Freeze Movement Research Articles

Managing dissent in the Catholic Church: A reinterpretation of the pastoral letter on war and peace

As a political statement, the Catholic bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace has been interpreted as an endorsement of the nuclear freeze movement andas a bold challenge to the policies of the Reagan Administration. Yet in its religious context, the letter reasserted the bishops’ authority to define Church teachings on war and peace, and it forcefully repudiated the theological and political “revisionism” of the Catholic New Left. As a response to Catholic antinuclear activists, the pastoral letter is not at all a “radical” statement. Within the Church, it functioned rhetorically not to foster but to manage dissent.

Rice and Fall of the Washington

During the heady days of Reagan's first term, the freeze movement brought new energy and influence to the Washington arms control establishment Then the newcomers settled in, and the infighting began.

Leadership and Membership in the Nuclear Freeze Movement: A Specification of Resource Mobilization Theory

Participation in social movement activities is distinguished from occupancy of leadership positions in social movement organizations. Two alternative theoretical models derived from the resource mobilization literature, the progression and circulation models, are summarized and their implications regarding participation and leadership are specified. Hypotheses are enumerated for the explanatory factors of individual's self-interest and resources; attitudes, beliefs, and ideology; past organizational experience; background characteristics; and the nature of the association of the individual to the organization. Particular attention is paid to areas where the theoretical models indicate different relationships between the explanatory factors and the outcome variables of participation level and leadership status, and critical tests between the two models are specified. The hypotheses and critical tests are applied to data gathered from a survey of participants in the Cleveland nuclear freeze organization. Self-interest, resource and background characteristics are not found to be associated with either participation level or leadership status. Past experiences and beliefs are important in determining participation levels whereas leadership status is largely explained by the nature of organizationalindividual association. The results of the critical testing indicate the circulation model fits the data better than the progression model. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed and some additional factors helpful in explaining the results are considered. Why do people spend time, effort, and resources on activities that do not typically hold much promise of individual return or tangible compensation? This question has plagued social movement theorists, who have developed several varieties of explanation ranging from material incentives to interpersonal rewards to pure altruism. This article reports a test of hypotheses deduced from two competing theories which explain individuals' varying levels of active involvement and leadership status in the nuclear weapons freeze movement-a movement yielding few, if any, immediate or tangible rewards to its participants.

The Planet of the Apes: The Fable of the Hundredth Monkey in Anti-Nuclear Discourse

This essay examines a fable current in the discourse of the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980's, that of the “Hundredth Monkey,” and shows through the analysis that Aristotle's classification of ...

Participants in the nuclear weapons freeze movement

Explanations of why people participate in social movements are usually ad hoc combinations of ideology, social support, and ecological factors. This survey of Californians active in the nuclear freeze movement found that rather than structural isolation, as suggested by collective behavior tradition, the participants displayed links to Democratic Party organizations and the previous anti-Vietnam War movement. At least some social movements may become institutionalized to the degree that paradigms from areas such as political sociology of institutions are needed. Social movements may have evolved beyond their earlier collective behavior origins.

The effectiveness of reagan's “star wars” address

Abstract This essay evaluates the effectiveness of President Ronald Reagan's ‘'Star Wars” address of March 23, 1983. The essay identifies three main audiences for U.S. defense policy rhetoric—the general public, experts, and foreign governments—and examines the appeal of the speech for each audience. It concludes that the address was effective for the general public, primarily as a response to the nuclear freeze movement. However, the speech was much less effective, and perhaps counterproductive, as an appeal to expert and foreign audiences. Consequently, the long‐term prospects for the Strategic Defense Initiative may have been hurt by the speech. It focused unnecessary attention on strategic defense research and development efforts and triggered heated debates on these issues long before the deployment decision must be made.

The Nuclear Freeze and the Politics of Illusion

The advent of the Reagan administration brought about a radically new approach to the issue of nuclear arms control. Some have said that this new approach is really going to destroy the process altogether, while others believe it to be a more realistic and thus more promising opportunity for real arms reduction. One of the negative reactions has been the rise of the nuclear freeze movement. The constituent groups of this movement are diverse but share a common trait: they depend on, or deal in, illusion. For that is what arms control was under SALT, and is under the freeze. These groups are a large number of more or less sophisticated but genuinely concerned and fearful citizens; a group of opportunistic politicians; and the arms control community-in-exile. Unless and until these groups recognize the failures of the past and the necessity of abandoning self-delusion, we will inevitably repeat our mistakes, and arms control will again put form before substance.

Physicists expand role in nuclear arms debate

The American Physical Society recently rejected a proposal that it formally join the nuclear freeze movement. It also rejected a proposal that it should support the no-first-use policy. However, the 33,000-member organization, the largest in the physics community, has supported the spirit of both positions by adopting through its council a strongly worded resolution that calls for the reversal of the arms race, a negotiated end to nuclear weapons testing, and disavowal of military doctrines that treat nuclear explosives as ordinary weapons of war. The new resolution seemingly reflects an increasingly widespread conviction among physicists that they bear a special responsibility to contribute toward the control and eventual elimination of the nuclear weapons they created and continue to develop. A growing number of physicists are of the opinion that they cannot leave it up to medical and church groups to lead the search for solutions to the nuclear arms race. This enhanced involvement of APS ...

LORD ROTHSCHILD, AFRIKANER SCABS AND THE 1907 STRIKE: A STATE-CAPITAL DAGUERROTYPE

STATE, organized white labour and capital were in an intense state of flux in South Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century. Not only was the outcome uncertain, but the rules of the game themselves had still to be established. In this respect, the situation of white labour in South Africa then was analagous to the situation of black labour today. The white miners' strike on the Witwatersrand in 1907 is important precisely because of its role in determining the rules of the game which have endured in most essential aspects until the present. The strike is treated here as a snapshot of the emerging state-capital relationship. Snapshots clearly have weaknesses: they freeze movement and they tend to overemphasize black and white tones. On the other hand, as with some wedding photographs, they can also capture a developing relationship at that crucial moment when it begins to crystallize into an enduring pattern. This does not exclude flux and change in the subsequent relationship-as the marriage analogy should make clear-but it does enable one to make a rough distinction between family quarrels and genuine wars. The distinction is as important to understanding contemporary South Africa as it is to understanding the events of 1907. There have been very real disputes between Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and D. F. Malan, or Harry Oppenheimer and Dr H. F. Verwoerd; but these disputes cannot be fully understood unless they are seen to be between contenders who, however reluctantly, are wedded to each other. The marriage of state and capital in South Africa's industrial heartland was solemnized in 1907 after many years of tentative wooing and many breaches of promise. It is still intact.' The 1907 white miners' strike on the Witwatersrand began on Knight's Deep mine on 1 May. It spread throughout the gold fields and reached its peak by late May, when well over 20 per cent of all white miners, according to official figures, were on strike. The strike was then met by the combined onslaught of capital and state: about 1,250 Afrikaner strike-breakers were recruited, mining regulations were bent to allow unqualified men to do certificated work, and miners' meetings and pickets were violently broken up by Imperial troops called