Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change: Volume 31

Being a dancer who is also active in political change efforts, I've long been struck by the quote from the famous Russian-American anarchist and organizer Emma Goldman who said something to the effect that, “If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution.” Apparently, Goldman well understood the many intimate connections between emotions and work for political and social change. Those connections have to do not only with mobilization, but also with sustainability. For people to remain mobilized over the long haul they often require expressive outlets that are rich in emotion. Many might argue, as Goldman did, that at least some of this expression must be fun, enjoyable, and stimulating – like dancing, for example.

This chapter aims at presenting a general picture of the emotions of protest, which can also capture the “feel” of the field and uncover the fluidity and complexity of these dynamics. Using data collected through participant observations at the vigils of Women in Black (WIB) in Israel, interviews, documents, and WIB website, the chapter presents maps of emotions that go beyond listing emotion words. The analysis follows differentiation between two overarching categories: processes that occur, respectively, outside and inside the vigil's time-space. Within the vigil's time-space setting, three different arenas of action were identified. These arenas were both physical (paralleling the physical layout of the vigil site) and symbolic in which different emotional dynamics evolved. The analysis demonstrates the contribution of emotion maps to our understanding of the emotional dynamics of protest. The study demonstrated the ways in which maps have uncovered the complex scene in which different emotional processes evolve; the fluid nature of emotional responses of both vigilers and spectators as they spill over from one arena to another; and the patterning of emotions into different constellations that point at different processes. The theoretical contributions are discussed.

The extent to which opposition movements engaged in contention are able to broaden the scope of their struggle has garnered the attention of scholars of ethnic conflict, social movements, and contentious politics alike. The ability to broaden the scope of contention is known as scale shift. It is of paramount importance in cases of ethnonationalist movements, given the nature of their claims and the oppressive and repressive sociopolitical setting in which they are often situated. Our study advances social movement theory by developing a more nuanced understanding of the process by analyzing rich historical evidence from a failed attempt of scale shift: the case of Israeli-Arab 1976 Land Day. Utilizing Tarrow and McAdam's (2003) model, we analyze scale shift and its constituent mechanisms of brokerage and diffusion as they operate across different political opportunity structures and encounter different levels and types of repression. Based on our findings, we modify the model by highlighting a set of intermediary mechanisms, namely individualization, segmentation, resource restriction, exclusion, co-optation, defection, and internalization/externalization. We argue that these intermediary mechanisms largely account for the failure of scale shift in the specific repressive settings of the Arab minority in Israel.

This chapter examines the conditions under which social movements demobilize. Political process theorists have long argued that hostility in the external environment often leads to movement decline, while others have suggested that some degree of hostility will mobilize constituents. Data drawn from the periodicals of two first-wave feminist organizations, the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman's Party, are used to document the changes in the two organizations’ levels of collectivism between 1910 and 1930. Analyses show that whether and to what extent movement organizations respond to favorable or hostile external environments depends on internal organizational dynamics. Specifically, single-issue organizations respond more quickly and acutely to changes in the external environment than their multi-issue counterparts. Thus, despite past research that has touted the benefits of organizing around a single issue, this chapter documents a potential downside: the difficulty of sustaining long-term collective mobilization.

Our research identifies political explicitness as a variable property among free spaces and its implications for the role that such spaces can potentially play vis-à-vis social movement mobilization. Specifically, spaces where politics are implicit (i.e., where political goals and values are not an explicit part of associative principles) can serve as sites where identities with affinities to social movements are cultivated while remaining open to those who do not already hold sympathetic views – representing free and open spaces. Our research draws on previously unexplored links between social movement research and leisure activity research, which explains processes of socialization across participant levels as a central dynamic in shaping collective values and individual participant identities. We illustrate our argument by exploring those processes within American belly dance as an example of a gendered leisure activity, and their influence on participants’ gender identity and related political attitudes. Findings are based on survey research of 103 dancers in the Salt Lake City, Utah, region. Data indicate wide acceptance of gender norm challenges, and affirm expectations of leisure activity research regarding community dynamics that promote such challenges.

