Social Movements Unit 1

What defines a social movement? Be able to explain the five key elements.

A social movement is defined as collectivities acting with some degree of continuity and organization, partly outside institutional or organizational channels, for the purpose of challenging extant systems of authority, or resisting change in such systems, in the organization, society, culture, or world system in which they are embedded. Five Key Elements: 1) Challengers or defenders of existing structures or systems of authority 2) Collective rather than individual action 3) Act, in varying degrees, outside existing institutional or organizational arrangements 4) Operate with some degree of organization 5) Do so typically with some kind of continuity.

What constitutes a system of authority? Be able to give examples.

A system of authority is a governmental or non-governmental organization, including for profit or not for profit foundations, professional associations, and religious denominations. They are the target of challenges mounted by social movements. They are recognized as seats of decisions, regulations, procedures, and guidelines influencing some aspect of the lives of an individual in a category, as well as being typically based on underlying sets of interconnected values, beliefs, and interpretive frameworks that rationalize the distribution of authority and provide vocab to be used to justify adherence and challenge perceived violations.

What is the decentralized informal model of social movement organization? Be able to describe both the positives and negatives of these types of organizations.

Allows for specialization among different groups, facilitates grass-roots mobilization, and reduces friction through relative group autonomy. Small, decentralized groups continue to emerge. Cons: resources distributed among multiple groups. Large, wealthy, professionalized SMOs are very few in number, and most fall in between centralized and decentralized models.

What is cognitive liberation? Be able to explain why it's necessary for movement emergence and give examples.

Cognitive Liberation is the ability for those active in political protest to recognize their collective strength and take advantage of political opportunities as they become available to them. People begin to believe that favorable shifts in political opportunities have occurred, and this is sometimes readily apparent. Indigenous organizations are the key to spreading these ideas, and strong social integration is needed to get individuals to believe that a movement will affect those other than themselves.

Know the four different methods of accessing resources (aggregation, self-production, co-optation/appropriation, and patronage) and be able to give examples of each.

1) Aggregation: collecting resources held by individuals - ex: money, locations, skills and expertise. 2) Self-Production: SMOs, leaders, and/or participants create new resources or add value to existing resources. Ex: merch, signs and posters, literature, media (creating a hashtag on social media), and creation of SMO itself. 3) Co-Optation/Appropriation: co-optation is the transparent, permitted borrowing of resources held by other groups (churches, transportation, infrastructure, social media, connections to other SMOs). Appropriation is surreptitious exploitation of such resources - you aren't allowed to use these resources (using an artist's music at a rally even though the artist didn't give you permission, using a work computer to create social media resources for the movement, using technological resources from your job when you're not supposed to). 4) Patronage: bestowal of resources by an individual or an organization. May want influence or control over what your organization does. Ex: celebrity endorsement, religious organization endorsement, etc.

Know the three forms of social-organizational resources and be able to give examples.

1) Infrastructure (supported, non-proprietary social resources like public transportation, libraries, etc), 2) Social networks (word of mouth, connections from people with expertise, recruitment), and 3) Organizations.

What are the two kinds of social organizations? Be able to describe them and how they relate to the acquisition of resources by movement organizations.

1) Intentional Social Organizations: created specifically to further movement goals. Use collaborative resources. 2) Appropriable Social Organizations: Created for non-movement purposes. Able to access other resources through these organizations. For example, religious organizations, foundations, etc, that are not movement organizations but aide SMOs. They have to be co-opted or appropriated.

What are political opportunities? Be able to give examples.

A political opportunity is any event or broad social process that undermines the political status quo. When something undermines the balance of power or government power, a movement could take the chance to emerge. ex: change in openness and ideology or political parties, change in public policy, international alliances and pressures on state, activities of counter-movement opponents, and fractures among elite groups.

What were the consequences of interpreting social movement activity using the classical model?

They don't take the political goals of movements seriously, and treat participants as psychologically deficient deviants.

Be able to explain how social movements emerge according to mass society theory.

Isolation in a highly bureaucratic and impersonal society leads to feelings of anxiety and alienation, and that can lead to "extreme" behavior that provides a sense of connection.

What was the fundamental assumption involved in the classical model of social movements?

It assumed that social order and integration is the norm, and social movements were wrong.

What does it mean that activists' prospects for success are context-dependent?

