This course examines collective action outside of political parties focusing on the role interest groups and social movements play in the political systems of industrialized nations. The non-institutional and often critical nature of these groups has resulted in the characterization of their activities as "contentious" and "unconventional" politics – the politics of protest. This course will cover a number of approaches explaining the formation and behaviour of such groups including, the nature of democratic participation, individual and group interests, free riders, resources, mobilization, the effect of culture versus structure, social capital, mechanisms of protest, and transnationality. The first term will cover approaches to the study of protest politics and collective action. The second term will comparatively analyze selected movements, groups, strategies and tactics.
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Senate Regulations Regarding Course Prerequisites and Antirequisites Students are responsible for ensuring that their selection of courses is appropriate and accurately recorded, that all course prerequisites have been successfully completed, and that they are aware of any antirequisite courses(s) that they have taken. Unless you have either the requisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enrol in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites Prerequisites: year three honours specialization political science or social justice and peace. Antirequisites: Political Science 392E in 2003-2004 |
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt. 2004. Advocacy Groups. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004
Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper. 2003. The Social Movement Reader: Cases and Concepts. New York: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
All other readings will be available online or made available in class.
1st Term Seminar Presentation 15%
1st Term Paper 20%
2nd Term Seminar Presentation 15%
2nd Term Paper 20%
Participation 30% (15% for each term)
Total 100%
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Plagiarism and Academic Offences Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as, footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see the appended Dept. of Political Science Policy Regarding Plagiarism, and refer to Scholastic Discipline under the Senate Policy on Academic Rights and Responsibilities at http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/. All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com http://www.turnitin.com Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf |
Two students will be assigned each week, starting on the fourth week of classes, to present the material for that week. Much of the material covered in this class is quite difficult, consequently the role of students in their seminar presentation is to act as translators and to clarify the material for their colleagues. The point of the seminar is to summarize the material and to comment critically on the contribution it makes to our understanding of social movement and protest politics. Students should explore questions such as: what is the definition of social movement used, why and how do they emerge, does this make a useful contribution to the understanding of social movement politics?
As the class is scheduled to meet for two hours a week, a further hour is set aside for each seminar group to meet with the professor prior to their seminar presentation. This meeting will be mandatory. This will allow for students to work with the professor to clarify difficult concepts and develop general themes for the seminar presentation.
The paper will be based on the material presented in the seminar presentation and further research of the literature. It will be an analytical and critical literature review of the approaches discussed in the student’s particular seminar presentation. The question to keep in mind is, how well does this approach explain social movements and/or social protest as a form of politics?
Due in class December 1st. (Arrangements will be made for students presenting in this class)
It is also required that assignments include footnotes or endnotes, and bibliography presented in a manner that conforms to an accepted academic style. It is a good idea to purchase a good reference guide such as Lucille Charlton and Mark Charlton, Thomson Guide to Writing for Political Science recommended and available in the bookstore. In addition, it is advisable that students read carefully the Department of Political Science’s policy regarding plagiarism appended to this course outline before proceeding with their essays.
Students must submit their essays to Turnitin.com before they will be marked.
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Policy on late assignments: "Just Don’t Do It." Students should expect that marks will be deducted for late submissions. The late penalty is 10 percent per day, with weekends counted as one day. Extensions will be permitted only in the event of 1) provision of an official written document on appropriate letterhead from a health care or social service professional (a note scribbled on a prescription pad will not be acceptable), or 2) permission of the professor. The deadline for permission for extensions from the professor is one week prior to the due date of the assignment. Papers are due in class. Late papers not handed in at class may be dropped off in the green mailbox, located on the 2nd floor of the Dante Lenardon Building. Papers in the mailbox will be picked-up twice per day at 9:30 am and 4:00 pm. All papers dropped off after 4:00pm on Friday will be date-stamped the following Monday. Essays should be placed in an envelope addressed to the Professor and with the class and student clearly identified.
If you feel that you have a medical or personal problem that is interfering with your work, you should contact the Academic Dean’s Office as soon as possible. Problems may then be documented and possible arrangements to assist you can be discussed at the time rather than on a retroactive basis. In general, retroactive requests for grade revisions on medical or compassionate grounds will not be considered. Students are also advised to read the Policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness ( https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/index.cfm).Any request for accommodation covering course work over 10% of the final mark must be submitted by the student directly to the appropriate Faculty Dean’s Office and not to the instructor. It will be the Dean’s Office that will determine if accommodation is warranted. |
This will be similar to the first term presentation in terms of students running the class, presenting material, facilitating discussion, and working with the professor. The material covered will be a case study of a particular social movement and/or social movement organization. At the end of November the class will set out a list of the movements they would like to cover and students will select a seminar topic or be assigned accordingly. The professor, in consultation with each presenter, will give a list of readings to the class.
