Pamela E. Oliver
Professor of Sociology

Soc 626 – Reading Assignments and Lecture Schedule

Instructions

  1. * materials are required. All others are recommended, not required. There are also links to further lists of recommended readings.
  2. GJ refers to readings in Goodwin & Jasper, eds., The Social Movements Reader. It will not be here before Feb. 1. Alternate readings are suggested and the required readings will be changed if we decide not to use the book.
  3. Articles in Social Science On-Line reserves are protected by classlist authorization and limited to students enrolled in the class. You will be asked for your UW NetID and password. Most of these are PDF files.
  4. Articles listed as “JSTOR” or “Stable URL” are accessible to anyone recognized as having a UW computer connection.
  5. Other articles are physically stored on my web site and are protected by a username and password which has been distributed to class members. Contact me directly if you need to know the password.

 

Introduction

Sept 4-6. Introduction.
What are we studying? The terrain of social movements. Examples. Types of movements. Overview of theoretical perspectives and the questions they address. The political process synthesis. Why the capacity to protest matters. The two articles on the civil rights movements will give you background on the civil rights movement. Introductory lectures will give an overview of the theoretical framework in the context of the civil rights movement.

  • Read your first book, do your first book report.
  • * GJ Editors’ Introduction (pp.3-7 AND pp 11-14): Jeff Goodwin And James M. Jasper. Definitions of social movement & protest, why study movements, quick overview of history of theory/research.
  • * GJ pp. 370-378 “Biographies” of some famous movement activists. Will help introduce you to social movements.

Sept 6 & 11, I lectured on introductory concepts;

Sept 13 we watched an episode of Eyes on the Prize;

Sept 18. The political context of protest.

  • * Meyer (The Politics of Protest), preface, introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2. In these two chapters, meyer locates protest and social movements in a US political context.
  • Notes on Meyer_and_Part I readings (these are my personal cursory notes which you may compare with yours)
  • *GJ1. Rhoda Lois Blumberg.. The Civil Rights Movement (From Civil Rights: The 1960s Freedom Struggle) Overview of history through the mid-1950s.
  • * Aldon Morris. A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks. Annual Review of Sociology 1999. 25:517. This will provide background for the next section.
  • *GJ2 Jo Freeman. The Women’s Movement. (From The Origins Of The Women’s Liberation Movement, American Journal of Sociology 1973: original available on web site). Overview of mobilization 1960-1970, with a boxed chronology through 1982. Emphasis on cooptable networks and a precipitating crisis.
  • *GJ3. John D’Emilio. The Gay Liberation Movement (From Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970). This selection focuses on 1969 Stonewall riot through the 1970s, “gay liberation” and “radical lesbian feminist” phases.
  • *GL4, . Charles Kurzman. The Iranian Revolution (From Structural And Perceived Opportunity: The Iranian Revolution Of 1979, American Sociological Review 1996.) Perceptions of political situation did not match objective conditions.
  • David Snyder & Charles Tilly “Hardship and Collective Violence in France, 1830 to 1960.” American Sociological Review 37: 520-532 (1972) The article which influenced resource mobilization arguments that deprivation does not cause movements.
  • James Chowning Davies. “The J-Curve and Power Struggle Theories of Collective Violence.” 1974, American Sociological Review 39: 607-610. A response to Snyder and Tilly.

 

Sept 20-27 – Why do people participate? Interests, motivations, identities.

September 20: Interests and the problem of collective action

  • * Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, (1965) Introduction and Chapter 1. Still very widely cited as true, despite extensive critical literature since its publication. You need to know what he said, as well as know why his argument is misleading (which we will discuss in class).
  • Oliver’s lecture summary of production function issues and other critiques ,”Collective Action” lecture notes: pdf file + graphics, includes everything in the other two options. RTF text only, PDF file graphics only
  • Oliver’s Proof that Olson’s equations are independent of group size (this is in case you want to know; not required reading)
  • Words and Theories – Short notes on the history of “collective behavior,” “collective action,” “collective event” and remarks on the falsity of the “rational vs. irrational” dichotomy
  • Not required: Link to a long list of collective action theory & research articles (graduate seminar page). Useful if you want to do further reading in this topic.

Mobilization Process

Some opening examples that raise themes we will revisit. Read these for concrete examples of how mobilization unfolds over time. Note: Read Klandermans and Oegema for Sept 20 and meyer for Sept 25.

