Francesca Polletta, Tania DoCarmo, K. Ward, J. Callahan
{"title":"PERSONAL STORYTELLING IN PROFESSIONALIZED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS*","authors":"Francesca Polletta, Tania DoCarmo, K. Ward, J. Callahan","doi":"10.17813/1086-671X-26-1-65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-26-1-65","url":null,"abstract":"Professionalized movement organizations today rely on outside expertise in fundraising, recruitment, lobbying, management, and public messaging. We argue that the risks that accompany that development have less to do with experts’ mixed loyalties to the movement than with the tendency of expert discourse to remake political problems into technical ones, thereby obscuring the dilemmatic choices movement groups must make. We focus on expert discourse around personal storytelling, a strategy that has become popular for raising funds, advocating for policy, and building public support. Our interviews with activists and consultants and content analysis of stories they rated as successful point to an expert discourse that emphatically rejects “victim” storytelling. Instead, activists are instructed to tell stories of hope and resilience, avoid referring to the graphic details of abuse, and only hint at their emotional pain. Experts justify these strategies as the best way to avoid exploiting storytellers, and only coincidentally as also appealing to audiences. However, we argue that, rather than superseding the tension between empowering movement participants and persuading those outside the movement, storytelling as currently practiced has reproduced that tension.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128211117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE CHANGING PRACTICE OF RIOTING: REVISITING REPERTOIRE TRANSITIONS IN BRITAIN, 1800–1939*","authors":"Matteo Tiratelli","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-201","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses a systematic catalogue of 414 riots in Liverpool, Glasgow, and Manchester to examine the changing practice of rioting from 1800 to 1939. Three empirical findings emerge: first, over this period, riots went from being an autonomous tactic to one which was largely subordinated to other protest logics; second, the way rioters chose their targets changed: instead of targeting individuals with whom rioters had concrete relationships, they started targeting people as tokens of some wider type; third, throughout this period rioting remained a localized practice that reflected local traditions and dynamics. On the basis of these findings, I revisit the orthodox history of social movements and suggest we refine this narrative to explicitly acknowledge continuity in the repertoire of contention, regional variation, the uneven reach of the state, and to properly distinguish between individual practices like demonstrations, composite forms like social movements, and the repertoire as a whole.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123774912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MOBILIZATION WITHOUT ORGANIZATION: GRIEVANCES AND GROUP SOLIDARITY OF THE UNEMPLOYED IN TUNISIA*","authors":"Prisca Jöst","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-265","url":null,"abstract":"The article investigates the role of social grievances, emotions and group solidarity in the spontaneous mobilization of unemployed university graduates in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Using a mixed method approach, I rely on interviews with political and civil actors conducted during fieldwork in 2018, protest event data from the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, Facebook posts, and secondary literature including additional media reports. My findings indicate that in January 2016, unemployed citizens organized autonomously in response to perceived social grievances and increasing levels of corruption among established trade unions and unemployed organizations. In the case of Tunisia, shared feelings of relative deprivation, compared to the coastal regions, strengthened in-group solidarity among the unemployed in the interior and south and resulted in their collective mobilization.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130634947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Holly J. McCammon, M. Moon, Brittany N. Hearne, M. Robinson
{"title":"THE SUPREME COURT AS AN ARENA FOR ACTIVISM: FEMINIST CAUSE LAWYERING’S INFLUENCE ON JUDICIAL DECISION MAKING*","authors":"Holly J. McCammon, M. Moon, Brittany N. Hearne, M. Robinson","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-25-2-221","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning in the 1960s, U.S. feminist movement litigators organized public-interest legal organizations to promote women’s rights through legal mobilization in the courts. We investigate all U.S. Supreme Court decisions involving gender equality from 1965 to 2016 to discern the impact of involvement of these feminist movement litigation groups as legal counsel. Our findings show that organized feminist cause lawyers increase the likelihood of decisions expanding women’s legal rights and/or promoting gender equality. Our results also indicate that broader legal and political opportunities combine with legal-activist efforts to produce these judicial outcomes. However, when the Supreme Court is highly conservative regarding abortion rights, feminist cause lawyers face difficulty winning cases. Our research suggests the importance for movement scholars of considering activist litigation, and our findings indicate that a theory of the joint effects of activist legal mobilization and broader legal/political opportunities can explain the judicial outcomes movement actors seek.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"190 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116743968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A MULTIMETHOD APPROACH TO FRAMING DISPUTES: SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ON TRIAL IN OBERGEFELL V. HODGES*","authors":"Alex Espinoza-Kulick","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-25-1-45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-25-1-45","url":null,"abstract":"Social movements scholars have widely used the framing perspective to analyze meaning-making related to social movements and contentious politics. Qualitative methods have helped to illuminate how activists frame social issues to combine meanings in strategic ways. By contrast, linear statistical modeling is ill-suited to analyze the interdependent and circuitous aspects of collective action frames. This study offers a multimethod approach that uses an abductive framework to combine techniques from computational text analysis and network modeling along with interpretive coding. I demonstrate this approach in the context of framing disputes through legal mobilization over the same-sex marriage in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. By examining Court discourse and amicus briefs, I show the coordination of similarities and distinctions among opposing social movement groups and elite actors. Future research can expand this method for both case studies and comparative analyses of movements.