Social Movement Literature Research Articles

The Advantaged Cause: Affect Control Theory and Social Movements

The role of grievances in drawing public concern and activist support is a surprisingly understudied topic in modern social movement literature. This research is the first to parse issues into core components to understand whether some grievances are more successful than others in evoking reactions that can benefit social movements. Specifically, I use concepts and measures developed by affect control theory scholars that tap into cultural perceptions of the goodness or badness of behaviors and identities to investigate how people react to different configurations of good or bad perpetrators, behaviors, and victims in mobilizing events. I find strong support, across outcomes, that evaluations of goodness and badness in grievances affect people’s willingness to care about an issue or support a campaign. This provides insights into both the types of movements more likely to be successful as well as the types of social problems less likely to draw public support.

Demonstrating Success: Identity, Emotions, and Risk in the “Trianon Demonstration” in Melbourne

AbstractThis article reexamines the concept of successful outcome and its relation to collective social action. Specifically, it looks at a demonstration organized by Australian‐Hungarian community members in Melbourne, Australia, in 2005 that failed to meet any of its original goals, yet was nonetheless perceived as a success by participants. In order to make sense of this seeming disjuncture, I argue we need to understand the protest as a performance through which protestors’ emotional transformations were able to alter both the meaning and the content of the collective action. More specifically, I argue that the performance of identity and the perception of risk were key factors contributing to participants’ perception of the demonstration's success. Drawing on ethnographic data highlighting protestors’ experiences and interpretations, this article blends social movement literature on emotions and identity with theories on risk in order to rethink how we evaluate mobilization outcomes and participant perceptions.

Lobbying the state or the market? A framework to study civil society organizations’ strategic behavior

AbstractThis article lays out a framework for the conditions under which a civil society organization lobbies the state and when it turns to the market. This strategic choice cannot be understood solely from within current frameworks of lobbying strategies; insights from interest group studies must be complemented with the social movement literature's understanding of market‐based strategies. We build an overarching framework by extending the inside and outside lobbying dichotomy to include strategies that target the market. We also argue that it is crucial to understand the relations between both lobbying venues, as their relative power affects the choice not only between inside or outside lobbying, but also between the state or the market. The result is a richer framework more suited to capture the breadth of contemporary civil society organization lobbying behavior and, more importantly, to facilitate the comparative assessment of different strategic choices in future empirical research.

The leadership component of Kelly’s mobilisation theory: Contribution, tensions, limitations and further development

This reassessment of Kelly’s analysis of the relationship of activist leadership to collective action within the overall jigsaw of mobilisation theory draws on social movement literature, studies by industrial relations scholars utilising aspects of Kelly’s approach – including this author’s own work – and related research on union leadership within collective mobilisation. In the process, it identifies and celebrates how Kelly’s work, whilst contributing a distinct and substantive actor-related approach, recognised that leadership is one ingredient amongst other factors, including important structural opportunities and constraints. It considers three potential ambiguities/tensions within Kelly’s conceptualisation of leadership related to the social construction of workers’ interests, spontaneity of workers’ action and the ‘leader/follower’ interplay. The review also identifies two important limitations, related to the union member/bureaucracy dynamic and the role of left-wing political leadership, and concludes by signalling different forms of leadership relationships on which further refinement and development would be fruitful.

Immigrant rights and social movements

AbstractThe disciplinary fields of immigration and social movements have largely developed as two distinct subareas of sociology. Scholars contend that immigrant rights, compared to other movements, have been given less attention in social movement research. Studies of immigrant‐based movements in recent decades have reached a stage whereby we can now assess how immigrant movement scholarship informs the general social movement literature in several areas. In this article, we show the contributions of empirical studies of immigrant movements in four primary arenas of social movement scholarship: (a) emergence; (b) participation; (c) framing; and (d) outcomes. Contemporary immigrant struggles offer social movement scholarship opportunities to incorporate these campaigns and enhance current theories and concepts as earlier protest waves advanced studies of collective action.

Justice, truth and oral history: legislating the past ‘from below’ in Northern Ireland

Drawing on the ‘from below’ perspective which has emerged in transitional justice scholarship and practice over the past two decades, this article critically examines the dealing with the past debate in Northern Ireland. The paper begins by offering an outline of the from below perspective in the context of post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies which are struggling to come to terms with past violence and human rights abuses. Having provided some of the legal and political background to the most recent efforts to deal with the past in Northern Ireland, it then critically examines the relevant past-related provisions of the Stormont House Agreement, namely the institutions which are designed to facilitate ‘justice’, truth recovery and the establishment of an Oral History Archive. Drawing from the political science and social movement literature on lobbying and the ways in which interests groups may seek to influence policy, the paper then explores the efforts of the authors and others to contribute to the broader public debate, including through drafting and circulating a ‘Model Bill’ on dealing with the past (reproduced elsewhere in this issue) as a counterweight to the legislation which is required from the British government to implement the Stormont House Agreement. The authors argue that the combination of technical capacity, grass-roots credibility and ‘international-savvy’ local solutions offers a framework for praxis from below in other contexts where activists are struggling to extend ownership of transitional justice beyond political elites.

