Status Inconsistency and Participation in Social Movements: a Rejoinder to Bland and Wallis' Comments

Abstract

Bland and Wallis attend to our paper, and participation in social movements: an application of Goodman's hierarchical modeling, and we appreciate their interest. Yet their comments in several ways either miss the point of the paper, or misinterpret our statements. Consequently, we offer a rejoinder. Bland and Wallis' comments began with observations concerning the inconsistency method represented in our article, and moved to a broader criticism of the notion of status defense. Thus in much of their critique they address issues beyond the Sociological Quarterly article-issues represented in Zurcher and Kirkpatrick's book, Citizens for Decency: Anti-Pornography Crusades as Status Protest (1976). We prefer to structure our rejoinder by beginning with the broader theoretical concerns, and then moving to the specific numerical and inferential points. Bland and Wallis assert that there are substantial problems with the Wilson and Zurcher model for the escalation of social movement mobilization in connection with pornography. In the article, we make no claims to offering a but only a status analysis of participants in two anti-pornography crusades. Zurcher and Kirkpatrick (1976) do offer a model, or more correctly an overall framework, for the analysis of the crusades. That framework combines the perspectives of Smelser's value-added stages of collective behavior (1962), Gusfield's status protest notion (1963), Turner's work on determinants of social movement strategy (1970), Gamson's research on political efficacy and political trust (1968, 1969), Zald and Ash's studies of the characteristics of social movement organizations (1966), assorted studies of the location of social movement organizations in multi-organizational fields, and the influence of various demographic and ecological factors upon the generation of social movements. Over 80 variables are represented in that analytical scheme. Status defense is only one, albeit a central and important one. Bland and Wallis state, Examination of the most detailed account of the original study (Zurcher and Kirkpatrick, 1976) reveals that no data on experienced status discontent were gathered. In essence they create a straw man by isolating status defense from its place in the overall framework employed by Zurcher and Kirkpatrick. More importantly, Bland and Wallis are wrong in their criticism that no data on experienced status discontent were presented in Citizens for Decency. Two-thirds of the 400-page book present, in rather exhaustive detail, natural histories of the crusades based upon the crusaders' speeches, interview responses, memos, letters, and organizational documents. The crusaders are cited concerning what they themselves label as the opposi-