GLOSSARY OF SOME KEY TERMS USED TO STUDY MOVEMENTS
The purpose of this glossary is to provide a basic vocabulary of terms and approaches used in studying social movements. Like all key concepts, the terms listed here are open to multiple interpretations and occur in significant variations. Thus, these particular definitions are not intended to be the last word, but rather a beginning point for further elaboration.
Affect Analysis
Where early forms of movement analysis like collective behavior emphasized dangerous emotions in collective behavior, new approaches on the important terrain of affect analysis have been developed over the past few decades to show more precisely how movements draw upon and reshape the emotional lives of participants and observers alike. Recent advances in psychology and neuroscience make clear the emotions and thought-filled and ideas are emotion-laden in ways that complicate a too easy dichotomy between rational thought and supposedly less rational emotions. Mobilizing emotions and mobilizing ideas are deeply intertwined in most movements.
On affective approaches, see Jeff Godwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); James M. Jasper and Lynn Owens, “Social Movements and Emotions,” in Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, vol. 2, ed. Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner (New York: Springer, 2014): 529–48; and Deborah Gould, “Emotion,” in Fahlenbrach et al., Protest Cultures,160–65. On traditional performance analysis, see Robert D. Benford and Scott A. Hunt, “Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power,” Sociological Inquiry 62. 1(1992): 36–55.
Collective Behavior Theory
The dominant school of sociological thought on social movements in the 1940s and 1950s, collective behavior scholars linked movements to such things as riots, crowds, and mass hysteria. Shaped in part by the recent memory of the fascist movements in Germany, Italy and Japan, and by the conformist mood of the 1950s, this school stressed the irrational dimensions of movements and often saw them as potentially dangerous, temporary aberrations in the otherwise smooth-flowing social system. While parallels between movements and other forms of collective behavior are still studied, this dark, irrationalist view of movements has largely been superseded by more complex and varied approaches.
Collective Identity
Collective identity is the name given to the tendency of many social movements to form a group self-image shaped by, but in turn shaping the consciousness of, individual participants. Social movement theorist Alberto Melluci emphasizes that such collective identities are not so much fixed as in process and offers this more specialized definition: "Collective identity is an interactive, shared definition produced by several individuals (or groups at a more complex level)... that must be conceived as a process because it is constructed and negotiated by repeated activation of the relationships that link individuals (or groups) [to the movement]."
A particularly grounded introduction to collective identity theory is provided by Verta Taylor and Nancy E. Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities,” in Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 104–29. Alberto Melucci’s “The Process of Collective Identity,” in that same volume, offers another useful perspective, one Melucci expands upon in his book Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Cycles of Protest
A phrase used to note the patterns of rising and falling action experienced by individual movements as well as the tendency of movements to generate other movements in waves of activity and inactivity (or latency). Think of the European uprisings of 1848, 1968 worldwide student revolts, or more recently the Arab Spring series of protests. The concept is most closely identified with political scientist Sydney Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest (1989).
Direct Theory
A term coined by social movement theorist Noël Sturgeon to describe the highly self-conscious decision making process and organizational structures she observed in the anti-nuclear and anti-militarist direct action movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sturgeon argues that a theory of social change was embedded in the organization structures and actions of the movement. This is related to the idea of "prefiguration" but is richer in that it in effect invents a notion of inherent theory.
See Sturgeon, “Theorizing Movements: Direct Action and Direct Theory,” in Darnvosky, et al. eds., Cultural Politics and Social Movements (1995).
Discourse/Rhetorical Theories
The classical field of rhetoric (the art of persuasion) and related forms of discourse analysis have become increasingly important in social movement studies. Rhetorical analysis has long examined one key component of many movements, public speeches (such as “I Have a Dream”), but it also looks at other kinds of persuasion at work in movements, especially verbal persuasion but also the roles of images, gestures (including dance), sounds (including music), and other symbolic systems. A different, related set of discourse analyses arose out of new cultural theories collectively labeled “poststructuralist” and/or “postmodernist,” particularly work derived from Michel Foucault. More fully than traditional rhetorical analysis, these approaches focus on languages as systems that use us as much as we use them. They focus on language as an underlying determining system, and on the material conditions through which words and nonverbal communication acts are performed. These approaches also sometimes overlap of narrative analysis.
