bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Competition Theory of Ethnic/Racial Conflict and Protest
Authors: Olzak Susan
Published: January 2013

Competition theory of race and ethnic conflict specifies three mechanisms under which racial/ethnic conflict and protest occurs. The first reflects a familiar “racial threat” argument, suggesting that the magnitude of response by dominant groups depends on thetiming and size of the incoming groupand on theclarity of ethnic distinctionsmade between newcomers and residents (Blalock 1967). Thus, particularly large and concentrated waves of newcomers perceived as ethnically or racially distinct are especially likely to receive a hostile response. Furthermore, as migration and immigration of distinct ethnic and racial populations surge, the potential for protest or violence directed against ethnically distinct newcomers becomes more likely (Koopmans & Olzak 2004).
Community Organizing (
U
nited
S
tates)
Authors: Swarts Heidi
Published: January 2013

Community organizing is the process of mobilizing people in the same geographic area to advocate for themselves in enduring organizations. While social movements are usually issue‐based, community organizing (CO) is geographic constituency‐based. It typically addresses multiple issues such as housing, jobs, public safety, healthcare, and community reinvestment. While affluent communities organize also, the term generally refers to organizing residents of poor and working‐class communities into lasting organizations to gain power. Tactics vary from unruly disruption to more conventional methods of rewarding and punishing elected officials through mobilizing voters. While most social movements have geographically organized mobilization, “community organizing” has a more specific meaning. Likewise, while organizing disempowered individuals in communities has occurred worldwide, this review focuses on the United States, where “community organizing” refers to specific traditions with US roots.
Consensus and Action Mobilization
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

Much social movement research concerns processes of mobilization. Understandably, because mobilization is the mechanism that brings demand and supply of protest together. Without mobilization there will be no action even in circumstances of high demand. The study of mobilization concerns such matters as the effectiveness of persuasive communication, the mobilization channels, the influence of social networks, and the perceived costs and benefits of participation. As for the effectiveness of communication, organizers must solve a crucial problem, namely, which are the people in demand of protest and how can they be reached. Sometimes this problem is easy to solve, if for example, it regards the inhabitants of a neighborhood or the workers in a company, but most of the time there are no such easy solutions to the problem. Under stark repression mobilization is extremely difficult and indeed dangerous. Censorship makes newspapers, radio and television unusable, while organizers and movement activists run the risk of being imprisoned or worse. Oppressive societies offer examples of people high on demand but low on supply of protest and failing mobilization. Once protest movements come in the open and mobilization can no longer be oppressed, the system quickly collapses.
Contagion Theory
Authors: Snow David A.
Published: January 2013

Scholars of collective gatherings or crowds, such as riots, protest events, and collective celebrations, have long been interested in accounting for the coordination that makes collective behavior truly collective rather than the aggregation of parallel individual behaviors. For about 75 years, from at least the time of Gustave Le Bon's
The Crowd
(1897) until the 1970s, one of the dominant explanations was provided by what Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian (1972) called “contagion theory” (see also the entries on Convergence/dispositional theory and Emergent norm theory). The idea of contagion conjures up the imagery of some behavioral, emotional, or ideational phenomenon spreading rapidly, uncritically, and uniformly within a collectivity, from one participant to another. People in collective gatherings or crowds, many of which are sponsored by social movements, are portrayed as behaving uniformly, intensely, and often in a fashion at odds with their usual normative behavioral patterns.
Contentious Politics
Authors: Tarrow Sidney
Published: January 2013

“Contentious politics” meansepisodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when: (a) at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claims, and (b) the claims would, if realized, affect the interests of at least one of the claimants or objects of claims. Roughly translated, the definition refers to collective political struggle. Contentious politics, in the sense of this entry, includes social movements, but it also includes less sustained forms of contention—like riots and strike waves—and more extensive ones—like civil wars, revolutions, and episodes of democratization—and it intersects with routine political processes—like elections and interest group politics.
Convergence/Dispositional Theory
Authors: Snow David A. , Rohlinger Deana
Published: January 2013

