Part I. What's the Problem?: 1. What are they shouting about 2. Lineaments of contention 3. Comparisons, mechanisms, and episodes Part II. Tentative Solutions: 4. Mobilizations in comparative perspective 5. Contentious action 6. Transformations of contention Part III. Applications and Conclusions: 7. Revolutionary trajectories 8. Nationalism, national disintegration, and contention 9. Contentious democratization 10. Conclusions.

Dynamics of Contention

Sociological studies sensitive to the issue of place are rarely labeled thus, and at the same time there are far too many of them to fit in this review. It may be a good thing that this research is seldom gathered up as a “sociology of place,” for that could ghettoize the subject as something of interest only to geographers, architects, or environmental historians. The point of this review is to indicate that sociologists have a stake in place no matter what they analyze, or how: The works cited below emplace inequality, difference, power, politics, interaction, community, social movements, deviance, crime, life course, science, identity, memory, history. After a prologue of definitions and methodological ruminations, I ask: How do places come to be the way they are, and how do places matter for social practices and historical change?

A Space for Place in Sociology

An integrative social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) is developed that incorporates 3 socio-psychological perspectives on collective action. Three meta-analyses synthesized a total of 182 effects of perceived injustice, efficacy, and identity on collective action (corresponding to these socio-psychological perspectives). Results showed that, in isolation, all 3 predictors had medium-sized (and causal) effects. Moreover, results showed the importance of social identity in predicting collective action by supporting SIMCA's key predictions that (a) affective injustice and politicized identity produced stronger effects than those of non-affective injustice and non-politicized identity; (b) identity predicted collective action against both incidental and structural disadvantages, whereas injustice and efficacy predicted collective action against incidental disadvantages better than against structural disadvantages; (c) all 3 predictors had unique medium-sized effects on collective action when controlling for between-predictor covariance; and (d) identity bridged the injustice and efficacy explanations of collective action. Results also showed more support for SIMCA than for alternative models reflecting previous attempts at theoretical integration. The authors discuss key implications for theory, practice, future research, and further integration of social and psychological perspectives on collective action.

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Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives

There has been rapid growth in the study of diffusion across organizations and social movements in recent years, fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis. This research develops a sociologically grounded account of change emphasizing the channels along which practices flow. Our review focuses on characteristic lines of argument, emphasizing the structural and cultural logic of diffusion processes. We argue for closer theoretical attention to why practices diffuse at different rates and via different pathways in different settings. Three strategies for further development are proposed: broader comparative research designs, closer inspection of the content of social relations between collective actors, and more attention to diffusion industries run by the media and communities of experts.

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DIFFUSION IN ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills

Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

This article examines attitudes related to feminism and gender equality by evaluating the trends in, and determinants of women and men's attitudes from 1974 to 1998. Past accounts suggest two clusters of explanations based on interests and exposure. Using these, we examine opinions on abortion, sexual behavior, public sphere gender roles, and family responsibilities. We find that attitudes have continued to liberalize and converge with the exception of abortion attitudes. The determinants of feminist opinion vary across domains, but have been largely stable. While not identical, the predictors of men and women's opinions are similar The results suggest the need for more attention to the mechanisms underlying the production of feminist opinions and theoretical integration of both interests and exposure in a dynamic process.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3598347.pdf

Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974–1998

Protest events occur against the backdrop of public life. Of 382 public events in police records for one year in a small U.S. city, 45% convey a message, 14% involve social conflict, and 13% are standard protest event forms. Local newspapers covered 32% of all events, favoring events that were large, involved conflict, were sponsored by business groups, and occurred in central locations. The more liberal paper also favored rallies and events sponsored by national social movement organizations (SMOs) or recreational groups. Discussion centers on the ways these factors shape the content of the public sphere.

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How events enter the public sphere : Conflict, location, and sponsorship in local newspaper coverage of public events

We review the literature that identifies selection bias in media-based data and propose a theoretical model of the sources of these biases. Given the implications for validity and reliability, we conclude that newspaper data often do not reach acceptable standards for event analysis and that using them can distort findings and misguide theorizing. Furthermore, media selection biases are resistant to correction procedures largely because they are unstable across media sources, time, and location. We end with a plea for more circumspect approaches to media data that fully and openly consider the implications of their inherent limitations.

Where Do We Stand with Newspaper Data

The issue of how an activist identity develops is one of the core issues in social psychology and social movement research Because of problems in the measurement of individuals' propensities to engage in social action, however, findings in this area are often equivocal, and cross-study comparisons and conclusions are difficult to draw Hence, the aim of these studies was to develop a measure to assess individuals' propensities to engage in social action This measure, the Activism Orientation Scale (AOS), demonstrates strong psychometric properties and allows assessment of activist propensity across a wide continuum of social action behaviors, ideological positions, and movement issues Additionally, the broad applicability of the AOS allows for its use by researchers, activists, and policymakers

Individual Orientation Toward Engagement in Social Action

This study examined selection effects in newspaper reports about civil disorders in the late 1960s. A comprehensive set of events recorded in newspapers across the United States was compared with the subsets of these events recorded in two national newspapers often used to construct collective event data bases-the New York Times and the Washington Post. The results demonstrate that fewer than half of all disorders are covered in these two newspapers combined, and that those reported are selected on the basis of event intensity, distance, event density, city population size, type of actor, and day of the week. To demonstrate the effects of these selection patterns on substantive analysis of civil disorder, the authors replicated earlier studies using all reported events, and then repeated the analyses using only the events reported in the Times and the Post. This procedure showed some substantial differences in results. The implications of these findings for event analyses and for substantive understanding...

Daniel J. Myers

Papers

Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974–1998

How events enter the public sphere : Conflict, location, and sponsorship in local newspaper coverage of public events

Where Do We Stand with Newspaper Data

Individual Orientation Toward Engagement in Social Action

All the Rioting That's Fit to Print: Selection Effects in National Newspaper Coverage of Civil Disorders, 1968-1969