The paper will be based on the material presented in the 2nd term seminar. Students are expected to explore a question appropriate to social movement politics and set out and argue a clear thesis in their paper
Due in class April 6, 2009 (Arrangements will be made for students presenting in this class.)
Students must submit their essays to Turnitin.com before they will be marked.
The mark assigned and the standards set for participation are high in this class because it is expected that students will contribute to the seminars. Seminars will only be as good as the participants make them. The 15% will primarily be measured by how engaged students are in the discussion of the material presented. Consequently, students will be required: 1) to attend seminars, 2) to have done the assigned class readings, and 3) to ask at least one appropriate question during each seminar
September 8: Introduction - What are we dealing with here?
September 15: Definitions - Apples and oranges are they just all fruit?
Required Reading:
Jacquetta Newman and A. Brian Tanguay. 2002. ‘Crashing the party: The Politics of Interest Groups and Social Movements,’ in Joanna Everitt and Brenda O’Neill, (eds.) Citizen Politics: Research and Theory in Canadian Political Behaviour, Don Mills: Oxford University Press, pp. 387-412.
Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly. 2001. ‘What are they shouting about?’ in Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp 3-37.
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt. 2004. ‘Advocacy Groups and Canadian Democracy,’ in Advocacy Groups. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, pp. 3-14.
Which definition is most useful for understanding collective actions such as: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, The Suzuki Foundation, National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, EGALE, CAW, Canadian Council of Chief Executive (formerly BCNI), the Canadian Tax Payers Federation?
Do the differences between these definitions matter? How does the choice of definition affect our understanding of collective action outside of political parties?
September 22: Are these people behaving badly? Pluralism or Elitism?
Required Reading:
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt. 2004. ‘Perspectives on Advocacy Groups and Democracy,’ in Advocacy Groups. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, pp. 15-24.
David Held. 1996. ‘From Post-War Stability to Political Crisis: The Polarization of Political Ideals,’ in Models of Democracy 2nd Edition, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 233-273.
Seminar Presenters Readings:
Mary Kaldor and Ivan Vejvoda. 1997. ‘Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe,’ International Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp 59-82.
James Madison. 1988/1787. ‘The Federalist No. 10: Madison,’ The Federalist Papers, New York: Bantam, pp. 42-49
Chantal Mouffe. 1992.‘Citizenship and Political Identity,’ October Vol. 61, The Identity in Question, Summer 1992, pp. 28-32
Robert J. Talisse. 2002. ‘Introduction: Pragmatism and Deliberative Democracy,’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4., pp. 1-8.
Is collective action outside of institutionalized political parties inherently good for democracy?
Can an inclusive participatory democracy exist?
Is collective action outside of institutionalized political parties inherently good for democracy? Can an inclusive participatory democracy exist?
To understand whether people engaged in civil society, social movement or protest organizations are behaving badly depends on your view of democracy. As the discussion arising from the presentation focused on there is a further question regarding engagement: are people in modern democracies behaving at all.
At this point, all we may argue is that recourse to representation in a flawed system is all we can ask for. However, the question remains of whether this is democratic. But what is democracy? What is the relationship between participation and democracy? If participation is limited does that mean that only the squeaky wheels in a society are able to affect the system and play a role in determining the common good? Do political systems require a level of passivity? Or is this passivity really a sign of disillusionment? Is this a reaction to the system or an individual choice? Quoting democratic theorist Carole Pateman, Held argues , ‘If the state is separate from the associations and practices of everyday life, then it is plausible to see it as a special kind of apparatus – a ‘protective knight,’ ‘umpire,’ or ‘judge’—which the citizen ought to behave. But if the state is inescapably locked into the maintenance and inequalities in everyday life, and accordingly, the whole basis of its claim to distinct allegiance is in doubt.’ "Public order" can be sustained but it is likely to break down on certain ‘marginal’ sites.
