Search

Although the general public often thinks of schools as "gun‐free zones," a growing number of U.S. colleges and universities recognize shooting sports organizations, enabling students to participate in rifle, pistol, shotgun, skeet, and trap sporting events. Building on recent scholarship that employs political opportunity and resource mobilization theories to analyze sports, we assess the roles that states' political characteristics and schools' resources play in the presence of student shooting sports organizations. Drawing on a comprehensive database of 1,953 four‐year colleges and universities in the United States, and employing logistic regression analyses, we show that Republican‐leaning states, schools with larger, mostly white, and majority men student bodies, and schools with Republican student organizations serve as conducive environments for shooting sports organizations. This article represents the most comprehensive study to date of shooting sports in U.S. schools and contributes to literatures on the sociology of guns, the sociology of sports, and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in U.S. deportations has resulted in a growing number of studies focused on the reintegration experiences of these migrants in their home communities. Based on interviews with deportees shortly after their arrival home, these studies paint a picture of economic gloom, finding that deportees are too frequently stigmatised by governments and employers and consequently unemployed or working on the margins of their home economies. In contrast, our longitudinal and comparative study, which draws on the findings of 93 deported and voluntary migrants in Leon, Mexico, finds convergence in the labour market trajectories and social mobility outcomes of deportees and non-deportees, which reduces initial labour market disparities over time. We found that deportation can stymie migrants’ initial labour market re-entry, often relegating former migrants to undesirable jobs in the informal labour market, while they re-familiarise themselves with their local labour markets and identify promising opportunities. Yet, in the long run, successful reintegration depends primarily on the acquisition and mobilisation of human and financial capital across the migratory circuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses black contemporary social movements in America in relation to a grassroots initiative which was developed in the Black community in the U.S. and is designed to eliminate police and vigilante violence against Blacks across the country. Black musical activism is addressed, along with resource mobilization and various social groups such as Black Lives Matter, Ferguson Action, and Say Her Name. Civil-rights movements in the U.S. are assessed, along with Black hop-hop artists.