  • *Meyer, Chapter 3 “Becoming an Activist”. An overview.
  • *Bert Klandermans and Dirk Oegema. “Potentials, Networks, Motivations and Barriers: Steps Toward Participation in Social Movements.” ASR 52 (1987): 519-532. Data on mobilization for a Dutch peace march.
  • Slides on “reading article tables/graphs” for the Klandermans & Oegema and Wood & Hughes articles PowerPoint pdf file
  • some reading notes about the “main points” in Klandermans & Oegema, Freeman, and Wood & Hughes articles

Motivations and Attitudes

A concern has been why people support movements that do not appear to be in their material interest. Sept 25 NOTE: Actually discussed Sept 27, except Wood & Hughes discussed Sept 25.

  • * GL pp. 51-54 editors’ comment on reasons for joining combines material in this section on networks with material in the next section on frames.
  • Retrospective lecture notes for Sept 27: My notes on what happened in this class.
  • * GJ5. Doug McAdam. Recruits To Civil Rights Activism (From Freedom Summer). This is a synopsis of a larger stream of work. The following optional articles give much more detail.
  • Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer. Doug McAdam. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 1. (Jul., 1986), pp. 64-90. (I will spend a lot of time on this in class.)
  • The Biographical Consequences of Activism, Doug McAdam, American Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 5. (Oct., 1989), pp. 744-760. How Freedom Summer changed people.
  • * GJ6. Ronald Inglehart. Changing Values In Post-Industrial Societies (From The Silent Revolution). Argues that the current period is post-materialist in its concerns.
  • * GJ7. Steven Cotgrove And Andrew Duff. Middle-Class Radicalism And Environmentalism (From Environmentalism, Middle Class Radicalism And Politics, The Sociological Review 1980). Survey of British environmentalists, builds on Inglehart, shows that a movement can be middle-class based without expressing middle-class interests. Page 73 includes a chronology of the US environmental movement.
  • * GJ8. James A. Aho. “Christian Patriots” (From The Politics Of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism). His argument is that perceptions of deprivation or threat are filtered through people’s religious world-views.
  • *Wood, M. and M. Hughes (1984). “The Moral Basis of Moral Reform: Status Discontent vs. Culture and Socialization as Explanations of Anti-Pornography Social Movement Adherence.” American Sociological Review 49(1 Feb): 86-99. Analysis of survey data to show that socialization and culture are more important than economic factors. [I will summarize this in class and go over the tables] . JSTOR Stable URL
  • Oliver’s notes on McAdam Inglehart, Cotgrove, Aho

Identities, emotions, commitment processes.

How do people come to feel tied to a movement? Sept 27.  Rescheduled to October 2

  • *GJ pp 91-3 editors’ comments. Definition of “collective identity” on p. 103.
  • Class notes for October 2  on Hirsch, Whittier, Klandermans
  • Oliver’s notes on Hirsch, Morris & Braine (below), Goodwin & Pfaff (fear), and Klandermans (leaving). I’ll be using some of these slides in the Oct 4 class.
  • * GJ9, . Eric L. Hirsch. Generating Commitment Among Students (From Sacrifice For The Cause: Group Processes, Recruitment, And Commitment In A Student Social Movement, American Sociological Review)
  • * GJ10. Nancy Whittier. Sustaining Commitment Among Radical Feminists (From Feminist Generations).
  • * GJ11. Bert Klandermans. Disengaging From Movements (From The Social Psychology Of Protest)
  • * GJ28. Barbara Epstein. The Decline Of The Women’s Movement (From What Happened To The Women’s Movement? Monthly Review 2001). Feminist ideas are broadly accepted, but the movement itself has declined.
  • *Goodwin, J. and S. Pfaff (2001). Emotion work in high-risk social movements: managing fear in the U.S. and East German civil rights movements. Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. J. Goodwin, J. M. Jasper and F. Polletta. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press: 282-300. High risk activists need to deal with fears of reprisals against self or family. Networks, gatherings, rituals, identities, shaming, guns all helped people deal with fear.
  • Pfaff, S. (1996). “Collective Identity and Informal Groups in Revolutionary Mobilization: East Germany in 1989.” Social Forces 75(1): 91-118. Informal groups were the invisible reservoir of dissent. JSTOR stable URL
  • Snow, D. A. and L. Anderson (1987). “Identity Work among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities.” American Journal of Sociology 92(6): 1336-1371. Processes of identity construction & avowal among 168 homeless street people. JSTOR Stable URL
  • Goodwin, J. (1997). “The Libidinal Constitution of a High-Risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion, 1946-1954.” American Sociological Review 62(1): 53-69. Family & love relations eroded movement solidarity.
  • Link to graduate seminar page with more articles on identities, consciousness & emotions

How do people understand their grievances and persuade others to participate?

