Theory-bashing and answer-improving in the study of social movements

Over the 1970s and 1980s, a “theory-bashing” mindset gained popularity among sociologists of social movements and, for a period, overshadowed the alternative mindset of seeking to improve answers to questions about social movements. Now on the wane, theory-bashing nonetheless retains a significant presence. This mindset has a number of attractions and virtues and it is, broadly speaking, legitimate. But, it also has negative features and consequences that I want to point out. I begin by showing how the theory-bashing differs from the answer-improving mindset and I then explain ways in which the former hinders the analysis of social movements even though it can also be helpful. Finally, I offer a sociological account of why theory-bashing has been so popular in movement studies. His most recent book isPolite Protesters: The American Peace Movement of the 1980s (Syracuse University Press, 1993).     

Ellen Swallow Richards: “Humanistic Oekologist,” “Applied Sociologist,” and the founding of sociology

Best known as the first woman graduate from MIT, and the founder of Home Economics, Ellen Swallow Richards was a Progressive Era reformer who applied social science research techniques to problems of concern to early sociologists. As a mentor to many women who joined the “Cultural” and “Pragmatic” feminists of Hull House, her secular theories of “Oekology” and “Euthenics” challenged many of the models of social change prevalent in the Cambridge and Chicago academic communities. Her most radical contribution as a feminist was her assertion that women’s unpaid labor in the home played a vital economic role in maintaining capitalism and was the ultimate source of their second-class citizenship. She shared a belief in democracy and education as a feminist “Pragmatist,” and laid the groundwork for the contemporary “Ecofeminist” movement. Although she was a biochemist by training, she engaged several genera-tions of women in the application of scientific methods to the solution of contemporary social problems. As a political organizer, much of her legacy is reflected in the accomplishments of the reform organizations she was instrumental in founding.     

Conflicts between activist research and academic success: Participatory research and alternative strategies

The article compares participatory research and alternative activist approaches, based on the literature on participatory research and interviews with nine successful sociologists who use alternative approaches. Participatory research, distinguished by high control over research by community members, equalizes power within the research process, but often retards academic publication and career advancement. The interviews show that successful academics retain control over their research, experience mild to severe conflicts with departments, and develop various strategies for combining activism and career success. All types of activist research are more effective in challenging inequality if they involve activist community organizations. Her research has focused on family, gender, and feminist and participatory methods. Recent publications includeLove in America, “Feminist Science,” and “Participatory Research” with Cathleen Armstead. Her current participatory research project explores “Family and Community Caring” in a Mexican-American community. Address for correspondence: Francesca M. Cancian, University of CA, Dept. of Sociology, Irvine, CA 92717.     

Who Are We? Genealogists Negotiating Ethno-Racial Identities

This paper analyzes how ethno-racial standpoints influence the ways that genealogists negotiate and narrate biological and/or social interpretations of family and social history. A constructivist methodological approach grounds the analysis of three family genealogists who all have African and European lineages, but differ in their current ethno-racial identities. These case studies serve as exemplars of how individuals negotiate the racial formation processes of past and present. I suggest that there is reflexive and political potential in bio-based genealogy to transform our current racial “common sense.” The practice of genealogy reveals tacit social and biological assumptions that can serve as points of leverage for progressive social change, and yet vary by standpoint. In the context of the iconic gene we must be vigilant about the threat of genetic essentialism, yet the threat is mitigated by the simultaneous democratization of our knowledge and control over origin stories.

Questioning Heteronormativity: Lesbian and gay challenges to education practice in British Columbia,Canada

This paper explores social movement organizing within social institutions, using the cases of the Surrey book banning and the Trinity Western University, two cases of activist litigation in British Columbia, Canada. In these cases, lesbian and gay teacher activists challenged heteronormative constructions in educational practices, in one case by introducing lesbian and gay-positive reading materials in the elementary grades, in the other by challenging the right of an evangelical university to train teachers for the public education system. In the context of the existing literatures on social movements within institutions and challenges to education practices, the paper emphasizes two main conclusions: 1) challenges to educational practice may be mounted by teachers themselves, despite their professional and 'insider' status and 2) a range of different types of relationships are possible between social movement challenges within social institutions and social movements outside of institutions. In the cases presented here, the strategies, discourses and frames of 'insider' challenges to educational practices were drawn from the teacher-activists' location as part of the broader legally focused Canadian lesbian and gay movement.     

