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Fossil fuel companies hold enormous political, economic, and knowledge production power. Recently, industry operators have pivoted from pushing climate denialism to campaigns aimed at individualizing responsibility for climate crisis. In this paper, we focus on one related outcome of such efforts – people's experiences of complicity – here in the context of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production. We ask: How do mobilized activists experience fossil fuel scapegoating, and what does it mean for their goals as they organize against UOG production? We show that even activists fighting UOG production feel complicit in fossil fuel production, and these feelings of complicity diminish their demands for UOG accountability. We argue that these outcomes have been especially pernicious in cultural contexts like that of the United States, where neoliberal ideologies are normalized, centering personal responsibility, individualization, and identification as consumers rather than citizens. We marshal an extensive qualitative dataset and advance a theory of complicity as a way to understand: a) how social movements intersect with neoliberalized patterns of life; b) how experiences of complicity affect activism; and c) how this may contribute to fossil fuel firms' goals of undercutting organizing. We end by examining how a sub-set of activists works to dismantle this complicity narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have argued that anti-racialist ideologies – which deem racial categorization dangerous and racist – are an obstacle to antiracism, because they make race and its effects invisible, and obscure institutional and structural racism. This paper reexamines this argument empirically, by analyzing how activists resist "racial ignorance" and produce knowledge about race in anti-racialist contexts. Drawing on race scholarship, social movement theory, and sociology of knowledge, I ask: How do social movements produce knowledge about the role of race in policing in France? What are the implications of different epistemic practices for activists' racial conceptualizations and political practice? The article is based on an ethnography of three mobilizations contesting policing in France. The comparative methodology reveals that epistemic practices play a role in shaping how mobilizations reach a shared understanding of race and racism. Specifically, how knowledge projects determine racial difference, the methodologies used to capture racial inequality/oppression, and the level of analysis, all matter for the understanding of racism that activists are able to substantiate. Mobilization's epistemic approaches provide some activists with additional resources to promote their preferred racial conceptualizations and can produce the evidence needed to change the mobilization's dominant discourse, from individualistic to structural and systemic conceptualizations of racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite evident and oft-cited disparities in the policing of right-wing extremists and more progressive social movements, we understand much less about how such distinctions emerge and unfold as the police prepare for, and act within, protest events. How does the racial and political orientation of social movements affect how they are policed? What are the processes through which such effects are realized? In contrast with most existing studies of protest policing, which emphasize how the actions of authorities are conditioned by the degree of threat associated with, for example, the size or capacity for violence of a given protest target, the analysis here of a cluster of cases associated with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, recognizes the constructed nature of protest threats and highlights how those assumptions inform and interact with police planning and action. Findings emphasize how the degree of alignment between police and protesters shapes policing agents' preparations for, and operational considerations within, protest events. This alignment provides a basis for asymmetric communication, differential assessment, and—ultimately—distinct treatment of different protest targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements pushed to reconceptualize intimate partner violence (IPV) as a social problem deserving of intervention rather than a private family matter. However, little work has examined which interventions the public is likely to support. How and where do personal politics affect perceptions of and responses to a social problem? To address these questions, 739 participants read a victim's narrative from a court case and indicated their concern for the victim and support for issuing a protection order, prohibiting the abuser from owning a gun, or the victim owning a gun to protect herself. Concern for the victim and support for issuing a protection order was widespread, regardless of political leaning, with minor variations driven by role-taking and attitudes towards IPV. Similarly, support for the victim receiving a protection order was high, with political ideology and political affiliation having no direct effects. While concern increased support for each intervention, it held less explanatory power for gun-related interventions. Instead, political ideology and affiliation shaped support for disarming the abuser or arming the victim. Support for these interventions seemed to filter through a political lens. Thus, one's personal politics drive divergent intervention attitudes, even when concern for a social problem is shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the way local social movements respond to structural transformations in city politics. Drawing from archival research, published scholarship, and 51 in-depth interviews, we characterize the mobilization of experts into social movements in Greater Boston since the 1960s as a long-term shift from "protecting places" to "providing services." Consonant with a shift from centralized to decentralized municipal government, we show how an initially unified resistance to urban renewal morphed into two diverging and opposing movements. One focused on housing affordability and relied on market-driven tactics; the other sought to enhance the "production of nature" through grassroots community organizing. These findings support two contributions to the scholarship on expert activism by showing that: (1) social movement organizations (SMOs) respond to structural shifts epistemologically, as well as organizationally; and (2) expert activism can alter the conditions and context of knowledge production in neighborhoods and the movements that rise in their defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews, some field research, and an analysis of online material, this paper focuses on the rights struggles of diasporic Indian caste groups formerly considered "Untouchable" whose self-chosen descriptor is "Dalit." It examines Dalit activism in the United States around caste discrimination in both India and the U.S. The goal of this study is to demonstrate how Dalit American leaders use racial analogies in their international activism, and why race is a contested frame within the community. It makes clear that "universalistic" frames can obscure crucial particularities, making it harder to address the issue at hand. But it also reveals that dogmatic, particularistic frames can compromise the unity and mission of transnational movements. A 2020 lawsuit against Cisco Systems alleging caste discrimination toward