October 4 – 11. Frames, ideologies and other ways of talking about ideas.

  • Meyer (chapter 2) pp. 40-43. Ideas in movements. A critique of the “great books” idea of how movements; emphasis on reception context. This is basically an introductory overview
  • *David Snow et al., “Frame Alignment Processes,” ASR 51 (1986): 464-481. Movement actors try to bring their movement’s frame into alignment with other’s ideas so that they will join or support the movement.
  • * Morris, A. and N. Braine (2001). “Social movements and oppositional consciousness.” Oppositional consciousness: the subjective roots of social protest. J. Mansbridge and A. Morris. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press: 20-37. Argues that liberation movements against domination differ in key ways from social problems movements. Copy in on-line reserves
  • Lectures and reading notes -Lectures notes on frames, narratives, fields Snow et al, Superbarrio, Poletta, Ray (listed below)
  • Robert Benford. 1993. “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement.” Social Forces 71: 677-702. Debates inside the peace movement about how they would view their issue and present themselves to others. Stable URL
  • Polletta, F. (1998). “”It Was Like a Fever…” Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45(2): 137-159, Narratives of the sit-ins helped to constitute “student activist” as a new collective identity & to make high-risk activism attractive.
  • Bert Klandermans. 1988. “The Formation and Mobilization of Consensus.” International Social Movement Research 1: 173-196. Consensus mobilization is the creation of shared views of movement issues (vs action mobilization to act). Wide-ranging review of functionalist requirements for content of ideologies and sources of communication and credibility.
  • Robert Benford and David Snow. Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 2000, 26, 611-639. Reviews scholarship on collective action frames & framing processes in relation to social movements, with focus on the analytic utility of this literature for understanding social movement dynamics.
  • Link to graduate seminar page with more articles on frames, discourses, narratives

For October 9

  • * GJ13. Kristin Luker. Word Views Of Pro- And Anti-Abortion Activists (From Abortion And The Politics Of Motherhood) This selection emphasizes the prolife rather than prochoice views (which are both treated in the book); lecture will expand upon this discussion.
  • Notes on history & ideas of pro- & anti-abortion movements (summary of Luker & Staggenborg)
  • Lecture Outline on abortion (text of slides)
  • * GJ14. Jane J. Mansbridge. Ideological Purity In The Women’s Movement (From Why We Lost The ERA) This selection might give the impression that the whole women’s movement became “purist,” but she captures a significant tendency of the 1970s.
  • * GJ15. James M. Jasper The Emotions Of Protest (From The Emotions Of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements. Sociological Forum, 1998, 13, 3, Sept, 397-424) An overview.
  • * GL33. Ron Eyerman And Andrew Jamison. Movements And Cultural Change (From Music And Social Movements):
  • Raka Ray. “Women’s Movements and Political Fields” Social Problems 1998. Compares women’s movement groups in Bombay and Calcutta, showing how discussion of spouse abuse was shaped by political context. My reserves
  • Cadena-Roa, J. (2002). “Strategic Framing, Emotions, and Superbarrio-Mexico City’s Masked Crusader.” Mobilization 7(2): 201-216 .A”party mood” that prevailed in a Mexico City social movement organization, the Asamblea de Barrios, created the conditions for the emergence of Superbarrio, a masked crusader for justice who used humor & dramaturgy drawn from wrestling culture to help the urban poor confront the corruption & mismanagement of the Mexican state.
  • Stephen Ellingson. “Understanding the Dialectic of Discourse and Collective Action: Public Debate and Rioting in Antebellum Cincinnati.” American Journal of Sociology 101: 100-144. 1995. Two incidents of mob violence in Cincinnati altered the discursive struggle over abolitionism
  • Steinberg, M. W. (1999). “The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A Dialogic Analysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth-Century English Cotton Spinners.” American Journal of Sociology 105(3): 736-780. Discourses evolve through rational choice and discursive constraints.

October 11: Continue discussions

Social Structure.

