Collective identity, rationality and collective political action

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Dieter Opp
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Extended Version ◽  
Standard Assumption ◽  
Feedback Effects

This paper explores the effects of collective identity on protest behavior by applying an extended version of the theory of collective action. Hypotheses are derived about the following questions that are rarely addressed in the literature: Are there situations in which collective identity diminishes protest? The standard assumption is that collective identity increases protest behavior. Does collective identity have indirect effects – via the determinants of protest – on protest behavior? Are there feedback effects of protest participation on collective identity? The hypotheses that address these questions are tested with a three-wave panel study. Three findings are of particular interest: (1) the overall direct additive effects of identity on protest behavior are statistically not significant. (2) Evidence is provided that in solidary groups identity does not raise but reduce protest. (3) The major effects of identity are indirect: identity influences the determinants of protest.

Promoting or Preventing Change Through Political Participation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Klandermans
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Group Efficacy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Social Level

This chapter examines political participation as a unique capacity possessed by humans that “fundamentally shapes a human being.” It argues that without political participation, we would lose much of our identity as “political actors” who seek to influence and change the world they live in. The chapter first explains what political participation is and why some people participate in collective political action while others do not. It then considers a range of individual factors that motivate political participation, such as ideology, identity, emotion, and instrumentality, and the role of social-level factors including social networks. It also describes a social identity model of collective action (SIMCA), which suggests that affective injustice (e.g., group-based anger), perceived group efficacy, and politicized collective identity predict engagement in collective action. The chapter concludes by discussing moral obligation as a motive for participating in political collective action.

scholarly journals Activismo Transmedia. Narrativas de participación para el cambio social. Entre la comunicación creativa y el media art

Obra digital ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Ortuño Mengual ◽  
Virginia Villaplana Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Participatory Media ◽  
Network Culture ◽  
Activist Groups ◽  
Media Practices

El artículo propone una revisión de prácticas activistas mediáticas, origen de las formas participativas de la narrativa transmedia, en relación al lugar y la acción política. La implantación de las redes digitales ha permitido el desarrollo de una cultura red. Se analizan prácticas artísticas de colectivos activistas y las nuevas propuestas desarrolladas con dispositivos móviles vía GPS y webdoc. En este sentido, se proponen tres líneas discursivas sobre el activismo transmedia: las aperturas narrativas del territorio y la ciudadanía, las políticas de acción y representación colectiva, y finalmente, la expresión de la experiencia mediante el testimonio.Transmedia activism. Participatory narratives for social changeAbstractWe propose a review of media activist practices giving rise to participative transmedia narratives in relation to political action and location. Digital networks have allowed the development of a network culture. We discuss artistic practices of activist groups and new proposals made via GPS with mobile devices and web documentaries. We identify three kinds of discourse in transmedia activism: narratives that open up to the regionand its inhabitants, policies for collective action and representation, and the expression of experiences through witness.Keywords: Transmedia, activism, participatory media practices, discursive communication, creative communication, social artpp. 123-144

scholarly journals Liberalism, Governmentality and Counter-Conduct; An Introduction to Foucauldian Analytics of Liberal Civil Society Notions

2015 ◽  
pp. 8-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miikka Pyykkönen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Potential Field ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one hand civil society is a field where different kinds of technologies of governance meet the lives and wills of groups and individuals, but on the other hand it is a potential field of what Foucault called ‘counter-conduct’ – for both collective action and individual political action.

Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Seth Levine
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
The Face

This chapter considers the prospects for political change in the face of communicative barriers to collective action. It begins to address this question by identifying several of the most well-known historical and recent moments in which there was large-scale mobilization on some economic insecurity issues. This discussion, in concert with the empirical findings in this book, helps clarify the prospects for political action (and policy change) on these issues. The chapter then uses the findings from the book to identify three types of people that are most likely to become active. It also talks about the implications of having this (narrower) set of people active as opposed to the full range of people that find the issues to be important. It concludes by reiterating how self-undermining rhetoric is a broad concept that can apply in many different situations beyond those considered herein.

Whatever Happened to The Women's Movement?

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Staggenborg ◽  
Verta Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
International Expansion ◽  
Movement Organizations

Analyses of the women's movement that focus on its "waves" and theories of social movements that focus on contentious politics have encouraged the view that the women's movement is in decline. Employing alternative perspectives on social movements, we show that the women's movement continues to thrive. This is evidenced by organizational maintenance and growth, including the international expansion of women's movement organizations; feminism within institutions and other social movements; the spread of feminist culture and collective identity; and the variety of the movement's tactical repertoires. Moreover, the movement remains capable of contentious collective action. We argue for research based on broader conceptions of social movements as well as the contentious politics approach.