a Dalit employee by Brahmin supervisors has opened the opportunity for anti-caste activists to develop a global norm specifically around how to address caste-based discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that economic indicators like efficiency, productivity, and profitability are key to explaining why some businesses survive and others do not. Yet not all work organizations ascribe to capitalist assumptions about ownership, authority, and even what constitutes success itself. Worker-recuperated businesses (WRBs) in Argentina—organizations closed by their private owners, occupied by their workers, and restarted as worker cooperatives—offer one such example. While research has documented the operational and financial challenges these businesses confront, we know little about why some survive and others do not. This article draws on qualitative and historical research in two WRBs in Buenos Aires: one that survived (Hotel Bauen) and one that closed (FORJA San Martín). Comparing the organizations' trajectories, we argue that labor process, geographic location, and political networks are key to understanding their survival. We find that different types of labor in industrial and service workplaces in conjunction with their geographic locations impacted efforts to develop networks with political actors, consumers, and social movements that provided legitimacy and resources to enable their continuity over time. The article discusses the contributions of these findings to theories of organizations and the implications for studying alternative work organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 106 Táíwò Olúfhemi O. Reconsidering Reparations. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 25 Du Bois W. E. Burghardt. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 27 Du Bois William Edward Burghardt, Jones Mack H. 2017. Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 21 Dean Lorraine T. 2018. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 26 Du Bois William Edward Burghardt, Diggs Irene. [Extracted from the article]

This study investigates the causal relationship between an under-studied emotion—hope—and online action. We ask whether some emotions are more effective than others in driving a semi-behavioral outcome—clicking a hyperlink. Using an experimental design, we find that a recorded speech that has been "emotionally charged" with hope increases respondents' willingness to seek information about a contentious social issue, immigrant rights. We argue that the hope charge is uniquely powerful, in part because it energizes both beneficiary constituents (BCs) and conscience constituents (CCs) of social movements, as well as those of broader publics. We suggest that hope is a quintessential bridging charge, linking beneficiary constituents to these other groups. Our study builds on important methodological trends in the developing field of survey experimentation: it uses audio recordings to convey emotional charges and embeds a semi-behavioral measure at the conclusion of an internet-based survey experiment. We argue that hope has been empirically submerged in the discipline, and, when used to charge social movement frames, has under-acknowledged mobilizing power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the false ballistic missile alert that occurred in Hawaii in 2018, which presented a unique opportunity for assessing the civic and mobilizing outcomes of a threat. In the days that followed the scare, we conducted an online experiment to investigate its effects on willingness to engage in activism and concerns about broader issues. Our results show that emotions serve as an important mechanism for channeling threat experiences into concern about specific causes. Those most emotionally affected by the missile scare in Hawaii thought it more important to engage in activities to control the spread of nuclear weapons, protect the environment, and address climate change, relative to a control group on the mainland. Both the intensity and type of emotion play a role. These results shed light on the role of threats and grievances in shaping concern about social and environmental issues. They also suggest that emotions may serve as a bridge that can connect personal, concrete, lived-experiences to more abstract, complex, or future-oriented issues and grievances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that focusing on situational, interactional space provides a fruitful addition to understanding protest dynamics and the emergence of violence in protests. It suggests connecting insights from social movement research and violence research to examine what happens spatially during a protest. Examining how space can be conceptualized situationally, the article then employs document and visual data, participant observation, and interviews in a qualitative analysis and cross-case comparison of protest marches. Situational space is studied in peaceful and violent marches during three social movements (Global Justice Movement, New Social Movements, 1960s student movement). Findings suggest that a clearly defined, transparent concept of situational space during protest marches can be useful in understanding the unfolding of protest events and that situational space is of particular relevance for the emergence of protest violence. Space is not only a common comfort zone, but for protests, territory also consists of implicit power relations. Thus, spatial incursions by police officers or protesters during protests into space assigned to the other group drastically change dynamics during protest marches, lead to mistrust and rising tensions, and form a crucial bedrock for violent eruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives polarized voting in Congress? This article develops a persuasive action model which argues that polarization in Congress depends on the assertive capacities of social movements, the vulnerability of political officials, and the partisanship of the environments they represent. Using multilevel analyses, I demonstrate that endorsements by the Tea Party movement influenced an increase in extreme (conservative) voting among legislators in the 112th Congress. These effects are strongest for vulnerable, freshman legislators representing amenable Republican contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the individual-level building blocks of getting out the vote (GOTV) for electoral parties that represent subaltern sectors in resource scarce environments. Drawing on theories of protest waves, social movement fields, and threat-induced collective action, we examine the likelihood of campaigning in left party electoral mobilization and party identification. The study implements a modified version of the Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) survey protocol and respondent selection design. We use a sympathy pool sample of over 1,200 May Day participants in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras to explain the micro-foundations of electoral proselytizing of political parties advocating for disadvantaged populations. We found that involvement in left party electoral campaigning was largely driven by resources deposited during anti-neoliberal protest waves, including prior movement-type protest, civic organizational activity, and economic threat perceptions. Campaigning for the anti-neoliberal party was also associated with a higher level of post-election party identification. The findings suggest that left parties may at times partially overcome economic and political resource deficits