Social Movement Scholars Research Articles

Caste Inequality in Indian States

Caste is arguably one of the most important factors that determines social and economic outcomes in India. Few studies, however, have systematically examined caste-based inequality comparatively. This note measures contemporary levels of caste inequality in Indian states by conceptualizing equality in three distinct ways: i) equality of outcome, measured through differences in income by caste ii) equality of opportunity, as reflected in caste-based difference in literacy rates, and iii) equality of status, reflected in the prevalence of inter-caste marriage, practices of untouchability, and violence against lower castes. As scholars of social movements predict, I find that the southern states are indeed more egalitarian in most measures of caste-based inequality. But contrary to expectation, the three measures are not highly correlated. A closer interpretation of the results suggests that this discrepancy may be because differences in social transformation across states. Regions where caste-based hierarchy is challenged may reflect higher levels of social conflict.

Property Lawfare: Historical Racism and Present Islamophobia in Anti-Mosque Activism

This chapter concerns itself with the use of the law, legal institutions, and processes in anti-mosque activism and litigation to advance an social and political agenda that seeks to marginalize, if not expel, Islam and Muslims from mainstream America. It argues that even though anti-mosque activists who seek redress in courts most often lose, they “win by losing”— a phenomenon well theorized by law and social movement scholars. In other words, the strategy of litigating a narrow legal issue is not so much about winning the lawsuit but about using the courts to introduce social and political claims that further an Islamophobic agenda. Regardless of the legal outcome, anti-Muslim groups achieve significant results: their use of the law results in political consolidation of the anti-mosque movement, it keeps alive questions about Islam and Muslims’ ability to “belong” in the U.S., it demonstrates the willingness to fight for a dominant racial ordering that excludes minorities from some neighborhoods, and it forces the internalization of both social and material costs by the Muslim communities that go well beyond the costs of litigation. As critical race scholars and critical theorists have long argued, law itself is a political and indeterminate instrument. The “law is a central, if not the most central, participant in the broader project of Islamophobia.” Khaled Beydoun theorizes that Islamophobia from a legal perspective can be understood as three intersecting dimensions—private, structural, and dialectical. This chapter demonstrates this very intersectionality as it appears in anti-mosque activism. It analyzes how the private Islamophobia of community members can become galvanized into community action and through the use of the structures of the state (zoning commissions and courts) reinforce dialectical Islamophobia signaling that Muslims must explain, apologize for, and justify their actions even where those actions are entirely uncontroversial for other groups.

THE MEANING OF ACTION: LINKING GOAL ORIENTATIONS, TACTICS, AND STRATEGIES IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

Social movement scholars cite the importance of strategy as a critical component of collective action. But what is a movement strategy, and what role does it play in facilitating movement processes? We conceptualize strategy as both the reason for engaging in collective action as well as the tools used in the course of action. More than a rational means-ends calculation, strategy is inherently a meaning-making process, providing the movement and its participants a sense of purpose. Using the U.S. environmental movement as a case study, and employing a data-driven and inductive strategy that combines both computational and qualitative methods, we find that strategy emerges as organizations link their actions to their goal orientation: what level of society the organization views as the locus of change. We conclude by illustrating changes over time in attention to different movement strategies, highlighting strategic differences between organizations working together in the same social movement.

Understanding Employee Activism in the High-Tech Sector: A Comparative Case Analysis

In this paper, we use social movement theory to better understand the recent wave of employee activism in the high-tech sector. Through a comparative case examination of four recent examples at Microsoft, Google, Wayfair, and Amazon, our analysis focuses on three important aspects of employee activism – opportunity structures, tactics and mobilization, and outcomes. We find that activists who exploited multiple opportunity structures were more effective and that when managers provided a positive yet unsatisfactory response to initial activist demands, activists shifted from persuasive to more confrontational tactics. In addition, although none of these examples can be categorized as comprehensive victories for activists, we find that activists were successful in mobilizing large numbers of employees, generating significant media attention, and forcing employers to engage in some types of substantive organizational change. Taken together, our findings reveal that scholars of social movements and organizations can gain analytical leverage by expanding their views of opportunity structures; focusing on employee activism as more of a dynamic, negotiated process; and defining activist success along multiple dimensions in the context of corporations.

Which Identity Frames Boost Support for and Mobilization in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement? An Experimental Test

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has organized hundreds of disruptive protests in American cities since 2013 (Garza 2014; Harris 2015; Taylor 2016). The movement has garnered considerable attention from the U.S. media and is well recognized by the U.S. public (Horowitz and Livingston 2016; Neal 2017). Social movement scholars suggest that such robust mobilizations are typically predicated on clear social movement frames (Benford and Snow 2000; Snow et al. 1986). Tillery (2019b) has identified several distinct message frames within the social media communications of BLM activists. In this paper, we use a survey experiment to test the effect of three of these frames—Black Nationalist, Feminist, and LGBTQ+ Rights—on the mobilization of African Americans. We find that exposure to these frames generates differential effects on respondents’ willingness to support, trust, canvass, and write representatives about the Black Lives Matter movement. These findings raise new questions about the deployment of intersectional messaging strategies within movements for racial justice.

