A Movement Society Evaluated: Collective Protest in The United States, 1960-1986

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Soule ◽  
Jennifer Earl

In an attempt to make sense of shifts in the social movement sector and its relationship to conventional politics over the past forty years, some have proposed that Western nations are increasingly becoming "movement societies." Accordingly, there are four key characteristics of the movement society: (1) over time expansion of protest; (2) over time diffusion of protest; (3) over time institutionalization of protest; and (4) over time institutionalization of state responses to protest. Using newly available data on over 19,000 protest events occurring in the U.S. between 1960 and 1986, we evaluate these four claims. Our findings suggest that movement society scholars are correct in some respects: the size of protest events has grown over time, the percentage of events at which at least one social movement organization is present has increased over time, the number of distinct protest claims has increased over time, and violent forms of protest policing have decreased over time. However, our findings call into question other movement society claims: the number of protests has declined over time, fewer organizations were present at each protest event over time, fewer new groups initiated events over time, fewer new claims emerged over time, and there was more significant activity by groups on the right in the 1960s and 1970s than expected. We suggest potential explanations for some of the negative findings in an attempt to refine the movement society arguments.

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Sutton ◽  
Stephen Vertigans

European new social movement (NSM) theory was developed to describe and explain the apparently unique character of the wave of collective action that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Key characteristics of NSM theory are a post-industrial orientation, middle-class activist core, loose organizational form, use of symbolic direct actions, creation of new identities, and a "self-limiting radicalism." The theory's claims to movement innovation were later criticized by many as exaggerated and ahistorical. However, the filtering down of key NSM elements into social movement studies has led to changing definitions of what social movements actually are and opened up new opportunities for the integration of religious movements into the social movements mainstream. Using the case of radical Islam, and with particular reference to the terrorist social movement organization al-Qa'ida, this article argues that drawing on key features of NSM theory should lead to a better understanding of radical Islam as well as a more realistic explanation of its continuing development and transformation.


Daedalus ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 141 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Linda K. Kerber

The old law of domestic relations and the system known as coverture have shaped marriage practices in the United States and have limited women's membership in the constitutional community. This system of law predates the Revolution, but it lingers in U.S. legal tradition even today. After describing coverture and the old law of domestic relations, this essay considers how the received narrative of women's place in U.S. history often obscures the story of women's and men's efforts to overthrow this oppressive regime, and also the story of the continuing efforts of men and some women to stabilize and protect it. The essay also questions the paradoxes built into American law: for example, how do we reconcile the strictures of coverture with the founders' care in defining rights-holders as “persons” rather than “men”? Citing a number of court cases from the early days of the republic to the present, the essay describes the 1960s and 1970s shift in legal interpretation of women's rights and obligations. However, recent developments – in abortion laws, for example – invite inquiry as to how full the change is that we have accomplished. The history of coverture and the way it affects legal, political, and cultural practice today is another American narrative that needs to be better understood.


Author(s):  
Axel R. Schäfer

The political mobilization of conservative Protestants in the United States since the 1970s is commonly viewed as having resulted from a “backlash” against the alleged iniquities of the 1960s, including the excess-es of the counterculture. In contrast, this article maintains that conservative Protestant efforts to infiltrate and absorb the counterculture contributed to the organizational strength, cultural attractiveness, and politi-cal efficacy of the New Christian Right. The essay advances three arguments: First, that evangelicals did not simply reject the countercultural ideas of the 1960s, but absorbed and extended its key sentiments. Second, that conservative Protestantism’s appropriation of countercultural rhetoric and organizational styles played a significant role in the right-wing political mobilization of evangelicals. And third, that the merger of evan-gelical Christianity and countercultural styles, rather than their antagonism, ended up being one of the most enduring legacies of the sixties. In revisiting the relationship between the counterculture and evangelicalism, the essay also explores the larger implications for understanding the relationship between religion and poli-tics. The New Christian Right domesticated genuinely insurgent impulses within the evangelical resurgence. By the same token, it nurtured the conservative components of the counterculture. Conservative Protestant-ism thus constituted a political movement that channeled insurgencies into a cultural form that relegitimized the fundamental trajectories of liberal capitalism and consumerist society.


