Research on Social Movements and Political Violence

Attention to extreme forms of political violence in the social sciences has been episodic, and studies of different forms of political violence have followed different approaches, with “breakdown” theories mostly used for the analysis of right-wing radicalism, social movement theories sometimes adapted to research on left-wing radical groups, and area study specialists focusing on ethnic and religious forms. Some of the studies on extreme forms of political violence that have emerged within the social movement tradition have nevertheless been able to trace processes of conflict escalation through the detailed examination of historical cases. This article assesses some of the knowledge acquired in previous research approaching issues of political violence from the social movement perspective, as well as the challenges coming from new waves of debate on terrorist and counterterrorist action and discourses. In doing this, the article reviews contributions coming from research looking at violence as escalation of action repertoires within protest cycles; political opportunity and the state in escalation processes; resource mobilization and violent organizations; narratives of violence; and militant constructions of external reality.

Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

While sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to how political elites matter for the emergence and development of social movements, they have focused less explicitly on how political elites matter for the culture of social movements. This essay reviews work that directly and indirectly addresses this relationship, showing how political elites matter for various aspects of movement culture, like collective identity and framing. It also reviews literature that suggests how movement culture comes to impact political elites. The essay concludes by drawing from very recent scholarship to argue that to best understand political elites and the culture of social movements, we need to think about culture and structure as intertwined and to understand how relations matters in the construction of meaning.     

The Challenge of Cultural Elites: Celebrities and Social Movements*

Although celebrities have become a regular fixture in modern social movements, there is little explicit theory on why, or on how they may affect the movements in which they participate. We begin by discussing the resources celebrities can bring to bear on social protest movements, as well as the risks that celebrity participation entails both for the movement and for the celebrity. We suggest a notion of political standing, which sets limits on the sorts of causes in which celebrities will generally participate. In constructing their legitimacy to speak for a movement, celebrities frequently alter the claims of that movement to more consensual kinds of politics. We examine the entry, action, and influence of celebrities in particular movements by looking at two recent controversies in which celebrities are deeply involved: The ongoing efforts to preserve the woods around Walden Pond, and the recent passage, and subsequent political fallout, of an antigay referendum in Colorado. In the first case, celebrity participation led to a redefining of movement claims into a nonconflictual inclusive politics that skirted important questions. In the second case, the larger claims of gay rights and liberation were eclipsed by the entry of celebrities into the conflict who universalized the opposition to discrimination. We conclude by discussing the systematic biases that movement use of celebrities may create, and the need to consider the impact of celebrities’peculiar relationships to audiences as they affect political movements and public life.     

Music in Movement: Cultural Politics and Old and New Social Movements

After a period of interdisciplinary openness, contemporary sociology has only recently rediscovered culture. This is especially true of political sociology, where institutional and network analyses, as well as rational choice models, have dominated. This article will offer another approach by focusing on the role of music and the visual arts in relation to the formation of collective identity, collective memory and collective action. Drawing on my own research on the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the memory of slavery in the formation of African-American identity, and its opposite, the place of white power music in contemporary neo-fascist movements, I will outline a model of culture as more than a mobilization resource and of the arts as political mediators.     

Social Media and Social Movements

What role does social media play in social movements and political unrest? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google have all been cited as important components in social revolutions, including those in Tunisia, Egypt, Iceland, Spain, and the global Occupy movement. This essay explores social science claims about the relationship between social networking and social movements. It examines research done on the relationship between social networking, the promotion of activism, and the offline participation in the streets. Can the technology of social networking help activists to achieve their goals? If so, is it just one of many tools they may use, or is the technology so powerful that the right use will actually tip the scales in favor of the social movement? This scholarship divides into optimistic, pessimistic, and ambivalent approaches, turning on an oft‐repeated question: will the revolution be tweeted?     