‘Building future politics’: projectivity and prefigurative politics in a Swedish social center

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the concept of prefigurative politics by sharpening the conceptual distinction between future-oriented prefiguration and projectivity. My research suggests that a social movement group’s orientation to the future is an important dynamic in how prefigurative action unfolds. Based on a case study of the Swedish autonomous collective Kulturkampanjen and the social center they built, Cyklopen, I analyze three dimensions of projectivity: reach (temporal extension into the short- or long-term future), contingency (perception of the future as fixed or flexible), and volition (a group moves toward the future or the future moves toward the group). This article is also an experiment in understanding how language can provide insight into the dynamics of prefiguration. I used a ‘projective grammars’ framework for qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes, newspaper articles, activist produced media (flyers, blog posts, zines, etc.), websites, and ephemera. I suggest that this analytic tool may help social movement scholars investigate projectivity and prefiguration more thoroughly.

Mapping movements: a call for qualitative social network analysis

Social network analysis (SNA) is an interdisciplinary method that takes as its starting point the premise that social life is created primarily and most importantly by relations and the patterns formed by these relations. While SNA is often associated with the quantitative analysis of network measures, we illustrate through our overall mapping of, and interpretation of the relations within the Denver food movement, the advantages of a qualitative approach. We bring together information from surveys, network diagrams, betweenness centrality measures, and interviews to offer an interpretive process that reveals both the structure and activist- and organization-level meanings to explain resource mobilization and collaboration. We propose that qualitative SNA allows researchers to (a) understand the context and content of network structures and (b) better interpret quantitative measures with additional qualitative data. Based on our findings, we additionally suggest that for social movement scholars, qualitative SNA offers a deeper understanding of how organizations collaborate to advance organizational and movement goals.

Review: First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles, by Damien M. Sojoyner

Review: First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles, by Damien M. Sojoyner

Rethinking the Link Between Structure and Collective Action. Capitalism, Politics, and the Theory of Social Movements

Social movement scholars have rarely paid attention to the transformations of capitalism as factors of social movement formation processes. This paper makes two different but complementary contributions. First, we provide a macro-social theory that connects the emergence of social movements to the capital circuit in order to embed social movement formation processes into the structural dynamics of capitalism. Exploring such dynamics is helpful to the understanding of social movements if one only looks at them by highlighting their socio-political—and not only merely economic—nature. Secondly, we show how and to what extent some institutional transformations involving the politics of advanced capitalist societies have been affected by the capital circuit and vice versa. More notably, we argue that these transformations have given rise to a political field centered on the ambivalence between two poles, namely, a regressive-oligarchic and a participative-mobilizing one, which is the domain of populist politics today.

Microfoundations of Framing: The Interactional Production of Collective Action Frames in the Occupy Movement

Social movement scholars have typically focused either on how social movements strategically use collective action frames to confront targets and mobilize supporters or on how targets respond to so...

Building Bridges: Social Movements and Civil Society in Times of Crisis

Social movement studies and studies on civil society and, related to them, studies on voluntarism and the third sector, are burgeoning fields of knowledge, which have, however, only rarely interacted with each other. In fact, social movement scholars have devoted little attention to the concept of civil society, not even when addressing issues of “social capital”. Vice versa, civil society scholars have, with few exceptions, not considered social movements as cognate phenomena. This is all the more puzzling as there is instead ample theoretical and empirical overlapping, which calls for the building of bridges between these fields of study. In political and media discourse some organizations, individuals or events are defined interchangeably as linked to either social movements or civil society. In the social sciences, however, the core conceptualizations have pointed towards different elements as characterizing these phenomena. In particular, social movement studies can contribute to the literature on voluntarism a toolkit of concepts and theory oriented to understand social and political conflicts, learning from the literature on voluntarism about conceptions and practices of solidarity. In this article, I will address some (potential) interactions between the two fields, looking at differences and similarities in the conceptualizations of the two phenomena as well as in their empirical analysis as they have developed in time. I will first of all address conceptualizations in these cognate fields with attention to their theoretical developments. Then, I will point towards some recent trends that have blurred the distinction between social movements and civil society, voluntarism and third sector policies, looking in particular not only at more established analyses of NGOization of social movements, but also, and especially, of what can be defined as an SMOization of civil society—that is, the hybridization of more established civil society organizations into social movement organizations, especially when facing politicization in times of crises and increasing criminalization of solidarity activities.