It means that the activists have to consider the broader political context in which they want to conduct their movement in. What goes on in the political context of the world affects the movement, and what the movement does can affect politics as well. There is an interactive relationship between politics and movements, which is an advantage to some strategies and claims, and a disadvantage to others. What a movement does depends on the context of society at the time.

Be able to describe how both the linear model and curvilinear model explain when movements will emerge.

Linear: as political openness rises, it provides opportunity for collective action. Curvilinear: mobilization occurs when government is open, but not too open.

Be able to explain the elements of the classical (strain) model and how they are related (structural strain, disruptive psychological state, and social movement activity).

Social movements are a response to strain. When individuals in a society feel strain, they need to release tension, which turns into an SM. SMs are viewed as spontaneous, highly emotional, and contagious.

What constitutes collective action?

The action is collective in that it involves some number of individuals, groups, or organizations engaged in joint or coordinated action. Distinct from individual action.

Know the five different types of resources (material, human, social-organizational, cultural, and moral) and be able to give examples of each.

1) Material: money, office space, supplies. 2) Human: walkouts, boycotts, marches, helping with more mundane labor for SMO. Experience and skills and expertise. "Human Capital", leadership. 3) Social-Organizational: 1) Infrastructure (supported, non-proprietary social resources like public transportation, libraries, etc), 2) Social networks (word of mouth, connections from people with expertise, recruitment), and 3) Organizations. 4) Cultural: knowledge available in broader culture that is specialized (how to run movements, put on news conferences, meetings, tactical repertoires), organizational templates, strategic or technical know-how. 5) Moral: legitimacy, sympathetic support, moral authority, celebrity or religious endorsement. Using external resources to gain moral resources. Actors who mimic institutional features have the advantage.

Know the four elements in indigenous organizational strength and be able to give examples.

1) Members: recruited along established lines of interaction, either from organizations that form the basis of a new movement, or through bloc recruitment, where organizations that already exist merge together. 2) Solidary Incentives: incentives to participate in a movement. Ex: the benefits one gets from being in a union, including legal support, financial aid, etc. 3) Communication Network: determines the size, pattern, speed, and extent of movement expansion. The better your networks are the more people you can recruit, and the farther you can spread word of your movement. Ex: Word of mouth, social media. 4) Leaders: need centralized direction and coordination. Established organizations can provide recognized leaders.

Be able to explain the five fundamental arguments of the resource mobilization tradition.

1) Movement actions are rational, not emotional or people trying to take out stress. When you can't create change through political system, protest is rational. 2) Goals defined by institutional power relations. Determined by how power is defined. 3) Grievances are essentially ubiquitous. There are issues that have been around before the movement, and protest doesn't arise because of them. Movements emerge with resources. 4) SMOs tend to be centralized and formally structured. Have to have organized bureaucracy to challenge bigger institutions. 5) Success of movements is determined by strategic factors. Based upon how you use your resources.

Be able to describe the four major weaknesses of the classical model.

1) Social movements are a response to strain 2) Individual discontent as a cause - movement participants are somehow abnormal and assumes collective behavior emerges out of individual attitudes. 3) Causal linkage between strain and discontent - gives little attention to what causes strain in the first place, and doesn't establish causal ordering. 4) Movements are psychological, not political phenomena. Movements are fundamentally irrational.

Be able to explain the three traits of the classical model.

1) Social movements are a response to strain. Creates tensions that turn into an SM. 2) More concerned with psychological effects on individuals. 3) Motivation of social movements is not to obtain political goals, but rather they existed to relieve psychological tensions.

What are the three main factors in McAdam's political process theory?

1) Structure of Political Opportunity 2) Indigenous Organizational Strength 3) Cognitive Liberation

What is the pluralist model of politics? Know the key features and assumptions.

Always distributed among many different groups, so no one group has all the power, so no one group can get what they want by themselves - has to compromise with others. Groups are attentive to interests of other groups, and have to work together to succeed. Coercive power is political suicide - you'll lose support by not playing fair, and everyone works together peacefully.

What is a social movement organization? What is the relationship between movements and SMOs? Be able to give examples of SMOs.

An SMO is a joint action of any kind that implies organization. In social movements we see the interests and objectives of a particular constituency being represented and promoted by individuals associated with organizations. Examples of an SMO include the organizations in the Civil Rights Movement, like SNCC, and the UFW led by Cesar Chavez.

Know McAdam's model of movement emergence and the relationships between the various factors involved.

