Mancur Olson
• In 1965 economist Mancur Olson argued that
protestors are “so rational and self interested that
they will not join groups if they think they can gain
the benefits that the groups pursue without taking
the time to participate.
• In other words they are “free riders” on the efforts of
others. (55)
Free riders…
• “You don’t have to join the environmental movement to enjoy
the clean air that it wins for all of us”(55)
• Another reason to free ride is that your own participation
won’t make a difference, something especially true in very
large groups.
• So to attract participants, Olson said movements have to
provide people with “selective incentives” that you only get
for participating (newsletters or insurance)
States as a type of organization
• Patriotism is probably the strongest non-economic motive for
organizational allegiance in modern times -- Age of nationalism.
• Many nations draw additional strength and unity from some powerful
ideology, such as democracy or communism, as well as from a common
religion, language, or cultural inheritance.
• Almost any government is economically beneficial to its citizens, in that
the law and order it provides is a prerequisite of all civilized economic
activity.
• Yet, no state has been able to support itself through voluntary dues and
contributions – Taxes are compulsory
Non collective Benefits
• American Medical Association: “provides a helpful defense
against malpractice suits, publishes medical journals needed
by its membership, and makes its conventions educational as
well as political”
•
• The AMA has offered its members and potential members a
number of selective or non-collective benefits. It has offered
its members benefits which, in contrast with the political
achievements of the organization, can be withheld from
nonmembers, and which accordingly provide an incentive for
joining the organization.” (64)
AMA Continued…
• The AMA gains membership because of subtle forms
of coercion and partly because of the non-collective
benefits they provide.
• If it were solely a lobbying organization, it would not
have the coercive power or non-collective benefits to
sell.
FREEDOM SUMMER
EYES ON THE PRIZE 1962-1964
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSitIXiP5Y
BACKGROUND
• Difficult to persuade prospective voters to register
• Lack of federal presence in state to stop violence
• Lack of publicity to generate federal action
PROTEST VOTE
• A mock gubernatorial election among the Mississippi Black
population, a parallel “Freedom Vote” designed to minimize
violence and ensure maximum voter turnout.
• This might:
• Generate publicity
• Coordinating a statewide campaign would strengthen SNCC’s
organizational presence
• Symbolic nature of vote would forestall violence
WHO STAFFS THE CAMPAIGN?
•
Who registers black voters and who stages the election?
•
White upper and middle-class youth
•
PRO:
•
Garner national media attention
•
Safety: Federal law enforcement officials would be there to protect white
students
•
Students have influential parents and are from Ivy League schools – Symbolic
Capital
•
CON: Students may take over the movement and appropriate leadership roles
WHY WHITE ELITES?
• Biographical Availability
• Students have free time to be activists
• Free from marriage
• Free from Full-time employment
• Free to express political views
COGNITIVE LIBERATION
• Participants expressed idealism and optimism
• Cognitive liberation: People don’t rebel against
the status quo unless they feel it is unjust and
illegitimate (as opposed to natural and
inevitable).
• Cognitive liberation is sometimes a product
rather than a cause of protest.
IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
OF APPLICANTS
• Least Political: 1) Teachers or education majors whose
motivation for applying represents an extension of their
occupational roles 2) Religious: Motivation for applying
represents an extension of the social gospel.
• More Political: Patriotic rhetoric – Carry on the legacy
of JFK
• Parents inspired both groups
WHY DID PEOPLE PARTICIPATE
IN THE PROJECT?
• 90% already participated in some form of activism – Safer, less
demanding forms of activism often precede riskier, more
demanding forms.
• Identity Transformation: Playing as activist is usually the 1 st step
to becoming one.
• Some applicants were linked to Civil Rights organizations.
• 49/80 applicants knew another applicant in advance of the
summer – Important in their decision to apply (social ties) –
Talked each other into going.
VOLUNTEERS VERSUS NO-SHOWS
• Going or not going to Mississippi had to do with applicant’s biographical
availability and social links to the project.
• Participants:
• Had stronger links to the project
•
More likely to be members of a Civil Rights group or an allied group
• More likely to have friends involved in the movement
• Participation was risky – Highly publicized dangers
• If applied alone and was isolated, social costs of withdrawing were low
• If applied with others, if tried to withdraw, social disapproval could be great
Inclusivity/Exclusivity
To change world, movement must include as many
people as possible (Inclusivity).
To attract devoted activists, movement must often
promote a sense of exclusivity.
Separatism, concern w/ purity, and homogeneity of
thought are associated with exclusivity.
Us vs. Them
Kanter Study: Most successful communes of 19th
century discouraged relationships outside the
group through geographic isolation, economic
self-sufficiency, a special language and style of
dress, and rules that controlled members’ and
outsiders’ movements across the boundaries of
community.
