Showing papers on "Social movement published in 1984"

Contradictions of the welfare state

Abstract: Claus Offe is one of the leading social scientists working in Germany today, and his work, particularly on the welfare state, has been enormously influential both in Europe and the United States "Contradictions of the Welfare State" is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on the breakdown of the post-war settlement The political writings in this book are primarily concerned with the origins of the present difficulties - what Offe calls the 'crises of crisis management' - of welfare capitalist states He indicates why in the present period, these states are no longer capable of fully managing the socio-political problems and conflicts generated by late capitalist societies and discusses the viability of New Right, corporatist, and democratic socialist proposals for restructuring the welfare state The book also offers fresh and penetrating insights into a range of other subjects, including social movements, political parties, law, social policy, and labor markets There is an interview with Claus Offe, prepared especially for this volume, and a substantial introductory chapter by John Keane which links the essays and explores Offe's central themes Claus Offe has researched and lectured widely throughout Europe and North America and is Professor in the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld John Keane is an editor of Telos and Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Sociology at the Polytechnic of Central London This book is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy

Mobilization and participation: social-psychological expansions of resource mobilization theory*

Abstract: Resource mobilization theorists have nearly abandoned social-psychological analysis of social movements. In this paper a fresh case is made for social psychology. New insights in psychology are combined with resource mobilization theory in an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of traditional social-psychological approaches to social movements. Expectancy-value theory is applied to movement participation and mobilization. It is assumed that the willingness to participate in a social movement is a function of the perceived costs and benefits of participation. Collective and selective incentives are discussed. Expectations about the behavior of others are introduced as an important expansion of expectancy-value theory to make this framework applicable to movement participation. The theory is applied to mobilization campaigns of the labor movement, and empirically tested in a longitudinal study of a campaign during the 1979 collective negotiations in the Netherlands. Outcomes support the theory. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The origins of the civil rights movement: Black communities organizing for change

Abstract: This important and provocative book reflects a trend in recent scholarship concerning the modern struggles for black advancement. Scholars have increasingly moved from a national to a local perspective in their effort to understand the momentous changes in American racial relations since 1954. The newer scholarship has begun to examine the distinctive qualities of the local black movements that both grew out of and spurred the campaign for national civil rights laws. Earlier studies have told us much about nationally prominent civil rights leaders such as King, but only recently have scholars begun to portray the southern black struggle as a locally based social movement with its own objectives instead of merely as a source of mass enthusiasm to be mobilized and manipulated by the national leaders. In short, what has been called the civil rights movement is now understood as more than an effort to achieve civil rights reforms. Revisionist scholarship such as Morris's has challenged many widely held assumptions regarding black activism of the 1950's and 1960's. In the 1960's, black activism was usually categorized with other forms of collective behavior, which were seen as ephemeral outbursts of emotions. In this view, protest activity was an expression of the yearning of blacks to realize a longstanding civil rights reform agenda and thereby become part of the American mainstream. While recognizing that black protesters were impatient with the pace of racial change and with the caution of NAACP leaders, scholars nevertheless assumed that the political significance of mass militancy was limited. Mass militancy merely gauged integrationist sentiments among blacks and allowed national civil rights leaders to demonstrate the urgency of their concerns. Only such leaders, it was assumed, possessed the political sophistication and access to institutionalized power that was necessary to transform amorphous racial frustrations and resentments into an effective force for social reform. Most early studies of the civil rights movement gave little at-

The industrial revolution and the regional geography of England

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widespread belief, shared by geographers and historians, that industrial- ization destroyed regional distinctiveness in England as elsewhere. After an outline of the complex regional structure of pre-industrial England, it is demonstrated that all kinds of social movements and political pressure groups were regionally fragmented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that distinctive social and cultural traits began to be recognized as characteristic of particular regions, and that people began consciously to identify themselves with the regions in which they lived. This develop- ment of regionalism in England was dependent upon the essentially regional structure of the early industrial economy which, in turn, was related to the importance of waterway transport and the sparseness and fragmentation of the canal network.