Combining transition studies and social movement theory: towards a new research agenda

This article addresses two central—yet insufficiently explored—characteristics of some social movements: i.) abrupt and rapid social mobilizations leading to ii.) the construction of novel political processes and structures. The article takes a novel approach to these issues by combining social movement literature and the notion of free social spaces with transition studies, which focuses on large-scale socio-technical transitions. This theoretical integration highlights the co-evolution between free spaces and societal transitions, and it is based upon complexity-thinking, which is essential to deal with non-linear dynamics. A key insight is that to enable bottom-up societal transitions, radical social movements need to proactively develop solid alternatives to existing societal structures, to be ready once a window of opportunity opens. This theoretical approach is empirically illustrated using the APPO-movement in Mexico in 2006.

Framing norms in online communities

One problem many organizations deal with is how to effectively govern their online communities. Unlike employees, online community members often respond poorly to formal control mechanisms. This study develops theory on how moderators can build norms in online communities using frame analysis theory from the social movements literature. Through a case analysis of two communities focused on discussing recreational drugs, our findings demonstrate that norm formation is influenced by two phenomena: (1) norm acceptance, and (2) norm transience. Norm acceptance requires that moderators be consistent in their expression of norms. To a lesser extent, moderators must be credible in their expression of norms. If these things occur, the community will accept the norms. Norm transience, on the other hand, occurs when moderators are not sensitive to the community identity. If accepted norms are not aligned with community identity, they will be dropped by the community within one or two years.

Oil governance in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Exploring the role of the militias

This article explores the complex voices of militants associated with the capture of oil resources in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The persistent violent conflict surrounding the struggle over oil resources is a major concern for many within the country and the international community. Understanding the conflict over oil in the Niger Delta has triggered a wide range of discussions and debates among researchers, politicians and policy makers. However, these debates have overlooked the views of the militants themselves, who are actively engaged in the conflict over resource governance in the region. Drawing on new empirical data, this article builds upon insights from the New Social Movements literature to explore the experience and expectations of militants, and to then reflect on the significance of these for understanding the politics of oil governance in the Niger Delta. We argue that militia actions that appear to challenge the legitimacy and authority of the Nigerian state to control oil resources, are embedded in complex webs of formal and informal interactions involving political elites, militia leaders and primary citizens. This, we argue, offers a fresh and innovative perspective into the dynamics of militancy in the governance of oil resources in the Niger Delta.

Getting ‘right’ into the news: grassroots far-right mobilization and media coverage in Italy and France

How do non-established far-right actors reach visibility in the media? While much research focuses on media visibility of progressive movements and established parties, little is known about the coverage of grassroots far-right mobilization. Inspired by insights from media studies, social movement literature, and scholarship on the far right, the paper suggests that media coverage is a function of the protest strategies of non-established far-right actors. To this end, We use a new dataset measuring political claims made on the websites of CasaPound Italia (CPI) and the Bloc Identitaire (BI), and from newspaper reports in France and Italy. We use logistic regressions to quantify increasing media coverage based on specific characteristics of mobilization (issue ownership, dramatization, confrontation and counter-mobilization). Focusing on two countries with comparable political contexts but major differences in other factors relevant to far-right mobilization (number of migrants, asylum seekers, perceived most important problem, and proximity to elections), we illustrate that news coverage is more likely when CPI and BI mobilize on immigration, engage in street protest, and create public controversy. While broader comparative evidence is needed, the paper offers a novel meso-level perspective on the interplay between far-right mobilization and media attention, and it sets out an innovative method to combine online and offline data for the study of protest in far-right politics.

In Keeping with Family Tradition: American Second-Wave Feminists and the Social Construction of Political Legacies

Through an interpretive lens that borrows from feminist postmodernist perspectives on identity and cognitive sociology, the manuscript utilizes in-depth interview data from 33 women active in the American second-wave feminist movement to explore how aging feminist activists construct their current political identities in relation to the meanings they give to the perceived progressive political identities and actions of their elders. In particular, this study examines the discursive strategies that respondents engage as they link their own feminist consciousness directly or indirectly to feminist, or otherwise progressive, parents and grandparents. Findings reveal three distinct political legacy narratives, namely 1) explicit transmission origin stories; 2) bridge narratives; and 3) paradox plots that add to both the social movement literature on the symbolic dimensions of recruitment, sustainability, and spillover, as well as cognitive sociological literature on the cultural transmission of political capital, in general, and to our understanding of American second-wave activists, more specifically.

