Social Movement Identity Research Articles

Protests and Policies: How Radical Social Movement Activists Engage with Climate Policy Dilemmas

How do radical movements seeking fundamental social change engage with nearer-term policy dilemmas? Disciplinary boundaries and practical obstacles have limited research into protester policy engagement. Using a hybrid method combining participant-observation and expert-led focus groups, we document activist attitudes concerning controversial climate policy options. Data gathered at ‘Climate Camps’ in six national contexts are presented alongside evidence from similar ‘participant-instigator’ events at Green Party conferences. We find activists engaged in direct action outside the established political system had policy knowledge and agendas comparable to or surpassing those active within the system. Support for radical change appears correlated with – rather than opposed to – knowledge and interest in policy agendas. As climate protests escalate it is important to understand ‘protester policy engagement’ – the processing, production and communication of changes proposed from a position outside the established political system and to theorise this with, rather than in contradistinction to, social movement identity.

MEMORY IN MOVEMENT: COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND MEMORY CONTESTATION IN HONG KONG'S TIANANMEN VIGILS

Collective memory shapes collective identity in social movements, yet the cultural process of transforming collective memory into collective identity and actions is anything but linear. While preserving an established historical narrative can maintain movement solidarity, this process is actively contested by multiple actors, which may weaken solidarity and disrupt mobilization. Why does the memory process facilitate collective identity building at one point but not another? What accounts for its success and failure in mobilizing through memories? This article studies the three-decade commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Hong Kong to unpack the memory making in movements. We argue that collective-identity building is shaped by the interaction between the repository of memories and the repertoires expressing them. Although the performative repertoire of the vigil has long bestowed moral power to memories of the Tiananmen crackdown, this repertoire is contested by competing repertoires, even though the memory itself is not disputed. Our findings highlight the performative and filtering role of repertoires in reproducing collective memory. They also reveal a dynamic and nuanced relationship between collective memory and identity, especially the mediating factors at work.

The Language of Student Power and Space:: Building a Spatialised Social Movement Identity in East Pakistan, 1948–1954

This article traces the emergence and development of a student political identity in post-colonial East Pakistan as it coalesced around the Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolan). It further argues that the collective student political identity was directly tied to the development of the Dhaka University campus as a contentious movement space. The politicisation of the students and the campus operated in a mutually constitutive dynamic in which students both defined, and were defined by, their physical control of the campus space and in spatialised ritual practices memorialising deceased student activists as political martyrs. This case study provides a salient example of the interconnected relationship of urban space, collective identity, and social movements.

White Women Wanted? An Analysis of Gender Diversity in Social Justice Magazines

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable leftist movements also known to exhibit diversity strains. A content analysis of Nonhuman Animal rights, women’s rights, and gay rights magazine covers spanning from 2000 to 2012 was undertaken to determine the manifestation of gender, race, body type, and sexualization. We find that the Nonhuman Animal rights media in our sample overwhelmingly portrays white women with a tendency toward thinness, but with low levels of sexualization as comparable to that of the other movements. All three movement samples unevenly depicted gender, overrepresented whites, and underrepresented non-thin body types.

Comparing Two Measures of Social Movement Identity: The Environmental Movement as an Example

ObjectiveWe compare the relative performance of two measures of identification with the environmental movement: a self‐identified environmentalist indicator and an environmental movement identity indicator.MethodsWe utilize data from the March/April 2000–2010 Gallup Polls to examine how these two measures of identification with the environmental movement are related to membership in environmental organizations, attitudes toward the environmental movement, and private and public environmental behaviors.ResultsWhile both indicators similarly predict self‐reported private environmental behaviors, the environmental movement identity indicator is more strongly associated with membership in environmental organizations and attitudes toward the environmental movement, and the self‐identified environmentalist indicator is more strongly associated with self‐reported public environmental behaviors.ConclusionsGiven the performance of the environmental movement identity measure, we lay out an agenda for future research using a slightly revised version of the indicator to investigate identification with a range of social movements via surveys of nationally representative samples of the general public.