What Is an Image

Abstract: T HERE HAVE BEEN times when the question "What is an image?" was a matter of some urgency. In eighthand ninth-century Byzantium, for instance, your answer would have immediately identified you as a partisan in the struggle between emperor and patriarch, as a radical iconoclast seeking to purify the Church of idolatry, or a conservative iconophile seeking to preserve traditional liturgical practices. The conflict over the nature and use of icons, on the surface a dispute about fine points in religious ritual and the meaning of symbols, was actually, as Jaroslav Pelikan points out, "a social movement in disguise" that "used doctrinal vocabulary to rationalize an essentially political conflict."' In mid-seventeenth-century England the connection between social movements, political causes, and the nature of imagery was, by contrast, quite undisguised. It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that the English Civil War was fought over the question of images, and not just the question of statues and other material symbols in religious ritual, but less tangible matters such as the "idol" of monarchy and, beyond that, the "idols of the mind" that Reformation thinkers sought to purge in themselves and others.2

Legal Control of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.

Abstract: Debate over the potential power of social movements has focused on the Southern civil rights experience. This debate has neglected, however, the use of the Southern legal system to harass the civil rights movement. This paper identifies two forms of white response-legalistic and violent-to black protest, and examines their impact on major protest campaigns in several Southern communities. In cities where white officials used legal means and avoided violence, civil rights forces were defeated, underscoring the weaknesses of the movement in the face of such legal control. Final remarks discuss implications for the debate addressed by this paper.

Statemaking and social movements : essays in history and theory

Abstract: An interdisciplinary dialogue about politics, social movements, and the transformative relationship between states and societies.

Organization, Rationality, and Spontaneity in the Civil Rights Movement.

Abstract: So-called "classical collective-behavior theorists" have been charged with placing too much emphasis on spontaneity and the emergence of new norms and structures in social movements. Empirical support for this charge and materialfor constructing an alternate model have been offered in recent revisionist studies of the Civil Rights Movement. This alternate model emphasizes the importance of deliberate planning and pre-existing social structures in the development and growth of bus boycotts and sit-ins between 1955 and 1965. Reexamination of the Civil Rights Movement in Tallahassee, Florida, shows it to be a case which does not fit the alternate model in important respects. It is concluded that while organization and planning are key variables, social movement theory must take into account spontaneity and emergence, and the transformation of pre-existing structures.

New Social Movements, Political Culture, and Democracy: Brazil and Argentina in the 1980s

Abstract: One of the most important phenomena in contemporary South America has been the tendency towards more democratic systems. After protracted periods of authoritarian rule, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia appear to be heading in a more democratic direction. This process has awakened political hopes and attracted intellectual reflection, especially regarding Brazil and Argentina, the largest and most influential nations of South America. Both countries are in different moments, with different timings, in transitions which could lead to the establishment of stable democratic regimes. The following will discuss a number of new social movements which have emerged under the military regimes and have been significant in the struggle for democracy.

The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation

Abstract: This book of original essays provides an objective and enlightening analysis of the emergence and changing forms of the New Christian Right. The subject is in itself important in contemporary American life, but in addition The New Christian Right reexamines standard theories of social movements and the relationship between religion and politics in America today. The book presents findings from original research, including surveys, personal interviews with elites, analysis of financial documents, reanalysis of existing data, and analysis of direct-mail solicitations and other primary literature. The New Christian Right is balanced and objective rather than partisan and evaluative. Using non-technical and non-jargonistic language, the authors raise questions concerning the nature of religion, the role of status groups, and contemporary directions in American culture.

The Moral Basis of Moral Reform: Status Discontent vs. Culture and Socialization as Explanations of Anti-Pornography Social Movement Adherence

Abstract: Using data from the General Social Surveys 1973 to 1980 on beliefs and opinions about pornography, we attempt to evaluate two explanations of the social base of moral reform movements. We find that various structural conditions, such as being geographically mobile from rural areas, being self-employed, or being status discrepant, have no effect on anti-pornography social movement adherence when variables representing different socialization experiences and cultural environments are taken into account (religion, education, residence, age and sex). Historical evidence challenging previous status discontent interpretations of the American temperance movement and German National Socialism is also reviewed. It is concluded that no special theories positing status frustration are required to account for moral-reform social movement adherence.

