Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces for Politically Oriented Consumerist Actions—Nationally, Transnationally, and Locally

Predatory Lending ◽

Grassroots Organizations ◽

Political Consumerism ◽

Consumer Organizations ◽

Ethical Criteria ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

The Relationship

This chapter discusses the relationship between social movements and political consumerism. Besides traditional consumer organizations that seek to protect customers from corporate abuse (such as unsafe products, predatory lending, or false advertising), political consumer practices have become increasingly employed to achieve diverse political and social goals. Calls to citizens to take action in their role as consumers have been made by social movement organizations of various types, either to build up transnational awareness so as to step up pressure on corporations or to facilitate the purchase of goods/services that meet specific ethical criteria. Along with large-scale boycotting and global fair trade initiatives, market-based actions have entered the repertoire of a number of local grassroots organizations seeking bottom-up solutions for sustainable development, within which the act of shopping moves beyond a form of individuals taking responsibility to become a tool for constructing collective, citizenship-driven alternative styles of provisioning.

From grassroots to digital ties: A case study of a political consumerism movement

Journal of Consumer Culture ◽

10.1177/1469540514526280 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 236-253 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Paolo Parigi ◽

Rachel Gong

Keyword(s):

Community Organizing ◽

Online Survey ◽

Grassroots Organizations ◽

Political Consumerism ◽

Network Ties ◽

Social Network Ties ◽

The Individual ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

And Behavior

New grassroots organizations that target ethical consumer choices and behavior represent a departure from traditional social movement organizations. In this article, we study the activists of one of these organizations and show that social network ties formed mainly online greatly reinforce commitment toward the goals of the movement. We suggest that online ties, that is, digital ties, are important for political consumerism movements because they create audiences for private actions. It is because of the presence of these audiences that the individual participants can reinterpret their actions into public ones. We used an online survey to collect data on the users of the Transition US social website on Ning.com. Over half of the respondents have experiences with political activism. However, their responses indicate that they are dissatisfied with traditional means of political participation (e.g. rallies) and prefer non-contentious collective actions (e.g. local gardening). Respondents perceive community organizing to be the most effective way to bring about social change, deprioritizing connections to local government. Furthermore, respondents who formed digital ties with other activists were significantly more likely than respondents who had no ties with other activists to adopt consumer changes consistent with the goals of the movement. We interpreted this finding as an indicator that digital ties share some of the characteristics of strong ties, and we explored this similarity in this article.

Onto the Street and Into the Movement: Understanding how Social Movements Expand their Reach through Large-Scale Protest Events

10.31219/osf.io/dyztw ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dana R Fisher ◽

William Yagatich ◽

Anya Galli Robertson

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Large Scale ◽

Computer Mediated Communication ◽

Personal Networks ◽

Mediated Communication ◽

Computer Mediated ◽

History Of ◽

How do social movements broaden their societal reach and mobilize more participants? To date, research has focused on social networks, organizational coalitions, and computer-mediated communication to aid in mobilization, but most research assesses these mechanisms in relative isolation. This paper integrates these perspectives to explore the ways social movements expand their ranks through large-scale street demonstrations and marches. Analyzing data collected through random surveys of participants at two of the largest demonstrations in the history of the climate movement—the Copenhagen Climate March in 2009 and the People’s Climate March in 2014—we assess how the movement expanded. Consistent with the literature on protest mobilization, we show that the climate movement increased participation at these events via personal networks, organizational coalitions, and computer-mediated channels of communication. In addition, we find clear evidence that large-scale protest events like the People’s Climate March are bringing new people, including passive members of social movement organizations and disengaged sympathizers, to the streets and into the movement. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of our findings on social movement expansion through large-scale demonstrations and outlining opportunities for future study.

The Organizational Trace of an Insurgent Moment

Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World ◽

10.1177/2378023117700651 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 237802311770065 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Adam D. Reich

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

Social Movement ◽

York City ◽

Occupy Wall Street ◽

Wall Street ◽

Formal Organizations ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

The Relationship

The relationship between social movements and formal organizations has long been a concern to scholars of collective action. Many have argued that social movement organizations (SMOs) provide resources that facilitate movement emergence, while others have highlighted the ways in which SMOs institutionalize or coopt movement goals. Through an examination of the relationship between Occupy Wall Street and the field of SMOs in New York City, this article illustrates a third possibility: that a moment of insurgency becomes a more enduring movement in part through the changes it induces in the relations among the SMOs in its orbit.