Us vs. Them: Opposition is evil → solidifies ingroup ties w/o creating dialogue w/ other.
Doctrinal Purity
Becoming us vs. them involves purifying beliefs.
Idealism, radicalism, exclusion: binds activists to
movement
Leaders: More radical than followers b/c serve not as
intermediaries to outside world, but moral
exemplars whose function is inspiration. → May
grow more conservative than rank & file over time
Homogeneity
Like attracts like, deviants suppress differences to
belong.
You are a member if you believe what others in the
movement believe.
In some movements, if do not take correct
ideological line, could be viewed as betraying family
or closest friends.
Iron Law of Involution
Every social movement tends to splinter unless it
wins quickly in which case it turns into a collection
of institutions.
Example: Socialist movement: Labor movement
turned into institution; Communist party (exclusive)
turned into sect.
Inclusivity vs.
Exclusivity
Inclusivity: “Strength of weak ties”
Easy to retreat to apolitical sanctuaries like
family
Allows friendships to run who gamut of political
views
Allows host of different ties to large community.
Conducive to success?
Inclusivity vs.
Exclusivity
Versus exclusivity, loose aggregation may
succeed b/c:
Members can use their weak contacts w/ diverse
organizations and individuals outside their
neighborhood to further their interests
Weakly tied have better access to info
Tightly knit: greatest overlap in contact w/ those
one already knows, so info they acquire is likely
to be the same as that which already have
Conditions That Impede
Exclusivity
In ERA movement:
1) Likelihood of Winning
2) Dependence of the movement on actors in
different structural roles
3) Explicitly inclusive ideology
1) Likelihood of
Winning
ERA: Close to being ratified
These conditions maximized the impact of political
realism, by reducing both overconfidence and the
temptation of the loser to retreat to purity.
2) Dependence of Movement on
Actors in Different Structural
Roles
Division of labor b/w different states, different
communities w/i each state, and b/w different
constituencies
Decentralization: allowed member to feel more
comfortable w/ one another
Division of labor fostered distinctive perspectives
that undermined unifying ideology
3) Inclusive Ideology
Ideology of women’s movement is inclusive,
stressing the sisterhood of women of differing classes,
ethnicities, regions, and traditional politics.
Listening to what other women had to say, even the
opposition
Making Sense of
Social Movements
• Are you currently or have you been
involved in a social movement.
• What factors give rise to social
movements?
• Are there any preconditions to the
emergence of social movements?
• Why do people join social movements.
Pre-1960s
• Scholars viewed social movements as
dangerous mobs that acted irrationally.
• Scholars felt that people were transformed
into unthinking automatons by social
movements.
• Fooled by their leaders whom they blindly
and stupidly followed.
Pre-1960s
• Theorists saw movements as mistakes
that were best avoided.
• Urgent issue was how to prevent them and
to do this one needs to know why they
appeared.
Structural Theories
1. Mass Society Theory
2. Resource Mobilization
3. Political Process Approach
4. Network Theory
• Movements linked to one another
• Participants shift from one to another
• Same political conditions encourage many
movements to form at same time
• All movements are equivalent
“Mass Society” Theorists
• Social movements occurred when society
has lost “intermediary” organizations (b/w
person and government) that the
discontented could join.
• Examples of “intermediary” organizations
that were considered stable, normal, and
healthy: trade unions, community groups,
churches. –Brought together individual
preferences and provided outlets for letting
off steam.
Other Theorists
• Emphasized the kind of people they
thought would join movements which
would form when enough people were
“alienated” from the world around them or
had infantile psychological needs that
movement would satisfy.
Marx’s Concept of Alienation
• 1) Alienation of worker from the product of
his labor.
• --Work for someone else; Work for
capitalist class
• 2) Alienation of worker from working, from
the act of producing.
• --Endless sequence of discrete, repetitive,
trivial, meaningless motions offering little
intrinsic reward
• McDonalds
Marx’s Concept of Alienation
• 3) Alienation of worker from himself as
producer, from his essence of species.
• --Can’t reach full potential because
always working for someone else. When
always working for someone else, can’t
fulfill one’s needs and desires.
Pre-1960
• Early theorists saw movements as a
function of discontent in society and saw
discontent as something unusual.
• Today: Scholars see social movements as
normal part of politics.
• 1950s: The Golden Age
1960s and 1970s
• Paradigm Shift
• Privileged people began to have sympathy
for those that demanded freedoms and
material improvements.
• Civil Rights Movement: Main reason views
changed.
• Hard to dismiss civil rights demonstrators
as misguided, immature, and irrational.
