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

Sociologists of social movements agree that culture matters for studying collective action, and have proposed a variety of theoretical concepts to understand culture and mobilization, including framing, free spaces, and collective identity. Despite this, what we mean when we say “culture matters” remains unclear. In this paper, I draw on 30 years of social movement theory and research to construct a typology of three ways that culture is seen as shaping social movement activity: (i) culture renders particular sites fruitful for social movements to mobilize out of; (ii) culture serves as a resource that assists in movement action; and (iii) culture provides wider contexts that shape movement activity. This typology represents the analytic building blocks of theories about culture and social movements, and is presented towards the end of clarifying and sharpening our theoretical concepts. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research that draw on, refine, and extend these three building blocks.     

COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION AND IDENTITY FROM THE UNDERGROUND: The Deployment of "Oppositional Capital" in the Harm Reduction Movement

Within social movement literature, the concept of collective identity is used to discuss the process through which political activists create in-group cohesion and distinguish themselves from society at large. Newer approaches to collective identity focus on the negotiation of boundaries as social movement agents interact with social structural forces. However, in their adoption of a perspective that holds identity as a process, these social movement studies neglect the more tangible cultural elements that actors manipulate when they express collective identity. This research project adopts a subcultural perspective in the Birmingham tradition to address the question of how social movement actors reapporpriate symbolic expressions of identity and what meaning systems they draw from that enable them to redefine "stigmatization" as "status" This article offers the concept of "oppositional capital" as a general framework for analyzing the symbolic work that social movement actors perform in their expressions of collective identity. For the purposes of analysis, the primary elements of oppositional symbolic expressions are divided into the four categories of distinction, antagonism, political activism, and popular cultural aesthetics. This article applies the concept of oppositional capital to representations of collective identity of a radical branch of political activism within the social movement of harm reduction. Specifically, it analyzes the zine, Junkphood to describe how actors within this social movement cohort are able to present their collective identity as part of an alternative status system by drawing from an economy of signs that are generally recognized as oppositional.     

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN THE STRAIGHT EDGE MOVEMENT:

Although social movement scholars generally study movement organizations, a great deal of significant collective action occurs in diffuse, noninstitutional contexts. This article uses the straight edge movement to explore the less structured aspects of movement activity and discuss the roles collective identity plays in diffuse movements. The straight edge collective identity promotes individual action within the context of a commitment to a strong identity. This paper shows how a strong collective identity is the foundation of diffuse movements, providing "structure," a basis for commitment, and guidelines for individualized participation. Finally, the article demonstrates that organizational conceptualizations of social movements fail to capture important avenues of cultural protest.     

Overcoming a collective action frame in the remaking of an antinuclear opposition

Recent research on social movements considers collective action frames and collective identities to be resources or achievements of social movement activity because they symbolicly link individuals to a collective cause. This paper maintains that a collective action frame operates at a sociocultural level and can be redefined by groups external to a movement. Nuclear power proponents worked to suppress the first cycle of protest against nuclear plants by redefining the movements' collective identity, such that individuals were unable to recognize movement organizations as representative of their interests. Citizens within the Ten Mile Radius, a group opposed to the licensing of the Seabrook nuclear power plant, initiated a second cycle of protest by overcoming the collective action frame imposed on the movement. This case suggests that the articulation and the representation of dissent is constrained due to the inability of social movement groups to retain control over their own collective identity. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Eastern Sociological Society annual meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1994.     

Conflicted Membership: Women in Fathers' Rights Groups

Women who participate in mixed-gender, antifeminist movements are not a homogeneous group of actors who face no identity-based conflicts when they mobilize for these causes. Using 23 in-depth interviews with women involved in the American fathers' rights movement—which has as its goal the reformation of child support and child custody laws in ways that are more favorable to men and less favorable to women—I argue that mixed-gender, antifeminist activism has the potential to produce high levels of tension for female participants between their various social identities and their collective movement identity. Indeed, almost half of these women elaborate on how two particular manifestations of their social identities—as simultaneous members of other feminist groups and simply as women—clash with the collective identity generated by the fathers' rights movement. Ultimately, these women coped with these competing allegiances in a variety of proactive ways. In contrast, the other half of the sample experienced no such tensions. These differential patterns of identity-based conflicts are suggestive of the hazards associated with a social movement's efforts to attract a wider membership base over time.     

Organizations,coalitions, and movements

This article uses empirical evidence on networks of voluntary organizations mobilizing on ethnic minority, environmental, and social exclusion issues in two British cities, to differentiate between social movement processes and other, cognate collective action dynamics. Social movement processes are identified as the building and reproducing of dense informal networks between a multiplicity of actors, sharing a collective identity, and engaged in social and/or political conflict. They are contrasted to coalitional processes, where alliances to achieve specific goals are not backed by significant identity links, and organizational processes, where collective action takes place mostly in reference to specific organizations rather than broader, looser networks.     

