Showing papers on "Social movement published in 1991"

Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions

Abstract: Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing" and "right-wing." Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries.

Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach

Abstract: Introduction. 1. Social Movements and Sociology. 2. Social Movements as Cognitive Praxis. 3. Dimensions of Cognitive Praxis. 4. Social Movements and their Intellectuals. 5. A Case Study: The American Civil Rights Movement. 6. Social Movements in Context. 7. Conclusions. Notes. References. Index.

Collective action and the civil rights movement

Abstract: Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement is a theoretical study of the dynamics of public-spirited collective action as well as a substantial study of the American civil rights movement and the local and national politics that surrounded it. In this major historical application of rational choice theory to a social movement, Dennis Chong reexamines the problem of organizing collective action by focusing on the social, psychological, and moral incentives of political activism that are often neglected by rational choice theorists. Using game theoretic concepts as well as dynamic models, he explores how rational individuals decide to participate in social movements and how these individual decisions translate into collective outcomes. In addition to applying formal modeling to the puzzling and important social phenomenon of collective action, he offers persuasive insights into the political and psychological dynamics that provoke and sustain public activism. This remarkably accessible study demonstrates how the civil rights movement succeeded against difficult odds by mobilizing community resources, resisting powerful opposition, and winning concessions from the government.

Multiple networks and mobilization in the paris commune, 1871*

Abstract: Although sociologists increasingly recognize the importance of networks in social movement mobilization, efforts to understand networkfactors have been hampered by the operationalization of network factors as individual-level variables. I argue that disaggregating relational data into individual-level counts of social ties obscures the crucial issues of network structure and multiplexity. I analyze data on insurgency in the Paris Commune of 1871 and show that organizational networks and pre-existing informal networks interacted in the mobilization process, even in thefinal moments of the insurrection. Network autocorrelation models reveal that enlistment patterns in the Paris National Guard created organizational linkages among residential areas that contributed to solidarity in the insurgent effort, but the efficacy of these linkages depended on the presence of informal social ties rooted in Parisian neighborhoods. Thus the role of networkfactors can only be understood by studying the joint influence offormal and informal social structures on the mobilization process. A decade ago, Snow, Zurcher, and EklandOlson (1980) pointed to the importance of social networks for understanding the mobilization of social movements, but the state of research in this area is still best described as inchoate. Despite widespread acceptance of the idea that "network" or "structural" factors play a role in mobilization or recruitment, only a handful of studies have made genuine progress toward understanding the significance of these factors. A principal reason for this state of affairs is that - often because of data considerations researchers have typically used purely scalar variables to measure networks of social relations. "Network effects" are examined by simply counting social ties and using these counts as interval variables in regression equations, so that the process by which social ties influence mobilization is analyzed as though it operates exclusively on the individual level. This in turn means that two key issues - network structure and multiplexity - have received insufficient consideration in theory and research. My goal is to demonstrate that the effect of social relations on the mobilization of collective action depends on the way in which these relations are structured and, more precisely, on the correspondence between organizational and informal networks. I use data on patterns of insurgency during the Paris Commune of 1871 to show that successful mobilization depended not on the sheer number of ties, but on the interplay between social ties created by insurgent organizations and pre-existing social networks rooted in Parisian neighborhoods. Organizational networks maintained solidarity because they were structured along neighborhood lines. Paradoxically, neighborhood ties even determined the importance of organizational links that cut across neighborhoods. Previous studies have rarely demonstrated that structural properties of relational systems are important for social movements, and there is no discussion in the literature of the ways in which formal and informal networks interact in the mobilization process. In the conclusion, I argue that these issues are best addressed through data collection procedures and analytic strategies that respect the structure of networks rather than reducing networks to individual-level counts of social ties.

