Midterm Part 1

Question 1

Marx

Answer 1

• Marx thought that the worst thing about capitalism is that people had private property, ownership of means of productions like lands and factories.
• He thought we should abolish inheritance so we could solve hunger and poverty because not everyone has an inheritance.
• The communist manifesto presents us with the theory of social change and social movement.

Question 2

What are the 5 key elements of Social Movements?

Answer 2

1. They challenge/defend structures or systems of authority.
   a. Includes states or national governments, Non-governmental organizations like companies, corporations, Includes universities or world bank.
   b. 2 things of all these systems of authorities
   - They are all recognized seats of regulations, procedures, and guidelines that influence some aspect of the lives of individuals
   - Systems of authorities are typically based on underlined sets of interconnected values beliefs and interpreted frameworks that work to rationalize their authority.
2. They are collective actors
   - Involves a number of individuals, groups, or organizations engaged in coordinated conjoined action
3. They are extra-institutional challenges
   a. Distinguishes social movements from other group actions like :
   - crowd behavior ex the wave at a sporting event
   - Rioting is not a social movement
   - Interest group behavior
   b. A social movement is when the challenges that group mounts is held outside the institution
   - An interest group for ex. Planned parenthood is involved in different social movements for their own benefits to promote themselves
4. They are organized activities
   - They are organized and coordinated actions to produce change or reach a common goal
5. They have some temporal continuity
   - Unlike a riot they don’t just break out, they are not spontaneous they are planned and organized but are not regularly scheduled events

Question 3

What is a social movement

Answer 3

collective behavior that is purposeful, organized, and institutionalized but not ritualized.

Question 4

Difference between Social rituals vs. social movements.

Answer 4

Rituals always occur and aren’t organized

Social movements are organized.

Question 5

What are the states of social movements?

Answer 5

1. Emergence: when the social problem being addressed is first identified
2. Coalescence: resources are mobilized and concrete actions are taken around the problems outlined in stage 1
3. Routinization: the movement becomes institutionalized and a formal structure develops to promote the cause.

Question 6

Ex states of social movments in HIV Movement

Answer 6

Emergence: February 1981- doctors identified a new disease among otherwise healthy gay men, initially called “gay-related immune deficiency” (GRID)
Coalescence: June 1981-a group of concerned activists founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the organization around which a movement formed
Routinization:1982- the GMHC established an office in NYC and published a newsletter. GRID was renamed “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” (AIDS). By 1988, GHMC organized the first “AIDS day” (12/1)

Question 7

what were some of the early theories of social movements? (pre 1970s theorist)

Answer 7

• People used to think that individuals who joined SM were aligned or had psychological needs
• People who were unhappy with society would join SM
• Focused on the individuals
• Today this has changed, scholars see movements as healthy and good political engagements

Question 8

Who was Mohammed Bouzazizi?

Answer 8

• Dec 17,2010 a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire protesting the illegal seizure of the goods he was selling and repeated harassment at the hands of state officials
• Bouazizi’s act is widely held as the “spark” that ignited the Tunisian Revolution which ultimately led to a change in political power in the country and a social movement that continues today—Arab Spring

Question 9

What a mobilizing grievances ?

Answer 9

• grievances that are shared among some number of actors, be they individuals or organizations, and that are felt to be sufficiently serious to warrant not only collective complaint but also some kind of corrective, collective action
• Felt to be serious enough that’s more than just “I don’t like this”, something up another level.
• Super important for generating these deeply shared grievances
• Big answer to the question why social movements occur
• Also feel deeply aggrieved from the success of the other social movement.ex pro life vs abortion rights they are both scared of the success of the other group because they are fighting for the complete opposite

Question 10

Where do mobilizing grievances come from?

