Showing papers on "Social movement published in 1988"

The Consequences of Professionalization and Formalization in the Pro-Choice Movement

Abstract: Resource mobilization theorists have argued that professionalized social movements emerge as more sources offending become available for activists who make careers out of being movement leaders. This paper analyzes organizational case histories from the pro-choice (abortion rights) movement to explore the consequences of professional leadership and formal structure in social movements. Five general propositions are drawn from the case of the pro-choice movement: (1) professional movement activists do not initiate movements and create new tactics; the roles of movement "professional" and movement "entrepreneur" are distinct; (2) professional movement leaders tend to formalize the organizations they lead; (3) formalized social movement organizations (SMOs) help maintain social movements when environmental conditions make mobilization difficult; (4) professional leaders and formalized SMOs stimulate the use of institutionalized tactics; and (5) professionalization and formalization facilitate coalition work.

NATIONAL POLITICS AND COLLECTIVE ACTION: Recent Theory and Research in Western Europe and the United States

Abstract: Research on social movements in both political science and sociology was radically renewed by the movements of the 1960s. The 1970s saw the growth in the United States of the resource mobilization approach and in Western Europe of the study of “new movements.” Although political factors were present in both approaches, the connections between politics and movements remained obscure in each. Research in the 1980s has restored politics to its central role in the origins, the dynamics, and the outcomes of social movements. Three important political concepts and the problems they raise for research on movements are explored in this review: the social movements sector, the political opportunity structure, and cycles of protest.

Political Culture and Political Preferences

Abstract: Aaron Wildavsky has argued that it is theoretically more useful to think of political preferences as rooted in political culture than to entertain alternative bases such as schemas or ideologies. In the APSA presidential address in which he made his case, Wildavsky also advocated a program of research on political cultures, and welcomed “challenges and improvements.” David Laitin accepts the invitation; he variously takes issue with Wildavsky's concept of political culture.

Disability as the Basis for a Social Movement: Advocacy and the Politics of Definition

Abstract: Many people with disabilities do not identify themselves as disabled or choose not to be part of a politically active community of disabled persons. This paper discusses both the barriers to the formation of a social movement of disabled people and the ways in which these barriers have been overcome. The role of public policy in the evolution of this movement is discussed, as are the current status and prospects of the disability rights movement.

Hegemony and strategic culture: American power projection and alliance defence politics

Abstract: The whole field of Strategic Studies bears the crippling legacy of having abstracted question of war and peace from their embeddedness in historically produced relations of social movements, political economy and culture. The very objects of strategic analysis—states and their mutual security alliances—are presumed to have been there from the start. And the principles underpinning their interactions are likewise construed as consistent with the rules governing a state system first made evident in Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War.

The social construction of an alcohol problem

Abstract: Social problems have careers that ebb and flow independent of the "objective" incidence of the behaviors thought to constitute them. This is nowhere more amply illustrated than in the history of alcohol issues. I offer here a description of the rise and impact of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers the latest in a long line of social movements that have contended over the definition of alcohol problems and an interpretation of why this movement managed to make drinking-driving into a major public problem in the conservative ethos of the 1980s.