The Moral Imperative of Universal Health Care: A Talk Presented at the Annual Forum of the National Academies of Practice

There are certain basic needs, such as food, shelter, education, and health care, which a moral society should meet for all of its people. When that society is the wealthiest in the world, the obligation to fulfill this requirement is even more compelling. Political and other social forces, however, often exacerbate the fears and greed of a country’s citizens, resulting in policies that benefit a few at the expense of many. Such policies can exist for long periods of time, but may ultimately give way when the conscience of society finds its voice and demands otherwise. William S. Meyer, MSW, BCD is the Director of Training and an Associate Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Ob/Gyn at Duke University Medical Center. He is also on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center of North Carolina.     

Perceived risk associated with apparel purchasing in discount stores

Consumer discount store patronage preferences for apparel are investigated using the concept of perceived risk. Apparel items are assigned a type and level of risk: low social, low economic; high social, low economic; and high social, high economic. Females (N=222) responding to a mail survey rate their willingness to purchase each item in a discount store on a scale ofprefer to buy, may buy, ornever buy. Results suggest that consumer preference for purchasing in discount stores declines more sharply when economic risk increases than when social risk increases.Teresa A. Summers is Associate Professor of the School of Human Ecology, Textiles, Apparel Design and Merchandising at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. She received her Ph.D. from Texas Woman's University. Her research interest includes rural/urban consumer responses to changes in the marketplace.Frances C. Lawrence is Professor of the School of Human Ecology, Family, Child, and Consumer Sciences at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. She received her Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her research interests include family financial decision-making and family time use.Janice L. Haynes is Assistant Professor of the School of Human Ecology, Textiles, Apparel Design and Merchandising at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. She received her Ph.D. from Texas Woman's University. Her research interest includes retail patronage of specialized consumer market segments.Patricia J. Wozniak is Associate Professor of the Department of Experimental Statistics at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include survey methodology and rural families.     

Interaction Ritual Chains and the Mobilization of Conscientious Consumers

Markets for “socially responsible” products are comprised of activists who lead protests, organize boycotts, and promote the consumption of these goods. However, the ultimate success of these movements is dependent upon the support of a large number of consumers whose self-professed values often contradict with their own purchasing patterns. Consumer support of socially responsible products cannot be explained by consumer culture theories, which privilege identity, attitudes, and behavior, or mass consumption theories, which emphasize location and advertising’s influence on consumption patterns. These perspectives are informative but unable to explain why some consumers will only buy socially responsible products while others with similar value systems possess much more contradictory consumption patterns. I extend Collin’s theory of “Interaction Ritual chains” to show that rituals and emotions—more than identity or coercive advertising—explain how ethical consumers are mobilized. I show how face-to-face interactions between consumers and producers produce solidarity and motivate support for the Fair Trade movement. This paper employs a micro-sociological approach to contribute to studies of ethical consumption in three notable ways: 1) it emphasizes the importance of “contexts” and is able to explain contradictions in consumer behavior; 2), it contributes to our understanding of “brand communities” by describing the micro-sociological processes that both help to build these communities and create value within the products that organize these groups; and 3) it offers the potential to develop a predictive model for the purchasing patterns of consumers.     

Disciplinary knowledge revisited: The social construction of sociology

In Making Science (1992) I make the distinction between two types of knowledge: research frontier knowledge and core knowledge. Core knowledge is the small body of knowledge for which the entire scientific community treats as indisputable facts. The research frontier is all new knowledge which makes claim to being facts but in practice there is no consensus on this knowledge. The two types of knowledge are linked together by the evaluation process. Most frontier knowledge turns out to be insignificant and is ignored. A small part of frontier knowledge is taken as candidates for the core and evaluated. Most of this knowledge turns out to be “wrong.” Thus the important data of Jacobs ( 1989) loses a good deal of its impact because he forces it into a theory which he calls “social control”: a theory for which there is no evidence. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science.     