The Islamic Militants in Egyptian Politics

Abstract: Because of the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, observers have felt a sense of urgency to analyze the conditions that favored the emergence of Islamic militancy in Egypt. Psychological, political, and socioeconomic categories have been widely used to explain—and even suggest the means to neutralize—the ill effects of sectarian and political violence on social harmony and the stability of the political order. Laudable as these attempts are, they must first be preceded by a clear conception as to whether the militants do represent a social movement whose existence can be supported by empirical data.

Organizing the poor

Abstract: Piven and Cloward aimed to be provocative, but they did so by badly overstating their argument. They are too fair-minded to ignore completely the contribution and courage of organizers in these movements. In spite of their thesis, they pay occasional obeisance to movement organizers and exemplars. “There were nevertheless organizers in these [labor] struggles,” they acknowledge. “Some of these organizers were insurgents from the rank and file; others were radicals whose vision of an alternative future helped to account for their exemplary courage. Wherever these organizers came from, their vision helped goad workers into protest, and their courage gave workers heart and determination” (148). Nor can they ignore the role of organizational activists in the civil-rights movement. They seek exemption from the implications of this activity by noting that these organizations were not much concerned with building formal membership and were “cadre organizations.” But the idea of cadre organizations doesn't appear in the index, is introduced in an ad hoc manner to preserve their argument, and is never developed. In their account of the National Welfare Rights Organization, Piven and Cloward advocate a cadre organization, modelled on the successes of the civil-rights movement and of SCLC in particular (, 282–85). When Poor People's Movements goes from general thesis to specific case analysis, the argument becomes less provocative but more reasonable. Apparently, it is not every organization that discourages insurgency, aspires to create a mass membership and hierarchical bureaucracy, and is willing to sell its birthright for a mess of elite pottage. Some movement organizations' stimulate anger and defiance, and escalate the momentum of the people's protests. Some use their communication networks to spread disruptive forms of collective action and their organizational planning to chart strategy and timing, and to increase the effectiveness of collective action. Some institutionalize their dependence on their own constituency rather than come to rely on elite resources for survival. If some militant organizations later become tame and abandon their oppositional politics, other formerly docile organizations sometimes become centers of militancy - as the black churches and colleges did in the Southern civil rights movement. The intellectual task becomes the more exacting one of figuring out what types of organization are likely to facilitate insurgency or abandon their oppositional politics under different historical conditions. Poor People's Movements might be interpreted as providing one kind of answer to this question, an argument against mass-membership organizations. This is certainly a much less dramatic and provocative thesis. But in the end, an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of organization is a great deal more useful to students of social movements than the anti-organizational phillipic that the authors offer us.

Vehicles for Empowerment: The Case of Feminist Movement Organizations

Abstract: This paper considers organizations that empower by examining feminist movement groups. The contemporary feminist movement has generated a wide variety of organizations which provide social services to women and act as vehicles for social change. Yet many of these organizations are short-lived. Factors that affect the structure and goals of feminist movement organizations are examined in order to develop a theoretically-based understanding of why some organizations thrive while others disintegrate. The contingencies under which feminist movement organizations maintain themselves, transform into other sorts of organizations, or decline and dissolve are described, and strategies for managing conflict are discussed. In particular, the paper emphasizes the organizational consequences of ideology, and concludes with a consideration of the role of organizations within a social movement.

