Mayer N. Zald

Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory

Past analysis of social movements and social movement organizations has normally assumed a close link between the frustrations or grievances of a collectivity of actors and the growth and decline of movement activity. Questioning the theoretical centrality of this assumption directs social movement analysis away from its heavy emphasis upon the social psychology of social movement participants; it can then be more easily integrated with structural theories of social process. This essay presents a set of concepts and related propositions drawn from a resource mobilization perspective. It emphasizes the variety and sources of resources; the relationship of social movements to the media, authorities, and other parties; and the interaction among movement organizations. Propositions are developed to explain social movement activity at several levels of inclusiveness-the social movement sector, the social movement industry, and social movement organization.

Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings

Introduction: opportunities mobilizing structures and framing processes Doug McAdam Part I. Political Opportunities: 1. Clarifying the concept of political opportunities Doug McAdam 2. States and opportunities: the political structuring of social movements Sidney Tarrow 3. Social movements and the state: thoughts on the policing of protest Donatella della Porta 4. Opportunities and framing in the East European revolts of 1989 Anthony Oberschall 5. Opportunities and Framing in the Political Cycle of Perestroika Elena Zdravomyslova Part II. Mobilizing Structures: 6. Mobilizing structures: constraints and opportunities in adopting, adapting and inventing John D. McCarthy 7. The organizational structure of new social movements in relation to their political context Hanspeter Kriesi 8. The impact of national contexts on social movement structures: a cross-movement and cross-national comparison Dieter Rucht 9. Organizational form as frame: collective identity and political strategy in the American Labor Movement 1880-1920 Elisabeth S. Clemens 10. The collapse of a social movement: the interplay of mobilizing structures, framing, and political opportunities in the Knights of Labor Kim Voss Part III. Framing Processes: 11. Culture ideology and strategic framing Mayer N. Zald 12. Accessing public media electoral and governmental agendas John D. McCarthy, Jackie Smith, and Mayer N. Zald 13. Media discourse, movement publicity, and the generation of collective action frames: theoretical and empirical exercises in meaning construction Bert Klandermans and Sjoerd Goslinga 14. Framing political opportunity William A. Gamson and David S. Meyer 15. The framing function of movement tactics: strategic dramaturgy in the American civil rights movement Doug McAdam.

Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Introduction: Opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes – toward a synthetic, comparative perspective on social movements

In a widely read book published in 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell proclaimed the “end of ideology.” As the 1960s dawned, a good many social scientists believed we had reached a stage in the development of society where ideological conflict would gradually be replaced by a more pluralistic, pragmatic consensus. Bell and his colleagues could not have been more mistaken. In the very year Bells book was published, black students staged sit-in demonstrations throughout the American South. In turn the sit-ins revitalized both a moribund civil rights movement and the tradition of leftist activism dormant in America since the 1930s. During the ensuing decade the country was rent by urban riots, massive antiwar demonstrations, student strikes, and political assassinations. On a global level, student movements proliferated: in France, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Pakistan, and numerous other countries. In Czechoslovakia, an effort to reform and “humanize the face of communism” was brutally suppressed by Soviet forces. In short, the 1960s witnessed a proliferation in the very kinds of social movements and revolutions that Bell had assumed were a thing of the past. The last twenty-five years have only served to underscore the poverty of Bells argument. If anything, social movements and revolutions have, in recent decades, emerged as a common – if not always welcome – feature of the political landscape. In the 1970s Islamic fundamentalists wrest power from the Shah of Iran. The Sandinistas depose Somoza in Nicaragua. Terrorist groups in Germany and Italy step up their attacks on military installations, politicians, and symbols of “corporate hegemony.” The 1980s were witness to more of the same.

Power Plays: How Social Movements and Collective Action Create New Organizational Forms

ABSTRACT Organizational theory emphasizes how new organizational forms are produced by technological innovation but has glossed over the role of cultural innovation. This chapter suggests that social movements are important sources of cultural innovation and identifies the scope conditions under which social movements create new organizational forms. By doing so, it lends substance to the notion of institutional entrepreneurship and enlarges the theoretical reach of neo-institutionalism.

More Fragmentation? Unfinished Business in Linking the Social Sciences and the Humanities

I am indebted to the editors of ASO for giving me the opportunity to write this essay. First, my own academic career is roughly coterminous with that of ASQ: I began research in organizations two years after ASO was born, some of my own early papers were published here, and I have been a subscriber almost since ASO first began. Second, J. D. Thompson became my colleague and friend at Vanderbilt in 1968, and I co-edited his collected essays (Rushing and Zald, 1976). Although administrative science (organizational studies) has made much progress since the founding of ASQ, it continues to be a fragmented field of study. This essay explores one source of the continuing and possibly increasing fragmentation of administrative science-the extensive but partial rapprochement with the humanities that has occurred in recent decades. I argue that the opening to the humanities is useful because it helps us understand processes and phenomena that are not well explored in more traditional modes, but the opening is still incomplete. It has taken place most fully in research using deconstructive, rhetorical, and narrative analysis growing out of literary theory, and there has been some engagement with history and historical analysis. The connection to the traditional topics of philosophy have been most disjointed. An agenda for further research is suggested.

