Lecture 7 Flashcards
Main assumptions of classical Collective behavior
Collective behavior is distinct from ‘’ordinary’’: sharply set off from conventional behavior
A) You join the movement because you are not happy and they want to lessen their stress by joining a social movement event with people with the same ideology kind of therapeutic, managing your tensions
B) It is spontaneous, irrational, emotional, aggressive, disruptive
C) Involves a belief in the existence of extraordinary forces – threats, conspiracies – which are at work in the universe
Classical moRevolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a sharp reversal (Davies, p.6)
1) According to Davies’s hypothesis, persistent economic growth and advance lead to the development of psychological expectations that conditions will continue to improve
2) When such expectations are suddenly blocked, individuals experience an intolerable gap between what they have come to expect and the sharp worsening of circumstances
3) At this point, individuals are most likely to engage in collective revolutionary activity
What are the weaknesses of the classical model?
Abnormal, irrational and pathological traits are assigned to movement participants
But why then movement sometimes recruit so many of them?
Some empirical evidence shows that social movement participants are socially integrated and well-off
Some movements pursue and attain political goals
Social dysfunction (discontent) is a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite of social movements
Movements may not arise at all because of repression, lack of resources or other rational calculations
4 steps of participation
- Mobilization potential (who agrees?)
- Recruitment networks/mobilization attempts (who asks)
- Motivation to participation (who wants?)
- Barriers to participation (what restrictions?)
Examples:
1) Participation is not only about individual values and resources (grievances)
2) Becoming mobilized is a process
3) Case study of the Peace Demonstration in the Netherlands (in 1983: 500,000 demonstrators)
4) Hot debate about whether American nuclear missiles should be placed on Dutch soil (against the Russians)
Assumptions
- Protest behavior is seen as a political and such as is similar to institutionalized action
- It is ‘’rational’’, ‘’instrumental’’, ‘’professional’’, by resourceful, socially integrated people
Agency-oriented paradigm (in contrast to structuralism) - Importance of costs and rewards in explaining individual and organizational involvement in social movement activity
- Importance of social movement organizations:
a. Social movements are typically represented by more than one social movement organization
b. The social movement organization must possess resources to work towards goal achievement: legitimacy, money, facilities and labor
Criticism of Resource Mobilization Theory
Top-down approach, elitist perspective:
Difficult to differentiate between professional, formal interest groups and social movements
Difficult to clearly differentiate organized efforts by excluded groups and by established polity members (top down)
Risk of co-optation
The ‘’Cultural Turn’’ in social movement theory
Collective identity
People must collectively define their situations as unjust and subject to change through collective action
Collectively: develop shared narratives and a sense collective identity
What is collective identity?
An individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community
It is a perception of a shared relation, which may be imagined rather than experienced directly, and it is distinct from personal identities
Personal identity is more unique, and collective identity needs a common denominator (what makes people as a category)
A collective identity may have been first constructed by outsiders, but it depends on some acceptance by those whom it is applied
In previous approaches, identity = interests’’ which meant gaining access to political power
Helps to solve the free rider problem (in absence of selective incentives)
Solidaristic behavior is something what you expect from others (trust and reciprocity)
Frames
Frames are schemes of interpretation that individuals apply to “identify and label occurrences within their life and world” (Snow et al., 1986: 464 in della Porta and Diani, 2020)
It is a standardized, predefined structure (derives from existing knowledge)
Allow recognition of the world and help to sort out information (what we do is “good” and what they do is “wrong”)
Frame analysis emphasizes the meaning of conflicts and events (e.g. murder of George Floyd)
facilitate mobilization
Three functions of framing
- Diagnostic
Phenomenon is converted into social problem (not anymore an individual responsibility or a result of “natural factors”)
Identification of those responsible for the situation (e.g. injustice frame)
Diagnosing a problem helps to identify the actors who have opinions on it
i. Highly contentious process between the actors who want to “own” issues
ii. Actors propose their own interpretations of issues
Diagnostic example: injustice there is no housing crisis but an immigration crisis - Prognostic
Involves seeking solutions, ways of regulating relationships between groups, new articulations of consensus (e.g. agency frame)
Basically, what are the concrete goals in a given social and cultural context?
What are the strategies?
What alternatives could be proposed?
Prognostic example: full rights for all immigrants - Motivational
Actors need to be convinced (intuitively and rationally)
Frames need to link individual sphere with that of collective experiences
Frames need to show relevance of a problem to individual life experiences
Strongly related to identity building (e.g. identity frame)
Master frames
There are dominant visions of the world in that period (dominant interpretative frames)
It affects the discourse of social movements – they need to adjust their “individual” frames to master frames (basically, possible frames are reduced to a certain level)
“Class conflict” vs “Return to democracy” – different frames for the same struggles emerge
For instance: women’s movement was first seen from the Marxist
perspective of equal opportunities, rather than as an affirmation of gender differences
Opposition to neoliberal globalization as a master frame
2 different definitions of social movements?
- Social movements are conceived as collectives – ranging from informal groups to formal organizations – that seek to challenge or defend institutional and/or cultural systems of authority and their associated practices
- Collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities
You do not have one day social movements
Long-term functioning, sustainable
Core properties of social movements
Collective: social solidarity and common purpose
An unconnected crowd or an individual action is not a social movement
Political: undertake some action to challenge/defend authority
Contention = disruptive direct action against power-holders
Other actions: lobbying, negotiating, petitioning, influencing, debate
Extra-institutional: exclusion from the polity/governance
Generally, social movements are not part of or embedded in state institutions
A political party is generally not considered a social movement
Sustained: social movements may last for a matter of days or decades
One single collective event is not (yet) a social movement
Aims/targets of social movements
Challenge, reform or replace state authorities (call their values and social practices into question)
Change the cultural and legal relations between persons in everyday life
Demand recognition for less privileged groups
Define actions and behaviors as more less legitimate
Change relationships of persons to non-persons (environment)
Oppose other extra-institutional actors (produce counter-movements)
Movements going against your movement
Different types of social movements
- Scope: radical vs. reform
- Range: global vs. local
- Type of action: violent vs. peaceful
- Issues: old vs. new (Inglehart: from materialist to post-materialist issues)
Social formations and related kinds of movements (Rucht, 2019: 290)
