Social Movement Communities and Cycles of Protest: The Emergence and Maintenance of a Local Women's Movement

1998 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Staggenborg
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Cycles Of Protest

Losing Common Ground: Feminists, Conservatives and Public Policy in Canada during the Mulroney Years

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Bashevkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Action ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The United Kingdom

AbstractThis article examines relations between organized feminism and the federal Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, focusing on elements of the Canadian women's movement that targeted federal policy change from 1984 to 1993. In questioning the main priorities of both sides and the potential for conflict between them, the discussion uses the conceptual literature on social movement evolution as a base. It assesses formal decision making across five major policy sectors identified by Canadian feminism and presents the perspectives of movement activists on the Mulroney period. Although comparisons with policy action under the Thatcher and Reagan governments indicate a more pro-feminist record in Canada than the United Kingdom or the United States, Canadian materials suggest a narrowing of common ground between the organized women's movement and federal elites during the Mulroney years.

Informal Organizations as Agents of Change: Notes From The Contemporary Women's Movement in India

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manisha Desai
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Cultural Innovation ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Cultural Goals ◽  
Survival Pattern ◽  
Movement Organizations

Some social movement scholars suggest a division of outcomes between bureaucratic and collective organizations. Bureaucratic organizations are more likely to achieve political and mobilization outcomes because of their ability to mobilize resources, while the structural flexibility of smaller collective organizations is more suitable for cultural goals. Others argue that women's movement organizations incorporate elements of both bureaucratic and collective structures. This article brings new empirical evidence from the women's movement in India to the debate. Based on an analysis of two informally structured movement organizations, it demonstrates that informal organizations can achieve both political outcomes as well as cultural outcomes. In India, they did so by working at two levels: the national or regional level, mobilizing action with other social movement organizations to achieve political goals; and the local level, mobilizing consensus to initiate cultural innovation. Low cost, informal structures also facilitated a punctuated survival pattern marked by periods of activity alternating with inactivity.

Social Movement Campaigns: Mobilization and Outcomes in the Montreal Women's Movement Community

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Staggenborg ◽  
Josée Lecomte
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Community Resources ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Movement Organizations

Social movement campaigns help create the networks and collective identities needed to build social movement communities, which in turn support subsequent collective campaigns. This article examines the interactions between movement communities and campaigns using the case of the 2000 World March of Women in Montreal. We find that movement community resources and networks, mobilized by leaders in stable movement organizations and institutions, support campaigns. Centralization, diversity, and size of movement communities affect campaign mobilization. Movement campaigns alter movement communities by creating bonds that form the basis for subsequent campaigns and by keeping movement communities politicized. Prior campaigns generate public consciousness, put issues on the public agenda, create new frames and discourse, forge connections to new constituents, and leave behind new networks, coalition organizations, leaders, and activists. Our research contributes to an understanding of the connections between the submerged networks of social movement communities and the contentious politics of movement campaigns.

The Complexity of Decline: Explaining the Marginalization of the East German Women's Movement

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Kamenitsa
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Movement Theory ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
East German ◽  
Key Dimensions

The case of the East German women's movement is used to examine a understudied and undertheorized area of social movement research, movement decline. The political marginalization of this movement in 1990, only a few months after its promising beginning, can best be explained by integrating three fundamental concepts in social movement theory: political opportunity, mobilizing structures, and framing processes. Based on the analysis of movement documents and forty interviews with women's movement activists, it is demonstrated that none of these approaches by itself is sufficient to explain the decline of the East German women's movement. Instead, the symbiotic interrelationships among political opportunities, framing, and mobilizing structures are crucial to understanding movement decline. The analysis identifies key dimensions on which these three factors interact, and suggests that they can be used to explain other cases of movement decline, particularly in political transitions.

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