October 16-25. Mobilization depends upon the social organization of the people.

Existing Networks link people and organizations and are created by movements. (Oct 16)

  • * Meyer, Chapter 4, “Individuals, Movements, Organizations, and Coalitions” ALSO * Meyer Ch2 pp. 24-40 about organizations.
  • *GJ2 REVIEW Jo Freeman. The Women’s Movement. (From The Origins Of The Women’s Liberation Movement, American Journal of Sociology 1973: original available on web site). Overview of mobilization 1960-1970, with a boxed chronology through 1982. Emphasis on cooptable networks and a precipitating crisis.
  • David Snow, Louis Zurcher, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment.” ASR 45: 787-801. 1980. People are recruited through social networks. Stable URL
  • Staggenborg, S. (1998). “Social Movement Communities and Cycles of Protest: The Emergence and Maintenance of a Local Women’s Movement.” Social Problems 45(2): 180-204. Movement communities developed as a context, communities maintain movements.
  • Whittier, Nancy “Political Generations, Micro-Cohorts, and the Transformation of Social Movements”. American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 760-778. Cohort replacement and movement change.
  • Pamela E. Oliver. 1989. “Bringing the Crowd Back In: The Nonorganizational Elements of Social Movements.” Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 11: 1-30. Showing how crowds and consciousness can be integrated in collective action and social movement theory.
  • Roger Gould. 1991. “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871.” American Sociological Review 45: 787-801. Stable URL
  • Zhao, Dingxin. “Ecologies of Social Movements: Student Mobilization during the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement in Beijing” American Journal of Sociology; 1998, 103, 6, May, 1493-1529. Networks, space. Stable URL

Organizations. Arguments about what is the best form of movement organization, competition between organizations, professionalization. ( Was assigned for Oct 18.  We will discuss Oct 23. Main points Will be on Exam #1)

  • * GJ pp165-168 overview of organizations; box defines key terms.
  • Lecture Notes on main points of these readings (and others)
  • * GJ15 John McCarthy and Mayer Zald. Social Movement Organizations. (From “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (May, 1977): 1212-1242.) This selection emphasizes organizational concepts and summarizes the resource mobilization perspective.
  • *GJ16, . Elisabeth S. Clemens. Organizational Repertoires (From Organizational Repertoires And Institutional Change: Women’s Groups And The Transformation Of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920) This selection emphasizes organizational choices and how they evolve through political action.
  • *GJ17. Transnational Environmental Activism (From Politics Beyond The State: Environmental Activism And World Civic Politics): Paul Wapner.
  • *GJ18. Affinity Groups And The Movement Against Corporate Globalization (From After Seattle): William Finnegan. Affinity groups and decentralized organizations are a growing phenomenon.
  • P. Bert Klandermans. 1990. “Linking the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ Movement Networks in the Netherlands. In Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler, eds., Challenging the Political Order, pages 122-136. Alliance and conflict systems in multi-organizational fields.
  • Suzanne Staggenborg. 1988. “The Consequences of Professionalization and Formalization in the Pro-Choice Movement.” American Sociological Review 53 (Aug): 585-606. Professionals and entrepreneurs are different roles. Entrepreneurs found movement organizations, professionals stabilize them. Comparative study of many organizations.

NOTE: Exam 1 (October 25) covers material through this point

Exam 1 Review Sheet

October 30. Loose ends.

This class will be a discussion of themes from prior readings on organization that we did not have time to dig into plus a look to the next classes on strategy and tactics.

  • I will also summarize the arguments from Jo Freeman’s The Tyranny of Structurelessness.
  • Oliver & Marwell Mobilizing Technologies for Collective Action is about the dilemmas of paid vs volunteer activism

Tactics/strategies: interactions between movements and their opponents.

Nov 1 – November 8. Repertoires of action, counter-movement pairs, repression dynamics, violence, terrorism.

(Note: I am re-working the second half of the course and may change the order of items after Nov 6 to allow time for some topics I think are especially interesting.)

What Movements Do (Read items 1-5 for Nov 1 )
Central Discussion topic is logic of disruptive tactics and civil disobedience.

