Abstract
This article systematizes a research perspective that assesses how different types of social movement outcomes mutually influence one another over time. This should offer a different perspective on the consequences of social movements by shifting the focus from single outcomes to processes of social change that are generated by the interaction between different types of effects. The variety of ways in which movement outcomes potentially influence each other in the short-term, or over an extended period of time, will be broken down into six hypothetical processes. Empirically, through a process-tracing approach, in this article I investigate how the British state’s responses at policy level toward the disruptive mobilization of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland and to the armed campaign of the PIRA have shaped the post-movement lives of PIRA volunteers.
Highlights
Este artículo sistematiza una perspectiva de investigación que evalúa cómo los diferentes tipos de resultados de los movimientos sociales se influyen mutuamente en el tiempo
We need to broaden our view of the interrelated effects of social movement outcomes, beyond their blackand-white borders, to embrace a far wider range of possibilities through which collective action affects social change, and we need to look beyond short-term consequences to long-term changes (Sztompka 1995)
This article’s reading of the biographical outcomes of PIRA volunteers complements existing works on social movements’ activists; but it adds to it by demonstrating the mechanical effects of social change, how the British State’s public policies reshaped the context in which Republican politics were conducted, through voluntary and community activism for community regeneration, and the nature of the change these policies caused, rather than assuming that post-movement life was the consequence of militant activism and the end point in itself
Summary
Este artículo sistematiza una perspectiva de investigación que evalúa cómo los diferentes tipos de resultados de los movimientos sociales se influyen mutuamente en el tiempo. Social Movements and Interrelated Effects: The Process of Social Change in the Biographical Outcomes of Provisional IRA Volunteers. We need to broaden our view of the interrelated effects of social movement outcomes, beyond their blackand-white borders, to embrace a far wider range of possibilities through which collective action affects social change, and we need to look beyond short-term consequences to long-term changes (Sztompka 1995). Social movements that do not appear to be achieving their explicitly stated goals at policy level in the short term can, for example, achieve cultural effects or biographical impacts that may be fundamental to subsequent political changes, these effects might not be visible for years. The cultural changes prompted by the Sixties movement, and the civil rights movement in particular, had a long-term effect at a political level and contributed to the election of the first African-American president of the United States in the new millennium. Mobilizations lead to positive effects, but they can clearly do worse than failing to achieve their initial goals
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