How are we to conceive the political community under such modern democratic conditions? According to Mouffe, what is required to belong to a political community is the acceptance of a specific language of civil intercourse. Mouffe realizes that there will always be those that are marginalized and those that are within, however, society should attempt to guarantee accountability by introducing a conception of the common good that is a form of social "imaginary" – "a guideline as much as a set of rules." Allegiance is then to a set of rules and practices that construct a specific language and model of the modern democratic citizen. Thus the political community is held together not by a shared vision of the common good but by a common public concern for working towards a "public good." The connection is to the means rather than the ends, the shared process of developing a common good through substantive debate rather than a single substantive good itself. This is where the Kaldor and Vejvoda reading provides us with an interesting illustration of the insufficiency of formal institutions or even a clear substantive goal of democratic elections and a free-market to provide for a "full-democracy" and democratic rights. There must also be a shared commitment to a "culture of participation" and a "culture of rights and inclusion" whereby a commitment to a process of substantive debate can be fostered. De Toqueville referred to these as the, ‘habits of the heart.’
However, Talisse maybe taking a more practical approach by raising serious questions as to whether we can create even a shared commitment to a process of substantive debate. The tendency, Talisse identifies, is to remove those issues, concerns and moral debates that create too much contention within the system because of the possibility of derailing debate or requiring too much active and intense engagement.
Starting from Kaldor and Vejvoda’s position, in looking at participation levels in democracies, it may very well be the case that the cultures of participation and the ‘habits of the heart’ are also missing in our own democracies. Or starting from Talisse’s position it may be that those very cultures have been removed from our political debates resulting in disillusionment. The two positions actually complement each other to illustrate combined phenomena that indicate a decline in engagement. We have not maintained a sufficient culture of participation because there is nothing truly significant to our lives that is allowed in our democracies to be deliberated.
Finally, discussion focused on voting as the most obvious measure of democratic participation might be misleading. Is it possible that engagement and democratic participation are finding new outlets in civil society organizations? We should be careful not to be too sanguine about alternative methods of political activity, because it is not entirely clear that the levels of social movement, NGO, civil society organization participation is any higher than voting levels. The lecture last week ended with a warning from Olsen regarding the issues of free-ridership and mobilization.
This leaves us with many unanswered questions and particularly the following: 1) what is modern democratic citizenship and what level and type of participation does it require, and 2) as Held asks, ‘in the absence of marked consensual values, how is political order held together?’
September 29: Social capital and democratic training
Required Reading:
Robert D. Putnam. 1995. ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,’ Journal of Democracy Vol. 6 No. 1. Pp. 65-78.
Tom Schuller, Stephen Baron, and John Field. 2000. ‘Social Capital: A Review and Critique,’ in Stephen Baron, John Field, and Tom Schuller (eds.) Social Capital: Critical Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 1-38.
Seminar Presenters Readings:
Jean L. Cohen. 2003. ‘Civic Innovation in America: Towards a Reflexive Politics,’ The Good Society, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 56-62
Mario Diani. 2001. ‘Social Capital as Social Movement Outcome,’ in Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley, and Mario Diani (eds.), Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective. Hanover : Tufts University , University Press of New England . Pp. 207-218.
Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley. 1996. ‘The Paradox of Civil Society,’ Journal of Democracy Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 38-52.
Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley & Mario Diani. 2001. ‘Social Capital Reconsidered,’ in Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley, and Mario Diani (eds.), Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective. Hanover : Tufts University , University Press of New England . pp. 266-280.
Carmen Sirianni & Lewis Friedland. 2003. ‘Civic Innovation, Conflict, and Politics: Response for the Good Society Symposium on Civic Innovation in American,’ The Good Society, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 74-82.
What is civil society? What about ‘uncivil’ society?
Is social capital too economistic to explain political behavior?
Held asks the question: ‘In the absence of marked consensual values, how is the political order held together?’ In addition, he makes the following observation: ‘’it is clearly not simply legitimacy that provides the ‘glue’ that ‘cements’ or ‘binds’ the liberal democratic polity.’ For Putnam it is social capital. Which means the first thing we need to discuss is, ‘what is social capital?’ Putnam defines social capital, ‘by analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital – tools and training that enhance individual productivity – ‘social capital’ refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit." Schuller, Baron and Field also define social capital in terms of networks, but in exploring a greater range of social capital theorists such as Bourdieu and Coleman they provide a more qualified and critical look at the concept of social capital. They raise questions of the concept of social capital being overly diverse in its definition, too versatile in its application, and therefore becoming a circular argument at worst and hard to measure vigorously at the least. They settle with social capital having ‘heuristic potential because of its capacity to open up issues rather to provide definitions and answers.