Resource Mobilization School
• Movements are formal organizations
• There were always enough discontented people to fill a
protest movement, but what varied and so explained the
emergence of movements was the resources available
to nourish it.
• As society grows wealthier, we see more movements
(more resources to nourish movements.
• Focus shifted from kinds of individuals who might join
movement to infrastructure necessary to sustain a
movement.
• Food Service (Occupy)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA6gszAn-yE
“Political Process” Approach
• Emphasize conditions in the external world
• Economic and political shifts occur that open up a space
for the movement.
• Changes in the state are the most important opportunity
a movement needs.
• Slackening in repression, political elites are divided,
movement finds allies in government, political and
economic elites have divergent interests, crisis in
government that distracts leaders.
• Rand Paul: Tea Party
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE1kjqhTdu4
Blumberg Article
• Reflects the Political Process approach
• Migration of African Americans out of rural
south provided more resources and
denser social ties, a church and
organizational infrastructure through which
money could be channeled to civil rights
work, and a new cultural outlook.→
Allowed greater degree of mobilization
Blumberg Article
• NAACP inspired through legal victories
• Emotions of raised expectations
The Civil Rights Movement
• Interacting events: p. 15
• Movement to cities: p. 16-17
• Formal organizations: p. 17
• White supremacy on decline
internationally: p. 20
Network Theorists
• Existence of social ties among potential recruits
is seen as a prerequisite for the emergence of a
social movement.
• Network Theorists look at the structural
conditions within the community or population of
those who might be recruited.
• Those with “dense” ties, or pre-existing formal
organizations, will find it easier to mobilize
supporters and build a movement.
Freeman Article
• Argues against early theorists who saw
discontented and unorganized masses as
spontaneously appearing in streets.
• Argues that pre-existing organizations and
social ties are vital to spread of movement.
• Networks are important for
communication.
The Women’s Movement
• 1) Need for pre-existing communications
network (pp. 31-32)
• 2) Network must be co-optable to ideas of
new movement (p. 32)
• 3) If co-optable communications network
exists, a) a crisis can galvanize it and/or b)
if rudimentary, organizing cadre is
necessary (p. 32)
Freeman Article
• Spontaneous movements are generally
small and don’t last long.
• Networks are important for communication
& spread of movement.
• Emotions are often overlooked but
important. People respond to information
they receive through networks b/c of
affective ties to those in the network.
D’ Emilio Article
• Emphasizes importance of social networks
to development of militant gay and lesbian
movement.
• Movement drew upon pre-existing
networks of activists in other radical
movements.
D’ Emilio Article
• “Gay Liberation” movement recruited from
New Left and women’s movement.
• Borrowed confrontational tactics from
these movements.
• Many lesbians and gay men had been
educated in the arts of protest by the
feminist and antiwar movements.
The Gay Liberation Movement
• Gay Liberation Movement borrowed from
the New Left (p. 37)
• Language of New Left (p. 37)
• Influence of Feminist Movement on The
Gay Liberation Movement and The
Lesbian Liberation Movement (p. 40)
• Structural versus cultural approaches to
explaining social movements.
Structural Approach
• Scholars saw movements as closely linked to
one another because leaders and participants
shifted from one to the other, or shared social
networks, or because they same political
conditions encouraged many movements to
form at the same time.
• Researchers began to ask what caused entire
waves of social movements to emerge.
• In structural view, all movements are equivalent.
Cultural Approach
• Not all movements are seen structurally similar.
• Undergirded by shift from manufacturing society
to postindustrial or knowledge society (fewer
people possess physical goods & more deal with
symbols).
• Social movements try to control the direction of
social change by controlling society’s symbols
and self-understandings.
• Collective identities created
Cultural Approach
• Goals and intentions of protesters are taken seriously.
• Must ask protesters about their perceptions, desires, and
fantasies.
• Cultural perceptions can play a bigger role in the
development of a social movement than changes in state
structure.
• “opportunities” of process theorists may only have an
effect if they are perceived as such.
• Perceptions, rhetoric, symbols, & emotions matter more
than structural shifts in state.
Structural Theorists vs.
Cultural Theorists
• Process Theorists (Structural): Focused
on movements of groups who have been
systematically excluded from political
power and legal rights.
• Cultural Theorists: More likely to examine
movements of those who already have the
formal rights of citizens.
Structural Theorists vs.
Cultural Theorists
• Structural Theorists: Assume that groups
of people know what they want already,
and merely, need an opportunity to go
after it (Often provided by state).
• Cultural Theorists: Recognize that in many
cases people need to figure out what they
want, often because organizers persuade
them of it.
Why Do Movements Emerge?
• 1) Political factors such as divisions
among elites
• 2) Lessened repression from police and
army
• 3) Economic conditions such as increased
discretionary income, especially among
those sympathetic to the movement’s
cause
Why Do Movements Emerge?
