Transnational Discursive Opportunities and Social Movement Risk Frames Opposing GMOs

Research on social movement frames has been cumulative. Recently, scholars started studying the structural incentives and constraints for claim-makers by relying on the concept of discursive opportunity structure (DOS) while bringing the public sphere and the media to the centre of analysis of political contention. This article draws on these literatures to investigate social movement campaigns against genetically modified (GM) crops and pesticides in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. First, it argues that there is a transnational DOS that provides structural incentives and constraints to frame risks in symbolic struggles to define GM crops. Next, based on a content analysis of national newspapers, it describes the use of risk frames in national public discourses. Finally, it addresses the question of how this transnationalized DOS is framed by the media by looking at the discursive opportunities for social movements as well as other collective actors in their framing disputes. The study provides evidence of a transnationalization of public debates and offers explanations for national variations by resorting to other components of the DOS such as national policy discourse, timing of political agendas, media structure and culture. It concludes by recognizing the need to consider the various dimensions of opportunity structures for movement action, i.e. political, discursive, and economic, and their relative degree of transnationalization or autonomy over global forces.     

Frame Changes and Social Movement Contraction: U.S. Peace Movement Framing After the Cold War*

This study analyzes framing processes and their relationships with ongoing social movement change. We examine peace frames found among U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOS) in its period of contraction at the end of the Cold War. On the basis of analysis of a unique two-wave survey of US. peace movement organizations in 1988 and 1992, we assess the extent to which organizational framing of the peace problematic changed. We found an overall shift in emphases from more bilateral frames like the nuclear weapons freeze to frames emphasizing multilateralism and global interdependence. PMO frame transformations that took place between 1988 and 1992 represent a trend towards broader, more radical (or structural) and less exclusive peace movement frames. We describe the frame transformations observed here as the emergence of “retention frames.” Retention frames embody several dimensions of movement abeyance structures and serve to sustain organizational continuity across episodes of movement surges and contraction.     

How Local Social Movement Groups Handle a Presidential Election

How do local social movement groups respond to national electoral politics? Previous studies, often based on aggregated data on public protests, focus on the effects of elections on established social movement organizations (SMOs). Some find that SMOs flourish during election years, taking advantage of the political opportunities that elections pose. Others conclude that elections hurt SMOs, siphoning members and resources. Using ethnographic, in-depth interview, and document data on new and emerging social movement groups (SMGs) in Pittsburgh for 20 months before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, we examine how members think about elections and whether and how groups decide to respond to national electoral campaigns. We find that SMGs vary considerably in the strategies of action or inaction they adopt, depending on their changing sense of whether the election poses an opportunity or a threat to the group and that these strategies of action are patterned in path-dependent sequences. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities for integrating concepts of path-dependency and timing into social movement research.     

Narrative and Frame Alignment in Social Movements: Labor Problem Novels and the 1929 Gastonia Strike

Research on social movements and frame alignment has shed light on how activists draw new participants to social movements through meaning making. However, the ‘framing perspective’ has failed to interrogate how the form or genre in which frames are deployed affects the communication of meaning. The burgeoning literature on social movements and narrative would seem to point to one discursive form of importance to meaning making in social movements, but scholars have failed to connect their insights with the literature on framing. In this article, I analyze five novels published in response to a 1929 communist-led strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. I argue that labor movement activists deployed these long-form narratives for the purposes of ‘frame alignment,’ specifically ‘frame amplification’ and ‘frame transformation,’ and I show how these narratives conveyed frames in ways that other discursive forms could not. The study raises new questions about the selection and reception of discursive forms in social movements.     

Telling Our Stories: Narrative and Framing in the Movement for Same-Sex Marriage

Although framing and narrative are both well-documented discursive features of social movements, the difference between them is often overstated; where frames are treated as logical, authoritative, and abstract, the usefulness of narratives is frequently documented in relation to pre-mobilization phases of movement development such as identity and community building. Drawing on an analysis of Connecticut's Judiciary Committee hearings on same-sex marriage, I challenge this distinction and elucidate the relationship between storytelling and framing, showing how narrative is used to make packages of frames cohesive and compelling. In demonstrating how proponents of the legislation deployed narratives and frames simultaneously, this research contributes to scholarship on the function and configuration of discursive strategies for social movements.     

"NO WEAPON SAVE ARGUMENT":

US. woman suffragists routinely utilized two types of arguments in their demands for voting rights: justice and reform. The former argument held that women should vote because they were men's equals and therefore should have political rights equal to those of men. Reform arguments stated that women should have the ballot because women, given their unique womanly experiences and perspectives, would bring a unique contribution to politics, making society a more humane place. Although social movement scholars have increasingly studied the framing work of movement activists, few systematic studies of framing activity exist. In this work we examine the circumstances that led the suffragists to amplify one or the other of these motivational frames. We find that the suffragists were quite strategic in their choice of frames, targeting particular audiences and taking advantage of cultural opportunities for frame resonance. We find only limited evidence that their frames were driven by the collective identity of particular groups in the movement.     