What are those issues? What makes social capital so compelling is that offers us a chance to consider the social activities of individuals as political, particularly when as the class discussed there is a turn away from more ‘conventional’ political activities such as voting, party membership, and party participation.
Sirianni and Friedland take up this concern by examining civic innovation as a form of social learning and, as Matthew pointed out, an attempt to reinvent American democracy. Union and such membership might be down, but it new groups are emerging and increasing efforts at local problem solving. Sirianni and Friedland argue that the valuable work that takes place in "civic initiatives is motivated by pragmatic public problem solving and an ethos of co-production." Interesting they view social capital as a neutral concept, that unlike Putnam there is no guarantee the effects be benevolent. Social capital can be mobilized for authoritarian as well as democratic ties. A point, Matthew identifies, as being taken up in Schuller, Baron and Fields assessment that the mafia and racist organizations are also high trust organizations.
Mario Diani, is less concerned with democratic participation than the other authors. He is interested in looking at social capital as a determinant of social action which constrains and enables movement activity and futures. "Social movements do not merely rely upon existing social capital, they also reproduce it and sometimes create new forms of it." Moses argued that Diani’s argument goes further and the networks found in a movement can be used as predictors of activism and mobilization. Therefore it is more than just a constraint but an enabler taking the common goals or compromises derived by the coming together of networks of different actors, with different approaches and even differing interpretation of what the final goals are. The more networks work together and compromise the more social capital will be produced which can lead to further mobilization around different issues. New networks can be used in future campaigns. Moses illustrated this with examples drawn from the anti-Coca Cola campaigns on campus and the campaign against the School of the Americas.
Cohen reacts to Sirianni and Friedland by criticizing the lack of conflict associated with civil society and social capital neutrality. She argues that civil society always contains competing visions and there is a need for reflexive politics to best deal with the conflict, a politics which was once undertaken by political parties who aggregated and integrated societies demands within their political frameworks. "As Gramsci understood long ago, it is not neutrality that generates alliances or trust across civil society, but the capacity to hegemonize particular actions, goals and commitments into a meaningful project." In short, the common good cannot be defined apolitically. She also critiques the implied homoeconomicus inherent in the idea of social capital which while dealing with the inherent problem of free-ridership lends a level of rational self-interest to remove any sense of emotional commitment. "Civil associations, civic orientation to communal and public purposes all involve commitment. For this commitment to consist of more than the pursuit of particular self-interest, it is essential that it be linked with a general vision for society – to a political project." Therefore, partisanship is unavoidable. In conclusion, Cohen warns about putting all democracy’s eggs into the civil society basket. "Rather we should articulate a general political project for the renewal of the political and not only civil society." We need not only to support civil society projects to reinvigorate democracy we need to work on redesigning and building political parties which work. This is an argument supported by Foley and Edwards, who conclude, "in short decidedly political organizations may well play the role attributed to civil associations in the civil society argument, and may play them better."
Foley and Edwards, engage in the most explicit critique of Putnam arguing that his conception of social capital underestimates the ability of new organizations specifically political associations to foster aspects of civil communities to advance democracy, glosses over conflict, and overlooks established existing consensus in a society. Social Capital as it is conceptualized has a fundamental normative element to its definition, either supporting a conservative status quo presupposing a sort of political peace that it imagines civil society providing (Civil Society I) or a radical conflictual transformation with grassroots revolutionary potential (Civil Society II). In neither case, do they see civil society and social capital as a full substitute for political society and political activity. "If civil society’s chief virtue is its ability to act as an organized counterweight to the state, to what extent can this happen without the help of political parties and expressly political movements?" Movements they see as being defined out of Putnam’s conception of social capital builders. Like Cohen they are concerned that, as we saw in the debates regarding deliberative politics, many conceptions of social capital and civil society remove politics from the equation. It is not helped by the fact that social capital takes on whatever properties any given theorists feels it should have , "at times the concept seems to take on the property of a gas, expanding or contracting to fit the analytical space afforded it by each historical or socio-political setting."