PARTICIPANT NARRATIVES AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN A METAPHYSICAL MOVEMENT

In this article we explore social movement solidarity through an examination of narratives offered by participants in a metaphysical movement. Drawing from contemporary social movement theory, we focus on how members develop a carefully built collective identity that perpetuates movement goals and ideology. Data for this project are drawn from in-depth interviews with local psychics, participant observation in various metaphysical fairs, and document analysis. We find that the movement's collective identity is centered around several narratives that help establish boundaries, identify antagonists, and create a collective consciousness. Together these narratives form a web of belief that binds members to the movement. The data we present in this article have implications for understanding other expressive movements, as well as for social movement theory in general.     

Social Movement Endurance: Collective Identity and the Rastafari

In this paper we argue that a movement's longevity depends on its ability to develop and sustain a strong sense of collective identity. We investigate social movement endurance by examining the Rastafari, whose membership is comprised primarily of disadvantaged Jamaicans of African descent. While many social movements fade after a short-lived peak, the Rastafari not only has persisted, but it also has become globally important. Despite its radical posture and its perceived threat to the Jamaican established order, the movement has prevailed for more than six decades. On the basis of a number of concepts derived from different theoretical traditions in social movement theory, we examine the dynamic processes involved in the construction of collective identity among the Rastafari. We are particularly interested in the concepts of "cognitive liberation,""movement culture/boundary structure," and "the politics of signification." These concepts allow us to describe and analyze the key dimensions of the Rastafarian collective identity. This framework, we argue, enhances our understanding of collective identity as well as the processes contributing to social movement longevity.     

THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN INHIBITING MOBILIZATION: SOLIDARITY AND SUPPRESSION IN OAK RIDGE

On the basis of documents and in-depth interviews with 80 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, we analyzed the lack of collective mobilization against documented environmental problems. Collective identity is a central concept in new social movement theory and is seen as a major determinant of collective action. We borrowed the concept but examined the converse. Individual activism has consistently emerged in Oak Ridge without the development of the collective processes that mark mobilization. We examined the establishment of a special collective identity for the community in Oak Ridge, then analyzed the role of collective identity in the suppression of health grievances through heightened saliency, consciousness, and opposition to activism.     

“That's not Grassfed!” Identity Formation,Maintenance, and Co‐Optation in Oklahoma's Grassfed Livestock Movement

Using interview data from thirty‐one grassfed ranchers across Oklahoma, we adapt a culturally focused social movement framework to explore a regional grassfed livestock movement. Drawing on social movement and agrifood literature, we examine how grassfed actors forge a cohesive grassfed collective identity and how collective identity processes inspire engagement in forms of individualized, cultural protest. We address how collective identity politicizes movement actors, moving them to prioritize cultural issues of the grassfed movement and development of a grassfed activist identity, sometimes above other tangible, economic rewards. We also consider how grassfed ranchers are restricting the boundaries of movement membership in response to increased interest in alternative agricultural practices by new producers and by agrifood elites, and how they use market‐oriented tactics to enforce those boundaries. In doing so we draw parallels to conventionalization processes in the organic sector. By emphasizing the identity work of grassfed producer‐activists, we provide new perspectives on an emerging agricultural movement gaining traction in the US and abroad.     

Solidarity is in the heart,not in the field: joint Israeli–Palestinian peace movement organizations during the 2014 Gaza War

The social movement literature suggests that social movement organizations that work across difference and power asymmetry are dependent to some degree on shared and unified action in order to construct and sustain a sense of ‘we.’ Yet ironically, for two joint Israeli–Palestinian peace movement organizations, sustaining a cross-conflict collective identity during the 2014 Gaza War did not require unified action, but rather, independent action from the Israeli participants. This article makes the argument that in highly asymmetrical environments, and in particular, protracted conflict environments, unified visible action is not always required for maintaining a collective identity. Structural and cultural forces can impede the ability of activists to work across borders or conflict lines. In these situations, what may be required to sustain a collective identity that crosses over traditional community divides is the willingness of the group with more privilege and power to move forward in activity focused on their own community.     

Anti-War Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age

This starts out by distinguishing between communication and communication mediums when examining social movement-powered formations of collective identity and collective action. We then focus on communication mediums to examine the different ways that old and new media are utilized in urban social movements under neoliberal capitalism. Based on shifts in the political economy and correspondingly in the contemporary composition of the working class, we focus on the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia to argue that contemporary urban social movements and networks utilize a multi-media platform to further class-based politics. The respective use of old or new media depends on important contextual questions, regarding technology access and geographic aspects of movement building work.     

Social Movement Strategy,Tactics, and Collective Identity1

Tactical choices and their execution are closely related to the construction of collective identities in social movements. Studying collective identity has helped scholars understand why people participate in collective action, but the array of tactics that constitute action has not been fully explored. An emerging interest in culture and strategy that situates social movement actors in a field of contention with opponents, allies, and bystanding publics raises questions about the tactics that are used and the construction of collective identity, which is formed in interaction with others. Strategies and tactics reflect collective identities but also provide opportunities for reaffirming or challenging them. Innovative methods can create tension as activists work to resolve what they do with who they feel they are. Conflict studies, nonviolent action studies, and sociological research using concepts such as framing, discourse, protest events, and tactical repertoires offer tools with which to bridge tactics and collective identity.     

