The Politics of Meaning: From Frames to Design Conflicts
The chapter reviews the literature on frame analysis and narratives in social movement studies and the parallel literature in science and technology studies on technological frames, boundary objects, and other cultural dimensions of science and expertise. It suggests the value of materializing the analysis of cultural meaning in the study of social movements and industry by developing the analysis of design conflicts. Three main types of design conflicts are reviewed: those based on social structural conflicts of race, class, and gender; those based on field-level industrial conflicts between incumbent firms and challengers; and those based on the environmental conflict between sustainability and resilience. This chapter uses examples from work on feminism, race, and design; on the solar energy and organic food movements; and on trade-offs between resilience and sustainability at the household and regional levels.