Therefore, we have to ask ourselves if civil society and social capital can provide the glue and cement that binds the liberal democratic polity together. The discussion focused on the nature of compromise and the need for compromise to work towards goals and the common good. But is it enough? We are left with a number of nagging questions. What about "uncivil society"? If social capital relies on the rational self-interested individual "homo-economicus" to act, is it really too economistic to explain political behavior? And finally, Foley and Edwards leave us with a very serious challenge, "if we retrieve what is most useful from the civil society argument, we must pursue nagging empirical questions about the way in which social power is constituted, distributed, and managed in contemporary societies."
October 6: Who are these People?
Required Reading:
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt. 2004. 'Who Participates in Advocacy Groups,' in Advocacy Groups. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, pp. 25-43.
Claus Offe (1987) ‘Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics: social movements since the 1960s,’in Charles S. Maier (ed.) Changing boundaries of the political: Essays on the evolving balance between the state and society, public and private in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., pp. 63-105.
Seminar Presenters Readings:
Ariel Armory & Victor Armory. ‘Indictments, Myths and Citizen Mobilization in Argentina: A discourse analysis,’ Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 27-54.
Marc Dixon, Vincent J. Roscigno, & Randy Hodson. 2004. ‘Unions, Solidarity, and Striking,’ Social Forces, Vol. 83, No. 1, September 2004, pp. 3-33.
Ronald Inglehart. 1985. ‘New Perspectives on Value Change: Response to Lafferty and Knutsen, Savage, and Böltken and Jagodzinski,’ Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 485-532.
Ronald Inglehart. 2000. ‘Globalization and Postmodern Values,’ The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2000, pp. 215-228.
Jurgen Habermas (1981) "New Social Movements," Telos 49 (Fall), pp. 33-38.
Mark Tessler, Mansoor Moaddel, and Ronald Inglehart. 2006. ‘Getting to Arab Democracy: What Do Iraqis Want? , Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 38-50.
Where does (a) gender, (b) race or (c) ethnicity fit? Can such variables be accommodated in any of these approaches?
Is there such a thing as class or collective consciousness? Can such a consciousness act both in and for itself?
| It is interesting that so much of this week’s
discussion of who the people engaged in political protest and social
movement activism are was framed as dualities: old/ new paradigms,
materialism/post-materialism, psychologizing approaches/structural
functional approaches, elites/non-elites, influential/marginalized,
local/global, and two additional dualities that underlay much of the
discussion but seemed to allude explicit mention – structure/agency
and theory/action.
It seemed that when movement actors engage with the theories regarding their existence and when those who have read the theories engage with the movement actors a room for meeting and compromise is hard to achieve. This is readily illustrated in the discussion of what social movement actors such as those in the environmental movement bring to the table. The answer is apparently nothing except for a willingness to engage in political action outside the rules or at least in an extra-parliamentary fashion. However, as Natasha asked, does that condemn such actors to unlawful acts? Maybe not unlawful acts, but acts outside of the perceived conventional political sphere or the "political rules of the game." This speaks to the definition of social movement activity that was presented in the first class, Melucci’s definition of a social movement: The term social movement and specifically new social movement is used to cover a variety of political and social collective actions that focus on issues such as gender equality, sexual freedom, health, civil rights, anti-racism, international development, the environment and peace. It refers to a form of collective action where the collective actor:
Therefore, it would appear that compromise might not be an achievable end as we have discussed and optimistically hoped for in the previous classes, that when the true interests of the marginalized people are introduced into our dialogue or deliberation (or whatever you want to call it) things can get rather confrontational, extremely politicized, and even "uncivil." But does this mean these actors are part of "new" social and political paradigm as Offe and Habermas would have or the "post-materialists" of Inglehart’s world? Offe and Habermas argue that the social movements which emerged after 1968 are a new phenomenon characterized by their non-institutional nature and moral focus on "state of living" grievances rather than "standard of living" grievances. These movements represented new social conflicts not over the distribution of material goods, but over what should be valued in the distribution. This is indicative of a new paradigm of politics that has emerged to possibly replace the old paradigm. The old paradigm reflects the class conflicts of Marxist theory, however, this new paradigm is still rooted in class conflict in that the actors are class aware but not class conscious. Its actors encompass the new middle class associated with the social welfare state that emerged after the Second World War, some elements of the old working class, and those marginalized outside the class system the unemployed and students. Inglehart sees a similar make up of the movements that emerge after the Second World War and develops a different but possibly complementary explanation for the phenomenon. Starting from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Inglehart argues that the cohort socialized in the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s did not