Urban Differentiation, Characteristics of Boards of Directors, and Organizational Effectiveness

The internal differentiation of urban areas affects the support base of organizations by, among other things, its provision of a pool of potential supporters to organizations. In turn, the characteristics of actual supporters (in this case boards of directors) should be related to organizational effectiveness. Aggregate measures of the socioeconomic composition of boards of directors of thirty-four branches of the YMCA of Chicago are found to be correlated with demographic measures on the areas each serves. Furthermore, the composition of the boards is correlated with measures of organizational and board effectiveness. The demographic measures are also correlated with the spatial work-residence patterns of board members. The over-all import of the study is to link ecological and organizational analysis.

Social Movements and Organization Theory: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ON ORGANIZATIONS: ENVIRONMENT AND RESPONSES

In some measure, much of the social change we have witnessed in America and elsewhere during the last several decades can be attributed to social movements, large and small. The civil rights movement (CRM), the environmental movement, the womens movement, and the gay rights movement are among the larger and more visible motors of social change. Other, less visible, movements also have promoted significant changes in social policy, raised our consciousness about issues and problems, and even altered our behavior in everyday life, at home, with friends, and at work. The anti–drunk driving movement, the coalition of groups opposed to smoking, the movement for pay equity reform, and the animal rights movement may not have loomed as large on the political landscape as other movements, but they have significantly contributed to changes in the way we live. Movements that developed as spin-offs or amalgams of larger movements also have led to social change. Consider, as examples, the environmental justice movement, which emerged as an outgrowth of the environmental and civil rights movements, or the movement for pay equity reform, which grew out of the interplay among the CRM, the womens movement, and the more progressive streams of the labor movement. Of course, social movements are themselves created out of broad social processes and social forces, and are accompanied by diffuse political and social processes that contribute to social change. Nevertheless, it is useful to ask how and where social movements contribute to social change.

Social Movements and Organization Theory: SOCIAL CHANGE, SOCIAL THEORY, AND THE CONVERGENCE OF MOVEMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONS

The essays in this volume have brought together two fields of inquiry, the study of social movements and the study of organizations, that have shown substantial convergence in core concepts and modes of analysis (McAdam and Scott, Chap. 1; Campbell, Chap. 2). Social movements are often represented by formal organizations, and organizations respond to social movements and have movement-like processes within themselves. Thus, scholars from both areas of study are finding it useful to borrow or bridge across the boundaries. This is not an entirely new development; indeed, it has a long, if fitful, history. We will not review that history here, although Elisabeth Clemens, in the next chapter, helps us to understand why that history has been so fitful. Instead, we want to give a partial answer to the question, Why now? Why is this bridging even more relevant today than it has been in the past? What events and processes “out there” almost force us to bridge and blend these two areas? In this era of rapid social change, organizations increasingly resemble episodic movements rather than ongoing bounded actors, and organizations and movements are changing their strategies and routines in response to similar social and technological changes. Moreover, one of the most visible social movements of our time, aimed at reining in “globalization from above,” is explicitly oriented toward contemporary economic and organizational arrangements. We are not attempting a full history of the fields of study, nor of the development and intersection of movements and We thank Chris Marquis, Tim Vogus, Klaus Weber, and Mina Yoo for research assistance and Dick Scott for extensive editorial comments on this chapter. Our arguments benefited from discussion at the first Michigan Conference on Social Movements and Organizations in May 2001.

From Pressure Group to Social Movement: Organizational Dilemmas of the Effort to Promote Nuclear Power

Social movement theorists have focused on the efforts groups make to gain the right to routinely influence government policy, while ignoring the opposite process, in which groups lose this right. This paper examines the development of the pronuclear movement in the United States as a case study of a pressure group which lost power and mobilized a social movement to restore it. The antinuclear movement helped to dislodge the pronuclear pressure group. We describe two wings of the pronuclear movement, an industry-based wing and a community-based wing, and look at the different organizational and strategic problems these two bases of mobilization gave rise to.

Power Balance and Staff Conflict in Correctional Institutions

As a part of a larger study of correctional institutions for juvenile delinquents, an attempt was made to account for the level and patterns of staff conflict in five institutions. Analysis reveals that the level of conflict is lowest in the most custodial institutions, and is higher in institutions with mixed goals or predominantly treatment goals. The pattern of staff conflict is found to be linked to the power balance in the institution, the degree of divergent perspectives among groups, and the amount of interdependence and intercommunication among groups. Since custodial and treatment institutions allocate power among cottage parents and social service workers differently, the patterns of conflict are also linked to institutional goals. Some implications of continuous problem solving and high conflict for organizational operation are discussed. Mayer N. Zald is assistant professor of sociology, University of Chicago.