Convergence, or dispositional, approaches to crowds and social movements focus on various psychological traits and states that hypothetically render individuals more or less susceptible to participation. The underlying assumption is that specifiable personality characteristics and/or cognitive or emotional states are likely to make the appeal of some movements especially attractive, thereby predisposing some individuals to participation. Rather than focusing on the material basis or socially constructed character of grievances, attention is focused on the psychological manifestation of or responses to grievances. Thus, crowd and social movement participants are seen as being a relatively undifferentiated and unrepresentative grouping of individuals because of the dispositions or tendencies they share. Hence the idea of convergence: the assemblage of “like‐minded” or similarly disposed individuals, as represented in Eric Hoffer's
The True Believer
. Especially prominent among the psychological and personality factors thought to account for this dispositional vulnerability to movement appeals are heightened frustration, a sense of relative deprivation, alienation, spoiled or stigmatized identities, and authoritarianism.
Conversion and New Religious Movements
Authors: Richardson James T.
Published: January 2013

Conversion, as the concept is used in the social sciences, is usually applied to joining a religious group, although the concept has considerable overlap with issues concerning recruitment and participation in other types of social movements. Recent conversion research in the area of sociology of religion has focused mainly on the question of how and why thousands of young people joined New Religious Movements (NRMs), even if temporarily. (Contrary to popular belief, defection or disaffiliation rates have always been quite high for NRMs, and most NRMs are small as a result.)
Critical Mass Theory
Authors: Oliver Pamela
Published: January 2013

“Critical mass theory” in social movements refers loosely to any formal theory about how interdependent decisions accumulate into collective action or more narrowly to work in the tradition of Marwell and Oliver (1993). The term “critical mass” originates in nuclear physics, as the smallest amount of fissile material needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. As analogy or metaphor the term has diffused into popular culture and social science and is widely used to refer to any context in which things change after a certain number of people get together or enter a setting. The term has been especially important in research and court cases about racial/ethnic or gender diversity in college admissions or employment (Addis 2007). Social movement activists and scholars often use “critical mass” in a loose metaphorical way to refer to an initial group of protesters or actors that is big enough to accomplish social change.
Critical Mass Bulletin
was the name given to the 1970s newsletter for scholars of collective behavior and social movements. An article written in the early 1970s bemoaned the lack of critical mass of scholars studying collective behavior (Quarantelili & Weller 1974).
Cults
Authors: Balch Robert W.
Published: January 2013

A cult is a religious movement whose beliefs and/or practices are regarded as highly unconventional. Beyond that, scholars disagree about the meaning of the term and the significance of the phenomenon.
Decolonization and Social Movements
Authors: Boudreau Vince
Published: January 2013

In their influence on state and social structures, colonial processes established some of the basic parameters for the social movements that contested imperial rule, and for those that rose to confront the independent governments of the newly postcolonial world. For decades, the study of decolonization was mainly the purview of area specialists, who approached these events with the interdisciplinary inclinations of men and women wanting deeply to understand the specific dynamics of particular places. For theorists of social movements, decolonization and contention posed analytic puzzles, because such processes seldom followed the patterns inscribed by political reform movements on which most of the early literature was rooted. More recently, analysts have made more concerted efforts to think theoretically about contention in the colonial and postcolonial worlds, even as new theoretical developments, such as the Dynamics of Contention program, have provided new ways to approach these struggles (McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly 2001).
Demand and Supply of Protest
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

The demand and supply of protest concerns the mobilizing context of participation. The “demand and supply” metaphor is borrowed from economics. Demand refers to the potential in a society for protest; supply refers to the opportunities staged by organizers to protest. Mobilization brings a demand for political protest that exists in a society together with a supply of opportunities to take part in such protest. The demand side of participation requires studies of such phenomena as socialization, grievance formation, causal attribution, and the formation of collective identity. The study of the supply side of participation concerns such matters as action repertoires, the effectiveness of social movements, the frames and ideologies movements stand for, and the constituents of identification they offer. Mobilization is the process that brings demand and supply together. Mobilization is the marketing mechanism of the social movement domain, and thus, the study of mobilization concerns such matters as the effectiveness of (persuasive) communication, the influence of social networks, and the perceived costs and benefits of participation.
Demonstrations
Authors: Walgrave Stefaan
Published: January 2013

Demonstrations are legal or illegal gatherings of people in the public domain (squares or streets) voicing economic, social, or political claims. When these people move from point A to B in the public space we call this a demonstration; when they are static we instead call them “rallies.”
Direct Democracy
Authors: Doerr Nicole
Published: January 2013