‘We will always be street’

I have learned much about the limits and transformative potential of the street, la calle, as a site of struggle from and with radical organizations fighting against state violence in the urban global South. In this essay, I draw from these experiences as I continue to accompany various street-level social movements in Colombia and Uganda. I draw attention to the street as a site where state violence is enacted in tangible forms across scales. I illustrate, through discussion of a particular mural project in Bogotá, the way the state exerts its power and presence in society as pitted against the image of the urban poor. I urge scholars of street-level social movements and state violence to continue to look at this space of antagonism between the street and the state as a productive analytical space for radical geography and social movement scholarship, while keeping in mind the illustrated tensions. Additionally, in future work, I suggest we take a closer look at the class contrasts in street-level justice-seeking; the street, as a political space of encounter, between people propelled by the emotive forces of indignation and rage in mass acts of justice-seeking and those propelled by the structural forces of inequality and violence.

Comparing collective actions beyond national contexts : ‘local spaces of protest’ and the added value of critical geography

ABSTRACT Comparative research has been rare in social movement studies and scholars who embark on this path are confronted with several analytical and methodological challenges. This paper offers an avenue for developing comparative analytics using ‘local spaces of protest’ as path for comparison. We first situate this concept vis-à-vis other models available (field, space, arena, networks). We then define the three dimensions of ‘spaces of protest’: specific aim prompting collective action; particular distribution of political actions along different poles (electoral, protest, concerted and participation) and specific scales of protest (local, societal or/and global/glocal). By invoking critical geography to enhance the definition of place and scales of actions, we propose a systematic set-up for comparison. The last part of the paper shows how this notion allows for the comparison of local social forums (gatherings of activists fighting against neoliberal globalization) in two societies, France and Québec. The data presented have been gathered during extensive fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted between 2010 and 2011.

Communication and Action: Re-Reading Habermas in the Age of Activism

The combined effects of digital communication technologies, political upheavals around the world, waves of powerful activism and protests have injected a new urgency into communication research. How communication theory is able to respond to this challenge is a matter of discussion, including the question of the adequacy of older theories to the new circumstances. This paper, aims to add to this discussion by returning to Habermas’s pragmatics, one of the 20th century communication classics, to reflect on how communication and other forms of action interact in campaigns for social change in the context of the growing reach of strategic communication and the growing role of social media in activism. This article starts by posing theoretical disjuncture as a problem shared by a number of communication subfields, such as public communication, public relations, communication for social change, and my particular example, development communication. The more recent scholarship, however, has moved away from this state of knowledge. Instead, scholars highlight the need to embrace non-linear models of communication for social change, and appear to embrace hybridity to deal with the theoretical confusion in the field. The analysis presented in this article aims to demonstrate that Habermas’s communication pragmatics works well to explicate complex campaigning practices in a consistent and yet theoretically expansive way. Re-reading Habermas makes it possible also to respond to the call articulated by social movement scholars to move beyond the limits of strategy and to recognize the importance of larger cultural conversations and scripts. Conceptualizing public campaigning as chains of speech acts, defined here as both linguistic and nonlinguistic acts, offers an analytical tool that works across different levels, spaces, and actors involved in social change efforts and that privileges communication as the explanatory mechanism for the contemporary social change praxis. Finally, returning to Habermas’s work underscores the importance of a valid position, rather than a desirable identity, from which to engage with others in the social world. This invites a clear and consistent focus on action and its basis (moral position) rather than on attributions ascribed to organizations and campaigners (identity). The key question thus shifts from ‘Do you like me/trust me sufficiently follow me?’ to a more substantial, ‘Is this a good thing to do?’.

Smartphones versus NHK? Mobilization strategies of the Japanese anti-nuclear movement under Abe’s restrictive media policy

ABSTRACTAgainst the background of Japan’s falling rank in the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom index, from 22 in 2011/12 to 61 in 2015, and a growing self-censorship within Japanese mainstream media since Prime Minister Abe took office in 2012, this article examines what media strategies are adopted by social movement actors and asks whether Internet-based media strategies replace contacts to mass media circles. Media coverage plays an important role in movement mobilization; however, the relationship between media and social movements is characterized by a power relationship leaning toward media actors, as social movement scholars such as Gamson and Wolfsfeld suggest. This article tackles these questions from the perspective of movement actors based on 24 qualitative semi-structured interviews with representatives of social movement organizations active in the anti-nuclear movement conducted in 2013 and 2014 in the Greater Tokyo Area. The results indicate that with growing public demand for alternative internet-based information by civic groups, movement organizations expand their activities in this realm while at the same time they do not neglect mass media contacts.