have to worry about meeting their material requirements and were therefore able to focus on values of self-actualization. He defines these values as post-materialist. "Economic development eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns not only in terms of life expectancy but also in terms of human happiness. This leads to a gradual but fundamental shift in basic values and goals of the people of advanced industrial societies." Moving beyond the threshold of material survival and comfort leads to an intergenerational shift in values which emphasize quality of life concerns such as environmental protection, but also in terms of identity needs for belonging, self-expression and a participatory role in society which become more prominent. There may be something to these characterizations of social movement as Everitt and Young in looking at Canadian advocacy politics found that advocacy group actors are more likely to be white, employed and middle-class and that the groups are slightly more inclusive of women than the political parties. However, such groups were less inclusive of lower income Canadians, the unemployed and ethnic minorities. Part of this could be explained by the fact that groups, particularly environmental and women’s groups, offer more participatory opportunities for excluded citizens. When a broader definition of advocacy group is utilized (including all voluntary organizations, unions and professional organizations) membership in advocacy organizations is greater than that of party organizations. However, it is far from encompassing more than 30% if the Canadian populations so we have to be careful about arguments that say extra-parliamentary activity is a more meaningful and popular substitute for parliamentary activity. It may also be the case that we must not be too enthusiastic about making such hard and fast divisions between old and new paradigms. In the presentation it was argued that the new paradigm makes claims for individual humanist principles based on rational democratic political culture and demands to engage more fully in all facets of politics. In their critique of the readings, the presenters asked an interesting question: ‘What is so new about that?’ This is something the other readings suggest through their case studies. Dixon looking at the old paradigm social movement, unions suggests there is a mix of old and new paradigm ethics, a combination of organization and identity (structure and agency): "The coordination of any extensive protest activity, it is suggested requires at least a minimal level of organization and resources for recruitment, the dissemination of information and the mobilization of activists. Classic literature in this tradition argues that formal SMOs will be especially effective in these regards, at least relative to loosely structured decentralized entities. Formal SMOs can better maintain movement activity in unfavorable environments and in a manner that can facilitate protest activities"… However, "protest emergence and persistence hinge on a sense of groupness and a common interpretive framework among activities. Identity construction processes that build on day-to-day experience and grievances of potential activists are especially central." This is also illustrate by the Armory and Armory article which argues that the Argentine crisis of 2001-2 cannot be fully understood without considering how citizen mobilization and the indictment of the political class are connected to longstanding conceptions of national identity, particularly to national myths. As usual we are left with more questions than answers. We have to wonder about the nature of consciousness? Where does (a) gender, (b) race or (c) ethnicity fit? Are they enough to be politically salient consciousnesses? Is there such a thing as class or collective consciousness? Can such a consciousness act both in and for itself? How helpful are us and them conceptions? Does dualism aid or detract from our understandings? Structure or agency? Organization or commitment? Chicken or egg? Finally, Melucci’s definition of social movement is something that we have left unexamined and is an issue that may need resolution in the class. This is something that we have yet to resolve as a class because some of you do refer to some of these people acting as advocates as part of advocacy groups. Does advocacy include protest? Is advocacy something limited to working within the system? |
October 13: Thanksgiving or Death to Turkey/Tofurkey Day.
October 20: Mobilization and Free-ridership
Required Reading:
Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt. 2004. 'The Internal Life of Groups' and 'Which Interests are Mobilized?,' in Advocacy Groups. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. pp. 44-66 and 67-86..
J. Craig Jenkins. (1983) ‘Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements,’ Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 9, pp. 527-553
Seminar Presenters Readings:
John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald. (2001) "Resource Mobilization Theory: Vigorous or Outmoded?," in Jonathan H. Turner (ed.) Handbook of Sociological Theory, New York : Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 533-565.
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (1995) "Collective Protest: A Critique of Resource-Mobilization Theory," in Stanford M. Lyman (ed.) Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-studies, New York : New York University Press. Pp. 137-167.
Margit Mayer (1995) "Social Movement Research in the United States: A European Perspective," in Stanford M. Lyman (ed.) Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-studies, New York: New York University Press. Pp. 168-195.
Is institutionalization the ‘kiss of death’ for collective action groups? Can such groups survive success and cooptation into the institutionalized political system?
Are incentives (tangible or symbolic) enough to mobilize collective action?