Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change: Volume 26

This 26th volume of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change opens with two papers addressing tactical and strategic innovations in social movement organizing, followed by two papers focusing on repression and social movements. We then move to two papers focused on media coverage of social movements, and the volume concludes with three papers addressing collective identity, solidarity, and empowerment issues in social movements. In what follows below, each paper will be briefly introduced, in the order of their appearance in the volume.

We use collective learning theory to explain social movement strategic outcomes. Three movement strategies are conceptualized: insider, outsider, and generalist strategies. Generalist strategies are a combination of insider and outsider tactics. Movements learn in three main ways: retention of existing knowledge, adaptation based on past experiences, and via diffusion processes. Utilizing available data about the use of insider and outsider tactics in the state-level fight for woman suffrage, we find that state suffrage movements learned through retention of previously used strategies, adaptation in the face of major defeat, and through the diffusion of outsider tactics. Social movements exhibit structural inertia. Movement activists stick to what they know, unless they face a major defeat. Movement strategies are more complex and more flexible than suggested by the current focus in the social movement literature, suggesting the need to rethink the insider–outsider dichotomy.

In recent years, the Internet has increasingly served as an important tactical tool for protest campaigns, arguably contributing to a restructuring of the repertoire of contention. This study analyzes a recent case of Internet-backed activism, focusing on the ongoing transnational mobilization against the Free Trade Area of the America's (FTAA) initiative. The Hemispheric Social Alliance, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organizations across the Western hemisphere opposed to the free market underpinnings of the FTAA, has employed Internet technologies to communicate, strategize, educate and pressure state authorities in an effort to promote an alternative social-developmental vision. This case of transnational contention has important implications that go beyond the Americas context. The organization of groups transnationally, combined with Internet communication and coordination strategies, suggests that popular political protest has begun to look considerably different from the time when state boundaries contained much political discourse and action.

The article focuses on varying protest intensities of social movement activists in an authoritarian political environment. Drawing on a sample of participants in El Salvador's El movimiento popular, the paper examines how structural location in the resistance movement's multi-sectoral organizational infrastructure shapes the level of participation. Those motivated by state repression and maintaining multiple or cross-sectoral organizational ties exhibited higher levels of protest participation. The findings suggest that more attention be given to how the multi-sectoral network structure of opposition coalitions induces micro-mobilization processes of individual participation in high-risk collective action.

Using socio-legal research on arrests and the criminal justice system, this paper contests the implicit argument in recent research on repression that arrests are “softer” than police violence. Specifically, the paper explores the physical conditions of arrest and detention, and the extent to which arrests initiate costly interactions with the legal system that punish defendants before they are even tried (or even if charges are later dropped). Using data on arrests and police practices from mine strikes in Arizona from the early 1980s and data on arrests and police practices during urban riots in the 1960s, the paper: (1) discusses the physical realities of arrest and detention; (2) outlines the array of costs that arrests impose on protesters; (3) discusses the implications of biased policing on that set of costs; and (4) examines the costs associated with mass arrests. The paper concludes this empirical analysis by questioning the commensurability of arrests with other forms of police action, including violence, against protesters.

Despite an increase in research that examines the media's selection of protest events for coverage, two areas of study have been left undeveloped. First, the type of protest examined is limited to common forms of the demonstration (march, vigil, rally). A second drawback of this literature is its focus on mass audience newspapers. The goal of the current study is to address these two issues by comparing coverage of a previously ignored form of protest, the strike, across two different media sources, the mass audience New York Times and the Daily Labor Report, a newspaper which targets industry and labor leaders and garners its revenue from subscriptions, not advertising. Due to specific differences between the two newspapers (primarily readership and revenue base), it is expected that certain strike characteristics (industry) will play a greater role in the New York Times’ selection of strikes than in the Daily Labor Report. Using government data to construct the population of events, I find that both newspapers select strikes in a manner that resembles coverage of other forms of protest. Important variables include size, length, and disruptiveness. The main difference between the two newspapers is the New York Time's attention to strikes in industries that affect the public and consumers and its strong regional bias. These findings indicate that not only do similar media selection processes work for both protest and strikes, but also that, despite some differences, media type did not affect selection greatly.

