what is a social movement?

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Social movements are at the heart of politics right now. Drawing loosely on work by Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Frencesca Polletta, Jennifer Earl, and others, I would define a social movement using five criteria (listed below). Note that this is a value-neutral definition. It could fit a fascist movement as well as a progressive one, and it doesn’t imply that social movements are preferable to other phenomena, such as political parties. It is merely intended to categorize a set of phenomena so that we can study them.

1. A social movement consists of many autonomous groups and individuals

Movements are polycentric rather than hierarchical or centralized. A single organization can adopt the feel and spirit of a movement by empowering separate groups internally, but it is only an actual movement if those groups are autonomous and collaborate voluntarily.

2. It persists over numerous episodes and campaigns

The marches over the Edmund Pettus Bridge were episodes. The struggle for the Voting Rights Act was a campaign. The Civil Rights Movement consisted of thousands of episodes and several campaigns.

3. It makes demands on holders of power

The power-holders may be governments, firms, media entities, universities, or any other institutions. If people make no demands on any institutions, I wouldn’t define them as participants in a social movement. They might form an important grouping, such as a spiritual revival or a self-help network, but it would not be a social movement.

Just as important, a social movement makes demands on holders of power rather than trying to supplant them. A political party seeks offices. A revolutionary cadre strives to overthrow and replace the state. An established labor union negotiates contracts with a firm. None of these meet the definition of a social movement, which stands apart from the institution and makes demands on it. I acknowledge that a broad-based social movement can encompass elements that act like parties, revolutionary cadres, or collective bargainers. The Civil Rights Movement encompassed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the Black Panther Party, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; but it was a movement because it wasn’t defined by any of those groups.

4. It supports its demands by displaying WUNC

Tilly observes that social movements don’t just express demands; they back them up with four assets that command attention: worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment. For example, the women’s marches after Trump’s Inauguration demonstrated that millions of people cared (numbers), that they were willing to travel to Washington or stand outside in the streets of their hometowns (commitment), that they were unified (pink pussycat hats, marching on the same day), and that they were worthy. Worthiness can mean respectability: for instance, “We are middle-class women (with some men) who are pillars of our communities, not the kinds of people who usually make trouble.” But worthiness need not mean respectability. Sometimes, highly oppressed groups claim the worthiness that comes from suffering.

WUNC serves as a standard for evaluating the credibility of would-be movements. For example, does holding a sign on the Boston Common demonstrate enough commitment?

5. It imposes limits on itself

Social movements often adopt and attempt to enforce limits on themselves: “We will not run for office or endorse any parties.” “We will negotiate with companies but not form our own businesses.” “We denounce terrorism.” “We call for a new nation but will not commit treason against the existing state.”

No particular form of self-limitation is definitive of social movements. For instance, there are violent and even terroristic social movements; thus nonviolence is not a condition. But it is highly characteristic–perhaps even definitive–of social movements that they choose some limitations that they enforce on their own members. I would propose a functional explanation of this tendency. Coordinating the behavior of many autonomous groups and individuals is extraordinarily difficult. Movements are easily destroyed by internal disagreements or by escalation to a point where they lose their support. Successful movements avoid escalation by choosing limits and economize on the topics that are open to discussion. For instance, if the movement eschews electoral politics, then it needn’t decide who should run for which office. If it renounces violence, it needn’t debate which targets to hit with which weapons.

Thus a social movement can say: “We are [a set of groups] who want [demands] from [institutions], who demonstrate WUNC [in particular ways] and who eschew [certain tactics or ends.]”

Whoa, “Woah”

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The interjection “whoa” – defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: a command to a horse to stop or stand still” or “a general interjection expressing surprise, delight, etc.” has been in use since the early 19th century.

Consider, for example, the use of the word as an intransitive verb in an 1838 issue of New Sporting Magazine: “He..climbed up the fence, ‘whoaing’ and crying to his horse to ‘stand still’.”

There is some evidence that the word has existed since long before that. One etymological dictionary, for example, dates the word to the 1620s; defining it as “a cry to call attention from a distance, a variant of who.”

But in the age of the internet, a funny thing has started happening:

Whoa. W. H. O. A. has more and more frequently come to be spelled as ‘woah’, as if the ‘h’ is precariously trying to escape from the whole messy situation.

In 2013, Slate wrote a whole piece on the gaining popularity of the wrong / new spelling: “All things considered, it’s been a banner year for “whoa,” no matter how you prefer to spell it,” they write.

And, as Mashable points out, the ACLU and Merriam-Webster dictionary recently sorted the whole thing on Twitter:

“We don’t include [woah] as a variant,” Merriam-Webster wrote in response to a query from the ACLU, “but we’re pretty sure you still have the right to say it.”