The Missing Link? The Relationship between Spatial Mobility and Social Mobility

Abstract: Sociological writing on social mobility has neglected to consider whether upward social mobility is linked to an individual's geographical mobility. This paper argues that there is no necessary link, but that in post-war Britain, where much intra-generational social mobility has been linked to workers' being promoted through internal labour markets of bureaucratic organisations this frequently means that these workers have to be re-located to different sites of that organisation. In these circumstances there is a significantthough under-researchedlink between social and spatial mobility. I argue that this type of upward social mobility is however becoming less important as public and private sector organisations have retrenched in recent years. thence the link between social and spatial mobility has declined. I speculate on the implications of this for patterns of class formation and political alignment. In this paper I will examine the hypothesis that social mobility is linked to geographical mobility, so that those individuals who are best able to move geographically are also most likely to achieve intragenerational social mobility (i.e. within the course of their working life). In itself this seems a perfectly reasonable idea: after all there are many studies which state that promotion depends on workers being prepared to move location (e.g. Crompton andJones 1984, Prandy et al. 1982). It is however rather disarming to realise that these studies nearly always note this in passing and rarely give the issue any sustained analytical attention. This partly reflects the fact that despite the considerable sophistication of social mobility studies they nearly all remain uninterested in spatial issues. Thus the Nuflield Mobility Study reported by Goldthorpe et al. (1980) does not consider whether there are any regional or local differences in the pattern of social mobility but simply assumes that a national survey should be the appropriate spatial unit of analysis. The Scottish Mobility Study The British Journal of Sociology Volume =vUiXIX Number 4 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.186 on Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:43:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The missing link? 555 reported by Payne (1987a, 1987b) claims to consider the specificity of the Scottish case, but then blithely concludes that the patterns found in Scotland are probably typical of other Western industrial countries. This neglect of the sub-national dimension is more surprising in the light of Payne's arguments that social mobility is closely related to patterns of occupational change. Since we know that occupational change is spatially differentiated within the UK (see e.g. Massey 1984) it seems probable that different patterns of social mobility must be found in different areas, but this issue is not raised, let alone resolved. In part the neglect of spatial issues by sociologists reflects the fact that geographical literature on spatial mobility has been rather poor. It is well known that spatial mobility is highly socially specific (e.g. Johnston et al. 1974) with higher social groups being more mobile, but there has been little sustained attention to the causes and consequences of this. In a similar vein the recent quite dramatic decline in long distance migration has hardly been noted, let alone explained. Most of the possible explanations remain untested hypotheses. Consider, for instance the argument focusing on the growth of female economic activity rates, so increasing the number of dual earner households (e.g. Abercrombie and Urry 1983: 138). In these circumstances, it is argued, it is more difficult for one earner to move in order to take on a job elsewhere since the other earner in the household will lose their job. Now while this may appeal as a commonsense explanation, there are no studies which make any attempt to demonstrate it. In fact two theoretical considerations can instantly be advanced against it: firstly that many of jobs usually done by women are in demand throughout the country (and hence they may be relatively mobile) and secondly that given inequality within the household a man's decision to move for a better job may be given preference over any loss of job or career the woman may suffer. The reason for the neglect of issues of geographical mobility owes much to the dominance of a perspective whereby mobile capital is contrasted with a largely static workforce (e.g. Urry 1981, Massey 1984, Harvey 1985) . Whereas radical geographers have become rather expert in analysing the mobility of capital, the mobility of people is at best seen as theoretically un-interesting, and at worst politically diversionary. Yet in order to subtantiate many of the arguments made about the social implications of the restructuring of contemporary capitalism it is in fact vital to consider the issue of migration. Consider, for instance, Urry's well known argument (1981) that the hyper-mobility of capital tends to lead to 'local social movements' as different social groups within localities ally to bid for footloose investment, so helping to undermine class based politics in the process. This argument would only hold if it were true that all social groups within a locality were equally fixed to it, so that they all needed to ally to encourage investment. In fact, if some social groups This content downloaded from 157.55.39.186 on Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:43:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

After the Working-class Movement? An Essay on What's 'New' and What's 'Social' in the New Social Movements

Abstract: In the earlv 1980s many social theorists claimed that the 'New Social Move ments' (NSMs) were the authentic social movements of our time This claim is discussed in relation to two traditions in the analysis of social movements. The 'American' tradition focuses on the single-issue movement of a protest and mobilizing character The 'European' tradition focuses on the relation between major societal changes and processes of class formation, the labour movement being the classic case.In the article the women's movement is discussed as a major cultural revolutionary movement, the different campaigns dealing with the new urban forms of socialized reproduction, housing, planning, etc , as movements for the defence of the 'real consumption', the green and environmentalist movements taking up the conflicting relation nature-societyIs the relation between the NSMs and the new and growing social strata of students and employees within the welfare state, which make up their audience and activist core, to be understoo...