Rerouting the Narrative: Mapping the Online Identity Politics of the Tamil and Palestinian Diaspora

Drawing on the e-Diasporas Atlas project ( www.e-diasporas.fr ) and original empirical research, this study examines the complex role of the World Wide Web in supporting and enabling new types of diaspora identity politics. It compares the online identity politics of two conflict-generated diasporas: Tamils and Palestinians. Both of these stateless diaspora communities maintain a strong web presence and have mobilized around various secessionist attempts, grievance narratives, issue-agendas, and calls for the right to self-determination that have garnered significant attention from the international community and mainstream media in recent times. Analytical concepts from transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and social movement literature are used to draw attention to the dynamic identity-based processes and framing mechanisms that connect diasporic demands and political claims across online and offline environments. The data combine Tamil and Palestinian e-Diasporas hyperlink network maps with web-based content analysis and key respondent interviews. The study argues that online diasporic exchanges transcend host–homeland territorial boundaries and invite comparatively expressive forms of identity-based political engagements that are simultaneously both deeply local and digitally global. In particular, the analysis demonstrates that human rights–based language offers a unique streamlining bridge between various locales, countries of settlement, and the international system more broadly.

A master institution of world society? Digital communications networks and the changing dynamics of transnational contention

In English School theory, the putative change from an international society of states to a world society of individuals is usually associated with the diffusion of a benign form of cosmopolitanism and the normative agenda of solidarism. Consequently, the notion that world society might enable alternative expressions of transnational politics, independent from international society, remains underdeveloped. Drawing on the literature of contentious politics and social movements, this article challenges orthodox accounts and suggests that the global proliferation of digitally mediated linkages between individuals and nonstate actors constitutes a fundamental challenge to traditional dynamics of interstate communication in the form of the diplomatic system. This provides an opportunity to reconceptualize world society as an alternative site of politics distinct from mainstream international society and generative of its own logic of communication, mobilization, and action. The 2011 events in Egypt and the ongoing digital presence of the so-called Islamic State are used to demonstrate how massive increases in global interaction capacity are transforming the pathways for political contention and collective mobilization worldwide.

Institucionalização e contestação: as lutas do Movimento Negro no Brasil (1970-1990)

A partir da análise da trajetória do Movimento Negro brasileiro na década de 1980, o presente artigo aborda como organizações e ativistas que formam o Movimento interpretaram e se apropriaram de distintas oportunidades políticas disponíveis em diferentes contextos político-institucionais. Argumenta-se que, a partir de suas capacidades, objetivos e estratégias, os atores da rede do Movimento Negro utilizaram diversos repertórios de ação na busca da transformação do quadro de profundas desigualdades raciais no país. Enfocando elementos como o tensionamento e o ativismo institucionais, sustenta-se que a identificada institucionalização de organizações e ativistas do Movimento no período pesquisado não significou necessariamente o abandono de formas de confrontação extrainstitucional. Ao contrário, a pesquisa realizada mostra complexas relações estabelecidas entre institucionalização e contestação na trajetória do Movimento Negro, que confrontam a tradicional contraposição destes dois processos na literatura de movimentos sociais.

Marriage, the Final Frontier? Same‐Sex Marriage and the Future of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

Given hostility within segments of LGBT communities toward same‐sex marriage, how do Australian activists justify their efforts toward achieving marriage equality? In this article, we expand the social movement literature by examining how activists construct identity, meaning, and goals in contradistinction to others within the same movement. We draw on interviews with Australian lesbian and gay activists to examine what enables them to pursue the contested goal of same‐sex marriage in light of internal movement critiques that marriage equality will undermine the significance of lesbian and gay identity and impair activism on other issues as a result of the view that equality has been achieved. We expand debates over the post‐gay trajectory of lesbian and gay activism and identity by illustrating how activists attach different, what we term, mobilizing meanings, to the same movement goal which enables them to withstand internal movement critiques. We provide a typology of mobilizing meanings that can be applied more generally.

The Anti-oppressive Value of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality in Social Movement Study

Social movements can be important mechanisms of social change for vulnerable populations as the formal mechanisms of policy and legislation tend to be in the hands of the powerful in society. Academic scholarship can play an important role in challenging or reinforcing social power dynamics. This reality makes it important to critically interrogate social movement knowledge production and use anti-oppressive frameworks for social movement scholarship. Sociology has contributed greatly to social movement literature, and the American Sociological Association (ASA), especially the section of Collective Behavior and Social Movements (CBSM), is a central site of academic credibility and scholarship. This examination draws on critical race theory and intersectionality to analyze 10 years of award-winning books from the CBSM, specifically recipients of the Charles Tilly Award for Best Book. These books are prominently positioned with respect to the production of knowledge, as well as the study of social movements. This analysis shows the absence of critical race theory and intersectionality in core of social movement scholarship and identifies a pattern of erasure and marginalization of vulnerable populations in the award-winning books.