• 4) Organizational conditions such as
social-network ties or formal organizations
among aggrieved populations.
• 5) Demographic conditions such as the
increased population density that comes
with industrialization
• 6) Potential protesters must understand
many of these factors as opportunities
before they can take advantage of them.
• 1. Political Process Approach (Structural)
• 2. Political Process Approach (Structural)
• 3. Political process & Resource mobilization
(Structural)
• 4. Network Theory (structural)
• 5. Political Process Approach (Possibly Network
Theory & Mass Society Theory)
• 6. Cultural Theory (Perceptions, ideas,
emotions)
Freedom Summer
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSitIXi
P5Y
• Social Movements: A Primer
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw13pS
7qB7w
Middle Class Radicalism &
Environmentalism
What Kind of environmentalist are you?
• http://thegreenists.com/its-complicated/what-kind-ofenvironmentalist-are-you/7562
Questions
• Are those who join environmental associations
particularly aware of the problems?
• Is it just about awareness? Are those who are more
aware of environmental problems more likely to
participate in environmental organizations?
• What is the difference between environmentalists and
non-environmentalists?
Research
• Questionnaire distributed to 3 groups.
• 1) Environmentalists 2)Industrialists (Business &
Engineering 3) General Public
• On some items, environmentalists and general public both
agreed on damage to environment (Environmentalists
agreement was stronger)
• Awareness of environmental dangers can only account in
part for membership in environmental groups
How do we then
explain participation in
Environmental groups?
• Need to examine beliefs about environment in the context of
wider systems of belief & action (We see bigger difference
between environmentalists and others)
• Environmentalists see environmental dangers to be much more
serious.
• Environmentalists: More likely to lack confidence in and even
show hostility toward science and technology
• Environmentalists: More opposed to institutions of industrial
society
Belief Systems
(Environmentalists)
• Low support for material values (Maintaining high rate of
economic growth, maintaining stable economy)
• High support for post-material values (Progressing
toward less impersonal, more humane society;
Progressing toward a society where ideas are more
important than money)
• Environmentalists have a different worldview, meaning
system, and value system than non-environmentalists.
Environmentalists Vs. General
Public
• What differentiates environmentalists from general public is
not awareness of environmental dangers but use to which
they put their environmental beliefs.
• Universal trump cards: Time, money, God, Nature
• Laws of nature are used to sanction moral codes (Hurricane
Katrina happened b/c of abortion)
• Environment is trump card used by environmentalists
• Those on Left: Less confidence in science, higher scores on
anti-industrial society scale, higher post-material scores, more
opposed to economic individualism, more likely to rate
environmental dangers as more serious.
Environmental Movement
• Environmental movement: Vehicle for harnessing beliefs about environmental
dangers to support attack on central values and beliefs of industrial capitalism -the hegemony of economic goals and values. (Define good citizenship through
consumerism)
• In other words, Environmental movement is a way of acting out beliefs. Belief is that
the world and society is not just about money, individualism, etc. A belief system that
feels the environment is in serious danger due to the primacy of profit.
• Society today: belief in experts, scientists, epistemology, scientific method, emphasis
on quantification.
• Environmentalists: Oppose dominant value attached to economic growth. Believe
resources are finite. Give higher priority to realization of non-material values -- To
social relationships and community, to increased participation and decisions that
affect our lives.
• Little confidence in science and technology -- can make things worse.
Occupations
• High proportion of environmentalists work in non-productive service
sector: doctors, social workers, teachers, creative arts.
• They are on the periphery of industrial capitalist society -- political
outsiders.
• They are protesting against being alienated from decision making,
protesting against usurpation of policy decisions by experts working
within dominant economic values.
• But their attack is not just rooted in their subordinate position. It is
rooted in the relations to the core economic institutions of society.
• Support for dominant social paradigm is strongest in industrialist
sample. Industrialists occupied dominant positions in market sector.
Occupational Choice
• Values are a major factor influencing occupational
choice.
• Personal service, intellectual, and artistic sectors
constitute non-industrial enclaves within industrial
societies and are the carriers of alternative noneconomic values.
Competing Cultures &
Meaning Systems
• New politics has demands stemming from non-economic
values.
• Dominant social paradigm provides not only a set of beliefs
about how society works, but functions as ideology
legitimating dominant political institutions and processes.
• Dominant social paradigm represses alternative viewpoints.
• Environmentalists call into question the sanity of modern
industrial societies being dominated by the value of
technology, efficiency, organization, and growth.
• Hegemony of values & beliefs of liberal capitalism blocks
dialogue and communication.
Earth First
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhTTAVbDEfw
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