Morality Politics vs. Identity Politics: Framing Processes and Competition Among Christian Right and Gay Social Movement Organizations

This paper applies a social movement organization framing analysis to conflicts between gay-rights and Christian Right groups over issues of lesbian, gay, and bisexual inclusions in public education. As groups representing each side entered this new arena of debate over gay rights, they applied strategies they had used in other arenas. Both sides have pursued inflexible, polarizing strategies that target their constituencies and have relinquished the opportunity to offer new and creative understanding of their positions and to reach a potential new audience. This shows how opposing frames can become mutually reinforcing constraints.     

Explaining spontaneous occupation: antecedents,contingencies and spaces in the Umbrella Movement

This paper examines the antecedent and contingent causes sparking the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Spurred by two contingent events generating pre-emptive and backlash mobilization, the movement is a spontaneous transformation of the staged Occupy Central campaign. Based on an onsite survey (n = 1681) and in-depth interviews (n = 18), this paper demonstrates how protest experience and social media networked and rallied autonomous individuals from diverse backgrounds to occupy the physical spaces, thereby sustaining a self-mobilized, horizontal and resilient movement. Spontaneity, however, did not come out of nowhere. As an integral part of Hong Kong’s bottom-up activism and ecology, this spontaneous episode encapsulates antecedent events diffusing stalwart actors, decentralized organization and transgressive repertories. This paper situates spontaneity in temporal, spatial and emotional contexts to understand the uncompromising claims and participatory practices of the spectacular occupation.     

Labor‐Environmental Coalition Formation: Framing and the Right to Know1

This article examines the formation of a cross‐movement coalition between elements of the labor and environmental movements in New Jersey. We explain the successful formation and initial political campaign of the New Jersey Work Environment Council with an expansion of the theoretical perspective of frame analysis. We propose a model of a coalition collective action frame that offers several important insights into the active role coalition actors play in the construction of a common frame uniting union and environmental activists. Using qualitative data gathered from interviews, observations, and document analyses of two major campaigns, we argue that the coalition frame allowed new political opportunities to be created, leading to the establishment of the most sweeping right‐to‐know laws in the United States. We conclude the discussion of coalition framing by examining political constraints on the framing possibilities of coalitions, specifically by exploring how the discursive shift from the right to know to the right to act failed to expand the influence of the cross‐movement coalition as originally expected by its members.     

Law as Movement Strategy: How the Islamophobia Movement Institutionalizes Fear Through Legislation

Islamophobia is a strategic movement led by a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts that institutionalizes fear and suspicion of Islam through bills and ballot initiatives. This profile examines the ways in which the Islamophobia movement uses law as a strategy, framing the anti-Muslim movement as a subject of constitutional concern. By strategically inserting Islamophobia into the legal sphere, movement participants shift the ways in which audiences perceive and legitimize the movement. Over time, the successful use of law as movement strategy can shift broader discourses, giving constructed frames institutionalized, political power.     

Framing and Strategy: Explaining Differential Longevity in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League

This study examines the sources of strength and mobilizing impetus in the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the early twentieth century. Both the ASL and the WCTU played essential roles in the establishment of national prohibition. The quick demise of the ASL after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 and the endurance of the WCTU cannot be explained only by the structural conditions that confronted the two movements, as suggested by the resource mobilization approach. Using Snow and Benford's "collective action frame" concept, it is argued that a consideration of meanings constructed by the movements'leaders and their translation into strategic action provides a better account of the temporal viability of the WCTU and ASL. The critical distinction between the WCTU and ASL was in how they framed the "alcohol question." Both the relative success of the WCTU and the failure of the ASL were contingent upon their ability to adapt their rhetoric and corresponding strategies to rapid shifts in the cultural and economic climate of the late twenties and early thirties.     

