The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (63 page)

centralization of local politics through government reform have led to national

politics becoming the prime field on which Labour has organized.

Fundamentally, one of the main resources available to the Labour movement

was its ability to mobilize numbers. However, this process depends less on face-

to-face mechanisms of workplace and neighborhood communication, and more

on the use of technologically advanced procedures which individualize while

they also mobilize individuals. Targeted mailings, opinion polling, market

research, and so forth create mechanisms for the mobilization of large numbers

of individuals without recourse to face-to-face, informal discussion. Rather than mobilization through numbers being important, the use of visual signifiers takes on a much greater role. As the electronic media, especially those based around

television, become of prime importance in disseminating information and im-

agery, so repertoires of action which are directly ``visualizable'' may take on a more significant mobilizing role. In many cases these modes of organizing do not benefit by having particularly large numbers of people involved, since these can be difficult to construct in a dramatically visual way. What matters more is the organization of action in a locale bounded by time and space so that it can be

readily visually recorded and transmitted, organized, for instance, around spe-

cific occasions (Hetherington, 1998). Notable examples include movements

against road building in Britain, ecological protests (especially those organized by Greenpeace, which have been highly original in devising effective visualizable protests), debates around new age travelers, as well as various kinds of riots,

whether these be semi-organized (as in the Carnival against Capitalism) or more

responsive to police interference.

The important point to emphasize here is that new repertories of action draw

very little on traditional modes of formal political organizing, based upon the

maximization of numbers. In this respect, and regardless of the actual class

composition of the members of these new kinds of political movements, they

are culturally and symbolically distinct from the old modes of working-class

politics. A further implication of this point is that fractures open up within

political campaigns themselves. Visually dramatic or extraordinary actions

may not appeal to potential activists without cultural capital, who may therefore react against the movement itself (see Skeggs, 1997, on the issue of feminism and 266

Mike Savage

class). Class divisions develop within social movements, between those with the

confidence and skills to develop novel campaigns and those who feel threatened

by the challenge to respectability and ordinariness that such politics invokes.

New kinds of social movement do indicate the rise of a new kind of political

field, in which symbolic and visual presence, which can be associated with

modes of cultural capital, hold increased sway. This testifies to a very different kind of political field to that which was studied by political sociology during its golden age in the 1960s.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have explored the limits of the classic political sociology

paradigm, with its emphasis on the representation of class interests. In the latter parts of the chapter I have sketched out some ideas which might point toward a

new, though hesitant, agenda for the re-energization of political sociology. The starting point for this revised approach is the recognition of the demise of

traditional class politics, with the working class seen as occupying a privileged position as social actor. We might instead define a new kind of politics, in which the political field indeed operates largely autonomously from other social and

cultural fields. However, it is then possible to redefine this field as one which is occupied by actors with significant amounts and kinds of cultural and social

capital. To be sure, by seeing politics as a field, we should note that the definition of legitimate politics cannot be taken as given but is contested and fluid over

time. We can then see the relative autonomy of the political from the social not as à`natural'' phenomenon testifying to the inherent irreducibility of the political to the social, but as a historically constructed and policed process that

involves the association between the world of legitimate politics and claims to

cultural and symbolic dominance.

We can argue, somewhat schematically, that the politics of early industrial

societies tended to be on a communal, ``dramatic'' basis, with all social groups having particular roles in the spectacles and rituals of political life. The process whereby more democratic political forms were developed also marked the

stripping down of this communal element of politics, but it allowed the working

class to emerge as a powerful force in organized political alignments. It would be wrong to exaggerate this, but there can be no gainsaying the significance of the organized labor movement and working-class activity in defining twentieth-century politics. We see instead the emergence of a new kind of politics that

marks the numerical dominance of various groups of the middle classes, and new

kinds of tension between different forms of economic, cultural, and social

capital. As Bourdieu rightly points out, the political differences between these groups rarely lead to outright challenges to the status quo.

Where, then, might we find the sources of more radical politics? To some

extent we can see them in various social movements that eschew or have a

critical relationship to organized politics, though even here I have suggested

that the salience of cultural capital for these kinds of activities cannot be

Political Sociology

267

doubted. Perhaps we might look again at the politics of the private realm. For as the world of organized politics becomes remote from the networks and routines

of everyday life, so new kinds of informal, everyday politics develop in the

interstices left open to them. We might even argue that the retreat into the

private, into the domestic world, and into the burgeoning area of enthusiasms,

leisure, and lifestyle (Bellah et al., 1985) is a form of political statement.

Bourdieu's argument that refusing to have an opinion, refusing to become

involved in thè`legitimate'' world of politics, might be more genuinely subvers-

ive than to become involved in formalized and sanitized political modes, which

might include involvement in both established political parties and new social

movements. Ordinary people stay aloof from the strange world of politics. But

how long can they continue to do so?

