Author: Pamela E. Oliver
Company: University of Wisconsin - Madison

Sociology 626 Oliver page

Commitment Processes
McAdam High Risk Activism (revisit graph)

Hirsch: Sacrifice for the Cause
•	Example of a sit-in / blockade at Columbia re disinvestment in South Africa
•	Group processes, not individual attitudes or characteristics, explain actions
•	Data are combination of participant observation & interviews with participants + survey of general student population
Hirsch: four collective processes
•	Consciousness-raising: learn about the issue collectively.  Study.  Small-group settings.
•	Collective empowerment: gain a sense of collective power.  
•	Activist cadre planned blockade & symbolic arrests.  Larger group did not know plans in advance.
•	Cadre led rally to the site, confronted students with chained door, would they stay or go?  Most stayed.
•	Leaders’ risks & sacrifice motivated others
•	Is this “empowerment” or group influence processes?
Hirsch: four collective processes (2)
•	Polarization: escalating response of opposition may lead to demobilization OR increased commitment
•	Students expected quick arrests, publicity
•	Administration threatened university discipline: up to expulsion.  (Worse than arrest for the students)
•	Students felt afraid, increased sense of group, solidarity
•	Collective decision-making: feel bound by group decisions.
Hirsch: comparing protesters to non-protesters with survey data
•	Protesters (compared to non):
–	Were more liberal/left in general political orientation
–	Combined support for divestment with belief in efficacy of blockade as a tactic
–	Believed personal costs of protest were justified
–	Believed university divestment would influence South Africa
–	Said their opinion of the university President had declined (polarization)
•	Not significant: extent of prior participation, membership in campus organizations, freshman, not religious

Oppositional consciousness Morris & Braine
Cultures of domination & opposition
•	Groups do not all face the same circumstances.  Oppression matters.
•	Cultures of dominated groups often intertwine cultures of subordination and cultures of opposition:
–	Music, stories, language may teach submission instead of resistance
–	May embody helplessness, fatalism, resignation, fear, despair, apathy, other-worldliness
–	May include negative views of one’s own group (what some call internalized oppression)
•	Importance of recognizing the intermixing of these elements in popular culture
Oppositional consciousness
•	Minimal criteria
–	Identify with subordinate group
–	Believe at lease some inequality is unjust
–	Opposing injustice
–	Seeing common interest in eliminating injustice
•	More full-fledged consciousness
–	Sees dominant actions as forming a “system” for advancing dominant group
–	Includes other ideas & beliefs that give coherence, explanation, moral condemnation [I’d see these as criteria for an ideology]
Oppositional culture & consciousness
•	Oppositional consciousness builds upon oppositional culture
•	But additionally distills and synthesizes ideas and weaves them into symbolic blueprints for collective action and social change
–	Overcomes the elements of fear and submission in the culture
•	This is a continuum, not a dichotomy
•	Important to recognize BOTH the ongoing continuity with a deeper culture AND the new elements that empower resistance
Segregation and consciousness
•	Physical segregation of a group strengthens its oppositional culture (although possibly reducing its influence in the dominant society)
–	Mechanism is reinforcing one set of ideas in social interaction with less influence from dominant ideas
–	Separate “private” spaces for talking to each other without presence of dominants
–	Non-segregated groups need to create separate spaces to form oppositional cultures
•	Example of deaf vs. blind & physically impaired: sign language creates a separate cultural space
Morris & Braine typology of movements
•	Liberation movements: oppressed people seeking to overthrow a system of domination; grounded in cultures of opposition
•	Equality-based special issue movements: particular issue tied to larger liberation movement
•	Social responsibility movements: challenge conditions affecting whole society; you choose whether to be in the group; less embedded in cultures of opposition

Goodwin & Pfaff: Managing Fear: US Black and East German Civil Rights Movements
Fear
•	A major emotion in liberation movements
•	Structures of domination are maintained by coercion
•	Oppressed people have learned lessons of submission
•	Past repression makes people conscious of consequences of resistance
•	Note: cultures of fear even among “dominants.”  Frightening to stand out, be disruptive, violate social rules
•	Countering and managing fear is central to challenging movements
Fear management (1)
•	Intimate small groups: relations of trust, commitment
–	Those arrested & interrogated knew they would not be forgotten
–	Pressure not to inform, to stay committed
•	Mass meetings, typically in relative safety of churches
–	Exhibit numbers, increase sense of others
–	Collective effervescence, emotional energy.  Festival atmosphere.  Excite, energize.
–	Singing
Fear management (2)
•	Collective identity
–	Encouraging individuals to identify first with the movement, with a larger force.  
–	Example speech from Andrew Young 1963
“We have no choice as to whether we will die.  We all will die.  But we can decide that dying in the cause of freedom for our families, our friends, in the cause of justice, is preferable to dying in an automobile accident, or from cancer or alcoholism.”  
Quotes Dr. King: “A man who has not found something he is willing to die for has not found something he is willing to live for.”
Fear management (3)
•	Shaming for not participating.  Pressure on others, challenges to inaction.
•	Guns (US only).  Despite non-violence as strategy, most Southern Blacks owned guns, considered them essential for safety.
•	Divine protection: belief in God’s protection for just action.

Departures from movements

From Bert Klandermans: The Social Psychology of Social Movements
Change in movements is normal
•	Commitment/participation have to be actively maintained, will not just happen
•	People exit movements for a variety of reasons, generally a process
–	Competing obligations
–	Dissatisfaction with accomplishments, leaders
–	Loss of affective (emotional) ties 
–	Burnout [very common!]
•	Movements decline not only because people leave, but because new people do not replace them
Exits from a failed movement
•	Dutch peace movement lost on cruise missiles in 1985, lost again in 1987 election when they failed to “punish” the government and party who did it won re-election
•	Many people left the movement
•	Klandermans & colleagues studied what happened to them
•	Key organization studied, the IKV, was a faith-based (religious) peace organization
Dutch peace movement 1980s: 
Post-failure groups
•	Persisters: stayed in the movement, kept it going at low level.  Peace movement their 1^st & only experience, long-time, generally church-connected.
•	Switchers: moved on to other movements, issues.  Activist identity.  Generally had been in other movements before this one.
•	Terminators: quit entirely. Had weaker connections to movement, shorter experiences.
•	Radicalizers: moved to more militant groups (either peace or other issue).  A minority.  More radical when they joined in peace movement upsurge, pull away when the movement loses.