by mobilizing individuals deeply embedded in the social movement field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does volunteer participation by college social justice activists decline dramatically following graduation? Using a new, multimethod longitudinal study that spans college and the early post-graduate years, I test existing theory about how changes in time constraints, social support, and organizational opportunities affect volunteer activist participation in social justice movements. Analyzing qualitative data from semi-structured interviews to further understand decreases in activism, I find no evidence showing that changes in time constraints or social support lead to changes in activist volunteering, but there is evidence to support the effects of organizational opportunities. Findings from the qualitative data further emphasize that activist opportunities are easier to access on college campuses, specifically because activism is physically convenient to the potential participant. Future research and practice should explicitly address the spatial proximity of potential activists to social movement opportunities, and should additionally remain sensitive to different needs of activists at different points in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Answering longstanding questions about the relationship between immigrant identity, collective action, and societal incorporation requires a dynamic theory that integrates these micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. I propose a Du Boisian framework of immigrant incorporation that centers immigrants' subjectivities, accounting for variation in immigrants' perceptions of their relational social positions and subsequent strategies for shifting these positions. In this conceptualization of collective identity and collective action, macro-contexts enable and constrain collective identities through the process of ethnoracial formation, but immigrants negotiate competing perceptions of these identities and the political context, shaping divergent strategies to negotiate group position. I illustrate this framework by drawing on focus groups with Muslim American immigrants, identifying three central couplings of perceived identity and collective action strategy: 1) a perception of an integrating, "model citizen" collective identity that is aspirationally white, shaping assimilationist strategies for incorporation; 2) a perception of temporarily stigmatized identity with corresponding "identity-improvement" strategies for incorporation; and 3) a perception of racialized identity that rejects aspirational whiteness coupled with coalition-building with Black and Brown communities to target racialized systems altogether. Following Du Bois' legacy, this framework expands our understanding of the dialectic between macro-contexts and micro-dynamics in immigrant incorporation and builds upon growing research that questions whether the quest for societal inclusion is necessarily a process of integration into the dominant category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement coalitions present unique opportunities and challenges for collective action as they bring together organizations, movements, and individuals who hold diverse interests and social positions. The literature suggests that collective identity and shared ideology both offer opportunities for bridging these differences, but few have addressed their relative utility. Drawing on a case study of a university-based coalition of undocumented and citizen students working to build support for the federal DREAM Act, I find that a social justice ideology was used to facilitate fast-paced recruitment, create simplified participation guidelines based on legal status, and allow for the strategic renegotiation of participation. I argue that building a cross-status coalition through a shared ideology has two key advantages: (1) it allows for fast-paced coalition formation and (2) it promotes the mobilization and commitment of organizations and individuals who occupy different identities and social locations. Additionally, I suggest that conflict among members can be best negotiated through the development of discursive and interactive spaces that allow individuals to engage across their different social locations. Keywords: social movements; coalitions; ideology; immigrant rights; undocumented youth. © 2014 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Scholarship has long recognized the centrality of white racial sexual fears in the rhetoric and practice surrounding the lynching of African Americans in the U.S. South in the decades around 1900. The topic has not previously been taken up for systematic study beyond event-level analyses. This article presents theoretical and empirical evidence that whites' intersecting racial and gender concerns converging in racial sexual fears were conducive to lynching related to interracial sex, but not to those unrelated to interracial sex, under certain conditions. The empirical findings, based on lynchings in 11 southern states from 1881–1930, demonstrate that lynchings related to interracial sex were more likely to occur in contexts characterized by higher levels of white female dependents residing with white male householders, higher levels of white female school attendance, and higher levels of adult black male literacy. These findings suggest that interracial sex-related lynching served to recover and retain white men's racial and gender status, which postbellum developments had undermined, by oppressing not only African American men and women but disempowering white women as well. White racial sexual fears during the lynching era should, therefore, be seen as constituting a social force in their own right with long-term consequences for race and gender relations and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses ethnographic and interview methods to compare two groups of sex workers in Bangalore, both of which formed during the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this context, donor priorities fundamentally shaped the landscape for sex worker organizations, but the two groups formed very different collective identities. I argue that the content of collective identity is not predetermined by the conditions set by global Northern funding. Instead, I show how collective identity is articulated , in a locally specific process of relating political orientations to local associational fields, within, but not predetermined by, global funding constraints. As each group positioned itself in a distinct local associational field, it articulated a distinct collective identity, the Women's Collective as entrepreneurial women (a more respectable collective identity), and the Union as sexual laborers (a more transgressive one). Articulation unfolded through material as well as symbolic processes, shaping members' life trajectories and their understandings of them. This article complicates accounts of Northern funding and institutional opportunities as predetermining the paths and visions of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although criminal-legal interventions became accepted as the best response to domestic violence early in the battered women's movement, recent literature suggests that such interventions are often ineffective in reducing rates of violence. Despite this evidence, domestic violence advocates still emphasize criminal-legal interventions over alternatives when working with victims of violence. The author spent thirteen months observing domestic violence