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 Integration,Psychological Well-Being,and Their Socioeconomic Correlates*

Unidimensional conceptions of socioeconomic status require that alternative indicators of one's position in the stratification system have similar effects upon the consequences of socioeconomic level. We show herein that different indicators of social participation and psychological well-being are in fact associated with different indicators of socioeconomic status. Thus, any attempt to combine these indicators—educational attainment, occupational pursuit, family income, or occupational origins—into a single index of socioeconomic status will prove unsatisfactory because its component parts have different consequences for the same variable. We also show in this paper precisely how certain formulations of the effects of inconsistency and mobility are wholly redundant and only represent a logically possible way of interpreting the linearly additive effects of the variables used to define inconsistency and mobility.     

Ideology and Social Movements: The Contributions of Habermas*

Theorists of social movements have not developed a sufficiently complex perspective of the role that ideology has in the dynamics of social movements. This essay demonstrates that Habermas’theory of the autonomy of normative structures is useful to explain the independent role of ideology in determining the direction taken by social movements. Habermas’emphasis on the interrelationship between cultural traditions, consensus formation, epistemologies, and differentiated rationalization processes furnishes an alternative to the instrumentalist and ahistorical assumptions that often characterize theorists’treatment of ideology in social movements. Empirical examples from studies of social movements are utilized to demonstrate the usefulness of Habermas’approach.     

Status Inconsistency and Participation in Social Movements: an Application of Goodman's Hierarchical Modeling*

Goodman's hierarchical modeling is used to analyze the status inconsistency configuration of 67 active participants in an anti-pornography social movement and 44 persons who actively opposed the movement. The substantive results indicated the need to interpret status inconsistency effects in light of the second-order interaction of all three stratification variables—education, occupation and income. We found that inconsistencies between two of the stratification dimensions changed the association between the third dimension and participation in a social movement in the positive direction. A modification of the over-rewarded/under-rewarded inconsistency hypothesis was advanced as a special case of the general finding. The methodological results indicate that the Goodman hierarchical modeling technique is a promising system for establishing empirical linkages between significance testing and substantive interpretations with regard to the area of status inconsistency.     

Restructuring the Past: Toward an Appreciation of the Social Context of Social Science*

The recent surge of interest in the history of the social sciences reflects the unsettled conditions which obtain within these disciplines. Historical analysis may prove an aid to the resolution of these conditions, but only if it does not fall into the genre generally called "whig history"—mythologized history which functions to legitimate contemporary practices by assimilating all previous developments to a stylized narrative of continuous, inevitable "progress." Because "whig history" is intrinsic to the "scientific ethos," its rejection entails a reconsideration of the nature of the scientific enterprise in general, and of social science in particular.     

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.     

Captain America and Thriller: How Artistic Expressions Shape Mobilization Processes in Social Movements

Social activist and anarchist Emma Goldman purportedly said, “If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!” Although falsely attributed to Goldman, subsequent protesters later adopted the sentiment, such as London‐based activists Reclaim the Streets (RTS), and, more recently, Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Art and protest has a long history, ranging from the use of song in the Civil Rights Movement to the use of graffiti in the global movements of 1968 to the creative performances of activists in AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to the dramatic street performances and costumes in the Battle of Seattle of 1999. Existing literature illuminates how art shapes mobilization processes of social movement. This review demonstrates two major ways in which art shapes mobilization processes, specifically the communication and visibility of movements and the emotional work of movements. In addition, suggestions are made for future research at the intersection of art and social movements.     

Patterns of Belief In Social Movements: Clarifications from an Analysis of Environmental Groups*

Several explanations of social movements rest on the assumption that participants are bonded together by a commonly-held set of beliefs differentiating them from non-participants. This is especially true of Smelser's theory of collective behavior and its central concept, the generalized belief. Components of the generalized belief are examined in light of recent studies of groups within the environmental movement; results disclose significant heterogeneity, especially regarding responsibility for environmental problems and visions of solutions. Data from a total census of a focal group within one urban environmental coalition are presented and the distribution of beliefs across its structure described. The degree of homogeneity of beliefs decreases with movement from the center to the periphery of the group. These analyses suggest that collective action by social movement organizations results from emergent internal processes and structures rather than initial consensus among movement participants.     

