Patrick G. Coy

A Stage Model of Social Movement Co-optation: Community Mediation in the United States

The community mediation movement in the United States arose in the late 1970s as an alternative to a formalized justice system that was perceived to be costly, time consuming, and unresponsive to individual and community needs. Community mediation advocates also valued community training, social justice, volunteerism, empowerment, and local control over conflict resolution mechanisms. But over the past quarter century, community mediation has become increasingly institutionalized and has undergone various degrees of co-optation in its evolving relationship with the court system. Drawing on the literatures of dispute resolution, co-optation, and social movements, we analyze the evolution of community mediation and identify the degrees and dimensions of its co-optation. Thus, we develop a four-stage model of co-optation as it has occurred within the community mediation movement, identifying multiple steps in each stage. This analysis facilitates greater understanding of specific events, particular processes, and individual decisions and dilemmas that mediation activists face in their working relationships with their communities and the formal legal system. Further, scholars studying similar processes in other social movements may find that this stage model of co-optation, in whole or in part, is useful to their analyses of other movements.

Constructing identity and oppositional knowledge: The framing practices of peace movement organizations during the Persian gulf war

Social movement organizations (SMOs) engage in the formation of public policy and social beliefs by framing issues and events for the public. These framing activities may offer an alternative source of knowledge and challenge status quo definitions of important social issues. Analyzing the statements and press releases of four peace movement organizations during the seven months of military escalation and war in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, this article explores the structure and content of social movement framing of a specific event. Findings suggest that the shape and content of the frames used by these SMOs are rooted in a complex amalgamation of each organizations historical and public identity, intended audiences, and contemporary motivations and organizational goals. The collective identity of an organization influences the shape and content of the organizations framing activities. The organizations studied made use of their specific structural and organizational strengths as part of a crede...

Harnessing and Challenging Hegemony: The U.S. Peace Movement after 9/11

This article examines how U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOs) sought discursively to overcome cultural and political obstacles to mass mobilization after September 11, 2001. Quantitative and qualitative methods are blended to analyze the official statements of nine U.S. PMOs. Three factors influencing framing are considered: the cultural context, the political context, and oppositional identities. The events of 9/11 presented discursive and emotional opportunities for PMOs to harness hegemony by drawing on resonant ideas, conforming to emotional norms, and linking strong emotions to opposing war and repression. Legitimated political closure in the aftermath of 9/11 also encouraged PMOs to harness hegemony by arguing that consensus for war and repression presented threats to civil liberties and democracy. Oppositional identities rooted in consciousness of structural inequalities encouraged PMOs to challenge hegemony, however, by highlighting the costs of war and repression of minority groups. This article advances our understanding of how interrelated cultural and political processes affect framing.

Shared Risks and Research Dilemmas on a Peace Brigades International Team in Sri Lanka

Peace Brigades International (PBI) is a nongovernmental organization that provides nonviolent protective accompaniment in situations of severe political violence for local activists under threat. PBI team members function as unarmed bodyguards, attempting to deter violence by their presence or to document it and raise the costs to the transgressors if the deterrence fails. Blending ethnographic research of PBI with simultaneous service on a PBI team in Sri Lanka created a host of ethical quandaries and dilemmas. This article explains and analyzes some of these problems, including the use of politically sensitive research material, participation in team meetings and team decisions with life-threatening consequences for others, the acceptance of a salary from the organization under study, and embracing or refusing risks as a participant observer/team member who had more than one agenda.

A Typology of Oppositional Knowledge: Democracy and the U.S. Peace Movement

Institutionally privileged political discourses not only legitimate the policy agendas of power-holders, but also de-legitimate dissent. Oppositional discourses are social movement responses to these cultural obstacles to mass mobilisation. Integrating discourse analysis and framing theory, we argue that the production of oppositional knowledge constitutes a long-term, counter-hegemonic project that connects macro-level discourses with meso and micro-level efforts at political persuasion, mobilisation, and change. Drawing examples from statements issued by U.S. peace movement organisations (PMOs) over fifteen years, we map the production of oppositional discourses across five conflict periods. Using qualitative data analysis and both inductive and deductive theorising, we develop a typology of the U.S. peace movements discourses on democracy. We show that four forms of oppositional knowledge were generated by PMOs to facilitate policy dialogue and accountability. Through their statements, peace movement organisations crafted a shared conception of democracy that is antithetical to military intervention abroad and political repression at home.