That is, after all, what it means for English to be a living language.

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I Stand With CEU

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It is a sad day for democracy and for intellectual freedom. This morning, after an expedited process, Hungary’s Parliament voted 123 yes / 38 against for amendments to the National Higher Education Law that will make it impossible for Central European University (CEU) to operate.

CEU is one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in central Europe, and a pillar of democracy. Founded after the fall of communism and “based on the premise that human fallibility can be counterbalanced by the critical discussion of ideas and that this critical spirit can be sustained best in societies where citizens have the freedom to scrutinize competing theories and openly evaluate and change government policies.”

The message sent in moving to shutter this great institution is clear. As MEP Tamás Meszerics – who was denied the opportunity to address assembly in opposition of the measure – wrote in his statement: the government hates everything it cannot control.

Hungarian Prime Minster, Viktor Orbán has long been a leading symbol of Europe’s rising radical right. The election of President Trump, I’m afraid, has only emboldened his efforts against democratic values.

The attack against CEU is a tragic move against a valuable institution, and raises disturbing implications for intellectual freedom and democracy around the world. We cannot allow leaders of any part to silence critical voices, legislate against reason, and stifle political dissent.

To be clear, the fight for CEU is far from over. In Budapest today, thousands took to the street to protest this outrageous legislation. CEU – which just days ago found itself fighting for its life – has a helpful guide of actions you can take to support the institution. Specifically, they encourage you to:

I stand with CEU – do you?

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would Americans be better off if they used ideology as a heuristic?

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(Washington DC) News stories abound these days about Trump voters who are surprised that the president and his party may cut their benefits. For instance, Mae Bilodeau says she voted for Trump “precisely because she thought he would help the poor people of America who need services like [the local Legal Advice and Referral Center]. ‘He seems to be taking away from them more than helping them at this point,’ Bilodeau said.”

A good number of Trump voters even spontaneously announce a preference for a Canadian-style single payer system.

I learned a long time ago to think of US politics on a left/right continuum: pro-state on the left, anti-state on the right. Using that framework, I regarded Obamacare as a modest shift leftward. I assumed that President Obama would wish to move further left but had compromised (wisely, I think; others would say unnecessarily) by enacting the ACA. If I were enrolled in an Obamacare exchange, I would expect a Democrat to reduce my premiums or increase my benefits, simply by spending more money on the program. I would expect a Republican president to do the opposite: defund or repeal the law. My opinion of their positions would depend on my view of the government and the market.

But the Trump supporters quoted in these recent news reports do not use the left/right continuum as a heuristic. And that shouldn’t surprise us.  “Despite the centrality of philosophical concepts like liberalism and conservatism to mainstream political discourse, modern public opinion research has generally concluded that most citizens are unable to effectively use these concepts when making political judgments” (Frederico & Hunt 2013). Instead, at least some of Trump’s voters simply see him as standing on their side, and liberals as their enemies. I overheard two working-class white New England guys recently. One said, “The problem with liberals is they just hate people.” The other laughed. Many seem to have assumed that Trump would lower their premiums or improve their benefits. If Obama wasn’t doing either, that showed that he was a people-hating liberal, or perhaps just less competent than business-wizard Donald J. Trump would be.

This post could end with me tsk-tsking my fellow citizens for not using the ideological heuristic that I learned long ago to decide for whom to vote. And in fact, I believe Americans would be better off (overall) if they at least understood how to think in pro-state versus pro-market terms. That would certainly be far preferable to using race as a heuristic, as some may do.

Yet they may also be right to downplay the left/right spectrum. Consider the Kentuckian whom Sarak Kliff interviewed last December. She is reliant on the ACA, yet she had voted for Trump. She explained, “I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many peoples lives. … I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot pay for insurance?”

At the time, I tsk-tsked. But, to my surprise, it now looks fairly unlikely that the Republicans will repeal the ACA. This voter was right, and I was wrong. She saw herself as part of a coalition that won the election and would serve her interests. Ultimately, I believe that heuristic misled her, because she threw her support to anti-government conservatives who want to cut her benefits for ideological reasons, and she joined a coalition dominated by wealthy people who mainly want their taxes cut. But again, I am the one who was surprised to see ACA repeal in such trouble; her prediction was more accurate than mine.

Republicans tend to think that they have an anti-government or pro-market movement behind them. They are likely wrong. (CIRCLE’s research reveals a substantial shift of young white men who define themselves as “moderates,” not “conservatives,” to Trump in 2016.) The Alt-Right believes there’s a majority that is pro-welfare and also white-supremacist. I doubt that constituency is huge. But liberals should also doubt that they can win votes mainly by finding the right point on the left/right spectrum. Their main challenge is trust. As for voters, they may use a range of heuristics to assess candidates, but they would be wise not to ignore left/right ideology completely, because it explains why the GOP is trying to cut their benefits.

