In Defense of Institutionalization: A Rape Crisis Center as a Case Study

The prevailing wisdom of both the social science literature and of social movement activists postulates that the institutionalization of social movements is a conservatizing tendency. "The iron law of oligarchy," Robert Michels' concept, is invoked as the rule of thumb for social movement transformation. From my participant observation study of STOP, an urban rape crisis center, I have drawn different conclusions. In that case study, it appears that institutionalization undermines oligarchy and conservatism, rather than contributing to them. Employing Oberschall's resource mobilization theory of social movement development, I suggest that institutionalization fosters social change efforts at STOP by ensuring organizational stability and resource availability. Second, I propose that institutionalization enables STOP to resist co-optation by providing its participants with material, symbolic, and emotional rewards for organizational loyalty. Finally, I conclude that at STOP institutionalization has inhibited the formation of informal elites, or what Jo Freeman has termed the "tyranny of structurelessness." As the New Right waxes powerful, the women's movement, among many others, faces direct and indirect threats to its very existence. To survive economic, political, and cultural attack, feminism, I suggest, must become a complex of institutions with multiple and deep roots. That long-maligned organizational form, the institution, will yet prove to be a source of stability, integrity, and democracy for the women's movement. The radical wing of the United States women's movement, since 1965, has generally focused on the negative dimensions of institutions. For many socialist feminists and radical feminists, institutions are suspect creations of an oppressive patriarchal and capitalist society. The empowering and connective functions are either overlooked or underestimated. As a consequence of this selective perception, we have failed to explore the opportunities for feminist expression, critique, and construction within existing institutions. At the same time, we have, on the whole, failed to make institutions of our own projects and networks. Why have feminists responded in this way? One obvious reason is that women have held little formal power historically within the multiple institutions in which we have found ourselves. As a result, our experience of institutions is a skewed one. The barriers which institutions present have been much more apparent than the potentialities which they promise. Many women infer from their experience that most people, or at least most women, are disempowered by institutions. Species is confused with genus. Feminists misconstrue capitalist and patriarchal institutions as being representative of institutions as a whole. Another part of the explanation for the women's movement's disregard for institutional possibilities has been its unwitting internalization of the individualism embedded in the American ethos. Protecting and enhancing the freedom and power of individuals has been the central concern of most feminist organizati-on-since 1965, with some radical feminist and socialist feminist exceptions. Fears of collective tyranny and of the submergence of the individual within institutions direct feminist attention to the restrictive and inhibiting dimensions of institutionalization. STOP, AN URBAN RAPE CRISIS CENTER STOP is a fictitious name for an urban rape crisis center which I have worked with and observed over an eight-year period. During 1979 and 1980, I carried out a ten-month participant observation study of STOP. Employing a case study approach, I derived from this one example a set of observations concerning the impact of institutionalization on STOP, the anti-rape movement, and feminism in the United States. Like all case study conclusions, my speculations require the corroboration of many other examples before they can take on the authority of reliable generalizations. Pioneer Period: 1972-1974 Organized in the fall of 1972, STOP was the first U.S. rape crisis center to provide services to rape victims "above ground" in a city hospital. Other anti-rape groups founded in the early years of this movement, from 1971-1973, chose to assist victims using underground strategies which did not involve reporting rape to the police or cooperating with the city hospital and district attorney's office, as STOP's approach did. STOP mushroomed quickly in size and reputation. Partly due to the charismatic force of its founder and partly a circumstance of its historical moment, STOP attracted more than seventy regular