Direct democracydescribes a theory of democracy and a form of collective decision‐making in which sovereignty is directly exercised by the people. Democracy is direct if it is characterized by citizens making all decisions together with a maximum of equal participation. Direct democracy can be distinguished from representative democracy, which is indirect and centralized, and in which citizens elect representatives for executive offices and parliament.
Disengagement in Social Movements
Authors: Corrigall‐Brown Catherine
Published: January 2013

Social movement participation is widespread in most modern industrial democracies. To illustrate, the World Values Survey finds that 37.5 percent of the French, 30.8 percent of Germans, 26.3 percent of Canadians, and 15.1 percent of Americans report having participated in a protest (2010). While this is a large proportion of these countries' populations, what happens to these individuals after they have been initially mobilized? While some remain active and involved over time, not all activism is sustained. In this entry, I propose that there are multiple trajectories that participation can follow once an individual engages with a social movement; persistent participation, transfer, individual abeyance, or disengagement. Below, I outline these trajectories and explore the factors which lead to disengagement from movements over time.
Dual Identity
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

The concept of dual identity originates in the identity family of theories. Identity, more specifically collective identity, became an important concept in the social movement literature during the last decade of the previous century. Cohen (1985) and Melucci (1985) were among the first to emphasize the significance of collective identity formation in social movements, and the concept gained importance in the years after (see Stryker, Owens, & White 2000 for an overview). Coming from a social psychological perspective, Simon and his colleagues (1998) proposed the existence of an identity pathway to collective action in addition to the instrumental pathway. These authors reasoned that people do not participate in social movements for instrumental reasons only, but also for fulfilling identity needs. Meanwhile, social psychologists had begun to explore the role of group identification in movement participation (Simon & Klandermans 2001 for an overview) and concluded that the more one identifies with the group that is involved in a protest activity, the more likely one is to take part in that activity. Applied in the context of identity theories of social movement participation the concept of dual identity introduces a dynamic element in that it recognizes that individuals hold multiple identities at the same time that do not necessarily work in the same direction.
Emotion Work
Authors: van Troost Dunya M.M.
Published: January 2013

Emotion work has been defined as “the act of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or a feeling” (Hochschild 1979). The concept, first coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, describes the efforts people make in their private lives to manage and control their emotions in agreement with the social situation in which they are expressed. Hochschild's theory of feeling rules and emotion work puts forward the notion that social rules apply to the experience of emotion. These feeling rules are “guidelines for the assessment of fits and misfits between feeling and situation” (Hochschild 1979), meaning that cultural and social aspects influence the appropriateness of emotions we feel. In Hochschild's words: “Emotion work can be done by the self upon the self, by the self upon others, and by others upon oneself” (Hochschild 1979). Important to note is that emotion work refers to the effort of trying to change an emotion or feeling, not whether this effort was successful and the emotion actually changed (Hochschild 1979).
Entrepreneurs, Movement
Authors: Staggenborg Suzanne
Published: January 2013

The notion of a
social movement entrepreneur
was introduced by John McCarthy and Mayer Zald (1973, 1977) in their seminal essays on resource mobilization theory. McCarthy and Zald's treatment of the movement entrepreneur was part of their analysis of the rise of “professional social movements.” In contrast to the “classical model” of movements, which focused on common grievances that give rise to social movements and emergent leaders, McCarthy and Zald argued that modern social movements are increasingly professionalized, characterized by full‐time leadership, a largely paper membership, and a reliance on
conscience constituents
who “do not stand to benefit directly from its success in goal accomplishment” (1977: 1222). While grievances play a role in movements, they receive second billing to entrepreneurial leaders who take the initiative to organize movements. In extreme cases, “grievances and discontent may be defined, created, and manipulated by issue entrepreneurs and organizations” (1977: 1215).
Ethnography and Social Movements
Authors: Lichterman Paul
Published: January 2013

Ethnography is a powerful research method for understanding how people turn grievances into public claims, organize collective action, and sustain collective action over time. During the past quarter‐century, scholars of social movements have called repeatedly for research on the social and symbolic processes that ethnography is particularly well‐suited to investigate. It is a promising and curiously under‐employed method in this field.
Event History Analysis
Authors: Grant J. Tobin
Published: January 2013

Event history analysis examines whether and when phenomena occur. Also known as survival, duration, or failure‐time analysis, event history analysis has proven useful in a wide range of disciplines because it allows researchers to make inferences about when an event happens and the duration until the event occurs (Raferty 2001; Box‐Steffensmeier & Jones 2004). Some view event history analysis as time series analysis for dichotomous dependent variables; others approach it as an extension of limited dependent variable analysis for panel data. Regardless, event history analysis provides a method of inference for longitudinal data common in social movement research.
Experimental Methods
Authors: Oliver Pamela
Published: January 2013