Sponsored Social Change in a Public Housing Project

Federal and local pressures have given rise to a hybrid organization that brings together disparate groups from the public and non-profit sectors to address complex social problems. This article examines one such organizational emergence of state-affiliated sponsorship. Based on data from a multi-method case study, we find that not only do members of the sponsoring organization use legitimate authority structures, existing laws, and social norms to reproduce their power, they do so with a state mandate that privileges their expertise and processes.Parts of this paper were prepared while the third author, Beth A. Rubin, was on leave to serve as Director, Sociology Program, National Science Foundation. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. P. Denise Cobb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. This research reflects one part of Cobb's dissertation research that addresses how organizational actors from unequal social positions define a collective agenda and whose interests prevail when there is a lack of consensus. Her current research further examines the emergence of the university-community partnership form. She has published related work in Administration & Society and previously in Qualitative Sociology. Jon Shefner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Studies Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is co-editor, with Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, of Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (2006: Pennsylvania State Press). He is currently working on a book examining the impact of globalization and democratization on the mobilization and well being of Mexico's urban poor. Beth A. Rubin is Professor of Management and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Rubin publishes on economic and workplace transformation, labor unions, homelessness and social policy and social theory in leading academic journals. Her current research is on organizational commitment in the context of the new economy, inequality and industrial restructuring, organizational and workplace restructuring and time in organizations, the latter of which is represented in the forthcoming book, Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, that Rubin is editing.     

Studying social capital in situ: A qualitative approach

In recent years, the concept of social capital – broadly defined as co-operative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust – has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital, e.g., inclusive and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a “social trap” (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population. Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen is Senior Researcher, at the Institute of Rural Research and Development, Southern University of Denmark. He is the co-author, with G. T. Svendsen, of The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-operative Movements and Institutions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, Paperback edition, October 2005); and author of Samarbejde og konfrontation. Opbygning og nedbrydning af social kapital i de danske landdistrikter 1864–2003 [Cooperation and Confrontation. The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital in Rural Denmark 1864–2003], Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sourthern Denmark, Esbjerg, 2004: http://www.humaniora.sdu.dk/phd/dokumenter/filer/Afhandlinger-30.pdfg. Gunnar Svendsen's scholarly interests include Bourdieusian Economics (new socioeconomics), capital theory, social capital, rural civic movements, and rural discourses. He has recently finished a research project for the Danish Ministry of the Interior about the role of intangible assets (culture, networks, and historical traditions) for differences in economic performance (DEP) among four Danish local communities.     

Power,prosperity and social choice: A review

Mancur Olson's book, The Rise and Decline of Nations [45], used ideas from his earlier Logic of Collective Action [44] to argue that entrenched interest groups in a polity could induce economic sclerosis, or slow growth. These ideas seemed relevant to the perceived relative decline of the U.S. and Britain during the 1970's. Five years later, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers [27] proposed a more general “declinist” argument, that a great power such as the USA would engage in fiscal irrationality through increasing military expenditure, thus hastening its own decline. Neither of these two declinist arguments seem applicable to the situation of the new millennium. Olson's last book, Power and Prosperity [46], published posthumously in 2000, attempted a more general theoretical analysis of the necessary and sufficient causes of prosperity and growth. For Olson only “securely democratic societies” could be conducive to long-lived individual rights to property and contract, but democracy itself need not be sufficient for the protection of rights. This review attempts to further develop Olson's logic on the connection between prosperity and liberty, by exploring insights derived from William Riker's interpretation of U.S. federalism [51], from the contribution of Douglass North and Barry Weingast [43] to neo-institutional economic theory, and from recent work on war and fiscal responsibility by Ferguson [20, 21] and Stasavage [70, 71]. Received: 25 June 2001/Accepted: 29 January 2002 This review is one of a series of papers on constitutional choice based on research supported by NSF grants SBR 97 30275 and 98 18582. I appreciate the assistance of Diana Ivanova, Annette Milford, Andrew Rutten and Tsvetan Tsvetkov. Unpublished work by David Stasavage was very helpful.     

