Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research Series Editor: Howard B. Kaplan, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas HANDBOOK OF COMMUNITY MOVEMENTS AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS Edited by Ram A. Cnaan and Carl Milofsky HANDBOOK OF DISASTER RESEARCH Edited by Havidán Rodríguez, Enrico L. Quarantelli, and Russell Dynes HANDBOOK OF DRUG ABUSE PREVENTION Theory, Science and Prevention Edited by Zili Sloboda and William J. Bukoski HANDBOOK OF THE LIFE COURSE Edited by Jeylan T. Mortimer and Michael J. Shanahan HANDBOOK OF POPULATION Edited by Dudley L. Poston and Michael Micklin HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Edited by John Delamater HANDBOOK OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY Edited by Jonathan H. Turner HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION Edited by Maureen T. Hallinan HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS Edited by Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER Edited by Janet Saltzman Chafetz HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF MENTAL HEALTH Edited by Carol S. Aneshensel and Jo C. Phelan HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE MILITARY Edited by Giuseppe Caforio HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ACROSS DISCIPLINES Edited by Bert Klandermans and Conny Roggeband HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC RELATIONS Edited by Hernán Vera and Joseph R. Feagin Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines Edited by Bert Klandermans Free University Department of Social Sciences Amsterdam, The Netherlands Conny Roggeband Free University Department of Social Sciences Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1 3 Editors BertKlandermans ConnyRoggeband FreeUniversity FreeUniversity SocialSciences SocialSciences DeBoelelaan108/c DeBoelelaan108/c 1081HVAmsterdam 1081HVAmsterdam Netherlands Netherlands [email protected] [email protected] ISSN1389-6903 ISBN978-0-387-70959-8 (hardcover) ISBN978-0-387-76580-8 (softcover) e-ISBN978-0-387-70960-4 DOI10.1007/978-0-387-70960-4 SpringerNewYorkDordrechtHeidelbergLondon LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2009939762 (cid:13)c SpringerScience+BusinessMedia,LLC2010 Allrightsreserved.Thisworkmaynotbetranslatedorcopiedinwholeorinpartwithoutthewrittenpermission ofthepublisher(SpringerScience+BusinessMedia,LLC,233SpringStreet,NewYork,NY10013,USA),except forbriefexcerptsinconnectionwithreviewsorscholarlyanalysis.Useinconnectionwithanyformofinformation storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodologynowknown orhereafterdevelopedisforbidden. 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Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Contributors Ronald Aminzade, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN Willem Assies, Van Vollenhoven Institute, University of Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands Brian Dill, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN Tina Fetner, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada James M.Jasper, Independent Scholar, New York, NY Bert Klandermans, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Lindsey Lupo, Department of Political Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA David S.Meyer, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA Conny Roggeband, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ton Salman, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Jackie Smith, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, StonyBrook, NY Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands v Table of Contents Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Chapter 1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Conny Roggeband and Bert Klandermans Chapter 2. Structural Approaches in the Sociology of Social Movements . . . . . . . 13 Jackie Smith and Tina Fetner Chapter 3. Cultural Approaches in the Sociology of Social Movements. . . . . . . . . 59 James M. Jasper Chapter 4. Assessing the Politics of Protest: Political Science and the Study of Social Movements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 David S. Meyer and Lindsey Lupo Chapter 5. Individuals in Movements: A Social Psychology of Contention. . . . . . 157 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans Chapter 6. Anthropology and the Study of Social Movements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Ton Salman and Willem Assies Chapter 7. Historians and the Study of Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Brian Dill and Ronald Aminzade Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 vii CHAPTER1 Introduction C R B K ONNY OGGEBAND AND ERT LANDERMANS Students from divergent academic disciplines share an interest in the phenomena of social movements and collective action. Through a variety of disciplinary approaches and tech- niques, researchers seek to understand the emergence and development of social movements, protest, and contentious politics. Their different perspectives have contributed to development of research and theory in the field of social movements. The last few decades social move- ment studies have proliferated enormously, covering a wide array of movements, issues and places, as evidenced by the rapid growth of the number of journal articles on social move- ments published since the 1980s (see Fig. 1.1). The growing interest and importance of the study of social movements as an area of the social sciences appears to be closely related to how its object of study developed in the course of time. Over the last decades, social movements as a social phenomenon grew rapidly. In the early 1960s, many sociologists believed society had reached a stage of devel- opment in which pluralist, pragmatic consensus, instead of protest, would resolve social conflict. Their expectations proved wrong and the 1960s became a decade of activism, riots, demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes, and many other forms of collective action. Over the last decades, social movements emerged as a common and central feature of the political land- scape across the globe. Diverse and multifaceted forms of mobilization materialized; “left- libertarian” movements such as the student, women’s, peace, and ecology movements and right-wing organizations such as the pro-life movement, fundamentalist religious move- ments, and the extreme right movement alike. In the 1970s, for instance, Islamic fundamen- talist and Marxist movements mobilized in Iran, in Nicaragua the Sandinistas organized, and in Germany and Italy a number of radical leftist terrorist groups were formed. These instances of protest gained international visibility and in some cases sparked new mobiliza- tions and counter-movements. Over the past two decades, we have witnessed further expan- sion of the movement sector, but also new forms of mobilization such as the rise of transnational protest, ethnic mobilizations, Internet protest, and Islamic movements. The myriad of movements, issues, action forms, and strategies has clearly fueled the proliferation of social movement studies. The increasing interdisciplinary cooperation of the field has resulted in a crossing of the various