The Dilemmas of Social Movement Identity and the Case of the Voice of the Faithful

This article focuses on the dilemmic nature of identity for challengers within organizations and on their emergent responses. It is based on ethnographic research of one affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, a group of Catholics that formed in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The abiding faith of the group and their commitment to change the church created a dilemma that encapsulates the central question of this article: how do challengers pursuing change of an institution balance commitment and critique, mainstream membership and otherness? Internal challengers manage these dilemmas by rescripting existing stories and telling novel ones to navigate group boundaries and formulate new understandings of their individual and collective pasts, presents, and futures. We trace the ways in which challengers work through contradictions and ambiguity in their emergent identities. This provides an opportunity to explore the existential dimensions of collective identity and focus on the processual nature of storytelling.

Politics of the encounter: Cognition, emotions, and networks in the Spanish 15M

This article seeks to analyze the mobilizations that are currently taking place in Spain as a result of the multidimensional crisis unleashed in 2008. The authors study the ‘15M movement,’ or that of the Spanish indignados, by focusing on three analytical axes: the cognitive, emotional, and relational processes feeding the construction of a social movement identity. First, the article refers to the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing tasks performed by 15M participants to define the problematic situation and attribute blame, articulate a solution to the problem and devise strategies to achieve that end, and motivate participants to sustain their engagement and remedy the situation. Second, the article concentrates on the emotions that were ‘mobilized’ by social movement organizations linked to the 15M (e.g. outrage or indignation), and those emotions that emerged spontaneously during the ‘encounters’ that took place in the public space: joy, efficacy, and empowerment. Finally, the article addresses the relational aspects entailed in the process of identity construction, that is, the activation and de-activation of both ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ ties between 15M members and previous and/or current political and social collectives within the ‘progressive field.’ In following this triple objective, the article describes the process of identity-synchronization that has allowed people with no previous political participation and with different and oftentimes opposing politico-ideological trajectories to feel part of the movement. The data come from 17 in-depth interviews and eight focus groups with key activists, ethnographic observations in camps and assemblies in both Bilbao and Madrid during the summer of 2011, and visual materials displayed in web pages and Facebook accounts associated to the 15M.

International Human Rights Law and Social Movements: States' Resistance and Civil Society's Insistence

This review examines recent scholarship on the rise of international human rights law and proposes that social movements have played critical roles both in elevating the standards of human rights in international law and in leveraging these standards into better local practices. Institutionalization of universal human rights principles began in the immediate post–World War II period, in which civil society actors worked with powerful states to establish human rights as a key guiding principle of the international community and to ensure the actors' continuing participation in international human rights institutions. The subsequent decades saw various hurdles arise in international politics, but civil society actors skillfully used the small openings that they had gained to continue to advance the cause of human rights. They held powerful governments accountable to their lofty promises about human rights and worked with sympathetic governments in the UN system to continuously upgrade the standards of international human rights. They also leveraged human rights laws toward better local practices, taking advantage of new political opportunities created by human rights laws, using expanding international channels to increase flows of human and material resources, embracing globally legitimated vocabularies of human rights to frame their movements, and integrating the broad cultural effects of human rights laws to construct new social movement identity and actorhood. The review then points out some potential pitfalls of international human rights laws: professionalization of movement actors, which can undermine the impact of social movements and lead to less ambitious and transformative goals; privileging of some causes over others, which can lead to demobilization around certain issues; and overextending movement goals, which can give rise to strong backlash against human rights principles.

Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates

The concept of collective identity has been used extensively by social movement scholars seeking to explain how social movements generate and sustain commitment and cohesion between actors over time. Despite its wide application, collective identity is a notoriously abstract concept. This article focuses on the use of the concept in the literature on contemporary social movements and offers a comprehensive theoretical overview. The central elements of collective identity in the social movement literature are developed, and some key differences in interpretations are highlighted. Finally, some contemporary debates around the continuing usefulness and limitations of the concept of collective identity are explored, with a special emphasis on the challenges of applying the concept to movements that define themselves in terms of heterogeneity, diversity and inclusiveness.