advocates in a feminist nonprofit organization to learn how the paradoxical reliance on criminal-legal interventions is reproduced. The paper identifies three mechanisms. First, information on criminal-legal interventions is emphasized more than other interventions in advocate training. Second, nonprofit staff present extreme examples of abuse and their associated criminal-legal interventions while training advocates rather than describing the types of abuse more typically brought to the organization. Finally, staff establish protocols for handling advocates' discontent with criminal-legal interventions which makes further collaboration between volunteers and the police possible. Together, these mechanisms reproduce criminal-legal interventions by limiting advocates' knowledge of the variety of alternative interventions. Practically, this work suggests several ways for advocates to destabilize ineffective organizational practices. Theoretically, the author shows that normative institutions are reproduced not just through socialization and coercion, but also through a lack of alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the feminist anti-domestic violence movement in the United States illustrates the trajectory from a social movement field devoid of carceral involvement to one fully occupied by the agents of crime control. Countering a narrative that often begins with the Violence against Women Act of 1994, this study demonstrates how the roots of carceral feminism extend back to the movement's first decade from 1973 to 1983. This study analyzes data from 60 social movement leaders. The pluralist coalition resulting from a successful lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, the creation of the victim witness program in San Francisco, and the development of the Community Coordinated Response in Duluth, Minnesota, represent mechanisms of engagement with law enforcement tied to innovative organizational forms. The process called the "carceral creep" describes how early social movement successes against an initially unresponsive criminal justice system evolved into collaborative relationships that altered the autonomy and constitution of initial social movement organizations. The creation of new organizational forms and their replication contributed to today's carceral feminism. These developments were accompanied by persisting gender, race, and class tropes used to justify pro-criminalization strategies and obfuscate impacts on marginalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of emotions in social movements and mobilization has been an important focus of recent research, but the emotional mechanisms producing apathy and non-participation remain under studied. This article explores the thinking and feeling processes involved in the production of apolitical attitudes, paying particular attention to their social and cultural context. Cultural norms of appropriateness and emotional expression can hinder or boost the emotions involved in the mobilizing processes. Based on 60 interviews with young people in two Russian cities, collected during and in the aftermath of the anti-regime protests of 2011–12, I explore the apathy syndrome—a combination of emotional mechanisms and cultural norms that produce political apathy. Personal frustrating experiences develop into long-term cynicism and disbelief in the efficacy of collective action, a process exacerbated by the transmission of apathy in families and educational institutions, as well as by cultural norms of appropriate emotions. Cultural clichés and dissociation from others help people cope with the trap and justify inaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, I argue that strong relational networks linking actors in the broader Cairo-based political opposition—a conglomerate of prodemocracy movement organizations—should be understood as a necessary, albeit insufficient, causal condition for the diffusion of protest. These networks fulfilled two essential functions. 1) They were critical in terms of professionally socializing a new generation of activists—many of whom would become early riser participants during the initial protests on January 25, 2011. 2) The networks allowed for critically important coordination of and mobilization for the protests as they cut across boundaries of individual social and protest movement organizations. Based on 55 semi-structured interviews, I trace the genesis of these relational networks during the first decade of the new millennium, showing how a coalition of actors sought to capitalize on a transnational demonstration effect triggered by the Tunisian Revolution. This group—linked by dense relational networks—then functioned as early risers during the initial stages of the uprising and encouraged other segments of Egyptian society to join the protests and to openly challenge a regime that had often been regarded as impenetrable to popular demands for socio-political change from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does religion promote or deter political activism? Most arguments and evidence on this question do not account for variation by social position. We argue that for the 2006 spring immigrant rights marches understanding the influence of religion on participation requires a careful assessment of the relationship between various dimensions of religion and the risks, barriers, and motivations that are rooted in citizenship status of potential participants. Dimensions that enhance efficacy are important for overcoming the participation obstacles that noncitizens faced. In contrast, dimensions that contributed to solidarity, opportunities, and framing fostered citizens' mobilization. Our findings from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life national survey of Latinos are consistent with the view that Charismatic identity and a salient personal religious faith were sources of empowerment that inspired noncitizen participation. Conversely, the emphasis on "law and order" of the biblical literalist as well as the pietistic orientation of a faith marked by personal prayer hindered marching among Latino noncitizens. Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions and a close association between faith and politics influenced citizen protest but not noncitizen involvement. Integration into congregations activated for immigrant rights and involvement in congregation-based volunteerism encouraged participation for both citizens and noncitizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a relational account of the emergence, development, and impact of a social movement against urban fracking in Denton, Texas. It highlights the role played by the interactions between grassroots activism, local officials, and other stakeholders in the political construction of shared understandings of environmental risk. Drawing upon scholarship on risk perceptions and on social movement outcomes, the article argues that as a result of relationships of conflict and cooperation between activists, officials, residents, and oil and gas industry representatives, a field of opinion about the potential (negative) impacts of fracking emerged. It shows that grassroots, face-to-face, joint action played a key role in the campaign to ban fracking. Localized collective action should be at the front and center of social scientific examinations of shared understandings of environmental danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World-systems scholars have recently advanced a framework for the analysis of "antisystemic" movements, with one important