Islam, Politics and Social Movements

Abstract: Taken together the essays in this work not only provide new research essential to the study of Islamic societies and Muslim peoples, but also set a new standard for the concrete study of local situations and illuminate the forces shaping the history of modern Muslim societies. This collection is unique in its sophisticated interpretation of the social protest and political resistance movements in Muslim countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors take two principal approaches to the study of their subject. Utilizing "new cultural history," they explore how particular movements have deployed the cultural and religious resources of Islam to mobilize and legitimize insurgent political action. Others rely on "new social history" to study the economic, political, and social contexts in which movements of anti-colonial resistance and revolution have developed. This work brings together contributions from specialists on Islamic North Africa, Egypt, the Arab fertile crescent, Iran and India.

Black Political Participation

Abstract: This essay reviews the recent literature evaluating the impact of civil rights reform on American politics. Black organizations, through a variety of extra-institutional protests in the 1950s and 1960s, forced national political institutions to deal with the denial of full citizenship and political participation to blacks. The civil rights movement created the national political and social pressure for passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its extensions in 1970, 1975 and 1982. These extensions and their administrative and judicial implementation have increasingly been directed by a group of litigative organizations and activists distinct from the organizations which initiated the protest movement and directed its litigation. This raises important political questions both for the direction of and the control of that policy. It is within this new environment that Jesse Jackson's race for the Democratic presidential nomination is possible. These changes have been examined in a number of recent books. In separate studies, Doug McAdam and Aldon Morris have investigated the necessary and powerful interactions among protest, mass mobilization, and social movements, as well as their effect on the reorganization of political institutions required for the political incorporation of blacks. Chandler Davidson and Lorn Foster, in two collections of original essays, explore post-protest legislative and judicial politics which involve more specialized groups of actors. Finally, Adolph Reed, Jr., addresses the most recent manifestation of the post-Southern civil rights era in Amer-

Social Organization and Pathways of Commitment: Types of Communal Groups, Rational Choice Theory, and the Kanter Thesis

Abstract: Kanter's (1968, 1972) theory of commitment posits that the mutual identification of individuals and a group emerges from resolving three problems of commitment: continuance of members' participation, their social cohesion, and social control over their relevant conduct. For 30 19th-century communal groups, Kanter found that groups employing commitment mechanisms were especially likely to be successful. A Weberian theory of social organization suggests that a group's basic cultural pattern of social organization shapes its capacity to use mechanisms to promote commitment. By locating Kanter's sample in a phenomenological Weberian typology of utopian communal groups, Ifound two distinct pathways of commitment associated with the "community" and the "other-worldly sect" as alternative types of communal religious social movements. Rational choice theory explicates how commitment problems are resolved (1) in the community through a pathway of social cohesion stemming from ethnicity; and (2) in the other-worldly sect by social control stemming from a spiritual hierarchy and confession.

The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the Demise of British Feminism

Abstract: The outbreak of war in August 1914 brought to a halt the activities of both militant and constitutional suffragists in their efforts to gain votes for women. By that time, the suffrage campaign had attained the size and status of a mass movement, commanding the time, energies, and resources of thousands of men and women and riveting the attention of the British public. In early 1918, in what it defined as a gesture of recognition for women's contribution to the war effort, Parliament granted the vote to women over the age of thirty. This measure, while welcome to feminists as a symbol of the fall of the sex barrier, failed to enfranchise some five million out of eleven million adult women. When war ended, feminists continued to agitate for votes for women on the same terms as they had been granted to men, but organized feminism, despite the fact that almost half of the potential female electorate remained disenfranchised, never regained its prewar status as a mass movement. By the end of the 1920s, feminism as a distinct political and social movement no longer existed. This was due to the impact of the war on cultural perceptions of gender. Feminists' understandings of masculinity and femininity became transformed during the war and in the immediate postwar period, until they were virtually indistinguishable from those of antifeminists.As I have argued elsewhere, prewar British feminists regarded their movement as an attack on separate-sphere ideology and its constructions of masculinity and femininity.

