Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

■ Abstract The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements. This review examines the analytic utility of the framing literature for un- derstanding social movement dynamics. We first review how collective action frames have been conceptualized, including their characteristic and variable features. We then examine the literature related to framing dynamics and processes. Next we review the literature regarding various contextual factors that constrain and facilitate framing processes. We conclude with an elaboration of the consequences of framing processes for other movement processes and outcomes. We seek throughout to provide clarifi- cation of the linkages between framing concepts/processes and other conceptual and theoretical formulations relevant to social movements, such as schemas and ideology.

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Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical‐evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).

What is agency

The authors analyze the nation‐state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation‐states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world‐level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority; (4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions.

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World society and the nation-state

This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of adherent and constituent mobilization by proposing and analyzing frame alignment as a conceptual bridge linking social psychological and resource mobilization views on movement participation. Extension of Goffinan's (1974) frame analytic perspective provides the conceptualltheoretical framework; field research on two religious movements, the peace movement, and several neighborhood movements provide the primary empirical base. Four frame alignment processes are identified and elaborated: frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation. The basic underlying premise is that frame alignment, of one variety or another, is a necessary condition for participation, whatever its nature or intensity, and that it is typically an interactional and ongoing accomplishment. The paper concludes with an elaboration of several sets of theoretical and research implications.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2095581.pdf

Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation.

Master-frames and cycles of protest

In the last decade the framing perspective has gained increasing popularity among social movement researchers and theorists. Surprisingly, there has been no critical assessment of this growing body of literature. Though the perspective has made significant contributions to the movements literature, it suffers from several shortcomings. These include neglect of systematic empirical studies, descriptive bias, static tendencies, reification, reductionism, elite bias, and monolithic tendencies. In addition to a critique of extant movement framing literature, I offer several remedies and illustrate them with recent work. The articles by Francesca Polletta, John H. Evans, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, and Ira Silver in this special section address several of the concerns raised in this critique and, in so doing, contribute to the integration of structural and cultural approaches to social movements.

An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective*

Social movement organizations (SMOs) devote considerable effort to constructing particular versions of reality, developing and espousingalternativevisions, and attempting to affect various audiences' interpretations. Conflicts regarding such interpretive matters, referred to as 'frame disputes," are ubiquitous within movements. Using a multimethod strategy, this study analyzes the dynamics of interorganizationalframe disputes within the nuclear disarmament movement, including their organizational and ideological contexts, conditions conducive to theiremergence, patterns observed, and their effects. Three generic types of disputes are identified and elaborated: diagnostic, prognostic, andframe resonance disputes. Of the 51 disputes observed, all but two involved SMOs from two or more different movement factions. More disputes occurred between the movement's most moderate and radicalfactions than between otherfactions. Intramural conflicts were both detrimental andfacilitative of the disarmament movement and its SMOs. In the most extensive review to date of social movement literature, McAdam, McCarthy and Zald (1988) conclude that we know little about "the dynamics of collective action past the emergence of a movement" (728). Until recently, even less was known about grievance interpretation and communication processes, the essence of movement dynamics. Scholars have begun to address this lacuna by attending to various movement interpretive processes including public discourse (Gamson 1988; Gamson & Modigliani 1989; Steinberg 1989), frame alignment (Benford 1987; Snow & Benford 1988,1992; Snow et al. 1986), grievance interpretation and reality construction (Benford & Hunt 1992; Ferree & Miller 1985; Gusfield 1981; Klandermans 1992; Mauss 1975; Tarrow 1992; Turner & Killian 1987), and collective identity (Friedman & McAdam 1992; Gamson 1991; Hunt 1991; Hunt & Benford 1994; Melucci 1980, 1985, 1988, 1989; Pizzomo 1978; Taylor & Whittier 1992). *This is a revisedversion of apaperpresentedat the annual meetings oftheMidwestSociological Society,April6-9,1989, in St.Louis. Iamgrateful to ScottA.Hunt,MichelleHughesMiller,David A. Snow, and two anonymous reviewersfor their advice and comments on earlier drafts. Please direct correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, University of NebraskaLincoln, 703 OldfatherHall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324. i) The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, March 1993, 71(3):677-701 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.137 on Fri, 27 May 2016 05:34:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 678 / Social Forces 71:3, March 1993 Although often empirically grounded, the bulk of these developments have been theoretical. Few analyses examine how well these concepts stand up empirically. McAdam, McCarthy and Zald (1988) suggest that "what is needed is more systematic, qualitative fieldwork into the dynamics of collective action at the intermediate meso level . . . the level at which most movement action occurs and of which we know the least" (729). With these considerations in mind, this article analyzes empirically the negotiated and often contentious nature of grievance construction and communication processes within the nuclear disarmament movement by focussing on intramovement frame disputes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2579890.pdf

Robert D. Benford

Papers

Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment

Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation.

Master-frames and cycles of protest

An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective*

Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement