Collective Behavior and Social Movements Workshop

Authors Meet Activists!

A growing number of scholars in the field have called for increasing attention to movement relevant research. Activists typically find little insight from academic theory and research on social movements. Can social movement scholars produce studies that are useful to activists while, at the same time, advance the academic field theoretically and methodologically?

The panel will bring together section members who have written books with the explicit intention of translating rigorous research into useful insights for social movement strategies with activists affiliated with the movements they have studies. The three books to be reviewed are:

• Labor and the Environmental Movement: The Quest for Common Ground (2004; MIT Press) by Brian Obach;
• Global Visions, Rival Networks: Social Movements for Global Democracy (Forthcoming; Johns Hopkins University) by Jackie Smith; and
• Contesting Patriotism: U.S. Peace Movement Discourses, 1990-2004 (Forthcoming; Rowman & Littlefield) by Lynne Woehrle, Patrick Coy, and Gregory Maney

Activist commentaries will focus upon aspects of the book that were useful in helping the reader to think about strategy; possible practical applications of findings; missing topics of relevance and interest to the movement; and alternative ways to think about the subject. The three activists reviewing the books respectively are:

• Timothy Mathews (Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation)
• Chet Tchozewski (Global Green Grants Fund)
• David McReynolds (War Resisters League)

The following pdf files provide either an overview or a chapter from each of the reviewed books:

• Labor and the Environmental Movement: The Quest for Common Ground
• Global Visions, Rival Networks: Social Movements for Global Democracy
• Contesting Patriotism: U.S. Peace Movement Discourses, 1990-2004