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

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Gaby ◽  
Neal Caren
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Term Outcome ◽  
Long Term Outcome ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.

Envisioning Land Seizure

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wetzel
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
A Site ◽  
Movement Organizations

Although land seizure is designed to be an evocative and provocative tactic for social movement organizations, how are groups’ members, goals, and claims portrayed in subsequent media coverage? Focusing on the Indians of All Tribes’ occupation of Alcatraz Island, this article qualitatively analyzes photographic representations of protest in three national newspapers. Images published during the occupation (1969 to 1971) represent Indian activists as lazing or inactive, politically ineffectual, and invisible. When foregrounding contention, photographs showed negatively affected non-Natives or Indians being arrested. By contrast, images published after the occupation (1972 to 2000) generally concentrate on the physical space of the island as a tourist destination rather than a site of conflict. Social scientists should critically assess the media’s role in shaping collective perceptions about social movements through visual images, particularly when tactics are designed to garner media attention.

Exploiting a Crisis: Abortion Activism and the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Organizations

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”

scholarly journals The Organizational Trace of an Insurgent Moment

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311770065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam D. Reich
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
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

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.

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

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lahusen
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Level Structure ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Single European Act ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Movement Organizations

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

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlene Stein
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Social Movement Framing ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
Gay Movement ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.

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

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Mulvaney ◽  
Anna Zivian
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Genetically Engineered ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
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.

Social Movements in Late 20th-Century Ecuador and Bolivia

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Becker
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
Movement Organizations

Both Ecuador and Bolivia have gained a reputation for powerful social movements that have repeatedly challenged entrenched political and economic interests that have controlled the countries since their independence from Spain almost two hundred years ago. A wealthy and powerful minority of European descendant landowners ruled the countries to the exclusion of the majority population of impoverished Indigenous farm workers. Repeated well-organized challenges to exclusionary rule in the late 20th century shifted policies and opened political spaces for previously marginalized people. Social movement organizations also altered their language to meet new realities, including incorporating identities as ethnic groups and Indigenous nationalities to advance their agenda. Their efforts contributed to a significant leftward shift in political discourse that led to the election of presidents Evo Morales and Rafael Correa.

Coalitions and The Development of The Global Environmental Movement: A Double-Edged Sword

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Transnational Social Movements ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Environmental Social Movement

Censuses reveal an increasing prominence of coalition organizations within transnational social movements. However, the causes and implications of this change are unclear. Using original data on a population of transnational environmental social movement organizations, this research shows that coalition presence is a double-edged sword. While greater numbers of coalitions suggest movement expansion, empirical evidence suggests that this rise makes foundings of new organizations less likely.

The Strategy of Normalization in the South African Lgbt Movement

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Currier
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
The South ◽  
Ethnographic Interview ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
Newspaper Data ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Lgbt Movement

The article theorizes and presents normalization as a movement-level strategy available to social movements dealing with an internal threat. By defining themselves against an internal threat's abnormality through a process of normalization, social movement organizations assert how they and the movement operate within socially and politically respectable parameters. Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and newspaper data, I show how mainstream South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement organizations deployed normalization to marginalize and expel an internal threat, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, between 1998 and 2006.

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