Test 2

Question 1

Explain the formal relationship between social movements and the established order

Answer 1

p.1: “Social movements challenge our conventional wisdom, values, beliefs, social relationships, distribution of wealth and power, and ideas about justice and equality.”

Question 2

Explain why social movements must be viewed as part of a moral struggle

Answer 2

“Social movements assume the powers to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and ethical from unethical motives, purposes, choices, strategies, and actions.”
- each SMO believes it alone is morally correct and justified
- movements raise public consciousness by revealing moral bankruptcy of targeted institutions
- social movements must claim moral legitimacy to enhance righteousness of adherents while diminishing moral legitimacy of opponents

Question 3

Define persuasion and explain why persuasion is a central feature of any social movement

Answer 3

Persuasion is the use of verbal and nonverbal symbols and actions to influence audience perceptions and thus to bring about or resist changes in thinking, feeling, and / or acting.
- Persuasion is essential when social movements threaten to use coercion–but all acts of influence have coercion
- Supreme Court supports right to use symbols in action–free speech
- Persuasion is primary method for making change, where violence (if it occurs) is incidental and usually symbolic
- vs revolutions: violence is the primary method, and persuasion is incidental

Question 4

Explain the difference between a social movement, a campaign, and a social movement
organization

Answer 4

Social movement:
- long and short term goals that differ between SMOs
- evolutionary leadership with many different leaders and organizations that change over time
- alter and add goals as time goes by
- leaders of SMOs split over strategy
- lurch backward and forward, take different strategies, etc
Campaign:
- created by SMO with predetermined goal in mind
- organized top down
- known end points
- coherent strategy
- carefully structured
SMO:
- organization of a movement

Question 5

Identify the features of the Interpretive Systems Model for studying social movements

Answer 5

Social Interpretive Systems:
- Needing
- Linking: born into networks, and accrue others
- Symbolizing: languages
- Reasoning: born into certain logics, adopt and construct new modes of reasoning together
- Preferencing: born into ideologies which coordinate preferencing, and continue to develop and evolve new ways of valuing and preferring

SO: ppl who share a social interpretive structure comprise an interpretive community
- people with vision constitute a community, which works within the rules if the rules work for it, and challenges them if they don’t

Dominant interpretive communities necessarily disadvantage marginalized ones–ex “patriotic” or “America”

Question 6

Identify & explain the questions the Interpretive Systems Model guides students of social
movements to ask

Answer 6

Which persons, conceiving themselves to be what “People” in what environment, use what networks and what adaptive strategies with what evolutionary results?

adaptive strategies: discrepancies between experienced and preferred arguments

evolutionary results: phases

Question 7

Identify the six overarching persuasive functions of social movements

Answer 7

1. Transforming perceptions of social reality
   - Past, Present, Future
2. Altering self-perceptions of protestors
   - Perceptions of Victimage
   - Perceptions of Self-Esteem and Self-Worth
   - Perceptions of Self-Identity
   - Perceptions of Social Status
3. Legitimizing the Social Movement
   - Conferring & Maintaining
   - Coactive and Confrontational strategies
4. Prescribing Courses of Action
   - What, Who, How
5. Mobilizing for Action
   - Organizing and Uniting the Discontented
   - Energizing the Discontented
   - Pressuring the Opposition
   - Gaining Sympathy and Legitimacy
6. Sustaining the Social Movement
   - Justifying Setbacks and Delays
   - Maintaining Viability & Visibility

Question 8

Explain the challenges involves in each stage

Answer 8

1. Have to convince the audience there is a problem by altering perceptions of past, present, and future
2. Creation or enhancement of strong, healthy egos–protestors have to take on powerful institutions and entrenched cultural norms and values
3. Attain positive relational patterns with broader society–hard when Americans only tolerate nonthreatening dissent
4. A set of beliefs addressing preferred courses of action must be sold: grave problems addressed by the grassroots
5. Have to create coalitions among movement members who have splintered into factions
6. Persuasion is critical over long periods of time and constant changes in the environment

Question 9

Identify the specific persuasive functions at work in images related to social movements
(see the PPT slides from class on October 27, which are posted on Moodle—though I might
also use other images that are similar)

Answer 9

Know all subcategories from the above

Question 10

Identify the stages of social movement

Answer 10

1. Genesis
2. Social Unrest
3. Enthusiastic Mobilization
4. Maintenance
5. Termination

Question 11

Explain the challenges of the Genesis stage

Answer 11

• individuals are scattered geographically and in terms of social networks
• few take early activists (“intellectuals”, “prophets”) seriously
• need “apprehension of an exigence” (need) and “cultivation of commitment” among aroused people to grow the seeds of the movement

Question 12

Explain the features of the Sit-In campaign and the Freedom Rides that correspond with the
Enthusiastic Mobilization stage

Answer 12

• institutions are the problem:
• institutions engage in counterefforts: encourage creation of countermovements, language of “the people” or “the silent majority”
• activists have to abandon institutional methods of change (courthouses, legislatures) for streets, marketplaces, etc

Question 13

Identify the major social movement organizations related to the Sit-Ins and the major social
movement leaders at that time