A Theory of the Critical Mass

Abstract: Collective action often depends on the social ties among members of a group. For example, it is widely agreed that participants in social movement organizations are usually recruited through preexisting social ties and that mobilization is more likely when the members of the beneficiary population are linked by social ties than when they are not (e.g. Tilly, 1978; Oberschall, 1973). In a recent paper (Maxwell, Oliver and Prahl, 1988) we have used formal theory and computer simulation to show how two fundamental aspects of the social networks of groups — their density and their level of centralization — positively affect the likelihood of collective action by those groups.2)

The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest

Abstract: This history and analysis of the animal rights movement chronicles its development from associations of kindly pet-lovers to groups of ruthless activists

Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becoming

Abstract: Preface. Part I: The Background: 1. Toward a Theoretical Reorientation. 2. Evolving Focus on the Agency. 3. On the Shoulders of Marx. Part II: The Theory: 4. Ontology of the Constructed World. 5. The Model of Social Becoming. 6. Active and Passive Society. Part III: The Follow-up: 7. Social Movements: Double Morphogenesis. 8. Revolutions: The Peak of Social Becoming. Name Index. Subject Index. Bibliography.

The Costs and Risks of Social Activism: A Study of Sanctuary Movement Activism

Abstract: This study challenges thefrequent characterization of social movements as homogeneous webs of activity. Such a view distorts the activist experience and blinds scholars to the daily realities of activism. We use the concepts of "cost" and "risk" to distinguish activist experiences within a single social movement. Data obtained from 141 participants in the sanctuary movement show: (1) individuals engage in a variety of movement activities; (2) cost and risk are empirically distinguishable, along with their personal correlates; and (3) of the varables drawn from two dominant explanations of movement participation, biographical availability factors best predict high-cost activism (more hours devoted to the movement), while socialization factors best differentiate highrisk (direct contact with Central American refugees) from low-risk activists (no refugee contact). Two research questions have long dominated the sociological study of social movements: the macroquestion of movement emergence: Why do movements emerge in the first place?, and the microquestion of movement recruitment: Why do some individuals, but not others, join social movements? Our research is concerned with the latter question of social movement recruitment. In some ways, our study is concerned with issues preliminary to the question of recruitment. We ask, What are individuals being recruited to do? While this question may appear to be an obvious one to ask about movement recruitment, social movement scholars have paid minimal attention to it. We approach the study of social activism in several ways. First, we depart from the usual approach of studying recruitment. Rather than searching for factors that differentiate activists from nonactivists, we investigate variation between activists in the same movement. Next, we call into question a view often implied in the sociological study of social movements, a view that distorts the activist experience by depicting social movements as homogeneous webs of

Commitment and agency in social movements

Abstract: Any movement that hopes to sustain commitment over a period of time must make the construction of a collective identity one of its most central tasks. Social relationships that embody values of participation and community in their concrete practices contribute to empowering people. But such arguments need additional specification before their theoretical potential can be realized. I have taken the coincidence of this talk with the anniversary of the first teach-in against the war in Vietnam and the assassination of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador as a directive for examining these two cases—with an eye toward learning more about how identity building and social relationships in social movement practice foster long-term commitment and agency.

The Structure of Political Opportunities and Peasant Mobilization in Central America

Abstract: The literature on the determinants of popular mobilization and social movements is rich with theoretical insights concerning the role of a variety of factors, from the generation of grievances by changing socioeconomic structures to the assistance of outside agents to the mobilization of resources. The crucial conditioning role of political systems themselves, however, has been too often understated or even ignored, whether the object of study has been urban movements in industrialized democracies' or peasant movements in the Third World.2 Even when scholars have recently attempted to address this deficiency, their efforts remain unsystematic. The intention of this project is, first, to elaborate a thorough conceptualization of the linkage between popular mobilization and the political system and, second, to demonstrate its utility through an explanation of the comparative mobilization of the peasantry in the five countries of Central America during the period from 1960 to 1984. The forms of peasant and government action and the resulting consequences for the peasantry have varied widely throughout Central America.3 The conceptual framework elaborated here should make clear why this has been so.

Legal Mobilization as a Social Movement Tactic: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity

Abstract: This article attempts to establish theoretical and methodological links between work on social movements and work on the mobilization of law by analyzing legal mobilization as a social movement tactic-the pursuit of movement goals through "proper channels." Focusing on the movement for equal employment opportunity (EEO), the article considers how often minorities and women mobilize federal EEO laws in their fight for equal treatment in the marketplace, how often they with their cases, and how victory is related to thier ability to organize and to get help from the federal government. Analysis of one aspect of the mobilization of EEO laws-in the federal appellate courts-leads to some conclusions very much in keeping with recent work on social movements. They are that the relationship between grievances and mobilization is problematic, that blacks remain central to the struggle for equality in the United States, that resources matter for challengers of the status quo, and that the federal government can be ...