component of this approach being the integration of global forces into causal accounts of social movement mobilizations. This perspective, both an extension and a critique of existing movement theories such as political opportunity structure and political mediation approaches, is an outgrowth of the long-running trend of constructing larger and more elaborate models of the economic and political structures that bear upon movement outcomes. I elaborate three strategies of antisystemic movement analysis, and go on to combine these strategies with Event Structure Analysis (ESA) in order to investigate episodes of syndicalist mobilization in Argentina in 1917 and Chile in 1923. These cases reveal a set of crucial world-scale determinants at work in each mobilization: the relations between local and foreign capitalists, fluctuations in the world market transmitted through foreign-dominated enclaves, and direct and indirect influence by powerful core states such as Britain and the US. In contrast to the sorts of nationally-bound causality assumed in many social movement theories, I demonstrate that these world-scale forces cannot be included merely as external context; instead, they actively condition ostensibly "local" actors and are crucial determinants of each mobilization's shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the extra-political consequences of contemporary U.S.-based nativist mobilization as well as the resilience unauthorized migrants display in the face of anti-immigrant mobilization along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bringing together social movements and immigration literatures, we examine these interrelated issues using original survey data from the first wave of the Migrant Border Crossing Study. In so doing, we examine: (1) factors influencing repatriated unauthorized migrants' awareness of nativist mobilization (i.e. Minutemen) along the Arizona-Sonora border, and (2) factors explaining why some migrants would or would not be potentially deterred from attempting future unauthorized crossings if encountering the Minutemen were a possibility. Results from a Heckman probit selection model indicate that higher levels of general, financial, and migration-specific human capital are associated with awareness of the Minutemen, while higher household income and status as an indigenous language speaker predict who would be less likely to be deterred from crossing. We also uncover an interesting paradox: migrants traveling with coyotes were less likely to have heard of Minutemen and more likely to be potentially deterred. Collectively, our results provide insight into the overlooked extra-political consequences of contemporary U.S. nativist mobilization, how resiliency in the face of such a deterrent is structured among repatriated unauthorized migrants, and how seemingly powerless migrant groups can mitigate potential threats initiated by relatively privileged groups of U.S. citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature examines the dynamics of social movement contention within and across "social fields." While fields tend toward stability, events and processes elsewhere in a broader system of fields can provide opportunities for movement mobilization. Most accounts see these cross-field dynamics as exogenous events, granting movements little control over when and how these opportunities might emerge. In contrast, this article argues that activists can and do purposely create cross-field effects. Examining changes in contentious practice in the American labor movement--which in recent decades, has reoriented contention over workplace issues away from workplaces themselves, and toward political arenas more traditionally dominated by community concerns--this article advances the concept of cross-field manipulation, purposive strategic action that accounts for the positioning of actors across social fields, triggering events in one field so as to reorder the dynamics of another. Using a historical study of evolving organizing practices in a Southern California hotel workers' union, including interviews and archival sources, the paper identifies three mechanisms--power analysis, alliance building, and actor-triggered crises--whereby labor activists purposely generate cross-field effects. Through repeated interactions with employers and polities, activists learned a unique campaign model that politicized workplace conflict in communities and markets, generating opportunities for workplace gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between social class and online participation in social movements? Scholars suggest that low costs to digital activism broaden participation and challenge conventional collective action theories, but given the digital divide, little is known about cost variation across social movement organizations from different social classes. A focus on high levels of digital engagement and extraordinary events leaves scant information about the effect of social class on digital mobilization patterns and everyday practices within and across organizations. This study takes a field-level approach to incorporate all groups involved in one statewide political issue, thereby including organizations with different social class compositions, from Tea Parties to labor unions. Data collection spans online and off-line digital activism practices. With an index to measure digital engagement from an original data set of over 90,000 online posts, findings show deep digital activism inequalities between working-class and middle/upper-class groups. In-depth interviews and ethnographic observations reveal that the mechanisms of this digital activism gap are organizational resources, along with individual disparities in access, skills, empowerment and time. These factors create high costs of online participation for working-class groups. Rather than reduced costs equalizing online participation, substantial costs contribute to digital activism inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a quasi-natural experiment in the Latino National Survey (2006), I examine the effect of the 2006 immigrant rights marches on attitudes about assimilation among Mexican immigrants residing in the United States. I test the hypothesis, dominant in the existing literature, that major sociopolitical events raise ethnic consciousness and lead to reactive or retentionist attitudes that privilege maintenance of ethnic culture over "blending in." Contrary to established findings, I show that the marches did not increase retentionist attitudes nor strengthen ethnic nationalism. Instead, in the period during and after the marches, Mexican immigrants were more likely to hold incorporationist attitudes that place value on both assimilation and ethnic cultural maintenance, as well as assimilationist attitudes which privilege "blending in" to American society. These findings suggest that attitudes were influenced by the incorporationist and assimilationist messages promulgated by protest organizers and the Spanish-language media. The specific discourse used by media and activists can shape both individual attitudes and conceptions of how minority groups relate to wider society, evincing a more expansive approach to American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits a central tenet in the research on gay identity: namely, that industrial capitalism "created" gay identity and set the stage for the modern lesbian and gay movement in the United States. Although largely forgotten by social movement scholarship, I argue that this relationship