Social Movements
Spring 2010
Michael Young
Thursday 12-3PM
Burdine 214
This class provides a general introduction to social movement theory. We begin with conceptual and theoretical issues: What are social movements? How are movements related to other forms of collective behavior or collective action. Must they be anti-institutional or political? How long have they been around? Are they a modern phenomenon?
We then look at three major theoretical approaches to explaining movement emergence, persistence, demise, and impact: 1) collective behaviorism; 2) resource mobilization and political process theory, and 3) new social movement theory. This review of social movement theory ends with the current state of the American sociology of social movements and social protest. We will discuss the collapse of the political process or contentious politics paradigm and new trends in theorizing
The course will also provide a closer look at the sociological analysis of particular social movements. For the last third of the semester, we will try to put to the test the theories we discuss in the first part of the course. The empirical focus of the second half of the course is something we can tinker with to fit our collective interests. This syllabus includes movements that I know something about but we can add and subtract from these: religious movements, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the New Left, and feminism. Other topics we might consider: Latin American movements, LGBT movements, labor movements, transnational movements, the Chicano/a movement, black power movement, Populism, &ct.
Students are required to do the reading (no small task), be prepared for class discussions and participate. They must also lead the discussion for one week of reading, and write a term paper due at the end of the semester. For those of you who took my theory class, you know what is expected for leading the discussion. Before class, a list of questions should be circulated to everyone in the seminar. For each question, assign someone to be responsible for getting the discussion of that question started. The questions should range over the entire scope of the readings with an eye to covering the most important issues raised. We will begin each class with this discussion of questions. Depending on how thorough our discussion is, I may or may not close-out the class meeting in a more lecture format to cover topics not touched upon.
At some point during the first half of the course, I will ask people to briefly talk about the topic they plan to write a term paper on. If we have time, toward the end of the course I will ask people to briefly discuss the main argument/focus of their term paper.
All readings will be either on Blackboard or available online through the library. Depending on the topics for the last third of the course, students may need to buy a book or two.
¨Week 1. (Jan. 21)
Introduction
SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY
¨Week 2. (Jan 28)
What are social movements? How are they related to other forms of collective action? How should we go about studying movements?
Smelser, Neil. 1961. Theory of Collective Behavior, chapter 1, pp. 1-23
Traugott, Mark. 1978. “Reconceiving Social Movements.” Social Problems 26: 38-49.
Touraine, Alain. 1985. “Introduction to the Study of Social Movements.” Social Research 52: 749-787. (especially pp. 749-760).
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement, introduction and chapter 1, pp. 1-27.
Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes, introduction and chapter 1, pp. 1-41
Della Porta, Donatella and Mario Diani. 1999, Social Movements, chapter 1., pp. 1-23.
Gitlin, Todd. 1987. The Sixties. Part II, chapters 4 and 5. This book is half memoire and half history. Pay attention to the way Gitlin speaks about “the movement.” Look for sentences like “the Movement had already grown sick of repitition”. What is the movement for Gitlin?
¨Week 3. (Feb. 4) ADRIAN
Before the Sixties (1960s, that is): spontaneous, emergent, and emotional collective behavior
LeBon, The Crowd. (selections on Bb)
Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. (selections on Bb)
Blumer, 1939. “Collective Behavior.” In R. E. Park (ed.), An Outline of the Principles of Sociology. New York: Barnes and Noble, pp. 221-280. (on Bb)
Turner, Ralph H. and Surace, Samuel J. 1956. “Zoot-Suiters and Mexicans: Symbols in Crowd Behavior” American Journal of Sociology 62: 14-20
Gusfield, Joseph R. 1963. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press (selections on Bb).
Hortencia Jimenez et al. 2010. “It Just Happened: Anxiety, Defiance, and Spontaneity in the 2006 Walkouts”. Unpublished paper (on Bb).
¨Week 4. (Feb. 11)
After the Sixties: rational and organized collective action and the mobilization of resources
Oberschall, Anthony. 1973. Social Conflict and Social Movements. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. (Selections)
McCarthy, John D. and Mayer Zald. 1973. The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization. (Republished in 1987 in the Appendix of Social Movements in the Organizational Society. New Brunswick, NY: Transaction Books.)
Tilly, Charles. 1975. “Revolutions and Collective Violence.” Chapter 5 in Handbook of Political Science vol. 3 (eds. Greenstein and Polsby). Reading, MA: Addison and Wesley.
Tilly, From Mobilizationt to Revolution, selections
McCarthy, John D. and Mayer Zald. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 82: 1212-1241.
Morris, Aldon. 1981. “Black Southern Student Sit-In Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organization.” American Sociological Review. 46 744-767. 1981.
McPhail, Clark. 1991. Myth of the madding crowd. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. (selections on Bb)
¨Week 5. (Feb. 18) MARCOS
Political Process Models: rational, organized, and political collective action
McAdam, Doug. 2000. Political Process and The Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1-4)
Kitschelt, Herbert P. 1986. “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.” British Journal of Political Science 16: 57-85.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. (Chapters 2-4)
Tilly, Charles. 1995. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Chapter 1)
¨Week 6. (Feb 24) ESTHER
New Social Movements: a different view from across the Atlantic
Touraine, Alain. The Voice and the Eye (selections on Bb).