  • GL pp 221-4, ideas of repertoires of action and strategy
  • Lecture notes on ideas of repertoires of action & constraints on tactics + an empirical inventory of tactics.
  • * Meyer, Chapter 5 “The Strategy and Tactics of Social Protest”
  • *Meyer, Chapter 6, “Civil Disobedience”
  • * GJ20. Saul D. Alinsky. Protest Tactics (From Rules For Radicals). Alinsky was an extremely influential community organizer who founded influential organizationad and wrote many books directed to activists. This short selection emphasizes some of his direct-action tactics. Alinsky’s “rules” are reprinted on the web in many places, both on activist/anarchist sites AND on business/administration sites which emphasize how to prepare for and respond to Alinskyist tactics.
  • An example of an anti-activist site for public adminstrators
  • An example of a pro-activist site listing the “rules”
  • GJ21. Aldon Morris. Tactical Innovation In The Civil Rights Movement (From The Origins Of The Civil Rights Movement). Short history of the evolution of the sit-in in the CRM
  • McAdam, Doug (1983). “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency.” American Sociological Review 48(6): 735-754. This was a crucial article setting off a lot of this analysis. Argues that upsurges in mobilization are due to tactical innovations, which are brought down by regimes learning how to respond.

Policing protests & policing the oppressed (Nov. 6 & 8)

  • * Oliver on Crime and Repression
  • Donatella Della Porta and Herbert Reiter, editors. Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies. University of Minnesota Press. 1998. This collection has excellent articles.
  • Introduction (della Porta & Reiter, Policing of protest in Western democracies)
  • *Chapter 2 (McPhail et al., Policing protest in the United States: 1960-1995 )
  • Chapter 10 (della PortaPolice knowledge and protest policing)
  • White, R. W. (1999). “Comparing State Repression of Pro-State Vigilantes and Anti-State Insurgents: Northern Ireland, 1972-75.” Mobilization 4(2): 189-202. Secondary empirical & statistical data are drawn on to compare the repression of pro-state paramilitary violence with that of anti-state insurgent violence in Northern Ireland, 1972-1975.

Case Study of Movement Tactics, Repression, News Coverage, Political Context: The Battle of Seattle. November 13-15.

  • Video: “This is What Democracy Looks Like” compiles a narrative of the “Battle of Seattle” from footage shot by protesters. Running time 72 minutes. We watched this in class November 13.
  • Discussion of video versus news coverage. November 15. Web site includes a sample of news coverage from the time as well as articles about the larger issues.
  • * Smith, Jackie. (2001). Globalizing Resistance: The Battle of Seattle and the Future of Social Movements. Mobilization 6(1): 1-19.  This study examines the participants, activities, & political context of the “Battle of Seattle.” It explores the transitional activist linkages & suggests that a division of labor was presented whereby groups with local & national ties took on mobilization roles while groups with routinized transnational ties provided information & frames for the struggle.
  • * Patrick Gillham & Gary Marx, “Complexity and Irony in Policing and Protesting: The World Trade Organization in Seattle.” Social Justice, Summer 2000, 27, 2 p. 212. More of a “birds’ eye” view of police & protester decision-making and the unintended consequences of everyone’s actions.
  • * Newsweek, December 13, 1999,, U.S. Edition, NATIONAL AFFAIRS; Pg. 30,  The Siege of Seattle, By Kenneth Klee; With Patricia King and Katrina Woznicki. A mainstream news magazine’s account.
  • Other examples of news coverage of the event:
  • William Solomon. “More form than substance: Press coverage of the WTO protests in Seattle.” Monthly Review May 2000; 52, 1. p. 12. Critiques news coverage in Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
  • JD Charlton. “Talking Seattle!” Radical Society [Socialist Review] 2001, 28, 3/4. p 183.  A descriptive summary of what happened at the protest and why people were there.
  • Walden Bello. “Lilliputians Rising — 2000: The Year of Global Protest Agasint Corporate Globalization.” Multinational Monitor Jan/Feb 2001; 22, 1/2.
  • In These Times, January 10, 2000, SPECIAL REPORT; Pg. 14, 2578 words, AFTER SEATTLE, BY DAVID MOBERG. A commentary on the significance of the event.
  • In These Times, January 10, 2000, SPECIAL REPORT; Pg. 18, 940 words, ANARCHY IN THE USA, BY DAVID GRAEBER; Challenges assumptions that anarchists are “violent.”
  • Newsweek, December 13, 1999, U.S. Edition, NATIONAL AFFAIRS; Pg. 36,  The New Radicals, By Michael Elliott; With Keith Naughton in Detroit, John McCormick and Peter Annin in Chicago, Thomas Hayden in New York, Kenneth Klee and Patricia King in Seattle, and Debra Gwartney in Eugene. Mainstream news magazine’s coverage of the activists.
  • Newsweek International, November 22, 1999, 2241 words, BUSINESS: ATTACKING FREE TRADE: WHY ARE SO MANY GREENS AND WORKERS’ RIGHTS ACTIVISTS HEADING FOR SEATTLE? pre-protest coverage.
  • Newsweek, December 6, 1999,, Atlantic Edition, WORLD VIEW; Pg. 4, Whose Cause Is It, Anyway?, By Pranay Gupte; Gupte is editor and publisher of The Earth Times. A pre-protest editorial arguing that NGOs are disconnected from their constituencies.
  • The Economist, December 04, 1999, U.S. Edition, 1308 words, The new trade war, seattle. Short news article, identifies mixture of types of protesters and issues.
  • Background on the WTO – World Trade Organization web site. This public-oriented site describes the structure of the WTO, contains rebuttals to “myths” about the WTO, describes current issues, etc. including defenses of its structure & the value of free trade.
  • Two anti-WTO sites with lots of information: Global Exchange, an NGO I don’t know much about, seems fairly commercial & professionalized but encouraging anti-WTO activism, with clear layouts and information you can download and Trade Observatory is a web site about WTO & related issues put out by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy which describes itself as supporting family farms, rural communities and ecosystems. Its home page lists a number of different projects on agriculture & the environment.