Regarding the Protests of Others

While much social movement research focuses on how activists actively cultivate affect and how social movements benefit from shared emotions, these ideas rarely intersect with research examining how race constructs emotional responses in a white settler society. I bridge this theoretical divide by examining the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada to study dimensions of suffering and apathy through the construction of the racialized protest(er). Drawing upon illustrations from a critical discourse analysis of 153 mainstream news articles and interviews with activists and journalists, this paper explores how racial logic frames media and public discourse through (1) the expression of protesters’ suffering and (2) the construction of racial apathy by the Canadian public. The paper theorizes why and how race frames the production of suffering and apathy, and offers considerations for social movement theory.     

Mobilizing Gender to Promote Peace: The Case of Machsom Watch

The binary model that presents women as peaceful and men as warfaring is a common conception of war and peace. Despite increasing levels of gender equality in most spheres of public life and decreasing gender segregation in institutions in many parts of the world, the associational link of men to war and women to peace remains widespread. Focusing on the Israeli women??s peace organization, Machsom Watch, this article uses a content analysis of interactions between Machsom Watch activists, soldiers and Palestinians to examine how gendered political opportunity structures affect and are affected by interactions between individuals, organizations and institutions. The paper highlights the contradiction between Machsom Watch??s form as a women-only organization and their framing and report language, which is non-gender specific. I argue that this contradiction emerges from their strategic negotiation of the gendered political opportunity structure as well as their culturally bounded experiences of gendered interactions and embodied gender norms. More generally, I argue that by understanding political opportunity structures as being bound by cultural norms that create distinct sets of opportunities and constraints for different groups of people, scholars can better understand the particular manifestation of social movement action and thereby more fully account for human agency in social and political structures. Additionally, this paper encourages social movement scholars to understand social movement framing as both a product of political opportunities and constraints as well as an influence in the formation of the political opportunity structure.     

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.     

From Game Protection to Wildlife Management: Frame Shifts,Organizational Development,and Field Practices

One enduring question in social movements research is the relationship between cultural representations and organizational structure. In this article, we examine the development of different discursive frames over time, and how such frame shifts affect movement structure and practices. This approach seeks to illuminate the dialectical interplay between the movement community's discursive frame and its practices, and thus expand our understanding of the process of social movement growth and change. Through a close qualitative and historical analysis of a discursive shift within the hunting community of the United States in the 1930s from a focus strictly on game protection to a more expanded discursive frame of wildlife management, we show how this cultural shift led to major changes in both the organizational structure and advocacy goals of this social movement. We conclude with a discussion of how this process can be further studied.     

Constructing identity and oppositional knowledge: The framing practices of peace movement organizations during the Persian gulf war

Social movement organizations (SMOs) engage in the formation of public policy and social beliefs by framing issues and events for the public. These framing activities may offer an alternative source of knowledge and challenge status quo definitions of important social issues. Analyzing the statements and press releases of four peace movement organizations during the seven months of military escalation and war in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, this article explores the structure and content of social movement framing of a specific event. Findings suggest that the shape and content of the frames used by these SMOs are rooted in a complex amalgamation of each organization's historical and public identity, intended audiences, and contemporary motivations and organizational goals. The collective identity of an organization influences the shape and content of the organization's framing activities. The organizations studied made use of their specific structural and organizational strengths as part of a credentialing process, wherein they shaped their oppositional voices so they could be heard and accepted by specific audiences. This was in turn a matter of the organization's historical practice, the ways it presented that history, and how it constructed its con temporary collective identity (e.g., as Quakers or as Catholic peacemakers). All of this is done with a view toward claiming a voice in the public debate, a voice that may help the SMO create oppositional bases of knowledge, influence public policy, sustain and embolden members, and establish a historical record of opposition.     

Time to go home? The conflictual politics of diaspora return in the Burmese women’s movement

ABSTRACT

The initiation of political reforms and a peace process in Myanmar has fundamentally altered the conditions for Burmese diasporic politics, and diaspora groups that have mobilized in Myanmar’s neighbouring countries are beginning to return. This article explores how return to Myanmar is debated within the Burmese women’s movement, a significant and internationally renowned segment of the Burmese diaspora. Does return represent the fulfilment of diasporic dreams; a pragmatic choice in response to less than ideal circumstances; or a threat to the very identity and the feminist politics of the women’s movement? Contrasting these competing perspectives, the analysis offers insights into the ongoing negotiations and difficult choices involved in return, and reveals the process of return as highly conflictual and contentious. In particular, the analysis sheds light on the gendered dimensions of diaspora activism and return, demonstrating how opportunities for women's activism are challenged, debated and reshaped in relation to return.     

