The Future of Social Movement Research

Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes

2013

Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Conny Roggeband, and Bert Klandermans, Editors

An up-to-date and comprehensive overview of current and future social movement scholarship

In The Future of Social Movement Research, some of the most influential scholars in the field provide a wide-ranging understanding of how social movements arise and persist, engendering unanswered questions pointing to new theoretical strands and fields of research. The resulting work is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in scope, constituting the most comprehensive overview of the dynamics of social movements available.

This is a major, very important work which brings together the leading lights in the international, interdisciplinary, invisible college of social movement scholars. The book combines thoughtful essays on the state of the art in the study of contentious politics with grounded speculation on the many still unanswered or incompletely answered questions. The authors do an excellent job of distinguishing what is based on solid empirical research and what would require additional research to answer with confidence. This does not prevent them from suggesting hypotheses and impressions which are based on reasonable and probable extensions of what we already know.

William Gamson, Boston College

Are the dynamics of contention changing? This is the question confronted by the contributors of this volume, among the most influential scholars in the field of social movements. The answers, arriving at a time of extraordinary worldwide turmoil, not only provide a wide-ranging and varied understanding of how social movements arise and persist, but also engender unanswered questions, pointing to new theoretical strands and fields of research.

The Future of Social Movement Research asks: How are the dynamics of contention shaped by globalization? By societies that are becoming increasingly more individualized and diverse? By the spread of new communication technologies such as social media, cell phones, and the Internet? Why do some movements survive while others dissipate? Do local and global networks differ in nature? The authors’ essays explore such questions with reference to changes in three domains of contention: the demand of protest (changes in grievances and identities), the supply of protest (changes in organizations and networks), and how these changes affect the dynamics of mobilization. In doing so, they theorize and make empirically insightful how globalization, individualization, and virtualization create new grievances, new venues for action, new action forms, and new structures of contention.

The resulting work—brought together through engaging discussions and debates between the contributors—is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in scope, constituting the most comprehensive overview of the dynamics of social movements available today.

Contributors: Marije Boekkooi, VU-U, Amsterdam; Pang Ching Bobby Chen, U of California, Merced; Donatella della Porta, European U Institute; Mario Diani, U of Trento, Italy; Jan Willem Duyvendak, U of Amsterdam; Myra Marx Ferree, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Beth Gharrity Gardner; Ashley Gromis; Swen Hutter, U of Munich; Ruud Koopmans, WZB, Berlin; Hanspeter Kriesi, U of Zurich; Nonna Mayer, National Centre for European Studies; Doug McAdam, Stanford U; John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State U; Debra Minkoff, Barnard College, Columbia U; Alice Motes; Pamela E. Oliver, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Francesca Polletta, U of California, Irvine; Jacomijne Prins, VU-U, Amsterdam; Patrick Rafail, Tulane U; Christopher Rootes, U of Kent, Canterbury; Dieter Rucht, Free U of Berlin; David A. Snow, U of California, Irvine; Sarah A. Soule, Stanford U; Suzanne Staggenborg, U of Pittsburgh; Sidney Tarrow, Cornell U; Verta Taylor, U of California, Santa Barbara; Marjoka van Doorn; Martijn van Zomeren, U of Groningen; Stefaan Walgrave, U of Antwerp; Saskia Welschen.

Jacquelien van Stekelenburg is associate professor of sociology at VU-University, Amsterdam.

Conny Roggeband is a lecturer in the social sciences and coordinator of the PhD program of Semisud, Ecuador.

Bert Klandermans is professor of applied psychology at VU-University, Amsterdam.

This is a major, very important work which brings together the leading lights in the international, interdisciplinary, invisible college of social movement scholars. The book combines thoughtful essays on the state of the art in the study of contentious politics with grounded speculation on the many still unanswered or incompletely answered questions. The authors do an excellent job of distinguishing what is based on solid empirical research and what would require additional research to answer with confidence. This does not prevent them from suggesting hypotheses and impressions which are based on reasonable and probable extensions of what we already know.

William Gamson, Boston College

Coverage of meaning and commitment, blended and changing identities, transitions (including migration) and blurred boundaries in the future of the globalized world are fascinating and thought provoking.

CHOICE

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Changing Dynamics of Contention
Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Conny Roggeband
Part I. Grievances and Identities: The Demand Side of Participation
1. The Dynamics of Demand
Bert Klandermans
2. Is the Internet Creating New Reasons to Protest?
Francesca Polletta, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes
3. Social Movement Participation in the Global Society: Identity, Networks, and Emotions
Verta Taylor
4. “Protest against whom?”: The Role of Collective Meaning Making in Politicization
Marjoka van Doorn, Jacomijne Prins, and Saskia Welschen
Discussion: Opening the Black Box of Dynamics in Theory and Research on the Demand Side of Protest
Martijn van Zomeren

Part II. Organizations and Networks: The Supply Side of Contention
5. The Changing Supply Side of Mobilization: Questions for Discussion
Conny Roggeband and Jan Willem Duyvendak
6. Bringing Organizational Studies Back into Social Movement Scholarship
Sarah A. Soule
7. Organization and Community in Social Movements
Suzanne Staggenborg
8. Organizational Fields and Social Movement Dynamics
Mario Diani
9. Social Movement Structures in Action: Conceptual Propositions and Empirical Illustration
Dieter Rucht
Discussion: The Changing Supply Side of Mobilization: Impressions on a Theme
Debra Minkoff

Part III. Dynamics of Mobilization
10. Changing Mobilization of Individual Activists?
Stefaan Walgrave
11. Mobilizing for Change in a Changing Society
Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Marije Boekkooi
12. Ethnicity, Repression, and Fields of Action in Movement Mobilization
Pamela E. Oliver
13. Identity Dilemmas, Discursive Fields, Identity Work, and Mobilization: Clarifying the Identity/Movement Nexus
David A. Snow
14. Movements of the Left, Movements of the Right Reconsidered
Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi
Discussion: Mobilization and the Changing and Persistent Dynamics of Political Participation
Christopher Rootes

Part IV. The Changing Context of Contention
15. The End of the Social Movement as We Know It?: Adaptive Challenges in Changed Contexts
Ruud Koopmans
16. Social Movements and Elections: Toward a Broader Understanding of the Political Context of Contention
Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow
17. Social Movements, Power, and Democracy: New Challenges, New Challengers, New Theories?
Donatella della Porta
18. Recent Trends in Public Protest in the U.S.A.: The Social Movement Society Thesis Revisited
John D. McCarthy, Patrick Rafail, and Ashley Gromis
19. The “Contentious French” Revisited
Nonna Mayer
Discussion: Meaning and Movements in the New Millennium: Gendering Democracy
Myra Marx Ferree
Afterword
Bert Klandermans

Contributors
Index