News as data, news as actor.

News coverage of movements and repression in shaping movement cycles.  (If you are doing reading notes, please do NOT waste your time taking pages and pages of notes about all these articles.  Instead use the abstracts a guides to what the main points are and then mostly “read” the tables and graphs and focus on the summaries of the results.  I will go over this in class and highlight the main points.)

Read the 4 *’d articles for November 20.  Read the first two with *’s, and for the two Oliver articles, skim them more lightly trying to see if you can get the main points, which I will discuss more in class.

  • *GJ26. The Media In The Unmaking Of The New Left (From The Whole World Is Watching): Todd Gitlin. [My notes on Gitlin are in a file for Nov 29]
  • My lecture notes: My lecture notes (document file, outline only, 9 pages) PDF of slide shots, includes lots of graphs, big file

Selection Processes.

Articles about factors predicting whether protests and demonstrations get news coverage. (I will summarize the findings from these articles in lecture. If you are doing pre-class reading notes, you should focus on the RESULTS of studies, what were their FINDINGS, not on the literature review at the beginning of the article. That is, just skim and do NOT take notes on the literature review. Focus on the data. You will also want to review the lecture slides, as soon as I get them posted.)

  • * McCarthy, J. D., C. McPhail, et al. (1996). “Images of Protest: Dimensions of Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991.” American Sociological Review 61(3): 478-499. The first study of its type.
  • (*) Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers. “How Events Enter the Public Sphere: Conflict, Location and Sponsorship in Local Newspaper Coverage of Public Events.” American Journal of Sociology 105: 38-87. 1999. This one assesses coverage of protest events relative to others: conflict gets you in the news, location and sponsorship matter. Non-conflictual message events have very low rates of coverage.
  • (*) “Political Processes and Local Newspaper Coverage of Protest Events: From Selection Bias to Triadic Interactions” (Pamela E. Oliver and Gregory M. Maney) American Journal of Sociology 106 (2 September) 2000: 463-505 PDF file. This one examines only protest events: ties to institutional politics increase coverage, but events compete with the legislature for space in the news hole.
  • Mueller, Carol. “International Press Coverage of East German Protest Events, 1989” American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 820-832. Comparison of six nations’ coverage in light of media selection models. Proximity to the event matters.
  • Mueller, Carol. “Media Measurement Models of Protest Event Data.” Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 165-184. Mueller, Media measurement models of protest event data A theoretical article that gives a very clear review of the relevant issues
  • Almeida and Lichbach, “To the Internet, From the Internet: Comparative Media Coverage of Transnational Protests.” Mobilization In Library Reserves Compares news coverage in different sources.

Media and Mobilization.

Articles about how the media aid or deter mobilization. Again, I’ll be summarizing results from this work.