THE DISCOURSE OF DEMOBILIZATION: Shifts in Activist Priorities and the Framing of Political Opportunities in a Peasant Land Struggle

This paper integrates the political opportunity and framing paradigms to analyze the discursive processes that were involved in the demobilization of a peasant land struggle in El Salvador. The framing paradigm provides a basis for analyzing how activist rhetoric shapes interpretations of opportunities and grievances among social movement participants to alter the goals and intensity of grassroots protest. As the land struggle demonstrates, leaders communicating with grassroots participants in a process of struggle may, over time, underemphasize shifts occurring in some dimensions of political opportunities, while framing more stable dimensions as having changed. They may also alter their framing of grievances.     

Wearing your Politics on your Sleeve: The Role of Political Colours in Social Movements

This article provides evidence of the significance of political colours and associated emblems in the repertoires of social movements and related political parties. It argues that political colours play an important role not only as visual symbols of the cause but also in the emotional life of social movements. Political colours help to create and sustain collective identities and illustrate the role of affect in political life. The article includes a case study of the role of colours in the women's movement, showing how one set of first-wave organizational colours took on much broader symbolic meanings during the second wave of the women's movement. It provides evidence from both the first and second waves of the women's movement of the emotional meaning of the colours for activists. The case study also illustrates the contestation over public memory that occurs in relation to powerful symbols.     

Toward a Free Information Movement

The past decade witnessed the emergence of numerous Internet‐based social justice groups, some of which have readily apparent social roles and follow traditional organizational paths, while others occupy more ambiguous spaces, and blur any clearly demarcated lines of classification. Groups such as Anonymous and WikiLeaks present researchers with difficulty in strict categorization and as such are often labeled in ways that obscure their classification and understanding. Situating these two groups within network society and social movement literatures, this study offers a sociological explanation for the rise of these groups and attempts to knit their disparately understood practices of “hacktivism” and “journalism” together in a coherent framework. Frame analysis is employed to examine how each group attends to core framing tasks, finding that both groups do so in substantially similar ways, employing complementary frames concerning the asymmetrical distribution of information. Moreover, their embeddedness in digital information networks, and their particular opposition to information asymmetry, acts as a unifying thread that enables these apparently disparate actors to be studied within a single analytical framework as part of an emerging digital, peer‐produced movement concerned with the asymmetrical distribution of information.     

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.     

Mobilizing in transnational contentious spaces: linking relations,emotions and space in migrant activism

Despite proliferation of political protest by migrants in recent years, analyses from a social movement perspective remain scarce. This lacuna is not coincidental, but theoretically grounded. According to dominant movement theories, migrants are unlikely subjects of mobilization due to legal obstacles, scarce resources and closed political and discursive opportunities. The article therefore explores how marginalized migrants organize transnational political protest against all evident odds. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and bridging transnational migration and social movement studies, it is argued that migrants mobilize within transnational social spaces, which link relations and emotions acquired on the move with the relational qualities at the locality of arrival. The article illustrates how the transnational spaces most migrants inhabit can be politicized and transformed into particular social formations, for which the term ‘transnational contentious spaces’ is suggested.     

Differential Impact of Repression on Social Movements: Christian Organizations and Liberation Theology in South Korea (1972–1979)*

During the height of authoritarianism in South Korea (1972–1979), Christian activists challenged the state along two dimensions. First, protesting Christians formed formal social movement organizations to better garner the resources to sustain their social movement. Second, they waged a discursive battle that challenged the legitimizing rhetoric of the state. By 1979, Christians developed a social movement industry involving the network of formal organizations as well as systematizing their rhetoric of protest in the guise of a Korean liberation theology; Minjung Theology. Drawing upon archival data and social movement theory, this study traces the rise and development of both the Christian social movement industry and Minjung Theology. We find that the emergence and evolution of mobilizing structures and movement frames were influenced by the state's repressive apparatuses and legitimizing rhetoric, respectively. Likewise, Christians’ attempts to mobilize and challenge the legitimizing rhetoric of the state further contributed to the closing of the political opportunity structure. This study empirically verifies recent theoretical work emphasizing the importance of considering the differential impact of repression on various components of a social movement.     

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.     

The new genetics: professionals' discursive boundaries

In this paper we examine new genetics professionals’ accounts of the social context of their work. We analyse accounts given in interview by an ‘elite’ group of scientists and clinicians. Drawing on the work of Gilbert and Mulkay (1984), we consider interviewees’ discourse about knowledge, exploring the way in which they separate science from society through the use of what we have called the ‘micro/macro split’. We then go on to consider the reasons for such a discursive boundary, exploring the interviewees’ wider discourse about expertise and responsibility for the social implications of the new genetics. We argue that interviewees’ discursive boundaries allow them to appeal variously to their objectivity, to dismiss bad science and to characterize the public as ignorant. However, these discursive boundaries are permeable and flexible, and are employed to support the new genetics professionals’ role in guiding education and government policy, whilst at the same time deflecting ultimate responsibility for the use of knowledge on to an abstract and amorphous society. Responsibility is flexibly embraced and abrogated. These flexible discursive boundaries thus promote rather than challenge the cognitive authority of new genetics professionals as they engage in debates about the social implications of their work. We end by challenging the replication of these discursive boundaries, noting some of the implications of such a critique for evaluation of the new genetics.