Although “experiments” are popularly understood as research done in a laboratory, for social scientists the key element of an experiment is at least one manipulated independent variable. A variable is manipulated if the researcher can determine who experiences each category (or treatment) of the variable. A “true” experiment is one in which the researcher randomly assigns subjects to different categories (treatments) of the independent variable. This random assignment (randomization) can yield high internal validity in assessing the causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent (outcome) variable. There have been important randomized field experiments in policy areas such as education, welfare provision, population control, or medical treatments. Market researchers may use randomized field experiments to test the impact of different advertising campaigns and some professionalized social movement organizations have used this kind of field experiment to test the impact of various ways of “marketing” their issues. Smaller voluntary groups might also find it valuable to use rigorous experimental methods to test their persuasive tactics, although they rarely do.
Frustration‐Aggression
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

Frustration‐aggression theory is one of the classic grievance theories in social psychology. It was first formulated by a group of researchers at Yale University. In 1939 Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, and Sears published their book
Frustration and Aggression
. In the 70 years that have passed since then, the frustration‐aggression hypothesis has been the subject of much debate. Through the years, the original sweeping statements have been replaced by more modest claims (Berkowitz 1989).
Generational and Cohort Analysis
Authors: Whittier Nancy
Published: January 2013

The study of generations and cohorts in social movements examines waves of protest that originate from particular age‐groups and differences between participants of different ages or movement eras. These studies assume that individuals' experiences are shaped by their historical context, producing distinctive perspectives on society and social movements. Mannheim (1952) first identified the problem of political generations, arguing that, when age groups enter social life in youth, they form distinct perspectives shaped by the social and political events of their era. In Mannheim's view, age groups contain multiple “generation units,” which interpret events in different ways, forming distinct ideological or cultural movements. In the Mannheimian view, these generational perspectives endure over the life‐course, and members of different political generations thus have different perspectives. Modifying this approach, some scholars of social movements define political generations not by common age, but by common time of entry into a social movement. In this view, it is the historical and social movement context when individuals begin activism that defines lasting political understandings, which may be shared by non‐agemates who enter the social movement at the same time. Studies show that political views formed in youth or initial participation in activism persist over the life‐course, but that individuals practice their politics differently as they age, shaping work choices and family relationships (McAdam 1998). Scholars have studied a variety of cohort sizes within social movements, from “micro‐cohorts,” which may consist of those who enter a movement within as short as a one‐year timeframe, to multi‐year or even decade‐long cohorts (Whittier 1997). Generational effects are important in understanding social movement origins, change over time, and decline or demise.
Grievances, Individual and Mobilizing
Authors: Snow David A.
Published: January 2013

When individuals collectively challenge authorities via social movements, they typically do so over matters about which they are deeply troubled, have considerable concern, and feel passionately. These troublesome matters or conditions, and the feelings associated with them—such as dissatisfaction, fear, indignation, resentment, and moral shock—can be thought of as grievances. They provide the primary motivational impetus for organizing social movement campaigns and for engaging in social movement activities. Although there are various sets of conditions that contribute to the emergence and operation of social movements—such as some degree of perceived political opportunity, organization, and resource acquisition, none of these factors is more important than the generation of mobilizing grievances. After all, it is difficult to imagine most individuals engaging in social movement activity without feeling deeply aggrieved about some condition that is regarded as contrary to the interests, rights, moral principles, or well‐being of themselves or others. Consider the adherents of the pro‐choice and pro‐life movements, and of those advocating for and against same‐sex marriages in the United States or immigration and tighter border control throughout much of the developed world. Not only are the adherents of one movement deeply aggrieved by the prospect of the other movement achieving its goals, but their passions about their movement are often palpable and thus worn, metaphorically, on their sleeves. Certainly other motivational factors—such as curiosity, the desire for approval, and peer pressure—may come into play when considering why people align themselves with a particular movement, but these usually are secondary and largely irrelevant in the absence of deeply felt grievances.
Historical Research and Social Movements
Authors: Deflem Mathieu , Dove April Lee
Published: January 2013