I examine how four distinct episodes of environmental policy debate have been depicted in the Vancouver Sun, British Columbia's largest daily newspaper. Discourse analysis is applied to the Protected Areas Strategy, the Forest Practices Code, the Working Forest and the Results-based Forest Practices Code. The network of power/knowledge constructed through these texts limits debate to the hegemonic alternatives of “ecomanagerialism” and “eco-capitalism.” This textual reality is constructed from three major organizational standpoints: government, industry and environmentalists. The voices of First Nations and forestry labour are marginalized, as are discourses that challenge the hegemony of the “treadmill of production.”

Through an analysis of the leaders of the 1960s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) this paper highlights the importance of individual identity work, and argues for an expanded theoretical treatment of social movement identity processes that takes account of partial identity correspondence (a partial alignment between an individual identity and the movement identity) to include degrees of identity congruence. Actors can embrace a movement, but remain in a state of conflict regarding some dimensions of its identity. Extending James Jasper's ((1997). The art of moral protest: Culture, biography, and creativity in social movements. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) identity classifications, the data suggest that participants engage in identity justification work when incongruence among personal identity (biographical), collective identity (ascribed, i.e. race, gender), and movement identities exist. This work may not reflect the organization's efforts to frame or reframe the movement identity. This study finds that individuals manage incongruence with organizational and tactical movement identities by employing three identity justification mechanisms: (1) personal identity modification of the movement's identity; (2) individual amplification of the common cause dimension of collective identity; and (3) individual amplification of the activist identity through pragmatic politics. Rather than dismantling the past, as Snow and McAdam ((2000). In: S. Stryker, T. J. Owens, & R. W. White (Eds), Self, identity, and social movements (pp. 41–67). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) propose, actors incorporate their biographies as a mechanism to achieve feelings of community and belonging. It is not so much an alignment with the organization's proffered movement identity as it is a reordering of the saliency hierarchy of their identities. Unlike Snow and McAdam's conceptualization of identity amplification, the reordering of an identity hierarchy and the amplification of certain identities is precipitated by the actor's, not the organization's, efforts to align her/his personal identity, collective identity, and movement identities.

This article describes the creation of specific solidarity relationship frames within an Aboriginal rights support network in Alberta, Canada. Advocacy relationship frames are discussed in the context of literature on social movement action framing processes as well as literature on solidarity relationships within social movements. After a brief explanation of research methods, the Lubicon Cree land rights conflict is introduced as a specific example of non-Aboriginal advocacy of an Aboriginal cause. In the Lubicon situation, supporters understood their solidarity as a commitment to those who were socially marginalized but this commitment was complicated by various factors such as the power imbalance between Lubicon and their advocates as well as the cultural differences between the two sides. The relatively passive framing of the solidarity relationship may also have contributed to a subsequent dissipation of support and a lack of ongoing direct and personal connection with the Lubicon people.

According to its advocates, community mediation empowers disputants in their dealing with conflict. However, critics of the community mediation movement have often contended that far from being empowering, community mediation programs constitute a means of social control and of informal state power enhancement. This paper undertakes a socio-theoretical examination of community mediation's empowerment claims and of its criticisms. The paradigmatic and contrasting works of Habermas on communicative action and of Foucault on power, freedom and governmentality are applied to community mediation. The paper contends that although Habermas’ insights are supportive of the community mediation agenda, the criticisms they engender might provide a way to move beyond optimistically naive assumptions regarding empowering claims. Conversely, although Foucault's work has often been used to dismiss community mediation's empowerment promises, the paper argues that it is possible to re-examine the empowering potential of community mediation from a Foucauldian perspective. It concludes that community mediation can provide a space for personal empowerment, if understood in a nuanced way.

Jordi Agusti-Panareda is a qualified lawyer in Spain and a researcher in mediation and conflict management. Lately he has been studying and undertaking research on mediation and dispute resolution at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at Stanford University. He has recently been awarded a J.S.D. doctoral degree at Stanford Law School.