Master Frames and Counter-Hegemony: Political Sensibilities in Contemporary Social Movements*

En se fondant sur l'analyse de données recueillies lors d'une série d'entrevues de 212 militants issus de divers groupes d'activistes, les auteurs examinent comment les nouveaux mouvements sociaux abordent les problèmes politiques de notre époque. Après avoir énuméré les principales façons de définir l'injustice et d'exprimer l'idéal social chez les personnes interrogées, ils tentent de déceler une pensée commune a tous les groupes, pensée fondée sur le partage d'une même idée de la justice sociale. À la lumière de cette analyse, on mesure ensuite la viabilité des mouvements luttant contre l'ordre établi; une théorie génerate sur leur influence dans la société contemporaine est ensuite esquissée. Based on an analysis of in-depth interview data from 212 activists in a variety of social movements, this paper considers the ways in which diverse movements' discourses frame political issues. After identifying primary injustice frames and social visions articulated by sample respondents, the authors assess the plausibility of a cross-movement unity based on shared “master frames,” i.e., common understandings of injustice and a common social vision. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of their analysis for the viability of counter-hegemonic politics and for theorizations of contemporary social movements. “I would suggest… (i) that power is co-extensive with the social body; there are no spaces of primal liberty between the meshes of the network; (ii) that relations of power are interwoven with other kinds of relations … for which they play at once a conditioning and a conditioned role; (iii) that these relations don't take the sole form of prohibition and punishment, but are of multiple forms; (iv) that their interconnections delineate general conditions of domination, and … one should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of integration into overall strategies; (v) that power relations do indeed ‘serve’, but not at all because they are “in the service of an economic interest taken as primary, rather because they are capable of being utilised in strategies; (vi) that there are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised.” —Michel Foucault, “Power and strategies”(1980)     

Life-Spheres,Networks, and Sustained Participation in Social Movements: A Phenomenological Approach to Political Commitment

This article proposes an account of individual participation in social movements that combines structural and cultural factors. It aims to explain why certain activists continue to be involved in social movements while others withdraw. When activists remain embedded in social networks relevant for the protest issues and, above all, when they keep a symbolic linkage between their activism and their personal life-spheres, sustained participation is likely to occur. When these two factors become progressively separated from each other and the process of self-interaction by activists loses its strength, disengagement can be expected. The argument is illustrated with life-history interviews of activists who have kept their strong commitment to a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement, and others that, in contrast, have abandoned their involvement. The findings support the argument that the interplay of the structural positions of actors and the symbolic meanings of mobilization has a strong impact on commitment to social movements and hence on sustained participation or disengagement. In particular, the interviews show the importance of a sense of coherence and of a holistic view of one's personal life for keeping commitment over time. This calls for a view of individual participation in social movements that draws from social phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in order to shed light on the symbolic (subjective) dimensions of participation, yet without neglecting the crucial role played by structural (objective) factors.     

Politics, Social Movements, and the Body

This paper outlines a conceptual idea of the 'body' in social movement research that captures how the body is both the materialization of civic culture and empowering agent of change. After critically reviewing the three main debates on the body literature –'biopolitics', 'embodiment' and 'feminism'– I explain why each fails to provide an adequate account of the embodied self in social movements. I suggest combining the concepts of 'performativity. and 'performance' to capture how social movements use, challenge, and reproduce civic norms to construct 'embodied performances' as forms of symbolic communication for the purposes of stimulating cultural and political change. By combining the two concepts, I will put forth an theory of the body in social movements that addresses: 1) the constraints of normative civic ethics that limit possible forms of struggle as well as foreshadow political consequences 2) how embodied performances create community and solidarity within a heterogeneous population to make mobilization possible and 3) the stratification and sometimes fracturing of social groups during the social movement process.     

Social Movements,Protest and Mainstream Media

This article provides a broad, cross‐disciplinary overview of scholarship which has explored the dynamics between social movements, protests and their coverage by mainstream media across sociology, social movement studies, political science and media and communications. Two general approaches are identified ‘representational’ and ‘relational’ research. ‘Representational’ scholarship is that which has concerned itself with how social movements are portrayed or ‘framed’ in the media, how the media production process facilitates this, and the consequences thereof. ‘Relational’ scholarship concentrates on the asymmetrical ‘relationship’ between social movements, the contestation of media representation and the media strategies of social movements. Within these two broad approaches different perspectives and areas of emphasis are highlighted along with their strengths and weaknesses. The conclusion reflects on current developments in this area of study and offers avenues for future research.     

Occupation, Biography and New Social Movements

Membership of 'new social movements' is generally associated with employment in the educated service class, particularly in the state sector. The nature of the employment experience is often said to be generative, in some way, of radical activism, even if only, in much modified versions of such theorising, through the reinforcement provided from the presence of networks of like-minded colleagues. On the basis of intensive biographical study of both environmentalist and feminist activists in a large industrial city, it is argued that though they are indeed located in the occupations referred to in the literature, their membership of NSMs cannot in general be attributed either to their experience of employment or of higher education. The propensity to radical activism is clearly established at an earlier date. It emerges from the intersection of socialisation within the family and personal life experience.     