Answer 10

-Grievances are ubiquitous and irrelevant
We all have grievances and issues that we don’t like about life or society therefore because they are so common they are irrelevant and not needed to create a social movement. Relatively inconsequential for the development of social movements
not really about the grievances but if they have the resources to really mobilize.
Individual grievances warrant collective action, we just put up with these individual grievances
Don’t really talk about the grievance itself but rather talk about the resources.
-Grievances are a function of material conditions : (whether one has material conditions or lack of
-Grievances as a function of social psychological factors
This calls attention to certain psychological perspective
Structural and material conditions are ignored.
Its general, some people have access to some things others not
If a certain psychological state is realized, then that’s when a mobilizing grievance
When a certain level of frustration is reached, it will seek release, even if the target of the problem isn’t used

Question 11

What is the grievance caused by conflict/inequality?

Answer 11

-Where you have people in an antagonistic position
Mobilizing grievances are done because of the uneven distribution of some kind of reward that impacts our opportunities and life chances in society
Ex. Marx depicted a capitalist society of 2 competing groups, the haves and the haves not, always class conflict. No other issue that was more important or more unifying
This is overly simplistic

Question 12

what is the strain theory?

Answer 12

• underlying grievances flourish because of social trends and changes that rearranges the way things have been.
• Developed by Durkheim

Question 13

What are the three thesis that derive from the strain theory?

Answer 13

• breakdown theory
• absolute deprivation theory
• quotidian distribution theory

Question 14

Breakdown thesis

Answer 14

• SM emerge from breakdown of existing social patterns
• that disruptive social changes loosen the threads of social constraint, the social fabric of our lives are weakened
• The things that bring us together that bring solidarity, so that social changes weaken the social fabric
• When we feel that strain that our society is not cohesive we go in to social movements. This strain turns into grievances which lead to the emergence of social movement
• Rather than emerging from two groups in conflict with each other, social movements emerge from existing social patterns

Question 15

Absolute Deprivation Thesis

Answer 15

-argues that people are in such a bad spot that things get so bad that people can’t take it anymore, they reach their breaking point that people mobilize
-Research on this has been mixed:
Its hard to mobilize if you are at an absolute zero.
Maybe certain ones create these social movements.

Question 16

Quotidian distribution thesis

Answer 16

-Developed by sociologist David Snow
He argues that some disruptions may be more likely than others to create a movement.
-That there are some certain grievances that come together to create a social movement
-Snow argues that when patterns of everyday life are disrupted. When your everyday life gets disrupted that’s when you have a mobilizing grievance
Ex kids at Parkland High, shootings are disrupting their everyday routine of going to school without being scared about getting shot. Be able to do these normal things that people are able to do without getting shot
-also includes natural disasters.
-also argues that most of them at their core are fighting for something they had and its being lost. can also be a shift in resources or change in social control

Question 17

What are the similarities between the black panther movement and black lives matter?

Answer 17

• both were a response to police brutality. police brutality was the mobilizing grievance, the spark
• both SM focus on networks to emerge

Question 18

What are the differences between the black panther movement and the black lives matter?

Answer 18

-Black panther used violence, black lives did not
-Black panther did more community outreach
Black panther had formal rules and processors but black lives does not
-Black panther included only people of color but black lives includes multiracial people

Question 19

Framing processes of SM

Answer 19

-views social movements not merely as carriers of existing ideas and meanings but as important signifying agents engaged in meaning making.
a.Culture turn in all mean making. Meaning is not objective it’s social produced and reproduced continually
-Meanings are not natural/automatic. Rather, they arise through interpretative processes mediated by culture
This is why representation matters. Ex when a white person commits a murder vs. a black person commits a crime framed in different ways, different adjectives are used to describe the people.
-The perspective of how we frame things vary
Ex: when a black person commits a crime, this event is framed one way but if a white person commits a crime, it is framed another way