Studies on relations and networks in both public diplomacy and public relations have been focusing on the project implementation. Largely ignored is the foundational stage of resource gathering before implementation that also involves relationship management. This paper applies the social network analysis to examine the 100,000 Strong partnership network for study abroad in China that facilitates the transaction of necessary resources to support US public diplomacy implementation. The findings of the research suggest that the 100,000 Strong Foundation, as the network builder, has successfully established channels to mobilize resources through opportunity recognition, information arbitrage, and innovativeness creation. Other network actors also obtained various levels of power from the network structure, which may ultimately contribute to public diplomacy. This study offers a new theoretical and methodological framework to study relations and networks in public diplomacy and public relations, while informing some practical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, scholars have begun to employ social movement theory to historical studies of the 19th century. This article uses political process, resource mobilization, and framing theories to examine black southern emigration movements to Liberia before and after the Civil War through historical-narrative analysis. It argues that the draconian racial environment in the South pushed black southerners to utilize strategies of interracial cooperation in order to minimize the number of whites' repressive tactics against them and to accrue the support of white sponsorship when orchestrating territorial separatist movements. Elite individual whites, white colonization societies, and U.S. government organizations provided black southern separatists with benefits such as financial and material assistance, physical protection, and character references, along with logistical and general information about traveling to and living in Liberia. Additionally, during the antebellum era, black southerners used religion and culture frames to garner sympathy from supportive whites, while justice and oppression frames calling for the redress of racial grievances were more widely used during the era of Reconstruction. Historical evidence suggests that black southern nationalists utilized strategic cooperation with elites and strategic framing to facilitate movements for territorial separatism both before and after the Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents findings from the Resource Generator-US, a new instrument used to identify accessible resources necessary to build social capital among the urban poor. To evaluate policy assumptions about the capacity of religious congregations to fill gaps left by public programs, members (N=120) of two urban churches in a Midwestern Rust Belt city were surveyed to understand resource access, personal resource possession, and resource mobilization patterns. Findings indicated that both congregations had access to a diversity of resources. The study demonstrated that urban congregations are important repositories of resources and resources vary even in proximal congregations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although social movement organizations (SMOs) are often depicted as mobilizing intensive resources from their individual members, we lack a systematic assessment of this issue. Based on the notion of ‘modern social movements’ I argue that SMOs mobilize fewer human and monetary resources from their members than other voluntary organizations do. A regression model using a survey representative of American adults shows that, when compared to other organization members, SMO members generally contribute significantly lower amounts of money and time. They are also less likely to attend, plan or chair meetings, and give speeches on behalf of the organization. The only exception to this pattern is that SMO members are more likely to write letters for the organization than other members do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using both a new data set of labor union appearances in congressional hearings and archival data on union organizational resources, this article analyzes factors that determine whether a labor union will be represented in congressional hearing testimony in a given year. Consistent with the expectations of resource mobilization theory, organizational resources are important predictors of participation in congressional hearings. For example, membership is an important predictor of testimony in hearings, as is the number of lobbyists on staff and the character of a union's primary industry. However, membership in the AFL- CIO federation is negatively related to hearing participation, and some of the benefits of having a large membership base may be diminishing over time. Implications for the study of interest group politics and organizational political strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details how the fund-raising efforts of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the wake of the 1963 Birmingham protests transformed the finances of the SCLC. Having struggled to sustain itself prior to 1963, the SCLC experienced a massive influx of donations. Contributions were sparked by outrage at police brutality in Birmingham but the impulse to give had to be systematically channeled to optimize the windfall: rallies, newspaper appeals and direct mail generated funds. Based on new archival research, this article presents an analysis of the timing of donations which shows that donations peak over a month after the media coverage of the children’s marches in Birmingham because it took time to organize the public events that encouraged giving. The article also offers the first analysis of the geographical distribution of donations, demonstrating the primacy of New York and California as sources for SCLC funds. By examining the fund-raising events in different cities, the ability of the SCLC to tap into church networks, union supporters, and Jewish American groups of sympathizers is confirmed. At the same time, it becomes clear that support is selective: not all black churches or all unions gave. The SCLC had to work hard to secure church donations and even within liberal unions such as the UAW, donations came primarily from local branches that had mainly African American members. Jewish donations tended to be from individuals rather than institutions. The article points out that the loss of administrative staff over the course of 1963 weakened efforts to professionalize fund-raising, leaving the SCLC highly reliant on individual donations triggered by headline-grabbing public clashes. The protest style of Birmingham was thus integral to the SCLC’s future approach to both the pursuit of federal action and its own financial survival. At the same time, the article links its discussion of the surge of donations to the SCLC to demonstrate that the pattern of resource mobilization evident in relation to the civil rights movement in the summer of 1963 was distinctive. It marked a level of movement development that was different from that evident earlier and the volatility of support in subsequent years suggests that the emphasis on continuity within the new scholarship of the “long civil rights movement” is mistaken. The breadth of appeal of the civil rights movement in the summer of 1963 made it different in character as well as composition from the March on Washington Movement of 1940 or the movements that supported Black Power goals in the early 1970s. While the freedom struggle was long and continues, the movement of the Sixties was distinctive and protean. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study expands upon existing research by shedding light on the challenges and opportunities facing participants in peer-to-peer wireless signal-sharing initiatives. The study relies on resource mobilization theory to gain a deeper understanding of why members of community mesh networks in the United States join the movement and how they sustain it. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with the founders of 12 unique U.S. networks. The projects examined illustrate the desire for alternatives to traditional ISPs, as well as deep commitments to digital inclusion and local ownership. Informants reported feeling personally invested in the future of their projects because they contribute technical support and other forms of labour. However, the deployment of mesh technology creates a unique set of legal and policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in policy advocacy by human service nonprofits has the potential to both strategically position organizations in their environment and promote client well-being. Despite these possible benefits, however, many human service nonprofits do not engage in policy advocacy. This article helps explain why, by placing advocacy involvement in a broad theoretical context and providing evidence on the factors that best explain involvement. It presents a new conceptual framework that employs both resource mobilization theory and resource dependency theory to outline why a variety of organizational resources and environmental incentives may influence participation. That framework is assessed using large-scale survey data. Results suggest that advocacy is most common among organizations that have already achieved some success, as evidenced by having relatively large size, professional leadership, strong collaborative ties, use of e-mail, and high levels of government funding. Overall, advocacy is found to be a more professionalized endeavor than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws lessons from the resource mobilization experiences of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). As the GPEI launched its eradication effort in 1988, it underestimated both the difficulty and the costs of the campaign. Advocacy for resource mobilization came as an afterthought in the late 1990s, when achieving eradication by the target date of 2000 began to look doubtful. The reality of funding shortfalls undercutting eradication leads to the conclusion that advocacy for resource mobilization is as central to operations as are scientific and technical factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we systematically examine the relevance of five bodies of social movement theory to the outcomes of two sport-related social movements — struggles over funding of sport facilities and struggles over Native American mascots. Thirty-eight themes were culled from the five bodies of social movement theory and explored via 83 semi-structured interviews with social movement and countermovement actors from 20 different sites in the United States. Surprisingly, we found only eight of the 38 themes that we studied are pivotal to the outcomes of both social movements. The analysis also reveals that no single theoretical approach adequately explains the outcomes of both movements. Parts of Resource Mobilization theory are useful, while Political Process and Cultural theories offer the most explanatory power. We find that a few internal aspects of social movement groups interact with some cultural and structural forces external to these groups to shape social movement outcomes. Sport sociologists are urged to continue the systematic study of social movement theory, but to move beyond the limitations of this study to focus on other social movements, geographical locations, and aspects of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the contradictory claims of Robert Putnam and Aldon Morris in relation to the American civil rights movement. Putnam identifies the South as the American region most lacking in social capital, and argues more generally that the 1960s marked a watershed beyond which social capital in the United States declined in all regions. Morris identifies the indigenous resources of southern African American communities as fundamental to the civil rights movement’s emergence in the late 1950s and sees the social networks and cultural assets of the African American church in particular as central to the movement. The article disputes Putnam’s negative judgment of the South by highlighting the role played by various types of social capital in the movement’s launch. It also challenges Morris’s over-emphasis on the ability of charismatic, black church leadership to deliver mass support and re-affirms the role played by female lay figures, such as beauticians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergence of local citizen monitoring groups has provided a structure for public participation in environmental issues but little is known about how these groups are achieving their goals. We examine a subset of citizen monitoring groups in the United States that conduct volunteer macroinvertebrate monitoring (VMM) as a tool for investigating stream health. Through a survey of VMM groups throughout the United States and interviews with state leaders, we found that VMM groups vary in size and character, and utilize a variety of means to achieve their goals. The majority of VMM groups rely on in-kind support from state and regional programs. Overall, these groups are more interested in conducting VMM to foster public awareness, rather than bringing about structural or legislative change. Based on resource mobilization theory, we illustrate that the opportunity structures at the state level significantly impact the character and success of U.S. VMM groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship between legitimation, resource mobilization, and political opportunity and the founding rate of national environmental organizations between 1895 and 1994. It addresses recent criticisms that organizational ecologists' reliance on the density dependence model, which treats legitimation as an unmeasured intervening variable and has failed to capture the active sociopolitical character of this process. It advocates a more historical approach to legitimation, which relies on print media to construct direct measures of legitimation. Specifically, it uses the yearly count of environmental books published as a measure of the legitimacy of environmentalism in the U.S. This count remains statistically significant and positively related to findings even when other variables are added to the model. A negative second-order effect of total books suggests that the recent proliferation of state and local environmental organizations is beginning to depress the founding rate of national organizations.