巴以冲突中的妇女和平运动

如何解决巴以冲突，已经成为关注的热点话题。普通妇女对于和平的渴望在巴以冲突地区越来越强烈地表现出来。她们的行动代表了一种新的政治理念。     

Framed Encounters with Conservation and Mining Development: Indigenous Peoples' use of Strategic Framing in Suriname

While studies on the use of framing as a strategy for social movements have proliferated in the past 20 years, little is still known about how and why the frames vary across social movement actors and/or events. This article addresses this knowledge lacuna by comparing and contrasting Indigenous peoples' use of rights and identity frames in response to conservation and development events in Suriname. The variation in frames, and possible reasons for these variations, was compared across actors and events by considering (1) alignments of the global Indigenous rights movement with different movements and organizations over time, and (2) participants' level of involvement with national and global Indigenous rights movements. Evidence of strategic frame variation in this study demonstrated Indigenous peoples' ability to creatively and strategically pursue their interests by asserting their collective identity and rights in encounters with conservation and development projects. They accomplished this through the presentation of frames that called into question the logic and fairness of protected areas, their innate capacity to protect the environment, as well as their rights to land, and economic interests in mining. The greater use of rights frames by participants reflected networks generated with human rights organizations. Frame inconsistencies were apparent across conservation and development events that indicated uneven levels of involvement with Indigenous rights movements, which may yet produce unintended consequences for Indigenous communities. However, this case could also signal new possibilities for Indigenous peoples in terms of greater maneuverability in being able to assert their rights and negotiate their identities in relation to conservation and development, and ultimately to gain more power and autonomy over their own affairs.     

Attack of the Butterfly Spirits: The Impact of Movement Framing by Community Garden Preservation Activists

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of movement framing by activists in their struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. In repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners successfully de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves, and the city. This process of re-framing urban development helped activists to compensate for their disempowered political status, and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens. Focusing on framing by movement activists demonstrates the purposive and strategic character of neighborhood identity. Emphasizing the strategy of neighborhood identities is a useful corrective to the many studies of community movements that emphasize their emergence from a relational, presumably non-strategic, local reality.     

Strategic Role Taking and Political Struggle: Bearing Witness to the Iraq War

U.S. and Canadian peace activists traveled to Iraq as a social movement tactic, in the buildup to the war and during the war itself, in an attempt to sustain or increase peace activism at home. Based on interviews with fourteen peace activists, this study analyzes how the presence of antiwar activists in Iraq serves two social movement goals. First, their presence in Iraq bestowed activists increased access to media, bolstering their ability to reframe the war within mainstream media accounts. Second, by traveling to Iraq, activists furnished themselves with stories of the hardships and suffering of war to share with audiences at home. By retelling these narratives, activists provide opportunities and obligations for audience members to imaginatively take the role of Iraqi civilians, in the hope that audience members will practice moral reasoning and be consequently moved to act against the war. To provide these role‐taking opportunities, peace activists must also engage in a political struggle over “otherhood” by countering official attempts to dehumanize Iraqis.     

Mobilization by images: TV screen and mediated instant grievances in the Umbrella Movement

This article discusses the effects of the televised images of the use of tear gas on people participating in the Umbrella Movement. Although the role of the Internet and social media in political mobilization has been widely discussed, the importance of television cannot be overlooked. This article argues that the widely transmitted broadcasts of live images of the police firing tear gas into the protesting crowd generated “mediated instant grievances” in a substantial sector of the viewing public, thus contributing to the size and scale of the Umbrella Movement. The study reported here provides evidence for this argument by analyzing the results of a survey of protesters that were on site during the early stage of the movement (N = 969). The study sought to determine whether and how the television images were related to the participants’ political attitudes, reasons for participation, and views of self-mobilized actions. The findings showed that, in particular, mediated instant grievances motivated the participation of the “amateur protesters” in the movement.     

Framing the Other: cosmopolitanism and the representation of difference in overseas gap year narratives

This paper engages with debates surrounding contemporary cosmopolitanism and the outcomes of cultural encounters. It considers if overseas gap years, often put forward in the UK as a way of becoming a global citizen, enable young Britons to ‘broaden their mind’. I explore representations of the people and places encountered during these periods of time out through an analysis of young people's travel blogs. Four key themes are highlighted in these narratives: the exotic place; feeling ‘out of place’; the importance and outcomes of local interaction; and the historical legacies that are implicated in constructing places as ‘different’. Gappers display a willingness to interact with and gain knowledge about their host communities. Yet as gap years are designed to be distinct from the normal course of things, they also demonstrate the ‘difference’ of places. This can often result in the reproduction of established ways of representing the Other in order to frame them as meaningful. There is a tension in the narratives between ‘globally reflexive’ and ‘globally reproductive’ representations of difference, and I suggest that we might question the development of cosmopolitan attitudes and competencies through undertaking a gap year.     