Modernity and the hybridization of nationalism and religion: Zionism and the Jews of the Middle East as a heuristic case

This article looks at nationalism and religion, analyzing the sociological mechanisms by which their intersection is simultaneously produced and obscured. I propose that the construction of modern nationalism follows two contradictory principles that operate simultaneously: hybridization and purification. Hybridization refers to the mixing of “religious” and “secular” practices; purification refers to the separation between “religion” and “nationalism” as two distinct ontological zones. I test these arguments empirically using the case of Zionist nationalism. As a movement that was born in Europe but traveled to the Middle East, Zionism exhibits traits of both of these seemingly contradictory principles, of hybridization and purification, and pushes them to their limits. The article concludes by pointing to an epistemological asymmetry in the literature by which the fusion of nationalism and religion tends to be underplayed in studies of the West and overplayed in studies of the East/global South.

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Hungarians and Jews: Narrowed Perspectives and Threatened Sensibilities

Sunshine (179 minutes) Directed by Istvén Szabó. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Ehle, William Hurt     

Looking at Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behavior After Almost 50 Years: A Review and Appreciation

A half century has gone by since the publication of Neil Smelser’s classic book on the Theory of Collective Behavior. The re-issue of the book triggered these observations in which I reflect on the fate of old books; trace a bit of the book’s genealogy; note changes in the field; and argue that Smelser’s book is really four books in one with varying impact over the decades and likely to be of varying interest to current scholars—an application of Parsonian theory to conflict and change; an elaboration of key concepts found with collective behavior which involves “uninstitutionalized mobilization to reconstitute components of social action on the basis of a generalized belief”; an elaboration of variables such as objective conditions of the social order, perceptions and belief systems required to understand the topic; and a comprehensive summary and critique of relevant empirical and theoretical work on collective behavior through the 1950s. Based on criticisms of the book, I suggest some areas that should be addressed were the book to be revised.     

From critique to constructive action: Concrete steps toward a more progressive SSSP

The Society for the Study of Social Problems was formed to analyze social problems, but especially to contribute to their solutions. After some recent years of drifting, a critical mass of the members has begun to construct a more progressive SSSP. One focus is how to change the annual meetings so as not to become a “junior ASA.” SSSP needs to break with the format that features isolated, professional discourse and begin to construct encounters with social practitioners and community activists. Attention to more democratic decision-making within the society and establishing a commission on grass roots organizations are other means to help re-establish the progressive character of SSSP. Currently he is on leave working as a research consultant atLa Coordinadora de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (CRIES) in Managua, Nicaragua.     

Radical Outcasts versus Three Kinds of Police: Constructing Limits in Japanese Anti-Emperor Protests

Field observation of anti-emperor protests in Japan reveals two key processes through which the interaction of police and demonstrators gradually narrows the limits of permitted dissent through soft repression. The first process stigmatizes demonstration participants and sharply separates them from the mainstream of Japanese public life, discouraging public attention to or participation in their causes. The second process divides protest movements internally, decreasing support for groups that operate at the prevailing limit of tolerated dissent, and gradually constricting the limit itself. Great variability in police-demonstrator interactions within demonstrations suggests the limitations of newspaper content analysis methods for such research. Patricia Steinhoff is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. A Japan specialist who studies Japanese radical left groups, she is the author or editor of twelve books, including three in Japanese, and eighty articles and book chapters. Recent publications include Doing fieldwork in Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2003), which she co-edited with Theodore Bestor and Victoria Lyon Bestor, and “Kidnapped Japanese in North Korea: The New Left connection” Journal of Japanese Studies 30:1, Winter, 2004, pp. 123–142.