The use of historical research methods in modern sociology has been largely conditioned by the relative popularity of the specialty area of (comparative‐)historical sociology, despite the relative autonomy of methodological orientation and substantive research themes. Any discussion of historical research, whether in the specialty area of social movements' research or in sociology more generally, must therefore proceed from the place of history in sociology and embark on an always difficult quest, for intellectual and institutional reasons alike, to delineate the boundaries between the scholarly tradition of history, on the one hand, and sociology, on the other (Burke 1980; Tilly 1981).
Ideology
Authors: Beck Colin J.
Published: January 2013

Ideology is an important aspect of social and political movements. The most basic and commonly held view of ideology is that it is a
system
of multiple beliefs, ideas, values, principles, ethic, morals, goals, and so on, that overlap, shape, and reinforce one another. In Swidler's (1986: 279) influential terms, ideology is “a highly articulated, self‐conscious belief and ritual system, aspiring to offer a unified answer to problems of social action.”
Interviewing Activists
Authors: Blee Kathleen
Published: January 2013

Personal interviews with activists are a common strategy for gathering data on current social movements. They allow scholars access to a broader segment of social movement participants than are represented in documents and propaganda produced by movement leaders. Interviews also provide different kinds of data than can observational methods. Through interviews, researchers can probe the biographies and motivations of activists as well as the meanings they give to their actions (Blee & Taylor 2002; Munson 2009). Indeed, activist interviews are a key source of information on many critical issues in social movement studies, including how individual and collective identities are constructed, how movements attract followers, and how members' commitments fluctuate over time.
Institutionalization of Social Movements
Authors: Staggenborg Suzanne
Published: January 2013

Social movement theorists have viewed various phenomena as aspects of the “institutionalization” of social movements. One meaning of institutionalization is that movements become established interest groups that are formalized in structure and headed by professional leaders. Along with formalization and professionalization, movements may also become institutionalized in the sense that their goals become conservative or mainstream. Another meaning of institutionalization is that movement ideas are incorporated into mainstream organizations or practices. And movements can be institutionalized in the sense that they operate
within
social institutions and organizations. All of these ideas are important to theories of the origins, development, and outcomes of social movements.
Instrumental Versus Expressive Action
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

Instrumental action
refers to action as an attempt to influence the social and political environment;
expressive action
refers to action as an expression of people's views.
“Iron Law of Oligarchy”
Authors: Tolbert Pamela S.
Published: January 2013

Resource mobilization, a dominant theoretical approach to the study of social movements for many decades, points to social movement organizations (SMOs) as a focal point for efforts to understand the variations in both the impact and fate of social movements. SMOs, like other types of political organizations, are expected to represent members' common preferences for some specified social change, acting to bring about such change by influencing formal political decisions, or the values and behaviors of the members of a polity, or both. In this context, the classic analysis offered by Robert Michels (1962) of typical evolutionary processes in the governance of political organizations, and the impact of such processes on organizations' goals, is very relevant to scholars of social movements. Early studies of social movements often drew heavily on Michels' work (e.g., Messinger 1955; Sills 1957; Zald & Denton 1963; Zald & Ash 1966), documenting and fleshing out the nature of the evolutionary processes he posited, and the transformational consequences for social movements. Concern with movement transformation has been less dominant in contemporary work, despite a lack of evidence that such processes are any less operative in current movement organizations. Below, the key processes involved in what Michels' referred to as the “iron law of oligarchy” are sketched, followed by a brief discussion of some of the implications of this analysis for social movement researchers.
Leadership
Authors: Robnett Belinda
Published: January 2013

Surprisingly little is known about leadership in social movements (Morris & Staggenborg 2004). It is not that there are no studies on leaders or leadership. Indeed, nearly all studies of social movements include some acknowledgement or discussion of the role of leadership in relation to, for example, recruitment, mobilization, or the achievement of goals. Rather, the area suffers from weak theoretical development, and a general failure to place leaders and leadership at the center of the analysis. Leadership is often tangential to analyses of social movement development, goals, tactics, and outcomes. Until recently, leadership has been treated as a structurally or socially constituted dependent variable, thus we know little about its independent effect on social movements.
Life History Research and Social Movements
Authors: Corrigall‐Brown Catherine , Ho Mabel
Published: January 2013