On discourse analysis that combines sociological approaches with methods drawn from the work of poststructuralist theorist Michel Foucault, see Peter Ullrich and Reiner Keller, “Comparing Discourses between Cultures: A Discursive Approach to Movement Knowledge,” in Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research, ed. Britta Baumgarten, Priska Daphi, and Peter Ullrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 113–39.
Dramaturgical/Performance Analysis
A kind of cultural analysis (derived from anthropology, performance studies, or literary studies) applied to the more dramatic, or ritualistic dimensions of movements, working from the analogy that much political activity generally, and social movement action in particular, has highly theatrical elements (i.e., sit-ins, protest marches, civil disobedience involving symbolic breaking of laws or trespassing). More generally, it using performance theory to analyze all actions, symbolic and practical, taken by movements.
On traditional performance analysis, see Robert D. Benford and Scott A. Hunt, “Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power,” Sociological Inquiry 62, no. 1(1992): 36–55.For a more recent theorizing of performativity in cultural politics, see Jeffrey C. Alexander, Performance and Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011).
Frames, Framing, Frame Analysis
Deriving originally from the work of sociologist Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (1974), the concept of frames or framing is used in the contexts of some social movement analysis to mean patterns of perception and/or schemata of interpretation employed by social movement participants or social movement organizations viewed collectively. A frame might be imagined as a kind of template or filter that organizes how one processes new information encountered in the world. Frames organize that information based on previously held beliefs or previously shaped patterns of perception and interpretation.
The classic description of frame analysis is found in Snow et al., “Frame Alignment Processes.” Updated perspectives on this approach appear in David A. Snow, “Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements,ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 380–412. See also, H. Johnston, “A Methodology for Frame Analysis,” in Johnston and Klandermans, eds. Social Movements and Culture (1995).
Grievance
A grievance is the issue (or issues) around which a social movement develops. Grievances stem from a shared perception that a group of individuals is being denied rights, opportunities, proper respect, safety, or some other form of social good simply because of who they are. Newly articulated grievances are generally the focal points around which movements are organized, but initial grievances are frequently elaborated upon and new grievances or ways to articulate grievances often emerge as movements evolve. While useful, the term as its limits, especially when referring to revolutions or other large scale, multi-issue movements for which the term grievance seems inadequate.
Marxist Theory
Marxism as an ideology and theory of social change has had an immense impact on the practice and the analysis of social movements. Marxism arose from an analysis of movements structured by conflicts between industrial workers and their capitalist employers in the 19th century. In the twentieth century a variety of neo-Marxist theories have been developed that have opened themselves to adding questions of race, gender, environment, and other issues to an analysis centered in (shifting) political economic conditions. Class-based movements, both revolutionary and labor-reformist, have always been stronger in Europe than in the US and so has Marxist theory as a tool for understanding social movements but important Marxist movements and theories have also evolved in the US. Marxist approaches have been and remain influential ways of understanding the role of political economy and class differences as key forces in many historical and current social movements, and they continue to challenge approaches that are limited by their inability to imagine serious alternatives to consumer capitalist social structures.