19

Why Social Movements Come into

Being and Why People Join Them

Bert Klandermans

In 1965, Mancur Olson published his The Logic of Collective Action. The core

of the book was the argument that rational actors will not contribute to the

production of a collective good unless selective incentives persuade them to do

so. Olson's reasoning was soon applied to social movement participation. It

helped to explain why so often people do not participate in social movements

despite the interest they have in the achievement of the movement's goals. It was argued that movement goals typically are collective. If the goal is achieved

people will enjoy the benefits irrespective of whether they have participated in the effort. In view of a goal whose achievement is uncertain, but whose benefits ±

if materialized ± can be reaped anyway, rational actors will take a free ride,

Olson reasons.

The problem with Olson's logic of collective action is that it provides an

explanation for why people do not participate, but fares much worse in explain-

ing why people do participate. A recurring criticism is that Olson's model

assumes that individuals make their decisions in isolation, as if there are no

other people with whom they consult, with whom they feel solidarity, by whom

they are kept to their promises, by whom they are put under pressure; in short, as if all those factors that make people fight together do not exist.

Olson's dilemma of collective action is a good starting point for a discussion of two questions that have always occupied students of social movements: why do

social movements come into being, and why do individuals participate in social

movements? Despite its limited significance for the explanation of movement

emergence and participation, it can serve well to argue that neither the development of social movements nor movement participation can be taken for granted.

Indeed, movement participants are most of the time a minority. Even mass social

movements most of the time do not mobilize more than a few percent of the

population.

Why Social Movements Come into Being

269

Our two questions hover between the sociology and the social psychology of

social movements. The first question, about the emergence of social movements,

typically concerns the sociology of social movements; social psychologists have

little to say about it. The second question, on movement participation, brings us to the heartland of social psychology. Social psychology is best in proposing

answers to the question of why individuals choose to make the sometimes

considerable effort to participate in a social movement. Students of social movements have sought the answers to both questions in different directions. This

chapter clarifies these different directions and thus explores the interface of the sociology and social psychology of social movements. But there is an obvious

question waiting for an answer first.

What Are Social Movements?

Movements?

``Social movements are collective challenges by people with common purposes

and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites and authorities'' (Tarrow,

1994, p. 4; see also Klandermans, 1997, p. 2). This definition includes three

key elements that deserve some elaboration. First, social movements are collect-

ive challenges. They concern disruptive direct action against elites, authorities, other groups, or cultural codes. There is an obvious reason why this is the case.

Social movements typically encompass people who lack access to politics. Had

they had access there would have been no need for a social movement. Disrupt-

ive collective action forces authorities to pay attention to the claims brought

forward. Second, it concerns people with a common purpose and solidarity.

Social movement participants rally behind common claims, they want authori-

ties to do something, to change a state of affair or to undo changes. Such

common claims are rooted in feelings of collective identity and solidarity.

Third, isolated incidents of collective action are not social movements. Only

by sustaining collective action does an actor turn a contentious episode into a

social movement.

Meyer and Tarrow (1998) observe that the movement type of action has

become much more frequent over the past thirty years. These authors wonder

whether this is because movement action has become part of the conventional

repertoire of participation, in other words whether this is a matter of institutionalization of movement type of activity. Neidhardt and Rucht (1993) and Jenkins

and Klandermans (1995) have made a similar observation. Increasingly, these

authors argued, social movement organizations are replacing political parties as intermediaries in interest representation between citizens and the state. These

authors are interpreting this not so much as institutionalization of social movement action but as thè`movementization'' of politics. Some facts: Russell Dalton (1996, p. 76), for example, observes that, in 1975, 22 percent of the British

people signed a petition. In 1990 the figure was 75 percent. In 1974, 9 percent of the British participated in a demonstration, against 25 percent in 1990. Between 1979 and 1993 the number of protest events in the French city of Marseille more

than doubled, from 183 to 395 events per annum (Fillieule, 1998). Rucht (1998)

270

Bert Klandermans

reports considerable increases in protest events in Germany in that same period, a result that is confirmed by Kriesi et al.'s (1995) study on new social movements in Europe. These authors report a similar pattern for the Netherlands and

Switzerland. In their study France is the exception, as it reveals a decline in the number of protest events, a finding the authors relate to the specifics of French politics during that period. On the whole, then, Meyer and Tarrow's observation

is supported by other empirical studies. Meyer and Tarrow continue to argue

that this diffusion of protest is a matter not only of growing numbers ± that is, of more protest events within a set amount of time ± but of diffusion to broader

sectors of the population as well. Across age groups, and gender lines, from the left to the right, among workers and students, and in Western and non-Western

societies alike, movement type actions have become a common phenomenon.

Whether this is a matter of institutionalization of movements or movementiza-

tion of politics remains a matter of interpretation, but this does not change the factual observation that movement type activity expanded considerably over the

past decades. This raises all the more the questions as to why social movements

come into being and why people join them.

Why Do Social Movements Come into Being?

The social movement literature has offered three types of answers to the question of why social movements come into being: because people are aggrieved, because