Double‐edged swords? Collective identity and solidarity in the environment movement1

Perhaps by virtue of its theoretical slipperiness, collective identity is often hailed as an important feature of social movements for the role it plays in unifying activists and organizations, and so helping them to develop shared concerns and engage in collective action. However, this paper argues that collective identity is the result of group rather than movement level processes, and although it can unite activists within a single movement organization, it is not always beneficial for the broader social movement. Although movements consist of networks of activists and organizations that have a broad shared concern, differing collective identities within the movement can actually be quite divisive. Based on case studies of three organizations in the environmental movement, this paper shows that activists who are most committed to an organization with an encompassing collective identity develop a strong sense of solidarity with other activists similarly committed to that organization. The resultant solidarity leads to the construction of a 'we-them' dichotomy between organizations within the same movement, increasing the chances of hostility between organizations and factions within the movement.     

Patterns of engagement: identities and social movement organizations in Finland and Malawi

Based on interviews with climate-change activists and NGO workers in Finland and Malawi, this article reconsiders the ways in which the coordination of identity projects and action is approached in social movement scholarship. Rather than beginning with personal and collective identities, we take our cue from recent work by Laurent Thévenot and trace actors’ forms of engagement—the various ways actors produce commonality. As we show, doing so in vastly different social contexts allows us to see permutations in such forms afforded by participation in a transnational social movement and to identify patterns of collective action that we would otherwise be apt to miss. Finnish activists narrated their activities by way of engaging in the forms of the common good driving the climate movement, but coordinated various situations also through engagement in familiarity, comfort, and ease. Malawian activists and NGO employees also spoke of the common good the movements worked to achieve, but principally created common ground by engaging in shared individual choices and projects, which were jointly consecrated by fellow NGO participants. Ultimately, we argue that tracing forms of engagement enables more in-depth understanding of what is at stake when people act together in social movement organizations: moving away from collective and personal identity to patterns of engagement allows a vantage point into the processes through which commonality is created and generates new hypotheses regarding the coordination of action in social movement organizations.     

Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social Movements

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from two social movement organizations, this article highlights the way that remembrances of the past are inserted into present interactions to help maintain a sense of movement continuity. Seeing collective identity and collective memory as intertwined dynamic processes, the article argues that the continuity of a social movement is maintained, in part, when movement members insert narrative commemorations that constrain current collective identity development. The process examined is that of “collective memory anchoring,” in which participants instrumentally and/or contextually bring forward the past during interactions in such a way that the formulation of elements in a movement's collective identity appears to mirror past formulations. The common constraints of preexisting networks, participants' shared cultural backgrounds, and a movement's collective action frames are explored.     

COMMUNITY, MOVEMENT, ORGANIZATION:

This article integrates resource mobilization and collective identity perspectives to show how understanding the degree of convergence of identities between a movement organization, its broader social movement, and the community in which it is located aids our analysis of social movement dynamics. The first part develops a model of identity convergence. The second part analyzes how identity convergence and divergence interacted with the movement resource base and affected the trajectory of the East Toledo neighborhood movement—a movement that changed over time from a protest movement to a development movement.     

Parenting as Activism: Identity Alignment and Activist Persistence in the White Power Movement

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and discusses implications for social movement persistence. We explain how individuals negotiate opportunities as parents to align and extend an activist identity with a movement's collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role to express commitment to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately sustain their activism. We suggest that parenting may provide unique opportunities for activists in many movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities and simultaneously affirm their identities as parents and persist as social movement activists.     

Contestation on Reddit,Gamergate, and movement barriers

This article investigates how the social media site Reddit hindered the collective action efforts stemming from the Gamergate controversy. Using forum posts from two time-points, one early in the movement and another six months later, this work describes how the Reddit platform impeded movement efforts over time. More specifically, we examine how the nature of Reddit discussions created barriers to each of three key movement processes: narrative construction of collective identity, framing, and boundary work. We argue that unlike social media platforms such as Facebook, some sites–Reddit in this case–may negatively impact movement success depending on its structure. We also discuss the importance of differing ICT structures and implications for online interactions more generally.     

MAINTAINING COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT: CONFRONTING NEGATIVE PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND FACTIONAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE SKINHEAD SUBCULTURE

Previous examinations of skinhead groups have limited their attention to racist elements within the subculture. But skinheads are a far more heterogeneous group than earlier studies indicate. This diversity has put skinhead factions at odds with each other, and has challenged mainstream conceptions about the skinhead movement. In this paper, we document how traditional skinheads maintain their unique collective identity in the midst of subcultural conflict and hostile stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream society. The study employs both primary and secondary sources to examine collective identity among traditional skinheads. Culture and ideology play an important role in counteracting negative stereotypes and solidifying traditional skinhead identity. Through culture and politics traditional skinheads establish collective identity and promote their nonracist beliefs. By focusing on nonracist and antiracist factions we expand the current literature on the skinhead subculture. The results illustrate that skinhead groups are diverse. Traditional factions see racism as an abomination of original skinhead culture, and as a result, many groups have taken action to confront their racist skinhead counterparts.