Question 20

Framing and social movements

Answer 20

-Meanings associated with relevant events are contestable and negotiable; they are open to debate and differential interpretation
These grievances don’t emerge natural but rather are the result of interactable based interpretations. So situations are being framed as something that should be seen as a grievance.
(Rather than people naturally feeling a way, you have an event being framed in a particular way to encourage this movement.)
Ex. 9/11: we didn’t know what happened, so President Bush and police officers framed it as a terrorist attack so we could all understand it.
-The very framing conceptualizes the activist, the leaders, that are constantly doing work to frame something in a particular way and it takes maintenance

Question 21

Diagnostic framing

Answer 21

-Problematization : this assess a social movement as something that needs to change ex gun control, people are threatened because they think their guns are going to be taken away.
-Blame: blames others to mobilize grievances
Ex NIMBY, when they residents in a neighborhood were trying to prevent a homeless shelter to be built in their neighborhood, they couldn’t blame the salvation army because they are a Christian organization, so they decided to put the blame on homeless men and they framed them as sex crazed druggies, who were going to enter their neighborhood and rape women and molest kids. Salvation Army provided lots of data to take the blame off of homeless men, but it didn’t work
Presenting people with data and sutff only make people dig their feet in more. Rather than being rational its more effective to connect with people on an emotional level to change their mind. another ex trump framing immigrants as criminals

Question 22

what is framing constrained by?

Answer 22

-constrained by facts, you have to work with what is there.
Some framings really resist reframing. Ex Christopher Columbus is known as the man who discovered America, although we know this is not factual because there are already people on the island.
-We like to think of framing as constrained by actually facts but sometimes facts are not as important as we want them to *****
When you believe in something it is hard to change your mind even when you’re presented with facts.

Question 23

Framing and mobilizing grievances

Answer 23

-MG are not naturally occurring
Ex how war is framed and discussed, early on in history we glorified war because we saw it as a civic duty,
-MG are the result of interactively based interpretation. They are based on signifying work (memory work).
-This signifying work is performed by social movement adherents on a regular basis.
-Frames are constrained by the cultural context in which they are emerging

Question 24

Constraints on framing

Answer 24

-empirical context/events: actual facts, what happened, what the problem is
-cultural context:Frames are constrained by cultural context in which the movement is emerging.
Cultural context provided the interpretative material, these are not direct relationship, these cultural contexts can be tapped and are used to frame existing social conditions that can produce a movement.

Question 25

why didn’t the heaven’s gat movement occur?

Answer 25

Didn’t occur because it wasn’t logical, was too far from the cultural fidelaty. People didn’t believe it
A movement has to have cultural resonance when it resonates with people.
Ex the women’s movement: many people relate to it many women and men who have daughters.

Question 26

Seeds of Change film

What was the april 6 youth movement?

Answer 26

• Founded by Ahmed Maher (and others)
• Established in Spring 2008
• Supported a labor strike

Question 27

What were the mobilizing grievances of the Egyptian revolution?

Answer 27

Improve economic conditions, police brutality, poverty and unemployment. People’s everyday lives were being disrupted so the SM wanted the president to step down from power

Question 28

What were the networks on which protestors relied?

Answer 28

-Technology- facebook
-Guided by other SM (pre existing networks)
-Social networks
-Resources:
money to supply medical supplies for people, needed money for phones, needed television and satellites, needed an office space
a. Can’t have social movement without resources like people, phones, etc.
b. If you want people to participate in your protest you have to be able to take care of them
-They weren’t being violent.
a. If one person becomes violent, that’s the story, people start being labeled as rioters and doesn’t give significance to the movement.
-Wanted the media to get involved, they needed reporters and word to get out, they needed people from the US, the UK, to cover the Egyptian revolution to let people around the world that this is happening

Question 29

Any other important factors that seem important to the Egyptian movement emerging or the movement’s success?

Answer 29

• It was important that the western world carried about this SM to spread the word and generate more resources
• Needed organization
  a. They were well organized, had these networks in place, were able to mobilize their grievances and resources

Question 30

In order for a social movement to be successful it must be planned and organized.. what is needed to enact change?