Broad socioeconomic processes leads to expanding political opportunities, which then leads to cognitive liberation, which then leads to indigenous organizational strength, which all lead to the emergence of a social movement.

Be able to describe and give examples of both direct and indirect challenges to authority in terms of both individual action and collective action.

Direct Challenge: Includes straightforward, undisguised, overt appeals and demands, such that the target authorities are aware of both the claims and their carriers. Direct Individual Challenge: appeals to authority for personal adjustment, like asking your boss for a raise. Direct Collective Challenge: various forms of targeted protest. Indirect Challenge: includes movements that seek to change larger systems by challenging individuals, movements that are covert or ambiguous, and that seek to divest themselves of the relevant authority by escaping. Indirect Individual Challenge: Everyday forms of resistance and withdrawal, like dragging your feet at work. Indirect Collective Challenge: Exiting from or divesting of authority, like an authority figure stepping down from their position in or because of protest.

What is status inconsistency and how was it thought it could lead to the emergence of social movement activity?

Discrepancy between one's various status rankings (income, occupational prestige, and education). Your rankings should all line up, so when it doesn't, it causes cognitive dissonance because of inconsistent levels. People then engage in collective activity to reduce this dissonance.

What is extra-institutional action? How is it distinguished from institutional action? Be able to identify and give examples of both.

Extrainsitutional action is defined by whether the challenges of a group are conducted outside normatively sanctioned institutional or organizational channels, like social movements, protests, boycotts, and sit ins. This is distinct from institutional action, where the changes are conducted inside the institution, like with interest groups, voting, lawsuits, and political contributions to candidates.

Be able to give examples of material, human, and moral resources used by the IFW / South Texas farm workers.

Material: location in abandoned theater, and a kitchen/food dispensary in adjoining restaurant, and a meeting hall in a warehouse. Used money to help protesters pay their bills and to pay for legal bills. Human: The farmers fighting for minimum wage. Contracted with medical doctors outside of Starr County for free health care for the IWA's members. Also had lawyers helping them and representing them in court. Priests, nuns, etc. Leaders from the UFW. Moral: religious support and endorsement from the Catholic Church, the use of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a symbol to bring the farmers and workers in the area together. Being connected to the UFW. Marches would end at historic hill with crucifix at the top of it. Wore red and black headbands, associated with labor struggles and strikes in Mexico.

What does it mean that movements have temporal continuity? What are cycles of protest?

Movements are relatively episodic phenomena because their meetings or protests are not regularly scheduled events. Movements are clustered in cycles of protest that wax and wane historically, depending on the social context of the society the movement occurs in at the time. Some last for a short while, and others last for decades.

What is the centralized bureaucratic model of social movement organization? Be able to describe both the positives and negatives of these types of organizations.

Need bureaucratic organization to challenge other modern, large-scale organizations. Allows for long range, proactive actions to use resources over years of SMO's existence. Pros: Liberal democracy well suited to large-scale organizations, and have guarantees that these things can exist. Urbanization and mass media has reduced costs of large mobilization. Cons: SMOs moderate movement goals and tactics. Large ones founded with help from patrons and foundations can influence SMO action. Can divert efforts from movement goals to organizational maintenance. Professionalization of leadership can push out those the movement is trying to help.

Know how anti-nuclear activist organizations responded to political opportunity structures in the United States and France. Be able to describe the openness of the political system in each country and how it affected the tactics of the movement organizations in each country.

United States: open polity but weak political output. Polity: -Strong Congress -Openness of fragmented executive -Lack of tightly integrated political parties -Lack of structured intermediation between executive and interest groups Political Output: -Fragmented executive and political parties -Little control over economic actors -Strong judiciary -Used assimilative strategies, like working within established institutions. The results were having a strong influence in regulatory arena (able to require detailed protocol, etc), but no policy or law came out of it. France: closed polity but strong political output Polity: -Strong executive dominated weak legislature. -Access to policy limited to select groups -Two strong political parties vying for power organized around class issues Political Output: -Very strong executive, no fragmentation. -Used confrontational movement strategies, like disruptive protests and sit-ins. Resulted in little to no policy change because of no input, and repression of anti-nuclear demonstrations, but did result in new green environmental political parties.

What is meant by relative deprivation? How was it thought it could lead to the emergence of social movement activity?

You assess your situation in comparison to other groups or past situations. Because you feel deprived relative to others, it causes psychological strain and triggers collective behavior. This is a psychological explanation, portraying SMs as irrational, tension-releasing activity.