Movement Cultures
The shared values, styles, behaviors, language, traditions, symbols, and/or other forms of group definition by which a social movement marks itself as unique. A movement-specific ideology or set of beliefs is perhaps the most conscious marker of a movement culture, but much of a movement culture may be unspoken, invisible, such as a sense of connection based on shared past experiences. Tangible markers of a movement culture might include: a special way of talking (a shared slang, or movement-specific slogans); rituals or ritualized behaviors (singing in a circle, a special kind of handshake); a uniform or stylized clothing (ethnicity-specific clothing, overalls to mark sympathy with poor farmers); a symbol (a black panther, the Aztec eagle of the farmworkers flag); a movement-identified form of artistic expression (black freedom songs, Chicano murals); movement folklore (stories of past victories or defeats, jokes about an opponent's follies); identification with tradition (a hero of the past, a history of previous struggles, revival of a suppressed or forgotten ethnic custom). A variety of other terms have been suggested to name the phenomena of a movement developing a special pattern of connection, including: movement communities, oppositional subcultures, cultures of solidarity, cultural havens. All these have in common the sense that movements create special patterns of interaction and expression that distinguish them from the wider, surrounding culture. Movements clearly differ in the degree to which they develop a specific culture, and no movement is ever fully isolated from or free from the influences of the larger culture(s) of which it is a part. For an attempt to categorize and characterize differing degrees or intensities of movement culture, see John Lofland, “Charting Degrees of Movement Culture: Tasks of the Cultural Cartographer,” in Johnston and Klandermans, eds. Social Movements and Culture (1995).
Narrative Approaches
One of the important things that movements try to do is change the societal story about the grievance they are trying to address. Story-telling is obviously an important aspect of all elements of social life, and various theories of narrative, drawn from literary, cultural and social science studies have increasingly been applied to studying the kinds of stories generated within and projected outward from movements.
On narrative analysis, of social movements, see J. E. Davis, ed., Stories of Change (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); and Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
New Social Movement Theory
New Social Movement Theory developed initially in Europe to help explain a host of new movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that did not seem to fit a model of Marxian class conflict that had been the predominant model in much European social movement theory. The "newness" of the putatively new social movements is said to consist of such things as a greater emphasis on group or collective identity, values and lifestyles rather than or in addition to developed ideologies, and a tendency to emerge more from middle than working class constituencies. The Green Party in Germany with its emphasis on environmental and peace issues, feminism, and alternative non-consumerist lifestyles is often portrayed as the umbrella group representing a synthesis of new social movements aimed at a broad, general social liberation. Some new social movement theorists emphasize a change in the economic structure of the First World from an industrial, heavy manufacturing based "Fordist" (after Henry Ford's assembly line) to a "post-industrial," "postmodern" or "post-Fordist" economy centered more around the service sector (i.e. fast food restaurants) and computer-based information industries as a structural force shaping the new movements. For an excellent overviews, see Mayer and Roth, "New Social Movements and the Transformation into a Post-Fordist Society," in Darnovsky, et al. eds. Cultural Politics and Social Movements (1995).
Organizing vs. Mobilizing
A distinction developed by Civil Rights activist Ella Baker and elaborated by scholar-activist Charles Payne, “I've Got the Light of Freedom” (1995), mobilizing refers to the process by which inspirational leaders or other persuaders can get large numbers of people to join a movement or engage in a particular movement action (think of ML King). Organizing, however, is a richer transformation. It refers to a more sustained process whereby people come to deeply understand a movement's goals and empower themselves to continued action on behalf of those goals.
Political Process Model
The form of social movement analysis that stresses the ways in which the wider political system, especially the federal government in the US, opens up and closes down opportunities for organizing resistance. An example of the opening up would be the positive Supreme Court decision against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, while an example of closing down would be the infiltration and repression of Black, Red, and Brown Power groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the FBI and other state agencies. The most influential example of this approach is Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (1982). PPM is closely connected to Resource Mobilization Theory (see below) but looks more broadly at the political context in which movements mobilize their resources.
Resource Mobilization Theory
This school of social movement analysis, developed from the 1960s onward, has been and remains the dominant approach among sociologists, though it has increasingly been challenged in recent years. RM theory stresses the ways in which movements are shaped by and work within limits set by the resources (especially economic, political and communications resources) available to the group and the organizational skills of movement leaders in utilizing those resources. It is especially interested in direct, measurable impacts of movements on political issues, and less interested in the expressive, ideological, identity-shaping and consciousness-raising dimensions of movements. More recently, the attention of scholars in this school has been turning slowly toward some of these more cultural questions. An important pioneering work in this latter vein is Aldon Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (1984), which stresses African American church language and church music as cultural resources drawn upon by the early civil rights movement.