Reinventing the Concept of Civic Culture

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195377767.013.8 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Paul Lichterman

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Collective Action ◽

Social Movement ◽

Voluntary Associations ◽

Civic Culture ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

Religious Associations ◽

This article proposes a new and better concept of civic culture and shows how it can benefit sociology. It argues that a better concept of civic culture gives us a stronger, comparative, and contextual perspective on voluntary associations—the conventional American empirical referent for “civic”—while also improving our sociologies of religion and social movements. The article first considers the classic perspective on civic culture and its current incarnations in order to show why we need better conceptual groundwork than they have offered. It then introduces the alternative approach, which is rooted in a pragmatist understanding of collective action and both builds on and departs in some ways from newly prominent understandings of culture in sociology. This approach’s virtues are illustrated with ethnographic examples from a variety of volunteer groups, social movement organizations, and religious associations.

THE RISE OF INEQUALITY: HOW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SHAPE DISCURSIVE FIELDS*

Mobilization An International Quarterly ◽

10.17813/1086-671x-21-4-413 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 413-429 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Sarah Gaby ◽

Neal Caren

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Limited Attention ◽

Wall Street ◽

Term Outcome ◽

Long Term Outcome ◽

Occupy Movement ◽

Social movement scholars have considered several political and cultural consequences of social movements, but have paid limited attention to whether and how social movements shape discourse. We develop a theory of discursive eruption, referring to the ability of radical movements to initially ignite media coverage but not control the content once other actors— particularly those that can take advantage of journalistic norms—enter the discourse. We hold that one long-term outcome of radical social movements is the ability to alter discursive fields through mechanisms such as increasing the salience and content of movement-based issues. We examine the way movements shape discourse by focusing on newspaper articles about inequality before, during, and after the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We analyze changes in the salience and content of coverage as well as shifts in actor standing and influence. Using 7,024 articles from eight newspapers, we find that the OWS movement increased media attention to inequality, shifting the focus of the discourse toward movement-based issue areas (e.g., the middle class and minimum wage). Further, we find that compared to the pre-OWS period, the influence of social movement organizations and think tanks rose in discourse on inequality. In addition, the discourse on inequality became more highly politicized as a result of the Occupy movement. These findings highlight the importance of social movements in shaping discourse and indicate that social movement scholars should further consider discursive changes as a consequence of social movements.

Transnational Social Movements

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.491 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Kenneth A. Gould ◽

Tammy L. Lewis

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Indigenous Rights ◽

Theoretical Development ◽

Political Opportunity ◽

Transnational Movements ◽

Transnational Social Movements ◽

National Movements ◽

Transnational social movements are defined as movements wherein members in at least two nations cooperatively engage in efforts to promote or resist change beyond the bounds of their nation. Over the last 20 years, research on transnational social movements has proliferated in tandem with rapid globalization. The scholarship draws upon research conducted by sociologists and political scientists on national social movements and extends it to a global level. Similar questions and concepts applied to national or subnational movements are now applied to transnational movements: Why do they emerge? What are their processes? What are their consequences? Concepts such as political opportunity structure, which have been used to analyze the timing and outcomes of national social movement organizations’ actions, are being extended to understand how the international political arena shapes movements. The majority of work has been case specific and focused on a handful of movements: the human and indigenous rights movements, the women’s movement, the labor movement, and the environmental movement. Over time, this theorizing moved beyond borrowing concepts intended to explain local and national movements to generate concepts and propositions unique to the particularities of local-global/transnational movements. One of the limitations of the work to date is the lack of comparative work and theoretical development. The next stage of research should build upon the empirical work that has been generated by assessing propositions comparatively.