The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict

Abstract: In this highly-praised analysis of the controversial pro-choice movement, Suzanne Staggenborg traces the development of the movement from its origins through the 1980s. She shows how a small group of activists were able to build on the momentum created by other social movements of the 1960s to win their cause-the legalization of abortion in 1973-and argues that professional leadership and formal organizational structures, together with threats from the anti-abortion movement and grass-roots support, enabled the pro-choice movement to remain an active force even after their primary goal had been achieved.

Dangerous Passage: The Social Control of Sexuality in Women's Adolescence

Abstract: Acknowledgments Part I: Introduction 1. Sexuality and Social Control Part II: Private Behavior as a Public Problem 2. Setting the Stage, 1960-1972 3. Making the Revolution, 1972-1978 4. Countermovements, 1978-1987 Part III: American Women's Adolescence in Historical Context 5. The Transformation of Women's Adolescence, 1850-1960 6. Rescue Work to Social Work: Management of the Sexually Unorthodox Girl 7. Social Movements for Sexual Control, 1885-1920 Part IV: Aspects of the Contemporary Scene 8. Contemporary Models of Sexual and Reproductive Control 9. The Limits of Professional Power: Medicine as an Agency of Moral Reform 10. Private Behavior and Personal Control: Contraceptive Management Strategies of Adolescent Women Part V: Conclusion 11. Sexual Social Control and the Management of Social Change Notes Bibliography Index

Autoconstruction in Working-Class Brazil

Abstract: The ideologues of Brazil's industrialization have long advanced home ownership as a recipe for disciplining the work force. They argue that it brings social stability and moral development to the "dangerous classes." Over the last 50 years, however, millions of workers have become home owners through a radicalizing process called autoconstruction (autoconstrucdo), in which they build their own houses in the urban hinterland under precarious material and legal circumstances. These conditions politicize them, becoming core issues of grassroots organizations and social movements. At the same time, autoconstruction is a domain of symbolic elaboration about the experience of becoming propertied and participating in mass consumer markets, in which both ruling-class and working-class ambitions for developing new social identities intersect. This elaboration occurs in the context of what is for most autoconstructors their greatest lifetime project: the transformation over decades of an initial shack of wood or concrete block into a dream house-a finished, furnished, and decorated masonry home.

The evolution of the U.S. environmental movement from 1970 to 1990: An overview

Abstract: The twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990 indicated that environmentalism has become an enduring and successful social movement and thus has avoided the rapid demise that many movements experience. However, the U.S. environmental movement has changed considerably since 1970, most notably by becoming a much more diverse movement. The contributions to this volume describe the major strands of environmentalism that have developed over the past two decades and, in the process, provide an overview of the evolution of the movement.

Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of Ethnic Newspapers

Abstract: Contemporary research on collective action claims that organizations play a central role in facilitating many kinds of collective actions. We reverse the causal link and ask whether ethnic conflict affects the life chances of social movement organizations. We analyze the effects of ethnic conflict,fluctuations in the economy, and organizational density on the rates offounding andfailure of white immigrant and African-American newspaper organizations in a system ofAmerican cities, and in New York and Chicago, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our results indicate that hostility and violence encouraged white immigrants to found ethnic newspapers, whereas racial attacks significantly deterred the founding of African-American newspapers. Existing immigrant newspapers thrived under attack, whereas African-American newspapers did not. Thus, the results suggest that the consequences of repressive attacks on ethnic and racial communities depend on the levels of collective violence in addition to the resources controlled by the victimized group.

Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women's Organizations

Abstract: Social movements are conceived of as networks that provide structures within which organizations negotiate meaning through the construction of collective identities. Network analysis is applied as a method for mapping the relationship among 33 national Canadian women's organizations. Results show that these diverse groups form an expansive, but loosely coupled, network that is bound by a collective identity of “liberalized” feminism. However, minority women tend to be marginalized within the movement and there are surprisingly few linkages with other core social movements. Intra-movement position has significant extra-movement consequences as demonstrated by the finding that network position is a highly significant predictor of the perceived effectiveness of a social movement organization.

Religion and Political Turbulence in Nigeria

Abstract: There 15 increasing evidence that social movements constitute an important repository of Africa's political practice. Emile Durkheim reminds us that although social facts, expressed in thought, feeling, or action, are derived from an environment external to the individual, they impose on him a route that he is obliged to follow. He suggests, therefore, that we study the public law that codifies existing political values and the sanctions that oblige obedience. The problem, however, is that formal institutions are sometimes unable to penetrate and impose their logic on social movements.

It Happened Here:Political Opportunity,the New nstitutionalism,and the Townsend Movement

Abstract: The Townsend movement, which sought pensions for the elderly in the Great Depression, was much larger in some states than others and its size fluctuated in the 1930s. Frustration or grievance theory predicts that the movement would be stronger when and where old people suffered more. The challenger perspective expects greater growth when and where indigenous organizations of the aged already existed. Political opportunity theories expect challenges to flourish when and where openings are provided by members of the polity or by related challenges. We supplement these theories by exploring the concept of political opportunity from an institutionalist perspective, assessing the model by comparing it with the other perspectives to account for longitudinal and cross-sectional differences in the movement’s strength. Although some support for each perspective was found, the movement was spurred most by indigenous organizations and different forms of political opportunity. We suggest an expansion of Tilly’s polity model, to recognize that the political party system can influence challenges and that the structure and policies of the state can aid challenges as well as hinder them.

Domination, Resistance, Compliance ... Discourse

Abstract: In the 1960s, American sociology and social history took a surprisingly populist turn. Scholars then began an unprecedented effort to speak for the powerless, or to help them speak for themselves. Voice itself validates insurgency, they seemed to claim. Both fields had long since undertaken studies of poor, powerless people; witness the Pittsburgh Survey of 1903 and R. H. Tawney's early writings on the 16th century (1912). Their successors of the 1960s, however, drove populism much farther; often activists and even radicals themselves, they aimed to give the silent masses voice by means of collective biography, oral history, participant observation, and involvement of the objects of study directly in their research. Studies of collective action illustrate that veer toward populism vividly: whole new schools of thought (such as resource-mobilization models of social movements) arose from a self-conscious program of empathizing with the members of mass movements (Aya, 1990; Gamson, 1990; McAdam et al., 1989; McPhail, 1991; Rule, 1989; Tarrow, 1989). Inspired by civil rights activism as well as by subsequent demands for empowerment of women, homosexuals, Chicanos, Native Americans, and many others, scholars tried to counter the condescension, denigration, and dehumanization they detected in earlier analyses of popular collective action. They insisted that routine social arrangements harmed ordinary people, and that only force held ordinary people back from overt resistance. Under banners of "history from below" and "empowerment," its ranks thinned and sometimes limping, that parade is marching still. Populist analyses rest on strong conceptions of power. With respect to the standard distinction between power to and power over which

Collective Protest: A Critique of Resource Mobilization Theory

Abstract: Over the last two decades, “resource mobilization” (RM) analysts have emphasized the importance of institutional continuities between conventional social life and collective protest.1 There is much about this interpretation with which we agree. It is a corrective to some of the malintegration (MI) literature in which movements are portrayed as mindless eruptions lacking either coherence or continuity with organized social life. Nevertheless, we shall argue that RM analysts commit a reverse error. Their emphasis on the similarities between conventional and protest behavior has led them to understate the differences. They thus tend to “normalize” collective protest.