Answer 13

SMOs:
- Congress of Racial Inequality: James Farmer
- SNCC: John Lewis, Diane Nash
- SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference): MLK

Question 14

Identify the ways leadership is maintained in social movements

Answer 14

A Mix of Leadership Attributes:
- charisma, prophecy, and pragmatism (2/3)
Handling Diverse, Conflicting Roles:
- different audiences, short and long term victories, militant and moderate tactics, organizational effectiveness, vilify and work with institutions, etc
Change as Movement Changes:
Adapt to Events:
- ex recessions
Lead by not getting too far Ahead or Behind:
- ex Malcolm X got ahead by not seeing whites as devils, bureaucrat may get behind when events happen and need charisma

Question 15

Explain why language itself can persuasive and how this impacts social movements

Answer 15

Each of us is born into a language system, which affects how we perceive the world and express ourselves
- ex gendered language like b—-
- “racial unrest” as a headline for uprisings against centuries of mistreatment in 1967 or 2021

Question 16

Explain why the ambiguity of symbols can be both a strength and a weakness for persuasion
in social movements

Answer 16

Strength: can be appropriated by other movements or even anti-movements
Weakness: Your symbol might be appropriated (ex thin blue line is now white supremacist; confederate flags are not about southern culture)

Question 17

Identify strategies and tactics of identification and polarization at work in social movement
rhetoric

Answer 17

Identification:
- commonality between movement leaders and members (eg demographic characteristics)
- adopt style, vocabulary depending on your audience
- identify with moral symbols
- identify with values, beliefs, attitudes of audiences by identifying with heroes and founders
Polarization:
- Label ingroup/outgroup (including within social movement–“militant”, “Uncle Tom”)
- Identify enemies

Question 18

Explain framing and its significance for social movements

Answer 18

• depicting things a certain way
• social movements are about framing: how to frame the past, for example
• sometimes movements struggle for how to frame: ex AIM: “settlers” uses European frame–genocide works better

Question 19

Identify how devil terms are used as a labeling language tactic

Answer 19

“them”
- scapegoat
- could be a class, individual, institution, or even thing (ex alcohol in Prohibition)
“Ideal Devil”: single omnipotent, omnipresent foreigner
- creates a “them” for “we” to be in opposition to

Question 20

Identify the steps of constituting a social movement; identify the challenges involved in the
inviting and defining an identify steps

Answer 20

1. Inviting
   - have to connect with people most affected
   - need people with the right skills and abilities for the act of protest
2. Defining
   - define “the people”–bring to life a certain aspect of identity
3. Structuring
4. Relating to Others

Question 21

Explain the differences between the different types of political argument ; identify examples

Answer 21

Insurgent: not violent but doesn’t use established social means, but anti-establishment, with clear scapegoat, regarding great social ills, scorn traditional social values
- ex Malcolm X blaming the US Gov for the current state of Black America
Innovative: argue for change in practice based on traditional values; nonviolent; claims moral advantage over insurgents and institutions; moderate elements of society might mistake it for an insurgent argument
- “I Have a Dream” speech–calls for change based on Americanism and Christianity
Progressive: systemic approach–uses the means of society AND its values to call for change
- ex LBJ’s War on Poverty speech–“we have to make the system work to prove the insurgents and innovators wrong”
Retentive: cautious, minimal change, wanting to preserve the status quo; presents all adversaries as badly motivated with ill-conceived ideas
- ex Reagan’s speech ridiculing Communism
Reversive: see the current direction of society as dangerous, alternative direction as desirable, and provide a vehicle for change backward
- ex abortion: if we allow abortion, every other marginalized group beware!
Restorative: full-scale return to a Golden Age; unlike reversive argument, presents a goal to be pursued
- ex John Birch Society: go back to before WWII: “get out of collective Europe, push the Communists back, and do free enterprise on our own”
Revolutionary: total overthrow of existing order
- ex Eugene Debs: Socialists must forcefully take the means of production

Question 22

Explain the significance of narratives for social movements

Answer 22

Narrative: stories people tell which represent an idealized thing and get farther away from lived experience
- ex narrative of new birth (from Christianity) in Gettysburg Address

Question 23

Identify a dominant theme in the rhetorical vision/fantasy theme of the abolitionist
movement

Answer 23

Narrative: stories people tell which represent an idealized thing and get farther away from lived experience
- ex narrative of new birth (from Christianity) in Gettysburg Address

Question 24

Explain the basic functions of an argument by transcendence

Answer 24

Quantity - “more”
Quality - good / evil
Value - what is desirable for society
Hierarchy - one group is higher order along a grade or continuum (ex Christianity over other religions)
Antithesis - identify morally corrupt common enemy to unite the movement

Question 25

Identify the benefits and problems of an argument by transcendence

Answer 25

Limits: when each side claims no exceptions, there is no room for morals

Question 26

Essay Q 1: Explain how the poster functions to legitimize the social movement (Chapter 3)