Joining the Cocktail Circuit: Social Movement Organizations at the European Union

Mobilization An International Quarterly ◽

10.17813/maiq.9.1.l06w4m11367600w4 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 55-71 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Christian Lahusen

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Level Structure ◽

Self Regulation ◽

The European Union ◽

Single European Act ◽

Multi Level ◽

Although social movement organizations have established themselves successfully on the European level, there is dispute whether the European Union is conducive or detrimental to movement politics. One view is that the EU's particular opportunity structures and styles of policy making subvert unconventional forms of action and participation, thus transforming social movements into a fragmented field of individual interest groups and lobbies. This article critically assesses this perspective. It traces these processes, showing that they were indeed part and parcel of the gradual Europeanization of social movements during the 1970s and 1980s. It then presents evidence that, in the aftermath of the Single European Act of 1986, the European movement sector began moving towards a more integrated multi-level structure. Data drawn from interviews with Euro-level movement activists and EU functionaries present a picture of this new interorganizational structure and multi-level action forms with reference to the European groups working on environmental protection, and human and social rights. It is argued that the present developments stress sectorial and cross-sectorial networking, self-regulation, and common policy deliberation.

Whose Memories? Whose Victimhood? Contests for the Holocaust Frame in Recent Social Movement Discourse

Sociological Perspectives ◽

10.2307/1389562 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 519-540 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Arlene Stein

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

World War Ii ◽

Social Movement ◽

World War ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Social Movement Framing ◽

Symbolic Resource ◽

Gay Movement ◽

Fifty years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust is being utilized as a symbolic resource by US social movements. This article investigates social movement “framing” processes, looking at the use of Holocaust rhetoric and imagery by social movement organizations and actors. I explore how competing movements, the lesbian/gay movement and the Christian right, battle over the same symbolic territory, and how the Holocaust frame is deployed by each. Two forms of symbolic appropriation in relation to the Holocaust are documented: metaphor creation and revisionism.

Sowing seeds of hope in California's fields of resistance to Pharm rice and Frankenfish

Journal of Political Ecology ◽

10.2458/v20i1.21763 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 159 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Dustin Mulvaney ◽

Anna Zivian

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Food Safety ◽

Social Movement ◽

Genetically Engineered ◽

Wild Salmon ◽

Safety Risks ◽

Genetically Engineered Organisms ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

Important Site

California has been an important site of governance on risks from genetically engineered (GE) organisms. This paper reviews California's efforts to govern the ecological and food safety risks from GE salmon and GE pharmaceutical rice. We explain how a political constellation of actors emerged to pursue precautionary policies, and we discuss the prospects for similar policies elsewhere. We find that regulation of particularly risky objects is possible in some places, particularly where social movement organizations are mobilized and the possible consequences are severe, such as with impacts to wild salmon runs or pharmaceutically contaminated foods. But such regulations may only emerge when they are inconsequential to, or aligned with, the market concerns of dominant economic interests.Key Words: genetically engineered organisms, social movements, biosafety, California.

Transnational Conservation Movement Organizations: Shaping The Protected Area Systems of Less Developed Countries

Mobilization An International Quarterly ◽

10.17813/maiq.5.1.27m21870658m8512 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 103-121 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Tammy Lewis

Keyword(s):

Developed Countries ◽

Political Opportunity ◽

Conservation Movement ◽

Human Rights Movement ◽

Transnational Mobilization ◽

Conservation Organizations ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

Developed Nations ◽

The Relationship

This article compares transnational conservation organizations' efforts in Ecuador, Chile, and Peru in order to answer several questions: Why do transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) engage in the politics of some nations but not others? Do TSMOs shape the policy decisions of less developed nations? What is the relationship between national political opportunity structure and transnational mobilization? Based upon historical data and fieldwork data, I argue that transnational conservationists can most easily affect the policies of politically "open" nations that have active domestic conservation movement organizations. In addition to influencing public policies, transnational conservationists are key actors in the development of private systems of biodiversity protection. Operating according to "lifeboat ethics," TSMOs select nations based on political criteria, while those nations most in need of conservation assistance (biodiversity hotspots) are neglected. This strategy contrasts sharply with strategies used by the transnational human rights movement.