Political Generations and the Contemporary Women's Movement*

Abstract: Most traditional work by political sociologists conceives of social movement activity and politics as pertaining only to the public world and political activity as inherently masculine. Women are virtually invisible in these accounts. That the nature of political and social change is shaped by the organization of gender is a fact obscured in the conceptualizations typically employed. One such concept is political generation. Virtually no scholarly work has been done to analyze women in terms of political generations. Political generations are taken as sex-neutral phenomena with no hint that the organization of politics is based in the social organization of gender. Indeed, perhaps the major assumption of generational analysis, that generations are formed during youth and its accompanying period of rebellion and change, has not been subject to sustained scrutiny; this model may well capture the male, but possibly not, the female experience. Nevertheless, the generational model might be usefully applied to an understanding of the growth and transformation of the women's movement. When women are put at the center of inquiry, the notion of political generations takes on new meanings, and it raises questions about who, how, and when social groups come to experience similar perceptions and understandings of reality. This analysis begins with a selective summary of the assumptions and directions of generational analysis in social science. Contemporary media use of generational analysis follows with an eye to the ways in which media representation has shaped some women's movement dialogue. Feminist generational thinking is explored as it attempts to account for the history of the women's movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and for the relations of young and old in the contemporary movement. Possible directions for further research and reformulation are suggested.

Resource Mobilization: An Analysis of Conflicting Theoretical Variations

Abstract: Although resource mobilization theory has brought a number of advances to the field of social movements, it does not constitute a unified body of theory. The principal divisions exist between McCarthy and Zald's “professional organizer” model and McAdam's “political process” model. Their disagreements are centered mainly around their conceptualizations of the role that elites play in the formation and development of social movements. It is believed that these differences can be reconciled by returning to the original precepts of resource mobilization theory.

Elite Cadres and Party Coalitions: Representing the Public in Party Politics

Abstract: Preface Part I: The Party Coalitional Approach The Current Crisis in Party Theory The Unraveling of Traditional Party Theory Reform and Contemporary Social and Political Movements Elite Cadres, Intermediation and Social Movements Part II: Elite Cadres and Party Orientations Party Reform or Social Change? Party Reform: The Selective Alienation of Support Gauging the Commitment to Party Representing the Public in Party Politics Appendix I: Group Comparisons on Age, Gender, Race and Education Appendix II: Sampling Information and Return Rates

The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c.1300–c.1450

Abstract: Preface List of abbreviations Maps Genealogy Introduction 1. The causes and progress of the Hundred Year War 2. Approaches to war 3. The conduct of war 4. The institutions of war 5. War, social movement, and change 6. War, people and nation 7. War and literature Conclusion Select bibliography Index.

Social movements, social transformation and the struggle for democracy in Africa

Abstract: and Struggle for Democracy in Africa Mahmood Mamdani Thandika Mkandawire Wamba-dia-Wamba The current 'crisis in Africa1 demands that attention be directed to the subjective factor in African development. For whatever the roots of that crisis, its solution can only be the result of initiative by organised social forces inside Africa. So far the focus of inquiry had largely been one-sided

Collective Welfare as Resource Mobilization in Peoples Temple: A Case Study of a Poor People's Religious Social Movement

Abstract: Previous research on resource mobilization in religious social movements represents one side of a sociological equation that can be balanced by investigating resource allocation, toward both collective goals and individual needs of participants. Peoples Temple offers an instructive example of the resource-related organizational tensions in a poor people's movement. Its communal and world-transforming orientation was grafted onto conventional fund-raising techniques in ways that exacerbated conflict with external critics. Internally, the Temple became a charismatic bureaucracy that may be seen both as a \"greedy institution\" and, paradoxically, as a \"corporation of people\" that operated to lessen the social alienation of its members.