continues. Specifically, different kinds of capitalism yielded different dominant understandings of gay identity held by the movement over its 70-year history: reform capitalism created a psychiatric gay identity; social contract capitalism created an "out" minority gay identity; capitalism-in-crisis created a decentered and contested gay identity; and neoliberal capitalism created a domesticated and consumerist gay identity. Rather than viewing gay identity and the movement through the prism of resources, opportunities, social networks, and social construction, the article argues that these processes are best subsumed under the broader rubric of capitalist political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do perceptions of the state shape social movements' strategies? Drawing on 16 months of participant observation and 70 interviews with activists in Arizona, this article illustrates how the politics of immigration plays out at the grassroots level as a struggle between expanding and restricting the state. Pro-immigrant activists in this study contended that the problem of undocumented migration resulted from the state's unchecked coercive power. Experiencing this strong-state effect, pro-immigrant activists' tactics focused on limiting the state's reach and reinforcing society's capacity to resist the state. Meanwhile, immigration restrictionist activists attributed the problem of undocumented immigration to the state's feebleness as a policing entity. In response to this weak-state effect, restrictionist tactics tried to expand the state's scope and build society's ability to aid the state. The article concludes by discussing how the strong/weak-state effect framework helps illuminate the field of social relations in which an activist group is embedded and provides an avenue for exploring the relationship between state practices and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social movement scholarship has emphasized the role of activists in socially constructing grievances, we contend that material adversity is a reoccurring precondition of anti-state mobilization. We test the effect of economic decline on the count of large-scale, anti-government demonstrations and riots. Using multiple sources of newspaper reports of contentious events across 145 countries during the period 1960-2006, we find a statistically significant negative relationship between economic growth and the number of contentious events, controlling for a variety of state-governance, demographic, and media characteristics. We find that the effect is strongest under conditions of extreme economic decline and in non-democracies. These findings highlight the need for social movement scholars to take seriously the role of economic performance as an important factor that enables mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do authoritarian states deter dissent in the diaspora? Using data on Libyan and Syrian activism in the United States and Great Britain, this study demonstrates that they do through violence, exile, threats, surveillance, and by harming dissidents' relatives at home. The analysis finds that the transnational repression of these diasporas deterred public antiregime mobilization before the Arab Spring. I then identify the mechanisms by which Libyans and Syrians overcame these effects during the 2011 revolutions. Activists "came out" when (1) violence at home changed their relatives' circumstances and upset repression's relational effects; (2) the sacrifices of vanguard activists expanded their objects of obligation, leading them to embrace cost sharing; and (3) the regimes were perceived as incapable of making good on their threats. However, differences in the regimes' perceived capacities to repress in 2011 produced significant variation in the pace of diaspora emergence over time and guarded advocacy. The study advances understanding of transnationalism by demonstrating how states exercise coercive power across borders and the conditions under which diasporas mobilize to publicly and collectively challenge home-country regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship at the intersection of social movement and organizational theories has illuminated intra-organizational factors that shape agencies' efforts to implement policies social movements have fought for, emphasizing the roles of agency leaders' ideological commitments to movement policy, organizational capacity, and sanctions to ensure compliance. I argue that social movement policy implementation is also shaped by bureaucrats' tacit understandings of key movement concepts, albeit conditioned by how able they feel to implement those interpretations in light of political contexts. I make this argument through the case of government agency environmental justice (EJ) grant programs, analyzing program documents, funding patterns, and confidential interviews with agency representatives to explain why most EJ grant programs deviate from longstanding EJ movement priorities while one program coheres with them. I show that these outcomes stem from the fact that many staff--even while avowing support for EJ policy--hold tacit understandings of key movement concepts that differ from those of advocates. Social movement policy implementation can align with movement principles when institutional logics consistent with the movement are held, promoted, and defended by agency representatives who feel that their institutional environment permits them to implement those ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous studies of ethnic contention and conflict identify important structural and meso-level indicators of threat and competition, analysis of variation in the mechanisms linking these sources of potential grievance formation with mobilization remains unclear. To address this issue, this study explores the social organization of Ku Klux Klan mobilization in 1960s North Carolina. While regarded as a progressive state in the civil rights era, North Carolina exhibited a greater level of Klan mobilization than the rest of the South combined. We build on models of "mediated competition," where ethnic competition and group threat are held as necessary, and propinquity, authority work, and legacies of previous racial violence link threat and competition with mobilization. Extending prior formulations centered on the discrete impact of individual components of competition, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to precisely specify the conjunctural conditions governing two modes of Klan mobilization: public rally events and the establishment of local organizational units. Our findings indicate that the mobilizing effects of threat and competition varied between rural and urban areas, and that threat/competition and organization/ leadership play a dual role in translating collective grievances into mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements strive for policy changes that will realize their conception of the "perfect world." To achieve their aims as rapidly as possible, movements attempt to identify the most effective ways of influencing decision makers. In parliamentary democracies, the central decision makers are political parties. Much of the existing literature emphasizes the use of public pressure and lobbying. To complement this literature, I argue that the intersection between political parties and social movements is also a strong and stable means for activists to influence policy. Using novel microdata on the German antinuclear movement, and particularly its success in influencing the shutdown of