Organizational Linkages and Resource Mobilization: The Significance of Linkage Strength and Breadth*

This paper discusses the importance of identifying the environmental context in which organizations function. The relationship between an organization and those other groups and individuals constituting its environment is specified in terms of linkages. Two key dimensions of linkage are identified: strength and breadth. The former refers to how intimately the organization is connected with any other group while the latter refers to how extensive is the support. These linkages' dimensions are viewed from a “resource mobilization” perspective, i.e., as the means by which resources are brought into an organization. A study of linkages sustained by the NAACP during 1961–69 illustrates how the dimensions of linkage strength and breadth can be operationalized and applied. New avenues of research then are suggested.     

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)     

Critical Perspectives on Crime and Social Harm: Toward a Criminology of Human Rights

Using Sutherland’s conceptualization of white‐collar crime as a significant point of departure, this article explores recent attempts to theorize crime and social harm from a critical criminological perspective. Arguing that the development of this approach is inextricably linked to theoretical and methodological concerns that strike at the very foundation of criminology as a discipline of study, I show how advances in state and corporate crime literature have advanced the field of criminology. Ultimately I argue that contemporary mainstream criminology, which tends to focus solely on the analysis of traditional ‘street’ crime, has failed to bring within its criminological purview those actions which have the greatest potential for causing significant human suffering.     

Fields,Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field*

This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational‐ and individual‐level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this claim by delineating the contours of one such field, the “social justice field” (SJF). I argue that the SJF is a delimited, trans‐movement arena of contentious politics united by the logic of the pursuit of radical social justice. Drawing upon existing scholarship, as well as my own research on the prison abolition movement, I argue that the competitive demands of the field produce characteristic effects on organizations and individual activists within the field. I conclude by considering how a Bourdieuian approach can provide fresh insights into familiar problematics within the social movements literature.     

Support for Climate Change Policy: Social Psychological and Social Structural Influences*

Abstract We investigated preferences for climate change mitigation policies and factors contributing to higher levels of policy support. The sample was comprised of 316 Michigan and Virginia residents, all of whom completed mail surveys. Of the eight policies proposed to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, respondents overwhelmingly indicated they would not support a gas tax, while support was highest for shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy strategies. With the exception of taxes on gasoline and “gas guzzlers,” a majority of respondents supported all other mitigation policies. Multivariate analyses revealed that greater trust in environmentalists and less trust in industry, greater recognition of the consequences of climate change, higher income, being black, and older age were predictive of greater policy support. Personal values (e.g., altruism), future orientation, and political affiliation were strong predictors of policy support but only indirectly via worldviews and environmental beliefs.     

Urban Social Movements and the Right to the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Mobilization

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299–318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887–917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’     

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 Capital, Resource Mobilization and Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract  This article critiques the contradictory claims of Robert Putnam and Aldon Morris in relation to the American civil rights movement. Putnam identifies the South as the American region most lacking in social capital, and argues more generally that the 1960s marked a watershed beyond which social capital in the United States declined in all regions. Morris identifies the indigenous resources of southern African American communities as fundamental to the civil rights movement's emergence in the late 1950s and sees the social networks and cultural assets of the African American church in particular as central to the movement. The article disputes Putnam's negative judgment of the South by highlighting the role played by various types of social capital in the movement's launch. It also challenges Morris's over-emphasis on the ability of charismatic, black church leadership to deliver mass support and re-affirms the role played by female lay figures, such as beauticians.     

Empirical Considerations on the Problem of Social Integration*

The present study analyzes differences in perception of neighborhood and residential mobility as related to formal and informal participation. Results show that perceived similarity is related to neighborhood participation, while residential mobility is related to formal group membership. These relationships, with very few exceptions, seem to persist even in the presence of other control variables like age, education and religion. A significant proportion of the urban community participates frequently with neighbors and belongs to church and other formal groups. These activities are generally high in the suburb and low in the inner city regardless of differences in perception of neighborhood and residential mobility except for membership in organizational groups: the high membership in the suburb occurs under conditions of perceived similarity. The theoretical implications suggest a re-evaluation of the mode of life in the modern urban community and emphasize the significance of taking the perceptual as well as the behavioral context into account in sociological analysis.