Life history research is a useful technique in qualitative methodology. This technique is suited for researchers interested in generating rich and textured detail about social processes, understanding the intersection between personal narratives and social structures, and focusing on individual agency and social context. Life history research captures the participants' subjectivities while being aware of potential pitfalls such as generalizations and memory recall problems. Life history research can deepen our understanding of social processes, including social movements. Here we examine what life history research is and when it is used. Through an examination of two social movement studies that employ these techniques, we assess the utility of these methods. We conclude by discussing potential problems associated with this methodology and how to deal with these issues.
M
arxism and Social Movements
Authors: Barker Colin
Published: January 2013

One distinctive feature of Marxist thought is that it yokes together three ideas: class struggle, social movements, and social revolution. For Marx and Engels, struggle between classes was both a characteristic of exploitative modes of social production, but also the means by which class society could be abolished. Marxism thus generates a central theoretical and practical question. How can humanity emancipate itself from the toils of existing capitalist society and begin creating a new and different form of society?
Marches
Authors: Walgrave Stefaan
Published: January 2013

Marches are part of the classic action repertoire of social movements. They are a form of protest closely connected to rallies and demonstrations. In the case of rallies, marches are the relatively organized means through which an aggregation of individuals gets from point A to point B, coming to assemble in a common space for the purpose of a protest or celebratory rally. Although the terms “marches” and “demonstrations” are often used interchangeably, demonstrations typically encompass a broader set of collective actions, including not only the march but also assemblage and the rally in which economic, political, and social or cultural concerns and demands are voiced.
Modular Protest Forms
Authors: McPhail Clark
Published: January 2013

Tarrow's (1993) concept of “modular protest” is an improvisation on Tilly's (1997, 1979) concept of protest repertoire. Tilly frequently compared his concept to the repertoires of jazz musicians and street theater troupes whose players improvise on familiar tunes or stories to produce pleasing sounds or humorous scenarios. Of protest repertoires Tilly argued (1979: 131) “The main point is elementary: within any particular time and place, the array of collective actions that people employ is well defined and quite limited in comparison to the range of actions that are theoretically available to them. In that sense, particular times, places, and populations have their own repertoires of collective action.” Modularity was not yet in Tilly's own published theoretical repertoire.
Moral Incentives
Authors: van Stekelenburg Jacquelien
Published: January 2013

One of the most fascinating and puzzling features of collective action is the fact that people undertake potentially high‐risk protests with little likelihood of reward. Take the widespread protests of early October 1989 in East Germany with high chances of repression and low chances of success. Why are people time and again prepared to participate in protests?
Motivation and Types of Motives (Instrumental; Identity, Ideological Motives)
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: January 2013

The social psychology of movement participation distinguishes three fundamental reasons why people participate in social movements: people may want to change their circumstances, they may want to act as members of their group, or they may want to express their views. Together these three motives account for most of the reasons why people take part in collective political action. Social movements may supply the opportunity to fulfill these motives and the better they do the more movement participation turns into a satisfying experience. In brief, the literature refers to these three motives as instrumentality, identity, and ideology.
Instrumentality
refers to movement participation as an attempt to influence the social and political environment;
identity
refers to movement participation as an expression of identification with a group; and
ideology
refers to movement participation as an expression of one's views. Different theories are associated with these three angles (Klandermans 1997; Tarrow 1998). Instrumentality is related to resource mobilization and political process theories of social movements and at the psychological level to rational choice theory and expectancy‐value theories; identity is related to sociological approaches that emphasize the collective identity component of social movement participation and with the social psychological social identity theory; and ideology is related to approaches in social movement literature that focus on culture, meaning, narratives, moral reasoning, and emotion and in psychology to theories of social cognition and emotions.
Movement/Countermovement Dynamics
Authors: Dillard Maria K.
Published: January 2013

Movement/countermovement dynamics refers to the patterns of interaction between the originating social movement and the responding countermovement. A recognition of the importance of this dynamic came about with the concept of countermovements, which arose when scholars recognized that opposition to the movements of the 1960s bore a striking resemblance to social movements in both form and function. Scholars have since identified the interaction of social movement and countermovement as an important aspect of the political context and of democratization. Movement/countermovement dynamics span a range from direct influence of the opposing side to indirect changes to the political context in which the other side operates (Meyer & Staggenborg 1996). Countermovements (CM) and social movements (SM) have been distinguished from one another on several key dimensions, including goals, ideology, tactics, membership, and location in the social structure. SMs and CMs engage with each other on each dimension. Movement/countermovement dynamics include the ways in which SMs contribute to CM emergence, relationships of SM, CM, and the state, and patterns of interaction.
Movement Society
Authors: Meyer David S.
Published: January 2013