Music and Social Movements

Music is a key component of social movements. This article addresses the relationship between music and social movements through four foci: collective identity, free space, emotions, and social movement culture. Collective identity is developed and nurtured within free spaces through the use of music. These spaces are often rife with emotions that are instrumental in development of collective identity. A social movement culture may develop as these processes unfold. Music is part of this culture and serves as an important mechanism for solidarity when participants move beyond free spaces to more contested ones. Examples of song lyrics demonstrate these processes. Research on music and social movements, it is argued here, can be enhanced by addressing technology and popular culture.     

Humor and Social Movements

At first glance, humor and politics may appear oppositional. Politics is often understood as serious, important, and grave, while humor is perceived as lighthearted and frivolous. Beneath the surface, however, it is evident that humor and politics are actually inextricably linked and have been throughout political history. This paper interrogates the tensions between humor and seriousness, importance and frivolity, and legitimate and dismissible to examine the manifestations of humor in social movement protest. I discuss how humor is used as a communicative and emotional strategy for social movement activists and organizations and focus on two constellations of movement humor: humor directed outside the group in the forms of tactics and frames, which I term external humor, and the role of humor in leadership, collective identity, and emotional labor, termed internal humor. To illustrate the role of humor in protest, I integrate examples from scholarly research, media depictions, and participant observation data to provide examples of how humor is manifest as an external tactic, social movement frame, and its potential role in strengthening ties to leadership and collective identity. The essay concludes by highlighting some potential paths for future study about the relationship between humor, ideology, identity, and power.     

Social Movements and Social Networks: Introduction

In this Introduction we provide a brief literature review of work on social networks and social movements, a brief introduction to certain key concepts and debates in social network analysis, and a brief introduction to the articles which follow in the special issue.     

Social Movements and New Media

This article explores the contention that social movements are a significant social force transforming societies through their engagement with new media, such as the Internet, Web 2.0, and digital communications, which are seen as capable of facilitating new power structures. Utilizing della Porta and Diani's framework, it considers how new media technologies may be shaping the structure, identity, opportunity, and protest dimensions of social movements. It concludes by suggesting that new media does offer important opportunities for cost‐effective networking, interpretive framing, mobilization, and repertoires of protest action. However, their adoption does not represent the creation of entirely new virtual social movements but rather a new means of providing existing social movement organisations, local activist networks, and street‐level protest with a trans‐national capacity to collaborate, share information, and communicate with a wider audience. Such new media‐enabled social action is both more congruent with a politics of identity but may also increasingly be competing within a media environment saturated by user‐generated content.     

Toward a Class-Cultural Theory of Social Movements: Reinterpreting New Social Movements

This paper examines the relationship between social class and social mobilization through reviewing the case of new social movements. The middle-class membership of new social movements is well documented but poorly explained by current New Class, New Social Movement, and Cultural Shift theories. These theories fail to recognize the interdependence between interests, values, and expressed ideas. Class culture provides an alternative framework for interpreting the complex relationships between class interests and consciousness in these movements. Through a comparison of working- and middle-class cultures, it is proposed that social class orders consciousness and shapes the interpretation of interests. Class cultures produce distinct class forms of political and organizational behavior while not defining any particular content of movement issues or politics. In particular, the middle-class membership of new social movements is explained by the cultural form of these movements which is distinctly middle class.     

Social Movements and Tactical Choice

For much of the past 40 years, the study of social movement tactics has viewed organizers' choices as driven by a desire to maximize efficacy and efficiency within a context of scarce resources and structural constraints. As sociologists increasingly turned toward culture, a new orientation emerged to view tactical choice as a process of gathering, interpreting, and evaluating information within dynamic, uncertain, and often‐contradictory contexts. The importance of the cultural turn has been amply demonstrated in studies of such things as identities, emotions, and collective action frames, but the full implications of its insights continue to be discovered. Four insights in particular warrant greater attention: many core concepts in the study of social movements have an interpretive, subjective, and contingent nature; tactics are a means of communication; social structures are imbued with culture, and culture is thoroughly structured; and social movements sometimes behave irrationally, and what appears to be irrational behavior often is in fact rational. I briefly discuss three areas of scholarship – collective identities, diffusion, and institutional fields – that demonstrate innovative ways that sociologists continue to combine and incorporate these insights and point the way toward a more sophisticated understanding of social movements and tactical choice.