Social Movement Identity and Belief Systems: An Examination of Beliefs about Environmental Problems within the American Public

Using six years of Gallup data, we examine the effects of environmental movement identity on several characteristics of environmental problem belief systems within the general public. We find that the environmental problem belief systems of self-identified active participants in the environmental movement exhibit greater consistency, greater consensus, and less position extremity than do those of individuals unsympathetic to the environmental movement. Future research on identification with and involvement in movements may benefit from utilizing our self-reported measure of social movement identity. Such an analytical strategy not only complements the practice of studying members of movement organizations, but also provides a more efficient means for examining the full range of variation in public support for a movement and easily allows for the comparative analysis of multiple movements.

Social Movement Identity: Validating a Measure of Identification with the Environmental Movement*

Objective.We offer an empirical measure of “social movement identity” vis‐à‐vis the environmental movement. Our measure of environmental movement identity complements existing efforts to measure the ambiguous concept of “environmental identity.”Methods.We utilize data from a 2000 Gallup Poll of 1,004 adults to examine relationships between our measure of environmental movement identity and self‐reported membership in environmental organizations, assessments of the environmental movement, and self‐reported pro‐environmental behaviors.Results.The measure appears to have face validity, and our results suggest it also has construct and predictive validity since it is related to environmental organization memberships, assessments of the environmental movement, and self‐reported pro‐environmental behaviors—even when controlling for relevant sociopolitical characteristics.Conclusions.The measure is useful for analyses of the environmental movement, can be adapted for research on other movements, and can help social movement analysts respond to calls to investigate linkages between public opinion and movement dynamics.

The Emotional Contradictions of Identity Politics: A Case Study of a Failed Human Relations Commission

This case study of the birth and death of a human relations commission in California contributes to our understanding of the emotional stakes of social movement participation and the meaning of multiculturalism in the U.S. post–civil rights era. The research indicates the extent to which resonant movement frames are necessary for movement success and how their absence can cause emotional harm to movement adherents. In this account of institutional activism, the frameworks of human relations and multiculturalism—simultaneously affective and amorphous— attracted participation but produced a harmful emotional climate and ultimately proved insufficient to inspire collective identity and action. Thus, instead of transforming social movement behavior, the state project of human relations deployed here succeeded in invigorating entrenched grievances and identities. Other factors, such as leadership, social movement identity work, and the “emotion culture” of movements are also discussed. Findings presented herein are based on one year of participant observation, twenty-four interviews, and analysis of public records.

Bringing The Outsiders In: Opponents' Claims and The Construction of Animal Rights Activists' Identity

Most research on the role of identity in social movements treats identity as something that is constructed solely by movement participants themselves. However, participants are not the only actors involved in this identity construction. This article uses basic insights from symbolic interactionism to argue that external claims, or claims made about movement participants by those outside the movement, also shape activists' sense of identity. Using data collected during three years of fieldwork with members of a non-violent animal rights organization, I show how the activists made use of their opponents' depictions of them—in particular, charges that the activists were "overly emotional" and "irrational"—when describing themselves. Specifically, I illustrate two processes by which these external claims left their mark on the activists' identity: identity disconfirmation and identity recasting. More broadly, I suggest that "bringing the outsiders in" to examinations of identity and collective action provides a more complete picture not simply of identity construction but of movement dynamics as a whole.

Mass Belief Systems Revisited: Political Change and Attitude Structure

* This paper owes a great debt to my students in the National Opinion Research Center Training program, who did much to rekindle my interest in ideology. I would also like to thank Sidney Verba and Kenneth Prewitt for their intellectual contributions at various stages. The first draft of the paper was written while I was a research Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. I would like to express my appreciation to the Fulbright Foundation for support during this period and to the University of Leiden for supporting the research. Additional support for myself and for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant GS 3155 and the Twentieth Century Fund. The data reported in this article come from seven separate surveys and the organization and presentation was a mammoth job in data management. This task could not have been accomplished without the efforts of Carol Ann Lugtigheid, Eric Lugtigheid, John R. Petrocik, Jaap Rozema, and Jaap van Poelgeest.