CBSM Workshop 2007
MOVEMENT CULTURES, STRATEGIES, AND OUTCOMES
Working Title: Neoliberal Reforms and Popular Movement Strategies in the Global South
Organizer: Paul Almeida (Texas A&M)
E-mail: almeida@tamu.edu
Description: Substantive Focus: The panel will explore a cutting-edge theme in a specific realm of social movements research - economic-based protests against globalization in the lesser-developed world. Panelists will present their work with specialization on movements in the global South. Each participant will examine how neoliberal policies led to particular movement strategies (e.g., roadblocks, mass marches, symbolic actions) to resist unwanted economic changes and the outcomes of the struggle. Such a panel aspires to enhance our understanding of the similarities and differences of mobilizing strategies against policies associated with economic liberalization and globalization in a variety of contexts. The audience and panelists will interact and exchange research interests and findings to increase our knowledge of social movement-type mobilization strategies outside of the industrialized capitalist democracies. Rationale for Inclusion: Economic restructuring has occurred throughout the developing world over the past 25 years. The economic reforms are based on the principles of economic liberalization and free trade and result in welfare state retrenchment, public sector privatizations, and consumer price increases. Such policies have generated large-scale social movements and popular protests in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. The largest of such movements have overthrown governments and elected populist leaders promising a reversal of such policies (i.e., Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela). Moving beyond the spontaneity of austerity protests and "IMF riots," a new generation of scholars has an interest in connecting the emergence, mobilization, and outcomes of these movements to the ongoing process of deepening globalization. Such a panel will contribute to current debates in social movement theory that examine in greater detail the negative conditions or threats (i.e., such as socially harmful economic policies) associated with mass mobilization to further complement political opportunity models of collective action.
Working Title: The Morality of Food As a Social Movement
Organizer(s): Prof. Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern University), Michaela DeSoucey (graduate student) (Northwestern University)
E-mail(s): g-fine@northwestern.edu, m-desoucey@northwestern.edu
Description: If we are what we eat, how do our roles as social actors juxtapose food with morality? Certain principles or actions are called "moral" because they fit into our social perception of morality, whether or not the issue can be explicitly identified as such. This session will investigate the role of social movements and place of social movement culture in creating food production and consumption as morally problematic issues. Of course, there is, in any society, a discrepancy of how we ought to behave and the reality of how we actually behave. We will explore how issues of morality both shape and are shaped by mobilization and contention. We will discuss the narratives and discourse around certain moral food genres' evolution (e.g., organic foods, "free trade" foods, diet and health trends, elite vs. popular foods) and the nature of the society in question in order to situate different interest groups' positions.Such groups and movements are vital to the creation of food as a problem of morality in that they create vocabularies, arguments, and symbols from which to draw associations and ideas about "appropriate" identities and ideologies. Many such organizations are involved in creating spectacles that have garnered media attention around the country and globe. Targets of morality campaigns demand change in the political, industry and consumer realms. Food-based morality movements are not only about changing behaviors and educating new audiences; they are also about buying and selling. The morality of food movements is thus associated with class politics and consumer identity.We welcome proposals for papers that deal with the industrialized food chain; factory farming; animal rights advocacy; moral identity and consumption practices; the relationship between food and labor practices; techniques used in moral protest around certain foods or food movements; the role of moral entrepreneurs; morality movements as cultural arbiters; recent movements to change food and beverage availability in public schools; measuring the morality of food; the Slow Food movement; and international food movements dealing with issues of morality, among others.
Working Title: Authors Meet Activists!
Organizer: Greg Maney (Hofstra University)
E-mail: socgmm@hofstra.edu
Description: A growing number of scholars in the field have called for increasing attention to movement relevant research (Bevington and Dixon 2003; Flacks 2003). 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 proposed panel would 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; Changing the World: Struggles for Global Democracy (Forthcoming: Johns Hopkins University) by Jackie Smith; and Contesting Patriotism: U.S. Peace Movement Discourses (Forthcoming: Rowman & Littlefield) by Lynne Woehrle, Patrick Coy, and Gregory Maney Three activists will be invited to read the book covering their movement and to provide commentary. 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. Links to excerpts of each book will be placed on the conference Web site to promote discussion prior to the conference.