Journalists Convene Divide-Bridging Dialogue in Pacific NW

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Recently, journalists from The Evergrey undertook an effort that provided an inspiring, real-life example of dialogue work that is #BridgingOurDivides, and we wanted to highlight it for our network. The group brought people from urban, liberal King County, WA together with people from rural, conservative Sherman County, OR to have conversations about politics and their perspectives. Not only did they avoid shouting mathes, but people acutally listened to and learned from each other.
We encourage you to read the excerpt below from the great write up about the trip below from one of the organizers, Mónica Guzmán of The Evergrey, and check out the full version here. You can also learn more by watching the recording of the live chat that The Evergrey hosted to debrief the trip, which you can find here.

Seattleites took a 10-hour road trip to cross a political divide. Here’s what happened

Sherman County, Oregon, sits just south of the Washington border, east of the Cascades. Fewer than 2,000 people live in its 831 square miles. Stand on one of the hills near Moro, the county seat, and you’ll see wheat fields all around – and maybe some tall wind turbines.

Sherman County has very little in common with Seattle and King County. And yet, we’re connected: It’s the nearest county to ours that voted exactly opposite us in the presidential election. While 74 percent of King County voters went for Clinton, 74 percent of Sherman County voters went for Trump.

So on Saturday, about 20 of us King County residents took a 10-hour road trip to pay the people of Sherman County a visit.

We called the trip “Melting Mountains: An Urban-Rural Gathering.” Sandy Macnab, a just-retired Sherman and Wasco County agricultural agent who planned the event with us, came up with the name. It refers to the snowmelt that runs down the mountains dividing the eastern and western parts of our states, nourishing the land below.

We like the metaphor. And though we know we can’t melt the political and cultural “mountains” that divide our two counties in an afternoon – red vs. blue, liberal vs. conservative, rural vs. urban – we figured we might help people take a first step…

We encourage you to read the full version of this piece by Monica Guzman of The Evergrey at www.theevergrey.com/took-10-hour-road-trip-cross-political-divide-heres-happened.

Public Opinion and Social Influence

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The presence of homophily is frequently found as a core feature of social networks. The principle that “similarity breeds connection” results in personal networks skewed towards homogeneity along numerous demographic and interpersonal lines (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001).

Festinger argues that homophily is a direct result of social influence: beliefs are only coherent through a process of social comparison and therefore people “tend to move into groups which, in their own judgment, hold opinions which agree with their own” (Festinger, 1954). The problem of embeddedness  – that people’s attempts at purposive action are embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations – is inherent in this argument.

Reviewing the literature on social comparison, Festinger finds that individuals’ beliefs are malleable to social influence because the beliefs of others serve as guideposts in forming one’s own opinion. Foreshadowing Sunstein’s ‘law of group polarization’ (Sunstein, 1999), Festinger argues that this process of forming beliefs through social comparison is a primary driver of what he calls “social quiescence” (Festinger, 1954). This in turn serves as a driver for homophily, as people self-select out of groups unable to reach social quiescence, instead selecting into groups that more appropriately “satisfy their drive for self evaluation.”

Within the political domain, Lazarsfeld pioneered an understanding of public opinion as a process of social influence: a process driven significantly by personal conversations and everyday talk. While earlier understandings took media to be the primary source of political information and influence (Lippmann, 1922), Lazarsfeld suggests a “two-step flow” of communication: ideas and opinions may originate in media, but they flow first to opinion leaders.

What we call public opinion is then formed in a second step when these leaders disseminate information along lines of social influence. Importantly, opinion leaders generally exert greater social power than media, due to the many “psychological advantages” personal contacts have in exerting political influence (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948). These advantages include trust, conflict avoidance, and “persuasion without conviction,” e.g., the ability to actually take someone to the polls.

Perhaps most interesting for deliberative theory, however, is Lazarsfeld’s argument that “the weight of personal contacts upon opinion lies, paradoxically, in their greater casualness and non-purposiveness in political matters” (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948). In purposive political talk, individuals engage critically and intentionally, mentally prepared with “armor against influence.” Everyday talk, on the hand, catches us unprepared.

The passive exposure that comes from casual conversations presents a pervasive opportunity for powerful personal influence. We again see this argument manifest in Mutz and Mondak’s study of the workplace as a site for cross-cutting political dialogue. Workplaces may have a smaller proportion of political conversations than other settings, but the sheer volume of casual conversations makes workplaces as a key setting for political contact (Mutz, 2002).

Such public-minded talk ceased to be the sole purview of the Greek agorá long ago: when democracy is a way of living, as Dewey writes, even the most seemingly mundane sites of human interaction become critical elements of the deliberative system.

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