Civil society, the media and the Internet: changing roles and challenging authorities in digital political communication ecologies

ABSTRACT The digital transformation has had a profound impact on political communication. It has lowered the access barrier for actors to become publicly visible and reconfigured predominantly vertical flows of information into horizontal communication networks. Media-centric studies hold that these ‘hybrid media systems’ do not subvert the analogue order tout court, as the media still occupy a central role in selection and distribution processes. In contrast to this, social movement scholars interested in digital forms of mobilization show that civil society actors can directly engage their base and the wider public. Because of this focus, the status and role of the media in these connective efforts has remained largely neglected. This study extends the view of both media-centric and social movement research by asking how the media are included in civil society mobilization efforts online and what status and role they have. Analysing the online communication around the UK climate change debate over a 30-month period, we show that while the media account for a substantial amount of the actors in the networks generated by civil society actors and bloggers, they become more marginal with respect to the authority they command. Not only are they replaced by bloggers as focal points in these digital political communication ecologies, they become next to irrelevant in allocating visibility and attention to other actors. This has ambivalent consequences for democratic discourse, as online debates become more inclusive but also more fragmented, lacking common points of reference.

Rethinking neoliberalism, rethinking social movements

ABSTRACT Social movement scholars have not satisfactorily engaged with the concept and reality of neoliberalism. The growing academic consensus is that neoliberalism is a waning analytical category devoid of conceptual rigor, and therefore, inadequate for academic use. At the same time, research on neoliberalism repeatedly confirms the centrality of organized collective action in its ascent to global hegemony. Blurring the artificially constructed boundaries between politics and the academy, I propose an actor-centered approach to neoliberalism, shedding light on the mechanisms driving the term’s conceptual stretching and its exclusive usages by its political and intellectual foes. But I also probe social movement theory with the case of neoliberalism, understood as a peculiar type of movement: a transnational movement of market-fundamentalist intellectuals that, interestingly, relentlessly refrained from collectively asserting an ‘identity’. This makes neoliberalism a case ill-suited to canonical ways of describing social movements. Hence, my aim is to rethink not only neoliberalism but also to stretch a bit what we think movements are.

The recruitment functions of social ties: Weak and strong tie mobilization for 84 demonstrations in eight countries

Although recruitment is often studied by social movement scholars, the literature lacks an integrated account of what recruitment actually entails and there is disagreement about who the recruiters are (weak- or strong-tie contacts). This study develops a theoretical account of different recruitment “functions” that can be fulfilled by social ties and that enhance protest participation. Participants need to be informed about the protest event, many of them need to be persuaded before they join a demonstration, and most of them also want to have suitable company to attend the protest with. We expect that these three recruitment functions—information, persuasion, and company—are often fulfilled by the same social tie (homogeneous pattern). However, when this is not the case, we expect that strong ties become more important the closer one comes to actual participation (centripetal pattern). Drawing on individual-level information about more than 14,000 protesters, we find that these patterns are robust across 84 demonstrations in eight countries. Nevertheless, there are systematic differences across countries and across types of social movements. The centripetal recruitment pattern is significantly more apparent when people protest for socio-economic issues compared to when they participate in demonstrations on other, non-socio-economic issues.

Review of Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt by AK Thompson (AK Press)

In this series of essays written over the last decade, AK Thompson offers a critical assessment of the analytical foundation underwriting contemporary social movement politics. Methodologically and conceptually influenced by Walter Benjamin, Thompson looks to visual culture, everyday life, and collective street actions as crystallizations of the logics saturating our culture of revolt. Through generative critique, creative conceptual development, and a consistent orientation toward identifying politically possibility, Premonitions lays the groundwork for social movement scholars and activists alike to develop a conceptual toolkit for moving beyond the mere existence of struggle as an end in itself.

Reflections on academia, activism, and the politics of knowledge and learning

ABSTRACTThe significant contributions of knowledge produced in contemporary and historical social, political, and environmental struggles are often overlooked or overwritten by accounts by ‘experts’, including scholars of social movements and activism. Much of the writing on research for social change tends to assume that professionals with specialist academic training (perhaps employing certain methodologies that are claimed to be inherently emancipatory) do ‘activist scholarship’, but rarely engages with knowledge production from inside of social movements. Indeed, much of the work on ‘scholar-activism’ centres university faculty or graduate student efforts and experiences, implications for academic careers, scholarly credibility, and contributions to academic disciplines, rather than its use, relationship or relevance to struggles for change. In this article, I contend that we need to take the opportunity to learn from how organisers, activists and people in struggles think, learn, analyse and generate knowledge in the course of organising for progressive social change – beyond the sometimes self-referential loops of academic scholarship. In order to do so, we need to recentre understandings of activist scholarship that are not so primarily tied to university-based and produced knowledge.