The Triumph of Marxist Approaches in South African Social and Labour History

Abstract: Marxism has evolved as the dominant intellectual perspective in South Africa, replacing South African liberalism, because liberalism has failed to acknowledge the connection between capitalism and apartheid. But the emergent Marxist paradigm was divided into two distinct poles: the "structuralists" and the "social historians." The tension between these two alternative perspectives has pervaded a number of sub-fields, including studies of rural relations, labour and social movements, and class and culture. The works of Charles Van Onselen and Belinda Bozzoli are treated in considerable detail because they represent the "social historical" perspective. Both the "structuralist" and "social historical" variants are analyzed in terms of their historical methods.

Latin American Society

Abstract: Part 1 Development: what is development? central issues - poverty and related problems population, unemployment and education measuring development broad trends. Part 2 Theories of development: the modernization approach dependency criticisms of dependency post-dependency theory - social class, world systems approach, postmodernism neoliberalism and structural adjustment policies conclusion. Part 3 Sustainable development: unsustainable economic growth and urban environmental problems economic growth and rural environmental problems top-down technocentric solutions bottom-up solutions - indigenous people as subjects not objects in the process, women as subjects not objects responses - ecological social movements, women's environmental movements conclusion. Part 4 Values and institutions: church education health mass media conclusion. Part 5 Social relations: personalism family and household gender and development gender and the labour market race relations conclusion. Part 6 Changing rural society: penetration of capitalism into rural areas proletarianization or peasantization? agrarian reform food policies peasant mobilization conclusion. Part 7 Urbanization: rural-urban migration problems of shelter employment informal sector informal sector the garbage-pickers of Cali poverty trap or entrepreneurship? conclusion. Part 8 Social classes and social movements: beneficiaries of the social order the working class the role of the proletariat debate popular social movements conclusion. Part 9 The state: the authoritarian state the social costs of authoritarianism a weakening state? the state and inequality conclusion.

The changing status of women in Taiwan: A conscious and collective struggle toward equality

Abstract: The emancipation of Chinese women began in the late 19th century, as female resources were first tapped to increase productivity and strengthen national defense in the face of Western invasion. In the past century, women's movements in China and Taiwan usually took place in the context of drastic social changes and were interwined with other social movements. The contemporary Women's Movement in Taiwan started in the 1970s, earlier than other social movement but correlated with the Democratic Movement in time. The two stages of the Women's Movement marked its growth and the changing social environment. Although women's status in Taiwan has improved over the decades, equal partnership for women and men in all aspects of social life remains a goal to work for. Having cleared some old obstacles, the recent political liberalization on the island signifies a new chance for success for the Women's Movement.

Social movements, self-limiting radicalism and the green party in west germany

Abstract: The Green Party in West Germany represents a renewed challenge to interpretations of the relationship between social movements and parliamentary politics. Its emergence and durability can, to a large degree, be explained in terms of an attempt to reconcile innovative with established organizational forms, radical goals with reformist political practice, and the interests of the new middle class with those of marginalised social groups. Support for this interpretation is derived from empirical studies and from theoretical accounts of social movements. The latter have focused on the reconstruction of the most influential paradigms, namely, the traditional, resource mobilization and action-oriented ones (see Cohen 1985). Although largely conceptual, these attempts to arrive at a new synthesis lend support to an analysis of the Green Party in terms of its `self-limiting' characteristics.

The Transformative Impact of the Study of New Religions on the Sociology of Religion

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of the explosion of research on new religious movements in the 1970's and 80's in the sociology of religion. The encounter with NRMs has been highly provocative in terms of an impetus to comparative analysis; a heightening of theoretical and epistemological ferment; the identification of interfaces between the sociology of religion and other areas of sociology such as social movements, deviance, social psychology, and medical sociology; the reconsideration of the secularization thesis and sect-church theory; and the reevaluation of the role of the sociologist of religion in terms of issues of objectivity and partisanship. The present heightened controversiality of religion renders its "scientific study" more precarious.

