Analyzing the Hizmet Movement schools in three different countries from the perspective of the resource mobilization theory
Creators: name: Atay, Seyit
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2019

description: The Hizmet Movement (HM) is a civil transnational social movement with ~ operations in education, culture, interfaith and intercultural dialogue, relief, healthcare, media and publishing all around the world. It started in the late 1960s in the city of Izmir, Turkey, as a grassroots movement in the humanistic tradition of Islam and inspired by the ideas and activism of Fethullah Gulen. Apolitical and faith-inspired, it neither emerged from official policy nor as a state ideology. As its most important activity, the Hizmet Movement also known as the Gulen Movement, teaches modern education through its schools spread throughout 170 countries. It has an agenda to open new schools in different countries with an aim on both scientific and moral progress, focusing on the betterment of the individual to create a positive change in the community. It stands as a good example of the process in which social relations and bonds link distant localities by the dissemination of ideas and discourses and by the mobility of resources without the constraints of geography on any social or cultural arrangements. However, there is scant research about Hizmet Movement as a global social movement and especially its schools and other civic activities all over the world.In this research, the resource mobilization theory, one of the main paradigms for new social movements, is taken up to examine the Hizmet Movement. It redirects the focus from psychological explanations and structural patterns to the organizational dynamics of a social movement, placing emphasis on the effective mobilization of material or non-material resources, and the rational and strategic aspects of collective action. This research concerns the investigation of the movement and its global education network based on the theoretical framework of the resource mobilization theory by offering a comparative analysis of the movement’s schools in Cambodia, Georgia, and Nigeria, three countries each different in religion, culture, language, and regime. It analyzes how the movement mobilizes resources to achieve its educational objectives on a global scale, how their schools adjust themselves in different settings, what adjustment strategies the schools apply to fit in different cultures, how the movement is perceived by local people, and the role of political climate in the performance of these schools. The HM has become a center of interest especially ever since the government of its origin country, Turkey, started oppressing it recently. The Turkish government’s global campaign and anti-democratic policies against it aroused curiosity and widespread publicity for this movement around the globe. This research explores the movement, its actions, its goals and its beliefs under these contexts, investigating the controversies it’s involved in. This study reveals how this social movement gains acceptance in various parts of the world and helps us understand the ideas of different people about a movement based on Islamic teachings. It shows and answers whether a social movement, operating on a global scale, not political or affiliated with any State, can shape public opinion on issues as vitally important as peace among nations and religions. The successes and failures of a widespread organization such as the HM that this research uncovers is very important for the global community and provides a unique but effective model for other movements or NGO’s to follow. This study follows a qualitative approach by utilizing participant observations and in-depth interviews as a research technique. In order to have comparative data, and to have a representative sample, the research participants were chosen to be the Hizmet Movement School managers, teachers, students, parents, and other outsider, local intellectuals in the three countries. A snowball sampling strategy is applied to reach suitable informants, and the participation in the study was voluntary. The findings that emanated from the analysis of 66 interviews, participant observations, and other data collected allowed for a detailed discussion of themes and subthemes that surfaced through the rigorous qualitative analysis. Based on the findings, this research has made empirical contributions to the resource mobilization theory by studying the movement, its structure, and operations in three different countries under the name and framework of the theory. It has uncovered weaknesses and shortcomings of the theory. For example, the rational perspective of the theory becomes insufficient to explain the movement participants’ motivations and non-rational choices to mobilize their resources for the educational goals of the movement. Therefore, this research also looked at alternative theoretical explanations about the movement’s mobilization. This research benefited from the work of Durkheim and Collins on the non-rational foundations of social movements and the sociological perspective to explain better the non-rational mobilization and psychological motivations of the movement. It exposed the crucial characteristics of the movement that distinguish it from other social movements and enable it to successfully spread and take root over such a wide and diverse geography. This research discovered what motivates people to join the movement and take on different roles in its schools worldwide. It uncovered three main strategies used by these schools to adjust themselves in any country and how the movement was able to simultaneously localize and stay globalized, winning the favor of these localities. The results of analysis also indicated that political support and political pressure coming from both home country (Turkey) and host country (Cambodia, Georgia, and Nigeria) are critical for Hizmet Movement schools.