Social Movements in India: A Review of the Literature

Abstract: Preface Introduction Peasant Movements Tribal Movements Dalit Movements Backward Caste/Class Movements Women's Movements Industrial Working Class Movements Students Movements Middle Class Movements Human Rights and Environmental Movements Conclusions and Future Research Index

Democracy and the Discourse of Cultural Difference: towards a politics of border pedagogy

Abstract: Within the last decade in the United States, diverse conservative groups have attempted to undermine the struggles of various progressive social movements that constitute the new politics of cultural difference. In this paper, I analyse how conservatives have sought to transform both the arts and the schools into hegemonic cultural sites. I then focus specifically on the work of conservative Diane Ravitch, who has been a major force in discrediting radical and progressive attempts to implement multicultural curricula in American public education. Finally, I develop a new theoretical cartography around the concept of border pedagogy, which functions as a heuristic metaphor and theoretical space for creating a discourse capable of raising new questions, offering oppositional practices and producing fresh objects of analysis; moreover, such a discourse embodies a political project which serves as a partial response to the assault on difference and culture currently being waged by the New Right in th...

The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland's Working-Class Democratization

Abstract: In July 1980, two weeks before the Gdansk shipyard strikes, Roman Laba arrived in Poland as an American graduate student. He stayed there for almost two and a half years before he was arrested and expelled from the country for "activities noxious to the interests of the Polish state." Laba had set himself the ambitious task of documenting the history of Poland's free trade union. Martial law was in force for the last year of his stay, but even during that time he continued his rescue of the unique historical materials that contribute so much to Roots of Solidarity. The book uses this hard-earned information to challenge the commonly accepted view of the Polish intelligentsia as the driving force behind Solidarity and to demonstrate that the roots of the movement go back a decade earlier than the 1980 strikes. Laba presents compelling evidence that Solidarity emerged directly from the activities of workers in the 1970s along the Baltic coast. It was not the intellectual elite but these workers, independent of and unknown to the rest of Poland, who created three crucial strategies for struggle against oppression: the sit-down strike, the interfactory strike committee, and the demand for free trade unions independent of the party state. This concise and provocative work is divided into two parts. The first is a narrative of the creation of Solidarity. The second shows how workers' resistance to the Leninist state gradually generated new forms of democratic organizations and politics. Laba criticizes elitist ways of understanding social movements and also presents an unusual analysis of Solidarity's ritual symbolism. In addition, new evidence transforms our understanding of the role of thepolice and the army in a one-party state.

Social Movement Theory and the Sociology of Religion: Toward a New Synthesis*

Abstract: Despite a similar genesis in the classic nineteenth century theories of social change, scholarly analyses of religious and social movements have frequently addressed different problems and formulated separate paradigms. This divergence is discussed with reference to historical, ideological, and conceptual factors. Current religions and social movements, it is proposed, increasingly have much in common both structurally and ideologically. Three processes - contestation, globalization, and empowerment - are identified as characteristic of contemporary movements. The article concludes by advocating a fresh perspective on religion and contemporary social movements where the central thrust would be on the construction of new grievances, identities, and modes of association by collective actors. Since the founding of sociology in the nineteenth century, religious and social movements have occupied the same analytic corners of the discipline. Yet, more often than not, sociologists of religion and specialists in the study of social movements have failed to recognize the common grounds in which the two types of movements are rooted, opting instead to address different problems and formulate separate paradigms. While some individual researchers - notably John Lofland, Rodney Stark, and John Wilson - have been contributors to both sociological specialities, for the most part each has tended to be an "isolated subcultural universe" sealed off from the ideas and approaches of the other (Robbins, 1988a: 17).

Bureaucratic logic in new social movement clothing: the limits of health promotion research

Abstract: This paper discusses theoretical, methodological and political problems in the field of health promotion research. It argues that these problems result from a partial and contradictory appropriation of the discourse of new social movements. Politically, the health promotion movement is largely confined within the state, rather than the expression of a social movement against the state. The direction of health promotion research and policy is, therefore, caught in the bureaucratic logic of \"trapped administrators\", and results in contradictory emphases on problems like the development of \"health promotion indicators\", which show little result in informing a broader but coherent conceptualization of health, let alone in effecting change in health policy and outcomes. Such political problems reflect parallel confusions about theory and methodology. Theoretically, the field relies heavily on a critique of bio-medical science, but fails to move beyond a rhetorical outline of an alternative to systematic arguments about what promotes health. In this regard, the literature on health promotion remains unaware of important conceptual developments in the social sciences, relies on imprecise specifications of major constructs like community empowerment, and has no conception of the state. Methodologically, the literature is influenced by contradictory epistemological tendencies which reflect a positivist inspiration (as in the search for indicators) and an anti-positivist emphasis on agency and social change through the collective action and the discursive reconstitution of social identity, value and meaning. In regard to these questions, this paper is critical of observers who suggest that the way ahead is to embrace post-modern research strategies.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Post-military society: militarism, demilitarization and war at the end of the Twentieth Century