boundaries—disciplinary, thematic, historical, and geographic. Owing to the efforts of social historians, political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists, and anthropolo- gists from all parts of the world, our knowledge of the dynamics of collective action in past episodes has extended tremendously. Geographically, social movement studies are no longer 1 2 Conny Roggeband and Bert Klandermans 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 1960- 1966- 1971- 1976- 1981- 1986- 1991- 1996- 2001- 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 FIGURE1.1. Number of journal articles on social movements in English language journal (1960–2005). Source: Google scholar mainly the domain of European and North American scholars. The expansion of the field has also been the result of an important internationalization of social movement studies. Cross- national collaborations and networking have been important goals for social movement scholars who since the 1980s have tried to bridge theoretical gaps and divides (Klandermans, Kriesi, and Tarrow 1988). All this offers us the potential of making systematic comparisons across time and also across space. Institutional infrastructures such as the International Sociological Association (ISA), the International Political Science Association, and the International Society of Political Psychology have enabled independent interaction and networking of scholars across national borders. Internationalization has offered the opportu- nity to learn about new cases, to test theoretical insights in different settings, and to study cross-national similarities and differences. Such knowledge of cases across the globe helped to determine what general variables apply across boundaries and what variables must be specified and particularized with respect to different national–cultural settings and different historical periods. As a result of all these efforts, central concepts and frameworks have been developed across disciplines and one could argue that social movement studies in itself contain what Smelser (2002) calls a “hybrid subfield” with shared concept and approaches. The proliferation of the field has led to increased theoretical debate and attempts to synthesize the different theoretical perspectives (Goodwin and Jasper 2003; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Tarrow 1998). Nonetheless, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2007) recently complained that “with expertise divided across a confusing patchwork of disciplinary boundaries, geographic areas, historical era, and nominal different types of contention” the field of social movement studies has become very much fragmented. Perhaps such a state of affairs is given with the object of study. Social movements are phenomena that are not concerned about disciplinary boundaries. The study of social move- ments is by definition interdisciplinary, as many scholars of social movements never tire of 1. Introduction 3 asserting. At the same time, real interdisciplinary research on social movements is rare, because the awareness of what is available in the neighboring discipline is limited. Social movement students from different disciplines often speak little beyond their discipline andfail to connect their theories and concepts to that of neighboring disciplines. As a conse- quence, wheels are invented for the umpteenth time and cross-disciplinary collaboration can easily lead to mis-understandings, because researchers use an identical vocabulary with different meanings and operationalizations.1 Moreover, different disciplines have different subcultures, which may be overlooked by focusing on similarities and adopting common conceptual frameworks. Instead of a new attempt to integrate theoretical perspectives, this volume aims to revisit the disciplinary roots of social movement studies. The focus is on sociology, political science, anthropology, social psychology, and history, which we consider the central disciplines study- ing social movements, although admittedly the field is much broader and still growing.2The various disciplines involved in the study of social movements raise their own specific ques- tions and approach social movements from a variety of angles or perspectives. Moreover, each discipline has distinctive working arrangements, vocabularies, and “standards of explanation” to which students are exposed during their professional socialization, and which are enforced by a variety of disciplinary gatekeepers, from journal editors to grant reviewers. Let us give a few examples of questions characteristic to disciplines. While social psychologists focus on the individual level and look at attitudes, motives, and identities of activists, they pay little attention to the political or cultural context of mobilization or the impact of protest. Nor do they provide explanations for the rise and decline of social movements or the role of globalization. Political opportunities and the impact of protest are obviously topics political scientists are exploring, while such topics as the rise and decline of social movements are food for sociologists and historians. The role of culture in shaping protest and the cultural consequences of social movements are central topics for anthropologist and sociologists. We hold that knowing the specific questions and approaches of the various disciplines will help us in our interactions with colleagues from disciplines other than our own. There- fore, we invited scholars from what we defined as central disciplines of social movement studies to elaborate on how their own disciplines approach and conceptualize the dynamics of social movements. It is our conviction that genuine interdisciplinary research requires schol- ars who are firmly rooted in a disciplinary tradition, but at the same time well aware of what other social science disciplines have to offer. Despite the wealth of written material on social movements, we are not aware of a comprehensive publication that takes the major disciplines that are involved in the study of social movements as its point of departure. Most anthologies instead provide synthetic examinations of a comprehensive set of movement-related issues or focus on central theoretical perspectives on social movements such as resource mobilization, political process approach, or framing (Buechler 2000; della Porta and Diani 1999; Snow, Soule, and Kriesi 2004; Tarrow 1998). 1 The concept of political opportunity structure is a case in point. McAdam (1996) demonstrated that this concept is understood in multiple ways. Also, in many cases the concept is either narrowed or stretched, which leads respec- tively to very limited or tautological explanations (Koopmans 1999). This volume makes clear that concepts such as culture and identity are also interpreted and used very differently across disciplines. 2 Recently social movement and collective action have become the object of study in other disciplines like social geography (Miller 2000), organizational studies (Davis et al. 2005), and communication studies (Downing 2000). Also, social movement literature and theory are applied to areas of research as diverse as education policy, civil wars, terrorism, health care, and international relations.