National Power and Local Politics in India: A Twenty-year Perspective

Abstract: THE study of federal political systems, particularly parliamentary or representative federal political systems, such as those in the United States, Canada, or India involves complexities that do not exist in unitary states such as Great Britain or France. In the first place, there are three or more institutional levels in such systems, each of which has its own arena in which political struggles take place. Second, the balance of power among the levels in federal systems varies in different systems and in the same system at different times. Third, the study of the extraparliamentary organizations, such as political parties, and of social movements, also becomes a more complex task since it cannot be assumed that a political party or social movement with the same name is the same sort of formation in New York and Mississippi or in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Moreover, in federal systems with a high degree of regional cultural diversity, each federal unit in the country may have a distinctive configuration of extraconstitutional political formations and social forces. This is certainly the case in India, the most

Relative Deprivation and Collective Protest: An Impoverished Theory?*

Abstract: Recently, social psychological theories of social movements such as relative deprivation (RD) have come under heavy censure. An examination of the theoretical literature on RD indicates that many of the critics’remarks seem to be predicated on an inadequate and superficial interpretation of RD. A detailed examination of many of the studies purporting to operationalize RD reveals, however, that many of the criticisms retain their pertinence when evaluating the empirical work. At this point it seems premature to declare RD moribund. Instead, directions for future studies that may lead to a more accurate appraisal of RD are recommended, since both social psychological and mobilization theories are necessary for a comprehensive understanding of collective behavior. Ghetto dwellers have much to resent about the way the outside world treats them: poor jobs, unemployment, unfair practices on the part of many employers, high rents for unsatisfactory housing, inadequate schools and health and sometimes brutal police work, the poor performance and sharp practices of many businesses aiming at ghetto customers, as well as a host of major and minor expressions of prejudice and discrimination which may confront a member of the black minority as he goes about his everyday social traffic in American society. Although such circumstances do not hit every member of the community with equal force, they provide each ghetto dweller with some basis for discontent, and probably they all play some role in the accumulation of grievances which may finally result in a rising. (Hannerz, 1971:324)

Review Article : Contemporary Social Movements in Advanced Industrial Societies and Sociological Intervention: An Appraisal of Alain Touraine's Pratique

Abstract: Given various difficulties contained in the corpus of Alain Touraine, his work demands a close textual analysis. This paper provides a critical exegesis of his recent work on social movements in advanced industrial societies. After a review of Touraine's understanding of the particular contours of 'post-industrial society', it focuses on his discussions of the potential role of incipient social movements in shaping social change The paper proceeds to discuss his novel articulation of an applied sociology - which he terms 'sociological intervention' - designed to assist, not social integration, but societal transformation. Since this project is a work in progress. no definitive conclusions are drawn; however, a number of central unanswered questions are posed.

Paradoxes of Change : Culture Crisis, Islamic Revival, and the Reactivation of Patriarchy

Abstract: The preceding analysis placed the current Islamic revival in historical perspective by means of a comparison with Judeo-Christian culture. While noting important differences in content and structure which have influenced the relative positions of women in each society, it was found that patriarchy constitutes an essential element of both religious traditions. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic doctrines manifest similar themes of female inferiority paradoxically mixed with fears of female sexual power and wile, leading to the imposition of norms which preserve male control, such as female exclusion from public participation and restriction to dependent familial roles. Religious revivals in both cultures are characterized by resurrection of these patriarchal themes, thus explaining the return to the veil by some Muslim women and the anti-feminist sentiments of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. An additional point made by this study is that women function as symbols of cultural and religious identity. Traditional female roles as caretakers of the family, despite their lower valuation in the status hierarchy, constitute the bedrock of human social organization, and an important referent for individual identity. Levi-Strauss, in his classic work, The Elementary Structures of Kinship,67 characterized the exchange of females by male-controlled kinship groups as the foundation of human social organization. Thus, while females have less authority than males, they paradoxically remain powerful objects of kinship exchanges, thus becoming targets of exaggerated male control during periods of social disorganization. Large-scale social upheaval triggers the demand for a reintegration of the self within a stable meaning system, and consequently thrusts the ideology of traditional womanhood to a prominent position in the revival movement. Moreover, challenges to traditional female roles can themselves instigate a resurgence of religious fervor, underscoring the centrality of female subservience and domesticity to religious and cultural identity. In the Muslim region, for example, we have noted the stimulation of religious revivals by policies liberating women from seclusion and male hegemony, intensified in all likelihood by the perception that such policies represented foreign-inspired assaults on the integrity of Islam. An equally plausible hypothesis is that American Christian revivals have been provoked in part by challenges to traditional female domesticity embodied in the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and the feminist movement of the late 1960's. Thus, this study has tentatively identified some factors which may precipitate revivals of traditional religious and patriarchal sentiments. Additional cross-cultural analysis is needed to elaborate and specify the conditions under which these social movements occur and their consequent effects on women's roles. Finally, this research suggests some theoretical revisions for the more general process of societal development. Prevailing theories of modernization, particularly those influenced by the functionalist perspective, have tended to conceptualize tradition and modernity as contrasting ideal types, equating modernity with a host of structural and cognitive transformations including secularization and female equality.68 Evidence from the United States suggests that the developed nations are neither immune to significant religious revivals nor unilaterally dedicated to women's rights. In the developing world, Muslim leaders have found that Islamic revival is not an impediment to national development, but may in fact provide sacred legitimation for potentially disruptive social change.69 Industrial development, urbanization, and the diffusion of economic rationality may thus coexist with intense religious devotion and popular support for patriarchal traditions.