nuclear power plants, I demonstrate that movements realize their goals significantly more rapidly when their intersection with political parties increases. My results also suggest that there is a tipping point beyond which the effect of this intersection declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of LGBTQ_(Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer) participation in the undocumented immigrant youth movement, this research offers a theoretical framework for understanding how social movements can promote the attainment of leadership roles by members of disadvantaged subgroups contained within a larger constituency. Empirical analyses utilize data from web surveys and semi-structured interviews collected from undocumented youth activists in California in 2011-2012. Findings indicate that LGBTQ_ activists encountered significant challenges to disclosing their sexual orientation. Yet these youth comprised a significant proportion of movement participants and they were more dvically engaged than their straight peers. I argue that LGBTQ_prominence among undocumented youth activists can, in part, be attributed to identity processes within this movement. Specifically, the recognition and activation of multiply marginalized identities at various levels of collective identity formation-- at the broader movement, organizational, and individual levels-- catalyzed intersectional mobilization, meaning high levels of activism and commitment among a disadvantaged subgroup within an already marginalized constituency. At the movement level, 1 show how the immigrant youth movement's adoption of the LGBTQ_rights "coming out" strategy empowered undocumented youth around both their legal status and sexual orientation. This case of social movement spillover produced a boomerang effect by promoting LGBTQ_inclusivity among immigrants. At the organizational level, multi-identity work that addressed activists' overlapping identities created inclusive environments for LGBTQ_members. Finally, at the individual level, LGBTQ_ undocumented youth exhibited an intersectional consciousness regarding the multiple forms of oppression they experienced; this, in turn, intensified their activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A century of urban research has established that percentage black associates positively with violence at the neighborhood level. We extend traditional structural explanations for this association by drawing attention to the political contexts of cities that may influence the race-violence link. Drawing on insights from social movement and racial politics literatures, we contend that the relationship between percentage black and neighborhood violence will be attenuated in cities with greater black political opportunities and black mobilization. We examine this thesis using multilevel data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study that provide sociodemographic and violence data for census tracts nested within 87 large cities. We pair these data with city-level measures of black political opportunities and mobilization. Multilevel analyses reveal that the relationship between percentage black and violence varies substantially across cities, and that the average positive relationship often is attenuated, and reduced to statistical insignificance, in cities with favorable political contexts. We propose that the substantive and symbolic benefits set in motion by favorable political contexts lay the foundation for neighborhood organization against violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of protest expansion both in the United States and abroad has stimulated theoretical discussion of a "movement society," with some arguing that protest activities are becoming a standard feature of democratic politics. In advancing this claim, many have highlighted the role of domestic factors-for example, generational change or economic affluence-without fully accounting for the possibility that international dynamics may play an important role as well. The lack of work is surprising not only because the trend in protest is international in scope, but also because work in comparative sociology suggests globalization may make an important contribution. This study addresses the empirical gap by examining how political globalization (as measured by memberships in international organizations) and economic globalization (as measured by trade activity and foreign investment) influence trends in protest participation. Using data from World Values Surveys of 37,716 respondents in 17 advanced democracies merged with data on several national and international indicators, this study examines how the probability of participating in protest has changed over time as a result of these two forms of globalization. The results of multivariate, multilevel analysis combined with simulations indicate that trends in political globalization have expanded protest activity, while trends in economic globalization have limited that expansion. These results suggest that social movement scholarship should continue to examine the implications of globalization for protest behavior and other social movement dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brown v. Board of Education is considered a crowning achievement of racial equality yet, to date, there remains marked racial segregation in U.S. public schools. One explanation for continuing segregation lies in the reproduction of racialized institutions initially designed to preserve the color line. In this article, we examine the persistence of one such institution, drawing on historical institutionalism and rational choice theory to identify forces potentially linked to the reproduction of segregationist academies in the South. Using spatial analyses of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data on public and private schools, we observe a process of the elite preservation of hierarchical advantage with linkages to former plantation economies, a legacy of lynching, and organization of white countermovement groups in response to civil rights mobilization. The findings highlight the reproduction of racialized institutions through organizational creation and adaptation and underscore the continuing relevance of spatial and temporal context in shaping specific manifestations of the color line. Keywords: segregation; race; education; mobilization; social movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements interact in a wide range of ways, yet we have only a few concepts for thinking about these interactions: coalition, spillover, and opposition. Many social movements interact with each other as neither coalition partners nor opposing movements. In this article, I argue that we need to think more broadly and precisely about the relationships between movements and suggest a framework for conceptualizing noncoalitional interaction between movements. Although social movements scholars have not theorized such interactions, "strange bedfellows" are not uncommon. They differ from coalitions in form, dynamics, relationship to larger movements, and consequences. I first distinguish types of relationships between movements based on extent of interaction and ideological congruence and describe the relationship between collaborating, ideologically opposed movements, which I call "collaborative adversarial relationships." Second, I differentiate among the dimensions along which social movements may interact and outline the range of forms that collaborative adversarial relationships may take. Third, I theorize factors that