  • Sampedro, Victor The Media Politics of Social Protest. Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 185-205. Spain, media opportunities usually coincide with political opportunities, but sometimes there is a chance in the media.
  • Roscigno, V. J. and W. F. Danaher (2001). “Media and Mobilization: The Case of Radio and Southern Textile Worker Insurgency, 1929 to 1934.” American Sociological Review 66(1): 21-48. A nice piece, showing that worker-oriented radio stations facilitated insurgency.
  • Smith, J., J. D. McCarthy, et al. (2001). “From Protest to Agenda Building: Description Bias in Media Coverage of Protest Events in Washington, D.C.” Social Forces 79(4): 1397-1423. Protest coverage focus on events, not issues, may undermine movement agendas.
  • Rohlinger, D. A. (2002). “Framing the Abortion Debate: Organizational Resources, Media Strategies, and Movement-Countermovement Dynamics.” The Sociological Quarterly 43(4): 479-507. How opposed SMOs, the National Organization for Women (NOW) & Concerned Women for America (CWA), get media coverage during critical moments of the abortion debate. Strategic construction of frames, responses to opponents, success in getting coverage.
  • Wisler, D. and M. Giugni (1999). “Under the Spotlight: The Impact of Media Attention on Protest Policing.” Mobilization 4(2): 171-187.
  • Davenport, C. and M. Eads (2001). “Cued to Coerce or Coercing Cues? An Exploration of Dissident Rhetoric and Its Relationship to Political Repression.” Mobilization 6(2): 151-171.

Note: November 27 was an open discussion that mostly talked about alcohol movements.

For November 29 – Central discussion topic is difference vs sameness in identity deployment.

These articles are about the gay movement. Both are in the book.

Note: We also did not discuss the Gitlin article assigned before break, so that is relevant, too. (In class I said that “reading notes” on these articles would be accepted as on time next Tuesday as well.)

  • * GJ30. Joshua Gamson. The Dilemmas Of Identity Politics (From Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma. Social Problems 1995). Fixed identities are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power. I put this article here because it and the Bernstein article are taking different angles on the same issue.
  • * GJ22. Mary Bernstein. The Strategic Uses Of Identity In The Lesbian And Gay Movement: Bernstein, Mary. “Celebration and Suppression: The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement.” American Journal of Sociology; 1997, 103, 3, Nov, 531-565. Identities as public expressions of yourself which you can deploy for political purposes, stressing either similarity or difference with the dominant group.
  • Reading notes on Gitlin (from above), Gamson and Bernstein.

For December 4 & 6, We will come back to political structures and outcomes.  This is a lot of reading and I am in the process right now of re-reading the material to tell you which things to focus more or less on.

  • My older lecture notes on “outcomes” which will be a major basis for my updated lecture on outcomes next week. I’ll post the updated lecture notes when they are ready. Here are the newer notes.
  • Notes on the readings in this section, including guides to what to focus on.
  • These two short readings are important and should be read fully.
  • * GJ 315-317 includes a definition of “abeyance” AND GJ 347-9, explains radical flank effects and other issues regarding outcomes.
  • * GJ30. William A. Gamson. Defining Movement ‘Success’ (From The Strategy Of Social Protest)
  • GJ31,. Edwin Amenta, Kathleen Dunleavy, And Mary Bernstein. The Case Of Huey Long And The New Deal (From “Stolen Thunder? Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth, Political Mediation, And The Second New Deal”) Uses Gamson’s categories to discuss the success of a particular movement. My notes suggest focusing on theoretical material pp. 358ff.
  • * Meyer, Chapter 7 “The State and Protests” My notes suggest specific material to focus on, particularly 126-132; I suggest you read the case studies more lightly, to get a sense of the point but not to worry about details.
  • Meyer, Chapter 8 “When Everybody Protests” (this is about counter-movements). We have already covered most of this material already; it is relevant, but it does not need to be read as new material. See notes.
  • * Meyer, Chapter 9, “The Policy Connection” My notes suggest emphasizing pp. 171-180.
  • Meyer, Chapter 10. Looks to the future, a wrap-up. Worth reading. We will be discussing these issues on the last day of class (after the quiz) as we look to the future.
  • Andrews, Kenneth T “The Impacts of Social Movements on the Political Process: The Civil Rights Movement and Black Electoral Politics in Mississippi”. American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 800-819. I’ll be adding a summary of this article to my lecture. It shows that mobilization in one time period affects outcomes in later time periods. It is a good and important article.

NOTE: Last objective exam is December 11. Last class is December 13, after the test, and will be used for a more open-ended discussion of what we have learned and where we go from here.