Pursuing Political Persuasion: War and Peace Frames in the United States after September 11th

Despite the prominence of framing analysis in social movement research, the ways that power-holders and challengers attempt to persuade the general public remain under-theorized. We develop a multidimensional typology of what content producers frequently anticipate will make their frames potent. Moreover, we argue that several contextual factors influence which of these dimensions are emphasized in frames. To assess these propositions, we conducted an analysis of statements issued by President Bush and 10 US peace movement organizations following the September 11th attacks. Both sides touched upon all dimensions. President Bushs statements took advantage of discursive and emotional opportunities in crafting messages supportive of war and repression. Illustrating their strategic nature, PMO statements either appropriated or rejected dominant discourses for any single dimension. While peace groups took advantage of emotional opportunities, oppositional cultures curtailed their use of discursive opportunities. Lacking democratic legitimacy and rational legal authority, peace groups devoted a higher proportion of text to establishing the empirical credibility and the moral authority of their claims. The study advances social movement theory by highlighting the interplay of culture, power, and agency in the production of public collective action frames.

An Experiment in Personalist Politics: The Catholic Worker Movement and Nonviolent Action

The Catholic Worker movement, co-founded by Dorothy Day in 1933, is well known for its hospitality work with the urban poor. Less examined is the Worker movements steadfast commitment to nonviolent action as its primary means of political engagement. How has the movement managed to sustain this often costly commitment for nearly seventy years? The answer lies in an analysis of five aspects of Catholic Worker life and thought: Biblical earnestness, personalism, solidarity with the poor through hospitality, living in community, and membership turnover.

Ideological Consistency and Contextual Adaptation U.S. Peace Movement Emotional Work Before and After 9/11

The authors examine how the U.S. peace movement responded to the Bush administration’s attempts to generate and capitalize on a heightened sense of threat after the 9/11 attacks. Longitudinal analysis of statements by U.S. peace movement organizations issued before and after 9/11 indicates that the movement’s discourse is both ideologically consistent and contextually adaptive. In each period, movement discourse highlighted the U.S. government as a source of threat and people living outside of the United States as the targets of that threat. Nonetheless, the movement’s discourse changed significantly in the exacerbated climate of fear in the first 4 months after the 9/11 attacks and then began to revert to pre-9/11 patterns during the Iraq War when the salience of threat declined. This research significantly advances knowledge of social movement discourse by establishing that ideological consistency and contextual adaptation are not mutually exclusive, by highlighting the contextual and dialogical factors that encourage certain types of movement responses to dominant discourses, and by explaining the role of emotional work in mobilizing dissent.

Mainstreaming Peace and Conflict Studies: Designing Introductory Courses to Fit Liberal Arts Education Requirements.

Peace and conflict studies courses are seldom seen by faculty curriculum committees and university administrators as deserving to be part of their institution’s liberal arts education requirements. We show that this unfortunate tendency is rooted in a lack of understanding of not only the compatibility between the two but of their quite complementary connections. These connections include the liberal arts’ emphases on the following: producing liberated citizens; respecting diversity; thoughtfully considering different points of view; highlighting not just the rights of the individual but the responsibilities that accompany those rights. Using the experience of Kent State University’s Center for Applied Conflict Management as a case study, we show that by bridging the perceived gap between the traditional liberal arts core and peace and conflict studies it is indeed possible to have an introductory course in peace and conflict studies accepted as an option for fulfilling an institution’s liberal arts requirements. In the process of ‘mainstreaming’ peace and conflict studies this way, enrollments will expand exponentially, new generations of students will be equipped with conflict management skills, and the field of peace and conflict studies will gain more respect across academia.

Nonpartisanship, interventionism and legality in accompaniment: comparative analyses of Peace Brigades International, Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the International Solidarity Movement

International non-governmental organisations deploy international observers as unarmed bodyguards to promote human rights and protect local citizens threatened by political violence. The political dynamics associated with three prominent organisations whose fieldwork extensively utilises the accompaniment tactic are comparatively examined along three lines of inquiry: their respective degrees of nonpartisanship, interventionism, and engagement in illegal activities through the practice of civil disobedience. How do the real or perceived partisanship, interventionism and respect for local law of an accompaniment organisation impact the actions of those citizens and state forces that it is trying to deter from violating human rights? How do they impact the supporters of the accompaniment organisation as they lobby host governments? An argument is made that those local activists who are provided with international accompaniment are likely better served through nonpartisanship, i.e. the accompaniers lack of involvement in the work of local activists, and through more moderate forms of interventionism, including adherence to local laws.