Answer 26

Five Powers (institutions use these to confer and maintain legitimacy):
1. Power to Reward (those who agree and punish those who don’t)
2. Power of control (institutions regulate flow of information and persuasion)
3. Power of identification (institutions have symbols, emblems, values, offices, myths of social order)
4. Power of terministic control (institutions control language–ex newspaper headlines)
5. Power of moral suasion (institutions exert control by operating in the realms of attitudes and emotional attachments)
Legitimacy through coactive strategies:
- identify with fundamental societal norms and values to transport themselves from the margins of society to the centers where legitimacy resides
- ex. Tea Party–freedom and liberty against taxes and tyranny, dumped tea into harbor again
- activists rework traditional stories / ideologies
Opposite to legitimacy through confrontational strategies: makes society see the social movement as more legitimate than the social order
- Saul Alinsky: “make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”–if they break their own rules, they look illegitimate
- p.71: “Verbal and nonverbal violence by institutions and militant elements of movements may confer legitimacy on moderate leaders and organizations because they appear to be rational and safe in comparison”
SO Booker T. Washington is Coactive, not Confrontational–Power of identification, Moral Suasion

Question 27

Essay Q 1: Explain how the poster depicts the nature of Washington’s leadership (see chapter 5)

Answer 27

Nature of Leadership (p. 117-121)

Leaders as Organizers (Booker T Washington organized Tuskegee Institute, sent money to Black newspapers, challenged Jim Crow laws, built a political machine):
- persuade individuals that meaningful relationships and collective action are essential to further a cause
- characteristics: curiosity, irreverent, imagination, sense of humor, organized personalities, strong ego but not egotism
Leaders as Decision-Makers:
- raise funds, work between organizations, deal with leaders with big egos, etc
- ppl said MLK ran away from danger or accepted bail when others remained in jail because he had to fundraise and keep the movement together–like Booker T Washington meeting with Teddy Roosevelt and accepting money from elites
Leaders as Symbols:
- WEB DuBois “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”–leaders as symbols are rhetorical leaders, and represent their movement that way–Washington targeted as symbol of Black accommodationist movement
- poster: Washington is the latest symbol: Lincoln to Douglass to Washington–attempting to take the spot of that symbol from civil rights activists like DuBois

Question 28

Essay Q 1: Explain how identification functions as a symbolic strategy and tactic in the poster (see chapter 6)

Answer 28

“Languaging Strategies: patterns or methods of language usage that attempt to achieve a specific purpose, goal, or objective”

Identification: need for personal coherence and social cohesion; need for division and agreement: “put identification and division ambiguously together”

Levels of Identification:
- Common ground (most basic): demographic common ground, trade/occupation, etc
- looking for notion of “a people” to become one with the movement, sharing common interests, needs, values, and wisdom
Identification Tactics (ways to enhance that common ground):
- implied “we”
- Appearance–ex Washington wearing a suit
- Adapting language–ex the poster’s language is very academic–uses class/education identification
- Content adaptation (use examples that listeners/readers easily understand)
- Identify with moral symbols/revered documents of society–poster does American flag with Lady Liberty and “work and wisdom”, Bible?, architecture of Tuskegee Institute
- Values, beliefs, attitudes by identifying with heroes and founders: ex Abe Lincoln on the poster
- Refer to unrelated, honored individuals–ex Abe Lincoln, Frederick Douglass on the poster
Identity Politics:
- assumptions: group members share common histories and analyses of historic and continued shared oppression, which supersedes identity and makes all group members fierce allies
- less relevant

Question 29

Essay Q 2: how the document functions to prescribe a course of action—especially “prescribing the who” (chapter 3)

Answer 29

Prescribing the “Who”:
- “Social movements champion ‘ordinary people’ forming ‘great grassroots efforts’ as the only forces that can bring about or resist change, but they realize that every movement needs organizations and leaders. It must be more than a bunch of people. The first task is to convince enough people that only an uninstitutionalized collectivity has the will and ability to reach the much sought after goal because all institutions are ‘part of’ or the ‘cause of’ the problem”
- Second task: choose among types or organizations and leaders the ones best suited
- Third task: restrict membership?

Question 30

Essay Q 2: where the document fits within the stages of the social movement that produced it (chapter four)

Answer 30

Social Unrest:
- struggle becomes visible to media as movement
- prophets/intellectuals become agitators
- “forming unions and coalitions may alter self-perceptions and enhance the legitimacy of a rising social movement”
- identify with “the people”
- frame a manifesto, proclamation, or statement of principles: this sets the movement’s ideology (“elaboration of rationalizations and stereotypes into a consistent pattern”)
- “a manifesto pulls together verbal text elements that first emerged during the genesis stage–the exigence, devils/scapegoats, and principles”
- “constitutive rhetoric”–shared historical narrative, while identifying protestors with established norms and values
- joining a social division: we/they division
- transform perceptions of reality

Question 31

Essay Q 2: what type of political argument the document represents (chapter 8)

Answer 31

Insurgent:
- “finds societal norms, values, and institutions corrupt, mendacious, and exploitative”
- ex of Malcolm X who blamed the American government for the condition of Black America
- not explicit calls for violent change (radicalism is one boundary), while not timid either
- “insurgent argument is confrontational. it focuses on one or more social ills and blames them on persons, institutions, or values that are integral parts of institutions. strategically, insurgent argument calls for strong action.”