Toward a Radical Imagination of Law

In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seeking to transform the state: specifically, the Movement for Black Lives policy platform, “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice.” The Movement for Black Lives is the leading example of a contemporary racial justice movement with an intersectional politics including feminist and anti-capitalist commitments. The visions of such radical social movements offer an alternative epistemology for understanding and addressing structural inequality and injustice. By studying not only the critiques offered by radical social movements, but also their visions for transformative change, the edges of law scholarship can be expanded, a deeper set of critiques and a longer set of histories—of colonialism and settler colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and mass incarceration—centered, and a bolder project of transformation forwarded. These visions should push legal scholars toward a broader frame for understanding how law, the market, and the state co-produce intersectional structural inequality, and toward agendas that focus not on building the power of law and law enforcement, but on transforming the state and society and building the power of marginalized communities. This shift would invigorate the social movements literature and bring new energy to scholarship on substantive areas of law, from criminal and immigration law to property and contract law. To illustrate the creative potential of studying radical social movements, this Article considers policing the Vision for Black Lives with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Ferguson and Baltimore reports. The Vision and DOJ reports offer alternate conceptualizations of the problem of policing and the appropriate approach to law reform. Reflective of liberal law reform projects on police, the DOJ reports identify policing as a fundamental tool of law and order that serves the collective interests of society, and locate the problems of police in their failure to adhere to constitutional law. As a remedy, the DOJ reports advocate for investing more resources in police: more trainings, better supervision, community policing. In contrast, the Vision identifies policing as a historical and violent force in Black communities underpinning a system of racial capitalism and limiting the possibilities of Black life. Here, law is central to the shape and legitimation of racialized violence and inequality. The Vision’s reimagination of policing—rooted in Black history and Black intellectual traditions—transforms mainstream approaches to reform. The Vision demands shrinking the large footprint of policing, surveillance, and incarceration, and shifting resources into other social programs in Black communities: housing, health care, jobs, and schools. It focuses on building power in Black communities, and fundamentally transforming the relationship between government, market, and society. In forwarding an abolitionist imagination, the movement offers transformative, affirmative visions for change designed to address the structures of inequality—something legal scholarship has for far too long lacked.

Against the current: The emergence of a media democratization policy agenda in Latin America

In Latin America, the role of the media in democratic societies has recently become the subject of public debates, struggles and political mobilizations that have denaturalized the existing media order and established a distinct policy agenda oriented towards media democratization. This region-wide trend – a counter-tendency to the globally dominant market-driven orientation of media and telecommunication policies – requires explanation. This article stresses that it cannot be attributed to a spontaneous reaction to market concentration or media elitism, just as it cannot be reduced to a top-down process driven by populist leaders seeking to control the media. Drawing on social movement literature, the article traces four interacting processes – domestic network mobilization, reframing processes, transnational activism and changes in political elite alignments – that have brought about the unprecedented politicization of the Latin American media order.

Resistant identities: culture and politics among Kuwaiti youth

ABSTRACTThe present paper investigates the role of youth in contemporary Kuwait, and how their diverse resistance strategies contest and challenge dominant cultural and political paradigms, affecting identity construction and social patterns. It examines the distance between the government and youth, and a growing crisis of representation through the analysis of three main areas of resistant practices enacted by youth, seemingly interdependent and possibly overlapping: political mobilisation, political radicalisation and civic engagement. Political mobilisation concerns the protests staged in Kuwait mainly in 2012; political radicalisation examines political violence and terrorist episodes, while civic engagement investigates examples from an invigorated civil society. The article investigates and addresses youth practices employing classic and alternative social movements literature developed in Latin America and the Middle East, together with original ethnographic data.

Building Norms from the Grassroots Up: Divestment, Expressive Politics, and Climate Change

The fossil fuel divestment movement is at the forefront of civil society initiatives to raise public consciousness about the need for a “fossil‐free” future. Through the lens of the social movement literature, this article shows how the movement has harnessed grassroots activists, engaged in innovative and sometimes disruptive forms of protest, and used cognitive framing and symbolic politics to gain media interest and persuade the public of the importance and legitimacy of its claims as well as to promote a new social norm. The relative instrumental, structural, and discursive power of the movement and its adversaries is also examined, showing how, notwithstanding the fossil fuel industry's deeply embedded structural and instrumental power, the movement has managed to shift the contest onto a terrain where it holds a comparative advantage. Finally, the movement's role in nonstate climate governance is considered, taking account of its interactions with and impact on a range of other climate actors. This article's conclusion is that climate governance is not only an instrumental or pragmatic process of mandating changes in behavior but an expressive and symbolic one of nurturing a new norm and institutionalizing a new set of moral principles.