Castells, Manuel. 1983. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chapters 12-15).
Cohen, Jean. 1985. “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements.” Social Research 52: 663-716.
Touraine, Alain. 1985. “Introduction to the Study of Social Movements.” Social Research 52: 749-787. (Especially pp. 760-787).
Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Chapters 2-5)
¨Week 7. (Feb. 27) AMINA
The Cultural Turn in America: frame analysis, cultural idioms, and biography.
Goffman, Erving. “Frame Analysis.” Chapter 12 in Goffman Reader (eds.) Lemert and Branaman. Oxford: Blackwell.
Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford. 1986. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.”.American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 4. pp. 464-481.
Benford, Robert D. 1993. “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement” Social Forces, Vol. 71: 677-701.
Hunt, Scott A., Robert D. Benford, and David A. Snow. 1994. “Identity Fields: Framing Processes and the Social Construction of Movement Identities.” Chapter 8 in New Social Movements.
William H. Sewell, Jr., "Ideologies and social revolutions: Reflections on the French Case," in Social Revolutions in the Modern World, ed. Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Theda Skocpol, "Cultural idioms and political ideologies in the revolutionary reconstruction of state power: A rejoinder to Sewell," in Social Revolutions in the Modern World, ed. Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 200.
Jasper, James. 1996. Art of Moral Protest. Chicago. (selection on Bb)
Polletta, Francesca. 1998. “‘It Was like a Fever ...’: Narrative and identity in social protest. Social Problems 45 (2):137-159.
Isaac, Larry. 2008. “Movement of Movements: Culture Moves in the Long Civil Rights Struggle.” Social Forces vol. 87, no. 1, pp. 33-63.
¨Week 8. (March 11.) BOB
Trouble in Paradigm: return of the repressed (Bob)
Piven, Frances Fox and Richard A. Cloward. 1992. “Normalizing Collective Protest.” Pp. 301-325 in Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds.), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press
Goodwin, Jeff. 1997. “The Libidinal Constitution of a High-Risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion, 1946 to 1954.” American Sociological Review 62:53-69
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 1997. “Toward and Integrated Perspective on Social Movements and Revolution.” Chapter 6 in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure (eds.) Lichbach and Zuckerman. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McTeam. 2000. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge. (selection on Bb).
Goodwin, Jeff and James Jasper. 1999. “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory.” Sociological Forum 14: 27-54
¨Week 9. (March 25) LINDSAY
Emotions and Social Movements
Goodwin, Jeff, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta. 2000. The return of the repressed: The fall and rise of emotions in social movement theory. Mobilization 5 (1):65-84
Flam, Helena. 1990. “Emotional ‘Man’: I. The Emotional ‘Man’ and the Problem of Collective Action. International Sociolgy 5(1): pp. 39-56.
Aminzade, Ron and Doug McAdam. 2001. “Emotions and Contentious Politics.” Pp. 14-50 in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Eds. Ronald R. Aminzande et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gould, Deborah. 2009. Moving Politics: Emotions and ACT-UP’s Fight Against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (selections on Bb)
Reger, Jo. 2004. “Organizational ‘Emotion Work’ throough Consciousness Raising. Qualitative Sociology. 27 no. 2: 205-22.
¨Week 10. (April 1) DANIEL
Do movements matter? Do they make an impact?
Amenta, Edwin. When Movement Matters. (selections on Bb)
Andrews, Kenneth T. 2004. Freedom is a Constant Struggle (selections on Bb)
McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. (selections on Bb)
¨Week 11. (April 8) PAM
Religious Origins of Social Movements : Liberation Theology
Michael Walzer, Revolution of the Saints
Christian Smith, 1996. Disruptive Religion Routledge
Moaddel, Mansoor. 1992. Ideology and Episodic Discourse: The Case of the Iranian Revolution. American Sociological Review 57(3): 353-379.
Kurzman, Charles. 1996. Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979. American Sociological Review 61(1): 153-170.
Young, Michael. 2007. Bearing Witness Against Sin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
¨Week 12. (April 15) DEAN
Civil Rights Movement
McAdam, Political Process and The Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 4-7)
Morris, Aldon. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press. (Chapters 1-3).
Arsenault, Raymond, 2006. Freedom Riders. New York: Oxford.
¨Week 13. (April 22) MATT, JORGE
The New Left
Breinis, Wini. Community and Organization in the New Left: The Great Refusal
Gitlin, Tod. The Sixties
Rossinow, Doug. Politics of Authenticity
¨Week 14. (April 29) LINDSEY AND EMILY
Latin American activism
.
Auyero and Swistun, Flammable
Others?
¨Week. 15. (May 6)
Feminism
Whittier, Nancy. 1995. Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement. Philadelphia: Temple
Taylor, Verta. 1996. Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression. New York: Routledge, (Introduction, chapter 2, chapters 4-6).