influence collaborative adversarial relationships' development over time, the effects on participants, and consequences for larger movements, in contrast to coalitions. I draw on the case of the relationship between anti-pornography feminists and conservatives during the 1980s, charting the dynamics of their interaction across arenas and over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In one week in the spring of 2006 more than 100,000 students walked out of schools all across America to protest the threat of H.R. 4437 to immigrants. Drawing on 50 interviews with students, educators, and community activists involved in 11 walkouts across five Texas metropolitan areas, we reconstruct the lived experience of these spontaneous protests. We identify three tightly interrelated aspects of a social and psychological process shaping these protests: the relationship between political threat and telescoping anxiety; the role of defiance and its emotion-switching effect; and the emergent and situational nature of the walkouts. We argue that the collective psychological process of telescoping anxiety punctuated by the situational thrill of defiance is indispensable in explaining these massive, farflung, and spontaneous protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of collective identity formation within an organization that is part of the new atheist movement to illuminate how a nascent social movement organization successfully builds collective identity through the construction of permeable boundaries. The organization delineates clear boundaries from outsiders so that it can foster collective identity among its members: Group processes that take place within the social movement organization facilitate collective identity formation through contrast to an abstracted and maligned other and through inclusion of former outsiders, namely the formerly religious. In fact, those who cross the boundary between atheists and religious believers make core contributions to supporting boundary maintenance within the organization. The analysis evidences the importance of boundary permeability for understanding collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement scholars have demonstrated that foundation patronage channels social movements away from radical activities toward moderate goals, but accounts 0f how this process occurs are underdeveloped. Existing research typically focuses on foundations' differential selection of grant recipients (i.e., 'cherry-picking' nonthreatening groups) and transformation of particular recipient organizations over time (i.e., professionalizing grassroots groups). Scholars have overlooked ways in which foundations shape social movements by building or restructuring entire organizational fields. Foundation-led 'field-building' activities may embed social movement organizations (SMOs) in new contexts and enroll them in new projects, thus channeling protest in subtle ways. This argument is illustrated with the case of forest certification--a form of governance created in the 1990s as a moderate, market-based alternative to disruptive environmental boycotts. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, I show how foundations coordinated their grant-making to build afield of forest certification, enrolled social movement organizations in this project, and used the leverage of protest to further their fieldbuilding agenda. Keywords: social movements, organizational fields, philanthropic foundations, environment, global governance.

The model minority stereotype has been widely criticized for creating distinctions between racial groups by depicting some as more deserving than others. Immigration scholars have begun exploring similar distinctions among immigrant groups, with most research highlighting the role of anti-immigrant forces, the media, and policymakers in constructing divisions. Ethnographic research on the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of interfaith immigrant rights organizations, reveals that pro-immigrant activists also construct distinctions between "deserving" and "undeserving" immigrants. Building on frame alignment theory, which often focuses on movement discourse, I use a dramaturgical approach to highlight the nonrhetorical framing practices involved in creating these distinctions: in particular, the casting of select members of stigmatized groups and their public and visual association with more powerful actors. Through a type of frame transformation I call the model movement strategy--the use of model cases to challenge negative stereotypes of members of disadvantaged groups--New Sanctuary activists drew distinctions between model immigrants and those who did not share their dominant-friendly characteristics, implicitly portraying certain undocumented immigrants as less deserving of legal residency and citizenship. These findings suggest that the model movement strategy, an approach used by a variety of contemporary social movements, may have insidious consequences for the most vulnerable movement constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the notion of a modular repertoire of contention within a political context. The work of sociologist Charles Tilly regarding such social movement actions is addressed. Other topics include the history of resistance by Great Britain, the notion of transferability of various forms of demonstrations, and the role of British members of Parliament in public meetings and petitions. Also noted is the role of Methodist movement activists in public activism, while the relation of war and taxation to society is addressed.

The article looks at corporate participation in the international fair trade movement, with a particular focus on the multinational coffee firms Starbucks and Nestlé. It is suggested that corporate actors have co-opted the fair trade movement, limiting its progress in placing market exchange within a system social and moral relationships. According to the author, the movement's focus on certification and labeling has allowed corporations to weaken these standards. Details on the sociological study of social movement organizations (SMOs) are presented. Other topics include market embeddedness, private regulation, and global commodity chains.

The article looks at variations in the framing of arguments among 20th-century U.S. women's jury movements. According to the author, jury activists used both a traditional frame highlighting women's differences from men, and a radical frame highlighting their intellectual equality. It is suggested that frame variation among these activists was driven by their organizational identities and processes of counterframing and political and cultural resonance. Other topics include women lawmakers, political strategy, and political rhetoric.

The article looks at factors affecting the tactical disruptiveness of social movements seeking to change the behavior of corporate targets. Particular focus is given to market disruption, which diminishes' the target's acquisition and use of market resources, and mediated disruption, in which the social movement's grievances are communicated through third parties such as the media. According to the author, activists have more control over mediated disruption, while forms of market disruption such as boycotts depend on the selection of targets and the simultaneous use of mediated disruption. Details related to the effects of factors such as social movement organization (SMO) formality, public demonstrations, firm size, and target reputation on tactical disruptiveness are also presented.