and then continued to survive rather than disbanding. The SMO subsequently underwent two cycles of abeyance-and-resurgence, which we assess using Taylor's set of five characteristics of movement abeyance structures. We conclude that some of the abeyance structures are applicable to a grassroots movement while others are not.