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"366 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122344779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MEMORY IN MOVEMENT: COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND MEMORY CONTESTATION IN HONG KONG'S TIANANMEN VIGILS*","authors":"Edmund W. Cheng, S. Yuen","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-24-4-419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-24-4-419","url":null,"abstract":"Collective memory shapes collective identity in social movements, yet the cultural process of transforming collective memory into collective identity and actions is anything but linear. While preserving an established historical narrative can maintain movement solidarity, this process is actively contested by multiple actors, which may weaken solidarity and disrupt mobilization. Why does the memory process facilitate collective identity building at one point but not another? What accounts for its success and failure in mobilizing through memories? This article studies the three-decade commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Hong Kong to unpack the memory making in movements. We argue that collective-identity building is shaped by the interaction between the repository of memories and the repertoires expressing them. Although the performative repertoire of the vigil has long bestowed moral power to memories of the Tiananmen crackdown, this repertoire is contested by competing repertoires, even though the memory itself is not disputed. Our findings highlight the performative and filtering role of repertoires in reproducing collective memory. They also reveal a dynamic and nuanced relationship between collective memory and identity, especially the mediating factors at work.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"208 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125740899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"BEYOND THE DREAMERS: COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH MOVEMENT*","authors":"T. Fiorito","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-345","url":null,"abstract":"Based on longitudinal ethnographic research, this article explores what the concepts of collective identity and subjectivity contribute in the case of the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles. I show that while the collective identity of the Dreamers has been used to organize undocumented youth from different backgrounds and regions into a recognizable collective actor successfully engaged in political action, nowadays the Dreamer identity is a matter of contention among undocumented youth. I show that the basis of subjective sharing and belonging is now less derived from the collective identity of the Dreamer and more from the shared subjectivities of undocumented youths, constituted by embodied experiences of exclusion, stigmatization, and empowerment. I thus argue for a stronger engagement with the concept of subjectivity in social movement research, as it offers a greater understanding of the profound effects of embodied and affective experiences of negative discursive positioning, trauma, emancipation, and healing.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114772764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CONTENTIOUS EPISODE ANALYSIS*","authors":"Hanspeter Kriesi, Swen Hutter, Abel Bojar","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-251","url":null,"abstract":"We introduce a set of concepts and general guidelines for what we call Contentious Episode Analysis (CEA). In the footsteps of Dynamics of Contention (DoC), we attempt to develop a conceptual framework that improves upon the concepts originally introduced by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001). Our analytical strategy is similar to that of DoC in that we also propose to decompose the episodes into their component elements—actors, actions, sequences of actions, pairs of actions—that can then be recombined in a systematic way. We suggest that contentious episode analysis holds out the promise to go beyond the narrative approach by infusing it with the rigor and explicitness, while maintaining a dynamic quality. At the same time, CEA aims to move beyond a narrow focus on protest activities by challengers by incorporating into the analysis a broader set of action repertoires by a broader set of actors.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134112789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CONFIGURING POLITICAL REPRESSION: ANTI-CIVIL RIGHTS ENFORCEMENT IN MISSISSIPPI*","authors":"D. Cunningham, G. Ward, Peter B. Owens","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-319","url":null,"abstract":"Dominant approaches to political repression, which rely on linear analytic models and focus on discrete state agencies or repressive forms, obscure the complex organization and impacts of enforcement networks. Building on recent investigations of collective action fields and arenas of political contention, we develop a relational approach to political repression emphasizing joint actions to suppress challenges to the political status quo. We use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine enforcement networks that mobilized against challenges to segregation in early-1960s Mississippi, identifying four distinct enforcement configurations which maintained segregation across the state's eighty-two counties. We then analyze the processes that undergird these configurations of enforcement using archival data associated with representative counties. Our approach demonstrates the emergent logic of enforcement— i.e., how particular enforcement activities developed jointly, rather than only in parallel, with those initiated by other authorities.","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126933242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MOBILIZATION FORUM: COMMENTS ON KRIESI, HUTTER, AND BOJAR","authors":"","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-24-3-274","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":151940,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization: An International Quarterly","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124608754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}