“伊斯兰主义”：全球处境、社会运动及其意识形态

伊斯兰主义首先是一种宗教内部不断重复的变迁现象,其在当代兴起同近代以来尤其是上世纪七十年代伊斯兰世界在全球体系中的不利处境密切相关。伊斯兰主义的兴起即是希望通过宗教的符号来进行社会变革,以应对这一不利的局面。从社会形式讲,伊斯兰主义主要表现为一种社会运动,其本质则是政治意识形态。当代伊斯兰主义发生的一个主要背景在于全球化,而其自身同时也被全球化;不仅表现为全球化的组织,更具有全球性的意识形态和目标。     

Framing authoritarian legitimacy: elite cohesion in the aftermath of popular rebellion

ABSTRACT

Protest activity presents a significant threat to state legitimacy in nondemocratic settings. Although authoritarian regimes rely heavily on coercion, state officials must also justify their authority to both the public and other elites. Previous work has shown how elites vilify challengers to legitimize repression, but scholars have yet to examine how state officials engage in meaning work to prevent elite divisions from forming in light of popular challenges to regime legitimacy. In this study, we examine elite framing processes in a case of popular resistance to a 1953 currency reform in Communist Czechoslovakia. Using archival material, we trace the inter- and intra-organizational processes through which officials construct legitimacy claims by explaining and adjudicating blame for the popular rebellion. Results indicate that authoritarian rulers relied on a variety of discursive mechanisms to generate consensus among subordinate elites and protect regime legitimacy. We conclude by discussing implications for research on authoritarianism and social movements.     

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

This article uses newspaper coverage of a case from Baltimore, Maryland, to explore racial variation in the rhetorical framing of urban crime. In October 2002, seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in a house fire. The murders became an expression of Baltimore’s character and the lives of its residents. After analyzing 206 newspaper articles about the case, we find stark differences in the way the case, its causes, and its consequences are presented to readers. Newspapers with primarily white audiences—both “mainstream” and “alternative” papers—present the case as a horrific, singular instance, placing responsibility on the perpetrator. In contrast, articles in African American newspapers offer a complex web of explanation, calling attention to the structural inequalities and disparate access to state resources. Whereas white newspaper portray the Dawson family as martyrs in the drug war, black newspapers position the family as part of a wider of community of African Americans who are victims of slack policing, racial discrimination, and negligent social policy. We argue that these rhetorical differences are more than cosmetic. Rather, they provide a framework for better understanding the relationship between the press and policy makers. Differences in coverage of the case also contribute to our understanding of why blacks and whites have fundamentally different understandings of race in the United States.     

Framing contests in global NGO networks: How controversies enable and challenge collaboration and action

In multistakeholder sustainability initiatives, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) need not only to negotiate with actors from other sectors, but also with other NGOs. Taking a framing perspective, this study examines how NGOs engage in framing contests because of their collaborative attitude toward the private sector. Through an analysis of Oxfam's participation in the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogues, the paper examines the interplay between NGOs that propose and oppose certification as a viable strategy for ensuring sustainability in the farmed shrimp sector. The results show that controversies among NGO groups related prognostic framing (i.e., regarding the proposed solution to a problem) are characterized by specific ontological and normative attributes. The paper offers NGOs strategies for dealing with such controversies and shows that, depending on the nature of the controversy, engaging in framing contests might enlarge or constrain the roles that an NGO is able to play in a multistakeholder setting, particularly, when it comes to preserving its independence while securing interdependence with others.     