The development of the concept of development

Abstract: inventions of the nineteenth century, sharing epistemological and historiographical premises consonant with the existing world order. Their central organizing concept was "development." Changes in the world system in recent years and prospectively in the years to come are leading to a sea change in which social science is called upon the rethink its epistemology, its historiography, and its links with the social movement.

Social Movement Organizations and Response to Environmental Change: The NAACP, 1960-1973

Abstract: From 1960 to 1973 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People struggled to maintain its relevance to the black protest movement in the United States in the face of competition from organizations espousing more radical goals and strategies. The NAACP altered its short-term goals and some of its strategies in response to this challenge, but remained faithful to its traditional long-term goal of integration for blacks. This paper uses the resource mobilization model to help analyze how the NAACP survived this period despite its minimal doctrinal and strategic change. I find that while its membership remained constant, its revenue increased as it became professionalized and drew substantially greater funding from external sources such as foundations and corporations.

Solidarity: The Analysis of a Social Movement: Poland 1980–1

Abstract: Solidarity is a complex theoretical and historical investigation of one of the most dynamic social movements in post-World War II Europe. For some time now, Touraine has attempted to develop a comprehensive theory of social movements. In Solidarity, he and fellow researchers François Dubet, Michel Wieviorka, and Jan Strezelecki, apply the theories of action, movement and sociological intervention elaborated in The Voice and The Eye to the situation in Poland 1980-1. Solidarity is one of many attempts by Touraine to combine a comprehensive theory of social change and action with the history of a contemporary social movement. Here Touraine et al. attempt to explain “the nature, internal workings and the evolution of Solidarity.”

Political change, urban services and social movements: Political participation and grass‐roots politics in Metro Manila

Abstract: Rapid urbanization in the Third World has become one of the most pressing developmental problems of today. Metro Manila, capital of the Philippines, for instance, grew from 300,000 inhabitants in 1903 to more than 8 million in 1980. The authorities were unable to cope with the gigantic socio-economic problems of such an explosive growth. As a consequence, the urban poor gradually developed their own strategies for improving their adverse living conditions. Social movements emerged, in order to press the government for a more responsive policy towards the needs of the poor. Although the activities of these social movements culminated in the late 60s and early 70s, the imposition of martial law on the Philippines in 1972 had highly negative repercussions on citizen'S participation and community organizing efforts. Since authoritarian regimes have been established in the majority of Third World countries, the article examines the following questions by elaborating on the Philippine experience: how urban social movements are able to exist under authoritarian regimes, whether they are able to contribute to an upgrading of urban services and to what extent they are able to be starting points for a democratization from the grass roots’ level. The findings are that, without a minimum of constitutional liberties and pluralism, urban social movements remain rather short-lived phenomena and that the improvement of services through urban social movements is bound to fail under a political climate of severe repression. Moreover, the suppression of reformist and participatory movements fuels political polarization.