Answer 30

1. Political opportunity
   If you have connections with people
   -Means you can pursue your interests publicly, not just underground
   And not just by protesting but also by talking to relative authorities
   Whether individuals will act collectively depends in part on if they have the political opportunity to do so.
2. Mobilizing resources
   -basically the proposition that the emergence of a social movement and the condition of the SM depends on the availability of resources generally and that can be used for said social movement. Ex of resources: money is one you can buy more resources for it and also bodies so it can grow and thrive. More include phones, computers, office space. In order to be organized you need resources.
   Social movement organizations
   3.Free spaces
   4.Ecological factors

Question 31

What does the emergence or persistence of social movements depend on ?

Answer 31

John McCarty and Mayer Zald argue that SM depend on the availability of resources that can be used for the movement. 
-the more resources available to the SMS, the greater the likelihood that new SMIs(social movement industries) and SMOs(social movement organizations) will develop.

Question 32

What is SMO? Social Movement Organizations?

Answer 32

a formal organization which identifies its goals with the preferences of a SM and attempts to implement those goals

Question 33

What is important for SMOs to achieve their goals?

Answer 33

-Social capital: important to SMOs
Means you have access to social resources depending on the connections you have.
-Ties can be weak or strong
-Weak ties are people who you are loosely connected to who you see infrequently, and later that person ends up helping you get a job.
-Having a lot of weak ties is beneficial because you have a little bit of connections with lots of people.
-Ties are important because they are the social network you have access too

Question 34

What are SMIs? social movement industries?

Answer 34

-Where different SMOs compete for resources and attention
-The collection of all SMOs focused on a given issue
Ex green peace, other environmental things come together

Question 35

what is the SMS (Social movement sector)?

Answer 35

-compromised of all SMIs in a society

Question 36

When do you see less social movements?

Answer 36

when businesses are failing

Question 37

when do enviornmental SMOs appear more?

Answer 37

-when economy is doing good, and appear less when business failures appear.
Ex wasting money on cleaning up the ocean, rather than wasting it on, people put these issues on the backburner, and invest in other business
-Looking at economy, a good economy produces more social movements.

Question 38

What are the types of resources?

Answer 38

• Legitimacy
• People and money
• Not all resources matter in the same way for all SMs
  a. Some movements had a greater need for material resources
  b. While for some it may not be as important

Question 39

Resource deprivation

Answer 39

1. External sources:
   -Concerned constituents: If I give money to an organization that is supporting siren migrants, I am a concerned constituent, not participating in SM, just donate money
   Ex. Homeless, SM (75% external sources)
   Weren’t generating too many resources themselves
2. The constituent base:actually base of organization that is keeping it together. people donate money
   -resources from SM members itself
   -Come at a cost, loss of autonomy
   -Also an issue for scholars, if resources are really important for social movements, how far are you willing to go? Does this resource dependence theory, change the goals and tactics of a SM?
   -People donate and say “I don’t want this march to go like this but rather”
   How much influence do these external sources have?
   **mot of the time SMS needs both

Question 40

What are the cost of externally derived resources?

Answer 40

1.Moderates goals and tactics
-Lower chance of militant/radical action : if you have a SM that is successful you don’t need radical action needed
Ex: If the parkland students initial goal was to ban guns and take them away from them, but then an organization comes in and donates money and tries to shift the goal to a more attainable goal rather than going door to door and taking guns from people.
2. channels dissent into more professional and publicly acceptable forms
-Allows you to protest in a more professional way.
Ex lobbying, getting your way of things.
3. It depends on the degree of correspondence between the aims of the SM and resource providers
-If you have a lot of disconnect from the SM and social movement, the resource provider may have less movement
-Where the organization providing resources is located
-Do the organization start providing early on in the SM life?

Question 41

what are ecological factors?