Theories of Collective Action and the Iranian Revolution

Abstract: Most analyses of the collective actions that led to the Iranian revolution rest upon one of two classical models: social breakdown or social movement. These explanations emphasize such factors as the politicization of recently uprooted migrants, the growth of a new middle class opposing autocracy, the authority of the clergy, and specific aspects of Shiite Islam. Conflicts of interest, capacity for mobilization, coalition formation, and the structure of opportunities that shaped the collective actions of various groups and classes are ignored or downplayed. This paper argues that mobilization and collective action against the monarchy resulted from the adverse effects of state development policies on bazaaris, industrial workers, white-collar employees, and professionals. Bazaaris' mobilization provided an opportunity for other social groups and classes to oppose the government. A coalition of disparate interests, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, brought down the monarchy."

Mass education and community development in the British colonies, 1940‐1960: A study in the politics of community education

Abstract: During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of British adult educators began to argue for a radical brand of community education. They not only advocated 'a close involvement with the working class' (an attitude endorsed by many 'liberal' adult educators) but held that community education 'must be an active agent of change' (Lovett 1975:141). In general, they saw their approach as entirely novel to Britain: their preferred exemplars were such third-world educators as Paolo Freire. Colin Kirkwood has suggested (1978: 150), however, that 'the historical origin of the term community education... is colonial', describing an approach to the education of black Africans developed by white imperial administrators. This assertion has been rejected - entirely without evidence - by another advocate of community education (Fletcher 1980: 9). Yet during the 1920s and 1930s the British Colonial Office developed policies for the education of black Africans which placed great emphasis on the importance of the 'community' milieu. The British colonial experience of community education is instructive. It shows us, first, that although distinguishable in theory (compare for example Watson 1980), different types of community education flourish in the same hedgerow; second, that community education develops within a wider framework of educational and social policy (and, indeed, within a wider economic and political framework); and third that its theory and practice are significantly shaped by this wider framework. Finally, we shall see some of the limits of education as an agency of social change, particularly when this change runs counter either to the interests of the state, or to more deeply-rooted social movements. This paper is divided into five sections. The first outlines the main policy developments in British colonial education, especially in the period after 1940. The second examines the various strands of influence from which post-war colonial education policy was

The political context of feminist attitudes in israel

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to identify the sources of social support for feminist issues in Israel. Attitudes toward these issues as social problems and toward feminism as a social movement were examined through a questionnaire administered to 2,097 university students studying in the Tel Aviv area in 1985-1986. The study found that Israeli students who considered gender discrimination in promotion and prohibitions against abortion severe social problems were more likely to be on the political left, nonreligious or secular, and generally tolerant of difference and open to change. Support for the perception of violence against women as a social problem was stronger than for the other two issues and cut across the dominant cleavages in Israeli society. Students do not connect violence against women with gender inequality. These findings and their significance for the development of feminism in Israel are discussed within the framework of Gamson and Modigliani's (1987) analysis of the culture of po...

Soviet Education Policy 1917-1935: From Ideology to Bureaucratic Control.

Abstract: Drawing on social theory on the stages which social movements tend to go through, an examination is made of early Soviet Education policy. The paper analyses the early expression of Marxist humanist values, popular participation, and the value of productive work for general education. The ‘routinisation’ into a Stalinist pattern of bureaucratically controlled austere utilitarianism which followed is seen as part of a wider policy trend, transcending political and economic systems, of education for social control and economic mobilisation purposes. Recent indications of change in the Soviet Union are briefly commented on. 1I first became interested in this topic two decades ago as a student under the guidance of C. Arnold Anderson, at the University of Chicago. My return to it now is occasioned both by recent Soviet events whose implications for educational policy are at the time of writing yet to be identified, and by an invitation to contribute to a Festschrift for Janusz Tomiak who is a valued ...