Working Title: Resisting Political Repression
Organizer(s): Kelly Moore (University of Cincinnati), Christian Davenport (University of Maryland)
E-mail(s): moorek@uc.edu, cdsafecomm@aol.com
Description: This panel brings together activists, scholars, and scholar-activists to examine the strategies that activists use to resist political repression. Recent research has drawn more attention to the forms that repression takes and its affect on activists. This panel extends this body of work by examining how activists resist different types of repression, including police entrapment, spatial restrictions on street demonstrations, surveillance, and agent provocateurs. Forms of resistance include documenting police behavior, methods of mitigating the psychological effects of repression (e.g., paranoia, refusal to allow new members), and negotiation with political elites and police.
Working Title: The World Social Forum Process and Global Social Change: Prospects and Challenges
Organizer: Jackie Smith (University of Notre Dame)
E-mail: jsmith40@nd.edu
Description: The panel brings together scholarship on the World Social Forum (WSF) process in various local, national, and global settings. It explores the significance of the WSF for broader global political developments, including debates about democracy, global trade, and the development of new forms of political participation. Particular attention is paid to what we can learn by comparing the practices of different social forums across time and place, and in particular we ask how the experience of North America compares with other world regions that have tended to be more active in the WSF process. The aim of the session is to inform sociologists about the WSF and its local variants, and to encourage new comparative research on this important phenomenon.
Panelists (Preliminary List)
1) "The World Social Forum Process and World Politics"
Ellen Reese, Chris Chase-Dunn, Erika Gutierrez, Christing Petit, Linda Kim and Rebecca Giem UC-Riverside
2) Where are the Americans? Comparing Mobilization Dynamics Across the Social Forums
Jeffrey J. Juris Arizona State University
3) The World Social Forum, Framing Processes and Organizational Dynamics
Scott Byrd UC-Irvine
Discussant: TBA
Working Title: Strategy, Tactics, and Collective Identity
Organizer: Lee Smithey (Swarthmore College)
E-mail: LSmithe1@swarthmore.edu
Description: The proposed panel would focus on the nexus between collective action strategy, tactics and collective identity. Causal attributions may offer limited analytical utility with regard to this topic, but important work in the social movements field has focused on ways in which collective identity informs tactical choices through "taste in tactics." We can also ask how political opportunities and the adoption of novel efficacious tactics influence the construction of collective identities as participants in social movement organizations work to reconcile identities and tactical choices. In some cases, the selective and conspicuous expression of collective identity can offer its own strategic advantages. How do internal conflicts over reconciling collective action and identity affect movement viability and outcomes? How do the various strategic and tactical decisions in a multi-organizational field of contention influence the construction of collective identities, especially given the dialogic properties of collective action? Does the use of violent vs. nonviolent methods influence the construction of identities, since each takes a different approach to the "other" against which identities are constructed? Contributions from several fields of study could prove helpful: collective identity and social movements, violent social movements, strategic nonviolent action, identity conflict, dialogic analysis.
Working Title:Labor and the "New Social Movements": Differences in Strategy, Organization and Perspective: What Can We Learn from Each Other?
Organizer(s): Paul Mishler (Indiana University at South Bend) and Marc Dixon (Florida State University)
E-mail(s): pmishler@iusb.edu, mdixon@fsu.edu
Description: From the Social Forum movements internationally to community-based and environmental movements to "identity" struggles over race, gender and sexual orientation, the action in the streets is not the trade unions. But labor remains central to the project of social justice. Are these two trajectories talking to each other? Are there misconceptions that need to be addressed to form better working relations? Or are the interests of the trade unions structurally opposed to the demands raised in the social movements? Scholars and activists from all of these perspectives will discuss this problematic relationship. FORMAT: We will invite a panel of four to six people from the scholarly and labor organizing communities to present a short (5-minute) response to the puzzles posed in the roundtable abstract. These presentations will be followed by an open forum discussion.