Framing a welfare reform: the social benefits reform in Russia and Kazakhstan

This article addresses the question of why some non-democratic governments are more successful than others at reforming their welfare institutions. Using the example of the Russian and Kazakhstani social benefits reform, the author will illustrate that in modern non-democratic regimes the importance of framing and effective communication with the public for the purpose of effective policymaking and regime legitimization is equal to, if not greater than, in established democracies. The successful implementation of the Kazakhstani social benefits reform, as opposed to Russia’s protracted experience with reforming its social benefits system, was determined not only by the configuration of various institutional and political factors, but also the skilful actions of the Kazakhstani authorities, who used effective communication strategies and framing techniques that resonated with the public and generated broad support for reform. Based on extensive research conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006–2010 as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto, this paper enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and non-democratic contexts and adds important details to our understanding of how post-Soviet autocrats run their countries and what methods they use to stay in power, manage their state affairs, and avoid public dissatisfaction.     

Becoming Missionaries: Gender,Space and Subjectivities in Chinese Christian Communities in the UK

In recent years, single young women and married couples migrating from mainland China have constituted a prominent group engaging in ministry careers among Chinese Christian communities in the UK. By investigating how they construct meaning out of their career choices that were entangled in the binaries and contradictions of the past/present, home/diaspora, public/private, men/women and family/self, this study explores the complexity of gender, Christianity and space in a (late) socialist Chinese case, thereby revealing the paradoxical subjectivities of these Chinese ministers. The idea is advanced that apart from a structural demand for clergies from mainland China, the complex interaction between traditional, (late) socialist and Christian gender ideologies has also affected their choices. The interaction works as a ‘transformative mechanism’ which creates a new moral order in terms of gender relations, family relations and work ethics. The new order incurs a patriarchal backlash against women in this group as well as empowering them. This research explores an interesting relationship between feminism, socialism and Christianity.     

Negotiating Sustainability: Climate Change Framing in the Communications,Energy and Paperworkers Union

Environmental problems are often reduced to a catch‐22 that portrays sustainability‐oriented policies as disastrous for resource sector workers. Despite efforts by many industry leaders to frame climate change in “jobs versus environment” terms, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has supported ambitious greenhouse gas reduction policies. Using interviews with union members and staff, this study examines CEP's climate change framing. It finds that CEP extended the environmental justice master frame to define its response to climate change, neutralize anti‐Kyoto rhetoric, and work with the environmental movement. CEP's framing was accomplished through negotiation processes that continue to unfold as members work out the union's positions relative to their own values, experiences, and interpretations of what is possible. These findings suggest sustainability can be understood as an emergent, localized, and contested social order, and point to “self‐negotiation” in longer‐term social change struggles as a potential area of further study.     

Client-led Spiritual Interventions: Faith-integrated Professionalism in the Context of a Christian Faith-based Organisation

Focused on the professional practice habits of Christian social workers and counsellors, this article explores the question of good practice when working therapeutically with clients asking to discuss spirituality and faith. Interviews with 10 senior practitioners who are practising Christians as part of a qualitative study revealed several common experiences when working with clients actively seeking to explore faith and spirituality: (1) using flexibility, discernment, and a client-led approach; (2) trust in God and spiritual receptiveness; and (3) managing tensions between professional, personal, and organisational values. The implications of the study highlight the requirement for professional integrity, to include practising within one’s range of competence, and the value of ongoing professional development to support good practices when working with religious clients.     

Practicing Birchism: The Assumption and Limits of Idiocultural Coherence in Framing Theory

Social movement theory and research over the past twenty years have utilized the concepts incorporated under the rubric of Framing Theory in order to draw attention to the cultural ‘meaning work’ within a social movement or social movement organization. Underlying Framing Theory is an assumption of what I term idiocultural coherence – that for a movement organization to be successful, its members must come to agree cognitively with its cultural understandings and identify collectively with it. Drawing on an example of the John Birch Society, a very successful conspiratorial, anti-communist organization, I show how people may join a social movement organization not because they necessarily or fully agree with its collective action frames but because it provides an opportunity to act collectively and publicly perform a collective identity. I argue that a narrow focus on idiocultural processes obfuscates important cultural processes ‘outside’ of a movement organization that have an impact on how and why people join an organization and maintain membership.