This study theorizes about the development of dominant tactics within social movements, as certain tactics within a tactical repertoire are used frequently and imbued with ideological significance. Little research has been done on hierarchies within tactical repertoires, assuming that all tactics within a repertoire are equal. Between 1974 and 2008, the US Religious Right attempted over 200 anti-gay referendums and initiatives to retract or prevent gay rights laws. This research examines how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement developed campaign tactics to fight these direct democracy measures. This research expands the existing literature on tactical repertoires by theorizing about the mechanisms by which tactics become dominant, namely, their affirmation by victories, responsiveness to countermovement escalation, and involvement of institutionalized social movement organizations to disseminate tactics. This research contradicts existing movement–countermovement literature that suggests that movements do not develop dominant tactics when mobilizing in opposition to a countermovement.

This chapter presents a case study of the lesbian and gay rights movement following the Supreme Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which was a critical defeat in the campaign for sodomy repeal. Activists responded with a dramatic wave of mobilization by staging protests, successful appeals for organizational donations, building coalitions, and shifting institutional venues. This case provides a paradox for the dominant perspectives within social movement theory and legal mobilization literature, which often traces mobilization back to the expansion of political opportunities. The defeat in Bowers signaled a closing of political opportunities for activists. Drawing from a growing body of literature on political threats and heeding the call to specify the mechanisms of movement dynamics, I show how the defeat in Bowers was translated into proactive mobilization.

A growing number of human rights NGOs have placed international volunteers in conflict zones from Guatemala and Colombia to Palestine and Iraq. This study samples from contemporary high-risk transnational activists and highlights the variation in biographical steps taken toward the shared outcome of participation in human rights work (HRW). Data was collected through 6 weeks of participant observation in Israel-Palestine, 21 in-depth interviews, and 28 shorter focused interviews with human rights workers (N=49). Oversampling from the International Solidarity Movement reveals how the unique constraints and opportunities presented by a particular conflict zone and NGO culture impacts self-selection into HRW. Grounded theory and Boolean methodology aided in identifying four main pathways (the nonviolent activist, peace church, anarchist, and solidarity pathways) to HRW as well as biographical patterns and complexities that have been underemphasized in the existing literature. These include the salience of transformative events and attitude changes in the process of constructing a cosmopolitan identity and committing to high-risk transnational activism.

This chapter examines the training of indigenous Mayan catechists by the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, and their subsequent role in the establishment and growth of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in the period prior to the Zapatistas' 1994 uprising. It considers the adequacy of Timothy Wickham-Crowley's model of guerrilla insurgencies in Latin America in explaining the Zapatista case. It finds, contrary to Wickham-Crowley's model of the relations between urban university leadership groups and peasant support bases, that the catechists constituted a stratum of “organic indigenous-campesino intellectuals” that radically undermined their communities’ traditional intellectual dependence on outsiders and enabled them to constitute themselves as a new collective political subject.

Consistent research highlighting their utility for documenting historical protest events find social movement scholars relying heavily on newspapers. Simultaneously, research consistently finds racial bias in the media. Together, these findings suggest that scholars’ reliance on mainstream media accounts of protest by minority groups could lead to inaccurate histories and explanations. This chapter compares reports of a six-year-long protest case featuring African American activists found in both a mainstream media source, the New York Times, and two New York-based African American newspapers, the New York Amsterdam News and the New York Age, which were then triangulated with data from archival manuscript collections. Doing so revealed considerable and important differences. The ethnic press reported more protest events than the New York Times, which contained descriptive bias reflecting existing racial stereotypes and effectively silenced activists. These findings suggest that social movement scholars focusing on minority activists should engage in both ethnic and mainstream press accounts of protest events and political activity to ensure accurate descriptions of events and activist sentiments.

Eitan Y. Alimi is an assistant professor of political sociology at the Department of Political Science, Hebrew University. He received his PhD in sociology from Boston College in April 2004. His research interests include contentious politics and social movements, radicalization and political terrorism, and conflict resolution with special reference to Israeli political system and the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, International Journal of Press and Politics, Mobilization, International Political Science Review, Sociological Forum, Ricerche di Storia Politica, and the book, Israeli Politics and the First Palestinian Intifada (Alimi, 2007).