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                      SOCIAL MOVEMENTS & CULTURE THEORY 

In addition to the bibliographies offered for each movement and issue on this site, below is an annotated list of works that theorize more generally about the role(s) of culture and artistic practice in social movements.

Alexander, Jeffrey C. Performative Revolution in Egypt. NY and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
Using the case of the Tahir Square revolution, Alexander offers a striking analysis of how Egyptian protestors scripted and performed the revolt in order to raise broad issues of theatricality in movements.
d'Anjou, Leo. Social Movements and Cultural Change: The First Abolition Campaign Revisited. New York: Aldine, 1996.
Uses the first British anti-slavery campaign in the 18th century as a test case for explorations of the social construction of meaning via social movements.
Baumgarten, Britta, Priska Daphi and Peter Ullrich, eds. Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research. NY: Palgrave, 2014.
Thirteen theoretical essays aimed to get beyond narrowly instrumentalist or otherwise reductive approaches to the cultural analysis of movements. The volume is divided into four sections, I: neglected general theories of culture -- Western Marxisms, the sociology of emotions, and recent anthropological theory; II: culture as a general framework or the formative condition for sms; III: the internal cultures of sms; IV: cultural change as a result of sm activity.
Davis, Joseph E. ed. Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Ten essays drawing upon a range of narrative theories to examine the vital role of storytelling in framing, developing and maintaining movements.
Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 1991.
Reconceptualizes both American and European social movement theory via a sociology of knowledge approach to "movement intellectuals," and collective actors engaging in "cognitive praxis."
Fantasia, Rick. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action and Contemporary Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Takes an innovative look at the subcultures created by workers in unions, on the shop-floor and outside the job. His concept of "cultures of solidarity" connects in interesting ways to the idea of "movement cultures.
Fine, Gary Alan. "Public Narration and Group Culture: Discerning Discourse in Social Movements," in Social Movements and Culture. Ed. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 127-143.
Friedman, Debra and Doug McAdam."Collective Identity and Activism," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. 156-173.
Gamson, William A."The Social Psychology of Collective Action." in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. 53-76.
___. "Political Discourse and Collective Action." International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 219-244.
Goodwyn, Lawrence.The Populist Moment. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Contains one of the earliest and most interesting elaborations of the concept of "movement culture."
Hunt, Scott A., Robert D. Benford, and David A. Snow. "Identity Fields: Framing Processes and the Social Construction of Movement Identities," in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity. Ed. Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston, and Joseph Gusfield. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. 185-208.
Jaspers, James J. Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2014.
Accessible, if rather dry, introduction to key cultural dimensions of movements; especially strong on the role of emotions, Jaspers's speciality.
Johnston, Hank, ed. Culture, Social Movements and Protest. Farham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
Broad-ranging collection that includes theoretical approaches from storytelling analysis to speech act theory to examining movements as educational sites.
Johnston, Hank, and Bert Klandermans, eds. Social Movements and Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
The first anthology of theory dedicated fully to the topic of cultural approaches to social movement theorizing. In addition to articles cited herein, all the pieces in the volume raise interesting question about the relations between culture(s) and movements.
Johnston, Hank and Bert Klandermans. "The Cultural Analysis of Social Movements," in Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. eds. Social Movements and Culture.. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 3-24.
In the course of introducing the essays in the volume, the authors survey key questions in the cultural study of social movements, including conceptualizing culture in movement contexts, how movements process culture, and movement (sub)cultures as a characteristic of social movements.
Krasniewicz, Louise. Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Innovative use of postmodern ethnographic techniques to contrast the movement culture of the peace camp with the surrounding upstate New York community.
Lofland, John. "Charting Degrees of Movement Culture," in Social Movements and Culture. Eds. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 188-216.
Attempts to develop something of a quantitative measure of degrees or depth of movement culture intensity along six dimensions and as manifested in six cultural locations.
McAdam, Doug. "Culture and Social Movements," in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity. Eds. Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston, and Joseph Gusfield. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. 36-57.
Offers theoretical overview of social movements in terms of three broad dimensions: the cultural roots of movements (drawing heavily on modified frame analysis), the emergence and development of movement cultures, and the cultural consequences and impacts of movements.
McAdam, Doug, and Mayer Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
As the title implies, this book uses selected essays to compare three major approaches to movements. Section Three on framing is of greatest interest in this context, and McAdams' essay on CRM dramaturgy is especially suggestive.
Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Melucci, a key theorist of "new social movements" in Europe, offers his most sustained analyses here of the symbolic-semiotic nature of contemporary movements. Includes both general theory and application to a number of recent movements.
___. Nomads of the Present.. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Important, innovative collection of essays using of a kind of cultural semiotics to understand the symbolic meanings posed by movements and the nature of movement-bred collective and individual identities. This work provides more compact access to the ideas elaborated in Challenging Codes.
___.. "Getting Involved: Identity and Mobilization in Social Movements," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Eds. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. 104-129.
Summarizes some of Melucci's main conceptual innovations for studying symbolic action and collective identity in movements.
Morris, Aldon D., and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds. Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
This collection (several of whose essays are cited herein), is a transitionary volume indicating the beginnings of a shift toward greater interest in cultural matters in social movement theorizing. See the introduction and conclusion in additions to pieces cited here.
Polletta, Francesca. "Culture & Movements." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 619 (Sep. 2008): 78-96
Reed, T. V. The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the CivilRights Movement to the Present. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2019.
The entire book is relevant, but on theory see especially "Conclusion: The Cultural Study of Social Movements."
Roy, William. "How Movements Do Culture." International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 23:2/3 ( 85–98.
Sturgeon, Noël. “Theorizing Movements: Direct Action and Direct Theory, in Marcy Darnovsky, et al., eds. Cultural Politics and Social Movements. Philadelphia: Temple U P 1950), 35-51.
Brilliant interpretation of movement cultures as theorizing entities.
Swidler, Ann. "Cultural Power and Social Movements," in Social Movements and Culture.Eds. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 25-40.
Surveys various general theories of "culture" and evaluates their relative usefulness for social movement analysis.
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy Whittier. "Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Eds. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. 104-129.
Expands and clarifies the often rigid concept of collective identity in insightful ways.
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy Whittier. "Analytical Approaches to Social Movement Culture," in Social Movements and Culture. Eds. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 163-187.
Uses the example of the culture of the US second wave women's movement to provide a rich summary of ways to think about varieties of movement culture(s).
Young. Alison. Femininity in Dissent. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Analyzes press coverage of the Greenham Common women's peace camp in England using a feminist post-structuralist approach that has interesting implications for issues of cultural framing of movements.
Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics, and the Feminist Movement. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Analyzes existing historiographies of second wave US feminism and existing social movement theory, noting their inadequacy vis-a-vis cultural-discursive dimensions. Then, drawing concepts judiciously from postmodern theory, offers a case study of cultural production within the movement.
 
 

A number of organizations linked in our "General SM Resources" section also theorize about & work on cultural activism.