The phrase, “social movement society,” represents a theory to unify a series of observations about social protest in the contemporary era. Offered by David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (1998) in their introduction to an edited collection on contemporary social movements, it makes a series of claims about how protest movements have changed, and raised a series of questions to provoke subsequent scholarship.
Movements within Institutions/Organizations
Authors: Morrill Calvin , Chiarello Elizabeth
Published: January 2013

Social movement scholars traditionally concern themselves with coordinated and sustained collective action apart from institutional channels that promote or constrain change. Organizational scholars, by contrast, traditionally focus on the strategies and structures embodied in bureaucracy. Zald and Berger (1998) were among the first to systematically articulate the idea that organizations are polities in which members can engage in collective action to change and/or resist official policies. Over the past three decades, scholars began blurring the boundaries of the conventional analytic foci of organizational and social movement research as they recognized that a great deal of social change occurs in organizations via social movements and movement‐like dynamics. As Davis and colleagues (2005) illustrate, these developments led to multiple, interrelated shifts in social movement research, including: investigating the organizational bases of social and institutional change; expanding focal analytic concerns beyond state‐centered authority to address collective challenges to institutionalized authority that operates separately from or in the shadows of state authority; examining collective action that involves both formally organized and tacitly coordinated efforts within and across organizations, markets, and fields.
Movies and Movements
Authors: Andits Petra
Published: January 2013

Film has been recognized for its potential social and political impact since its beginning (see, for example, the debate between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno). Therefore, film, and in particular documentary film, can also be seen as an instrumental tool of social movements to bring about social and political change. Although generally ignored by social movement scholars, films can have a wide range of important impact on the public, social movement organizations and policymakers. Social movements continually attempt to create public space for debate of the issues they consider important, and films can become a crucial segment of that struggle as they create a forum in which the public can encounter issues (Whiteman 2003). Activist documentaries may provide a sense of shared identification around the issue at stake and this in turn can mobilize citizens, as was the case after the screenings of
Panama Deception
, a film about the 1989 US invasion of Panama. Activist films may also influence the activist communities themselves. The production process itself can stimulate greater communication among individuals and organizations and can strengthen organizational networks. For example, labor organizations have mobilized their members by educating them about the long history of labor activism in the southeastern US through
The Uprising of '34
(film about the 1934 textile strike). In addition, documentary films have proven to be powerful tools in influencing public policy. For example the documentary
Yes, In My Backyard
, exploring the dependence of one American farming town on the prison industry, helped spark debates about policy and reframe the policy agenda (Whiteman 2003).
Narratives
Authors: Polletta Francesca
Published: January 2013

A narrative or story is an account of a sequence of events in the order in which they occurred to make a point. Formally, narratives are composed of (1) an orientation, which sets the scene; (2) a series of complicating actions (implicit “and then…” clauses) ending with one that serves as dénouement; and (3) an evaluation, which can appear at any point in the story, establishing the importance of the events related (Labov & Waletsky 1967). As a rhetorical form, stories are distinctive in their use of sequence to denote causality, their integration of explanation and moral evaluation, and their reliance on a structure (plot) that is familiar from prior stories.
New Left and Social Movements in Europe
Authors: Kornetis Kostis
Published: January 2013

The New Left and the social movements that were born out of it changed for good the way in which movements were conceptualized in Europe. The New Left began in the US as the intellectual offspring of critical sociology, French existentialism, Beat literature, and participatory democracy principles deriving from the civil rights movement. The New Left in Europe shared some of these premises but, according to Carl Oglesby, mainly had to “overcome the memories, the certitudes, and the promises of the Old Left” (Oglesby 1970: 13). On one hand, the advent of a postindustrial age in post‐World War II Europe put into question the centrality of the capital–labor conflict. On the other, the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 exacerbated the disillusionment of certain left‐wing circles with old style communism due to the harshness of repression of the 1956 revolts in Eastern Europe that took place in its aftermath.
Nongovernmental Organizations
Authors: Smith Jackie
Published: January 2013