Abstract: With the collapse of the Cold War following the Eastern European revolutions and the ongoing democratization of the Soviet republics, optimism about peace has transformed the international political climate. Incidents such as the Gulf War, however, have tempered this optimism and cast doubts on the prospects for demilitarization. In this book, Martin Shaw examines some of the developments that lie behind the recent momentous changes and argues that, despite the Gulf War and other regional wars, militarism is in decisive retreat. Writing from a broadly sociological perspective, Shaw examines the roles of war and military institutions in human society and the ways in which preoccupation with war has affected domestic, regional, and international politics in the twentieth century. In doing so, he asks: When does the post-war era end? How have nuclear weapons altered the perception of war by society? What is the relationship between industrialism and militarism? The author contends that, despite the militarism of some Third World countries, societies in the advanced industrial world (especially in Europe) have been undergoing a profound demilitarization. These societies have become politically insulated from war preparation, have recognized the effect of social movements on inter-state relations, and are experiencing a "revolution of rising expectations." Offering evidence of "post-military citizenship," Shaw describes the increasing resistance to military conscription throughout the Western world, the replacement of blind obedience with demand for accountability in Eastern bloc countries, and the simultaneous rise of nationalism and communitarianism among common market members. And, in light of the collapse of Stalinist militarism in Europe and the USSR, Shaw suggests some of the changes that face Soviet society.

Union Membership Attitudes and Participation

Abstract: For George Strauss, Daniel Gallagher and Jack Fiorito, eds., The State of the Unions, Madison, WI: IRRA, 1991. UNION MEMBERSHIP ATTITUDES AND PARTICIPATION Daniel G. Gallagher James Madison University and George Strauss University of California, Berkeley The strength of a union depends, in part, upon its ability to mobilize its members not only in strikes but also in policing the collective agreement, filing grievances, and serving in the capacity of union stewards or committee members. Overflow crowds at union meetings, thousands of workers demonstrating in front of city hall, or every member wearing a union button all give the impression of unity and strength. Satisfied, highly committed members are more likely to support their union in strikes or political activities and to assist in organizing campaigns. Further, satisfied members serve as living advertisements of the advantages of union membership and so help win elections as well as public support generally. The reverse occurs when member are unhappy. Scope of Coverage This chapter provides an overview and critique of research dealing with union members' attitudes toward their union and their participation in it. The introduction clarifies the distinctions between attitudes and behaviors and assists in integrating the various types of research to be considered. The central sections discuss first attitudes and then participation. One concluding section critiques present research and offers suggestions for future research; A second considers the policy implications of this research. A few caveats. First, the chapter deals with individual attitudes and behaviors. What unions as a whole do is not within the area of our focus. Secondly, to avoid overlap with other chapters, we minimize attention to such issues as why members join unions (Chapter 2) or their political activities (Chapter 9). Finally, although we refer to English language research on union members in other countries, literature in other languages is not reviewed, for example, the substantial Dutch literature cited by Klandermans (1984, 1986). Research Trends Union attitudes and behaviors received considerable attention during academic industrial rclations's Golden Age, especially between 1948-1953 (see: Spinrad, 1960; Strauss, 1977), but were then largely ignored in North America. Meanwhile significant studies of membership attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Batstone, Boraston and Frcnkel, 1977; Nicholson, Ursell, and Blyton, 1981; and Klandermans, 1984) were conducted in Europe. By contrast with North American authors, Europeans were more aware of the literature in political science and sociology and more likely to look at unions as social movements. Since 1980 North American research interest in union members has considerably revived, especially since a younger generation of industrial relations