In this article the author focuses on the status of women farmers in the U.S. agriculture. The author remarks that many scholars working within the resource mobilization paradigm take institutionalization for granted, ignoring grassroots organizations where membership is difficult to define and where structures are elusive. They consequently underestimate the role of, and under-appreciate the practical situations of, less-than-totally-institutionalized organizations in challenging the status quo and producing political and social change. The author states that successful domain building in agricultural and non-agricultural rural areas requires representing the interests of women as well as men, allowing greater access by women to decision-making structures and processes, and providing a public arena or forum in which they may develop their collaborative potential. If women bring a different perspective to the table, and farm family and rural community receive better attention when women are at the table, then rural and agricultural institutions that exclude women ultimately disadvantage themselves.

Resource mobilization's implicit assumptions about social structure and social change may not match the theories of social change embedded in the European theoretical approaches, vitiating a possible synthesis. Moreover, the research tools congruent with those assumptions may have been appropriate and useful only for the analysis of the American movements of the 60s and 70s, for which they were originally developed. The belief systems of many of these movements were extensions of the basic liberal concepts hegemonic in American public philosophy. Hence, their motivating force and ideology did not then seem to require explanation, whereas the methods of organization and mobilization did. Before any "synthesis" of theories can take place, attention must therefore be paid to the presuppositions and implications of each analytical approach. To this end, this article starts with the dominant American approaches, focusing particularly on resource mobilization, and seeks to "deconstruct" the epistemologies and methods of U.S. research by relating them both to the particular character of social movements and to the unique political culture and national style of politics in the United States. By accounting for the historicity and national specificity of the assumptions and theoretical premises of the dominant American approaches to social movements, it is explained why these American theories are so unique, different, and as yet incompatible with European approaches.

Resource mobilization theory became the dominant paradigm for studying social movements in the 1970s because it was better able to account for the 1960s cycle of protest than previous theories of collective behavior. Alter almost two decades of theoretical development, the resource mobilization framework is now under increasing challenge. Drawing on research on women's movements in the United States, this article identifies ten issues which collectively pose a major theoretical challenge to the dominance of resource mobilization theory and which may initiate a paradigm shift to a new framework for the study of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over two decades, resources have been assumed to be a fundamental determinant of the course and character of social movement organizations (SMOs) and their activities. Yet surprisingly little research evaluates this taken-for-granted assumption. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork on 15 homeless SMOs in eight U.S. cities, we construct an empirically grounded typology of resources and assess the combinations of resources necessary for the viability of homeless SMOs. We then examine the sources of support for these organizations, highlighting the influence of benefactor organizations on SMO viability and tactics. Employing qualitative comparative analysis, we identify three resource configurations among the viable SMOs and find that certain resource types contributed more than others to viability. Support from benefactors also ensured viability of these organizations without moderating their tactics. We explain the implications of these findings for understanding the roles that resources and sponsorship or patronage play in the careers of SMOs and the relevance of resources, sponsorship, and organization to social movements of the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]