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are formal organizations that lie outside formal government structures. They include social movement organizations (SMOs) as well as other organizations that may be potential mobilization structures available to social movements. The term comes from the United Nations, where it is used to distinguish UN member governments from other actors. As it is commonly used in official circles, the term NGO thus can include both national and transnational groups and private, for‐profit actors as well as not‐for‐profit associations of all kinds. Scholars have used the general term to refer to the collection of formal organizations of civil society groups pursuing any collective aims. Thus, social movements and other political advocacy groups are a subset of this larger category, which includes many other nonprofit, voluntary groups.
Outcomes, Cultural
Authors: Earl Jennifer
Published: January 2013

Whether and when social movements result in cultural, social, and/or political changes are important questions in social movement scholarship. However, as has been widely reported (e.g., Bosi & Uba 2009), scholars have made less progress on these topics than is desirable. Research that is able to establish a clear causal connection between social movement activity and cultural change has been in particularly short supply (although research showing that culture can affect mobilization, which is a distinct question, has been increasing). This entry examines why this may be the case and provides a brief summary of the literature that is available on the topic.
Policing Protest
Authors: della Porta Donatella
Published: January 2013

Relying mainly on protest as a means to put pressure upon decision‐makers, social movements challenge the power of the state to impose a monopoly on the use of legitimate force. Taking to the streets, often forcing their presence beyond the legal limits in order to get their voices heard, they directly interact with the police, who are supposed to control public order. In their interventions, the police force therefore has to realize an uneasy balance between the defense of state power through the implementation of law and order and the recognition of demonstration rights. The intervention of the police in the case of violations of law is additionally not automatic: in public order, many minor violations are tolerated in order to avoid major disorders. While sometimes the government gives specific orders (or at least sends signals) about the type of intervention required (or desired) at political demonstrations, the police enjoy broad margins of discretion, at different hierarchical levels, as most decisions are taken on the spot, and are determined by the assessment of the specific situation as well as by interactive dynamics.
Police Autonomy
Authors: Jobard Fabien
Published: January 2013

The police usually enjoy a great amount of autonomy, of which two levels can be distinguished. The first level (micro level) is called police discretion, and is used by rank‐and‐file officers. Daily police matters call for quick if not split‐second decisions by individual officers on the beat, like bringing someone to the police station, approaching an apparent source of disorder, or following or abandoning the task given by a superior in order to help someone in trouble. The second level (macro level) is the autonomy exercised by the police as an institution. This autonomy is conceptualized in relation toward the authorities (usually political or judicial authorities), which give the police their mandate.
Political Generation
Authors: Braungart Richard G.
Published: January 2013

Conflict between the generations is as old as history, as young people periodically challenge and confront those in authority. For centuries, generational conflict was expressed by youthful outbursts of collective behavior (e.g., medieval town‐and‐gown riots, raucous youth festivals, destructive student protests against university officials). In the early nineteenth century, generational conflict took a new form when young people organized full‐fledged political movements that surged throughout European states. The political generation was launched as a dramatic and significant force for societal innovation and disruption.
Political Mediation Model
Authors: Amenta Edwin
Published: January 2013

The political mediation model is a theory explaining the influence of movements in politics. This theory builds on a series of ideas scattered throughout sociology and political science about the forms of mobilization, strategies, and political conditions that might account for the various political impacts of movements. It goes beyond them in indicating that specific movement strategies, activities, and forms in combination with specific political contexts will lead to influence for social movements—that social movement collective action is politically mediated (Amenta, Caren, & Olasky 2005; Amenta 2006).
Political Process Theory
Authors: McAdam Doug
Published: January 2013

McAdam used the term “political process model” to designate the theory of movement emergence sketched in his 1982 book,
Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970.
In the book, he posed the theory as an alternative to two other perspectives. The first was what he referred to as the “classical strain model,” at the time best exemplified by the “collective behavior” perspective. But McAdam also critiqued and sought to distinguish his model from the newer resource mobilization framework. Over time the distinction between these two perspectives has been blurred by incorporating elements of both into a more general theoretical synthesis that emphasizes the simultaneous importance of “political opportunities,” “mobilizing ,” and “framing processes.”
Political Science and the Study of Social Movements
Authors: Andretta Massimiliano
Published: January 2013

Social movements have been studied from the perspective of several disciplines—sociology, anthropology, social psychology, economics, and political science. When we conceive of social movements as political phenomena we need to take seriously their relations with the political context in which they act. Clearly, many, if not most, social movements are embedded in political institutions (Tarrow 1994). For this reason, the discipline of political science is of importance in understanding the close link between political institutions and social movements, and how politics matters in shaping social movements in different contexts.