BEYOND THE DREAMERS: COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH MOVEMENT*

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Tara R. Fiorito
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Undocumented Youth ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Discursive Positioning ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Collective Actor

Based on longitudinal ethnographic research, this article explores what the concepts of collective identity and subjectivity contribute in the case of the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles. I show that while the collective identity of the Dreamers has been used to organize undocumented youth from different backgrounds and regions into a recognizable collective actor successfully engaged in political action, nowadays the Dreamer identity is a matter of contention among undocumented youth. I show that the basis of subjective sharing and belonging is now less derived from the collective identity of the Dreamer and more from the shared subjectivities of undocumented youths, constituted by embodied experiences of exclusion, stigmatization, and empowerment. I thus argue for a stronger engagement with the concept of subjectivity in social movement research, as it offers a greater understanding of the profound effects of embodied and affective experiences of negative discursive positioning, trauma, emancipation, and healing.

scholarly journals ‘To Act upon one's Time …’ From the impulse to resist to global political strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Müller
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Political Actions

This article reflects on the possibilities for political action emerging out of quotidian engagements. Following controversies on the patenting of seeds in Canada and globally within the Committee for Food Security I explore what gave the impulse for political resistance in these different arenas. How did collective action emerge and how did it sustain itself? Three political concepts are important for understanding the political actions that I observed: Eigen-Sinn, empathy and strategy. These allowed me to follow and theorize political engagements. I first reflect on the potential to resist as a capacity of all human beings, because they have Eigen-Sinn: the capacity to attribute their own meanings to things, and act in their own self-interested way according to the meaning given. Self-interested action can only become political, however, when humans go beyond their strictly individual interests and empathize with others (humans and nonhumans), what Adorno described as getting into ‘live contact with the warmth of things’. Finally, I discuss how collective action can become not only possible, but also effective, by building and defending a space for strategic action.

Collective action as narrativity and praxis: Theory and application to Hong Kong’s urban protest movements

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 260-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Lejano ◽  
Ernest Chui ◽  
Timothy Lam ◽  
Jovial Wong
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Democratic Community ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Street Protest ◽  
Urban Protest

Policy scholars need to better describe the diversity of actors and interests that forge collective political action through nonformal social networks. The authors find extant theories of collective action to only partially explain such heterogeneity, which is exemplified by the urban protest movements in Hong Kong. A new concept, that of the narrative-network, appears better able to describe movements chiefly characterized by heterogeneity. Instead of simple commonalities among members, a relevant property is the plurivocity of narratives told by members of the coalition. Analyzing ethnographic interviews of members of the movement, the authors illustrate the utility of narrative-network analysis in explaining the complex and multiple motivations behind participation. Narrativity and the shared act of narration, within an inclusive and democratic community, are part of what sustains the movement. The research further develops the theory of the narrative-network, which helps explain the rise of street protest in Hong Kong as an emergent, alternative form of civic engagement.

Does gradual retirement have better outcomes than abrupt retirement? Results from an Australian panel study

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 667-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID DE VAUS ◽  
YVONNE WELLS ◽  
HAL KENDIG ◽  
SUSAN QUINE
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Positive And Negative Affect ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Employment Practices ◽  
Social Wellbeing ◽  
Retirement Decisions ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Gradual Retirement

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom promotes gradual retirement rather than an abrupt end to the working life. This paper compares the outcomes of abrupt and gradual retirement one and three years after the transition to retirement began using data from an Australian panel study. The outcomes included changes in health, positive and negative affect, wellbeing and marital cohesion. For many outcomes there was no difference between gradual and abrupt retirements, but those who retired abruptly were more likely to rate their health as having deteriorated and more likely to report better adjustment to retirement. Control over retirement decisions was also explored; it emerged as a more important factor in retirement wellbeing than whether the transition was gradual or abrupt. The absence of interaction or additive effects between the retirement pathway and the level of control over the process confirmed this result. Thus there is no simple answer to the question in the title. Retiring gradually allows time for people to make changes to their lifestyle, but having control over the timing and manner of leaving work had a greater positive impact on psychological and social wellbeing, and this persisted three years after retirement. The findings suggest that policies and employment practices that promote employees' control of their retirement decisions will enhance wellbeing in later life and facilitate longer workforce participation.

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