Answer 41

The spatial arrangement of movement populations and physical places which facilitate collective action
ex. 1989 Beijing student movement
All schools were in one area which allowed communication in all areas, universities were walled off with a brick wall that separated them.
Universities have more total institution
Allowed the spread of revolutionary ideas
Had those universities not been close together, if the have more diversity, more open campus,

Question 42

what are free spaces

Answer 42

-Small-scale community or movement settings that are located beyond the surveillance and control of institutionalized authority. ex We saw this in the seeds of change where they had to have those office spaces outside of the view from the government
-You have to have a safe place to meet with the opposition group not knowing about it
Ex Black people would meet in black churches, they couldn’t meet in places that were dominated by white people.
Although these places are not free of governmental intervention they are still seen as a safe place, in general people feel safe in churches and university type settings
For this reason that churches and colleges have been historically as free spaces for mobilization

Question 43

why are ecological factors and free spaces important?

Answer 43

if everything else is equal, have the same grievances, but have different free space, the movement would have never emerged(Beijing Students)
-A lot of people are starting to have encounters with people that aren’t like you make people more acceptable
Ex equal marriage, more people encounter gay people so it is seen more normal

Question 44

Why did people not partcipate in the Dutch Peace Movement?

Answer 44

• Found that well 3 quarters of the people were sympathetic about this movement, but only a few participated (1/20)
• Three reasons for non- participation
  1. Not all sympathizers were recruited
  2. Many were not motivated
  3. Those who intended to participate didn’t (life)

Question 45

What is consensus mobilization vs action mobilization?

Answer 45

• consensus Mobilization- when people have shared grievances and they agree to participate
• Action Mobilization- when people actually participate

Question 46

Degree of participation?

Answer 46

• If a person participates that does not guarantee that they will participate again
• When we talk about Degree of participation we are talking about coast and risk

Question 47

what are the different costs associated with participation?

Answer 47

-Direct: literal coast, things that you have to spend money on
For example: your flight/ trip expenses
-Indirect: what you lose for participating in this SM
Example: loose wages
Example: If you’re a student it could be missing class (any consequences of your participation in this SM that could affect you later)

Question 48

what are the risks associated with participating in SM?

Answer 48

-Direct: risks that can directly harm a person while participating, the direct risk you face while participating
For example: protesters may face brutality
-Indirect: risks not specific to the sight or the moment
these risks are very different depending on your race, sexuality, social class etc.
for women, there is an added risk when participating in SMs because we could be assaulted
Assumes that individuals engaged in rational calculus, weighting both coasts and risks

Question 49

Why do some people participate

Answer 49

1. structural factors
2. social/psychological factors
3. biographical factors

Question 50

biographical factors

Answer 50

-Resonant socialization experiences:
Transition of activist values from parents to children
If you parents are active then it is more likely that you will also participate in SM
Primary socialization and secondary socialization (when you get into SM from your parents and then from the outside world such as your teachers and peers)
-Prior engagement in politics/ movement: If you participate in one SM you are more likely to continue to patriate
-Biographical availability:Being married, having children, availability to participate

Question 51

social/psychological factors

Answer 51

• personal/collective efficiency:if u believe u can cause change u are more likely to participate
• collective identity: if u believe that this is a ‘we’ problem u are more likely to participate

Question 52

structural factors

Answer 52

• social networks, serve as bridges and conducts for the flow of resources
• embeddedness: social networks are embedded into communities and contacts

Question 53

What was freedom summer?

Answer 53

social movement that tried to register black voters

• in the South, there was a lot of ppl that prevented black ppl from voting
• therefore, this movement decided to get white, elite, university students to come down and register black ppl to vote so they could do so freely

Question 54

what were the consequences of bring white elite students to fight for black rights

Answer 54

• Some consequences of bring outsiders (white elite students/basically white rich men):
○ They have never faced discrimination
○ Distrust of white people
○ The status hierarchy: white people may sweep in to take over the leadership of the movement.
○ ** thought it would be best for white people to do this cause they would get white privilege, people were more likely to listen to them, less likely to get attacked. There were risk associated but it was the best way to get their voices heard.