Teaching and Learning Guide for: Culture Within Sites, Culture as Resources, and Culture as Wider Contexts: A Typology of How Culture Works in Social Movement Theory

Abstract

Since the 1980s, sociologists examining social movements have largely agreed that culture, or the symbolic and expressive aspects of social life, matters in understanding social movements. Despite this, we often mean very different things when we talk about culture in our analyses of social movements. To help clarify some of the discrepancies, I present a typology of three prominent ways that scholars have understood culture as shaping collective action. These ways are as follows: (i) by rendering particular sites fruitful for social movements to mobilize out of; (ii) by serving as resources that assist in movement action; and (iii) by providing wider contexts that shape movement activity. These analytical building blocks help us to examine what we understand culture as “doing” in our work. Below, I present a number of useful books and articles that demonstrate thoughtful takes on culture and social movements, along with several other resources useful for teaching a class on collective action and social movements.