Author(s):  
Mike Nellis

Since its operational beginnings in the United States in 1982—where its prototypes were first experimented with in the 1960s and 1970s—the electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders has spread to approximately 40 countries around the world, ostensibly—but not often effectively—to reduce the use of imprisonment by making bail, community supervision, and release from prison more controlling than they have hitherto been. No single authority monitors the development of EM around the world, and it is difficult to gain fully comprehensive accounts of what is happening outside the Western and Anglophone users of it. Some countries are secretive. Standpoints in writing on EM are varied and partisan. Although it still tends to be the pacesetter of technical innovation, the United States remains a relatively lower user of EM, in part because the exceptional punitiveness of its penal culture has inhibited its expansion, even when it has itself been developed in various punitive ways. Interprofessional and intergovernmental processes of “policy transfer” have contributed to EMs spreading around the world, but the commercial bodies that manufacture and market EM equipment have been of at least equal importance. In Europe, the Confederation of European Probation (CEP), a transnational probation advocacy organization, took an early interest in EM, and its regular conferences became a touchstone of international debate. As it developed globally, the United Nations reluctantly accepted that it may be of some value even in developing countries and set out standards for its use. Continuing innovations in EM technology will create new possibilities for offender supervision, both more and less punitive, but it is always culture, commerce, and politics in particular jurisdictions which shape the scale, pace, and form of its development.


Author(s):  
Dominic Standish

Rodney Marsh is a British footballer who found his sporting success in his home country and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter frames Marsh as a maverick, as a result of his drinking, womanizing, gambling, but also his blatant disregard for the rules of the game and society. Largely based on Marsh’s own words, from interviews and his autobiography, the chapter examines the ways Marsh was understood as a maverick in the sport of football.


Author(s):  
Pamela E. Pennock

As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, the United States continues to wrestle with defining its role in Middle East conflicts and fully accepting and fairly treating Arab and Muslim Americans. In this contentious and often ill-informed climate, it is crucial to appreciate the struggles, priorities, and accomplishments of Arab Americans over the past several decades, both what has set them apart and what has integrated them into the politics and culture of the United States. Arab American organizing in the environment of minority rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s fostered a heightened consciousness of and pride in Arab American identity....


Author(s):  
Kevin Morgan ◽  
Terry Marsden ◽  
Jonathan Murdoch

With its rolling hills, small farms, diverse products, and high-quality foodstuffs, Tuscany easily conjures up a world of diversification and localization. In fact, so many of the region’s products are seen as world class—notably its wines, olive oils, cheeses, and processed meats—that it is tempting to see this region as the prime example of an Interpersonal World (in Salais and Storper’s terms). Yet, Tuscany’s perceived success in this world of food is a recent phenomenon. Until the 1990s the region was thought to be rather ‘backward’ in character, mainly due to its inability to adopt conventional industrial approaches to food production and processing. While some effort was made to shift Tuscany on to a more industrialized development path during the 1960s and 1970s, by the early 1990s this was widely regarded as having failed. Out of this failure, however, came the search for a new development model, one that could work with, rather than against, the region’s core assets—notably, its localized variety in foodstuffs and environmental features. Thus, a distinctively Tuscan approach to the agri-food sector is explicitly identified in the recent Rural Development Plan (RDP) drawn up by the Tuscan regional government. The document states that the strategy elaborated in the plan is aiming at ‘strengthening the ‘‘Tuscan model’’ of agricultural and rural development’. The plan goes on to identify key characteristics of the model, including the presence of small and mediumsized farms, the existence of quality products, the diversification of agricultural production, the provision of adequate marketing networks, and the enhancement of the environment and the agricultural landscape (Regione Toscana, 2000). It is tempting to imagine that the consolidation of a diversified and localized world of food production in Tuscany owes much to the implementation of this model by governmental authorities in concert with other actors in the food sector. However, it will be argued below that the emergence of a new world of food in Tuscany owes as much to happenstance as it does to the conscious agency of differing institutions and organizations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Jessica DuLong

This chapter provides a background of the waterborne evacuation that happened after the events of 9/11. New York harbor was, and is, a busy place — the third largest container port in the United States and a vital connection between New York City and the rest of the world. Manhattan is an island, and the realities of island real estate are what ushered the port's industries off Manhattan's shores and over to Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey in the 1960s and 1970s. By late 2001, maritime infrastructure had been replaced with ornamental fencing. On September 11, 2001, as the cascade of catastrophe unfolded, people found their fates altered by the absence of that infrastructure and discovered themselves dependent upon the creative problem solving of New York harbor's maritime community — waterfront workers who had been thrust beyond their usual occupations and into the role of first responders. Long before the U.S. Coast Guard's call for “all available boats” crackled out over marine radios, scores of ferries, tugs, dinner boats, sailing yachts, and other vessels had begun converging along Manhattan's shores. Hundreds of mariners shared their skills and equipment to conduct a massive, unplanned rescue. Within hours, nearly half a million people had been delivered from Manhattan by boat.


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