Pamela E. Oliver
Professor of Sociology

Soc 924 – Networks and Mobilizing Structures

The earliest work simply established that networks matter. People mostly don’t individualistically join collective action, they are recruited through social ties. From there, people studied how networks work, the different ways they work, the ways they are structured, and the ways they change over time in the process of action. These are just a sample of articles that do not pick up the most recent work.

Index

Overviews

  1. Social Movements : An Introduction. Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani. (Third or Second Edition). Chapter 5 Networks. The role of networks in getting involved, whether networks always matter, organizational memberships, movement subcultures, virtual networks.
  2. Nick Crossley and Mario Diani. Chapter 8 “Networks and Fields” in Snow et al, eds, Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. UW Library Link How networks facilitate collective action. Mobilization, brokerage and diffusion, recruitment. From action to structure, how collective action produces emerging forms of social organization. Fields of collective action. Modes of coordination. Time and network evolution.
  3. Diani, Mario (2004). Networks and Participation. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing: 339-359. Begins by seeing networks as duality of link between individuals (particularly their identity) and group memberships, instead of as predictors of participation. Organizing idea. Section on background of network approaches. then broadening work on how networks actually work. Then population and organization effects. Then overlapping networks and affiliations. Ends with recurring themes: varying role of networks, impact of extent of difference between network messages and dominant society, different functions of networks, important to study network properties not just individual ties. Urgent final messages: duality of individuals and organizations, time dimension, virtual links.

Networks and Recruitment

  1. David Snow, Louis Zurcher, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment.” ASR 45: 787-801. 1980. People are recruited through social networks. Stable URL One of the early pieces.
  2. Bert Klandermans and Dirk Oegema. “Potentials, Networks, Motivations and Barriers: Steps Toward Participation in Social Movements.” ASR 52 (1987): 519-532. Data on mobilization for a Dutch peace march. Besides using cost-benefit logic, a nice logical approach to organizer-centered mobilization and how it works. A pretty straight-forward empirical analysis. First you care about the issue, then you learn about the protest, then you decide to participate, then you actually participate. Network ties are the strongest predictor of hearing about the event and deciding to participate. Stable URL
  3. Dirk Oegema and Bert Klandermans. (1994). “Why Social Movement Sympathizers Don’t Participate: Erosion and Nonconversion of Support.” American Sociological Review 59(5): 703-722.  This is really negative recruitment, people quitting. Tracing the factors predicting both loss of support and failure of supporters to act during a peace movement petition campaign in the Netherlands. The people who were most connected are the ones least likely to leave. Stable URL
  4. McAdam, D. (1988). “Micromobilization Contexts and Recruitment to Activism.” International Social Movement Research 1: 125-154. “Bridges” are needed to link the micro- with the macrolevels of analysis. Concept of “micromobilization contexts” is applied to data about recruitment of volunteers to the Mississippi Freedom Summer project in 1964, coded from their applications (N = 1,068). Participants were found to be highly integrated into activist networks, & structural location proved a better indicator of participation than ideological commitment. Attitudinal affinity is seen as a necessary but insufficient cause of activism.  Micromobilization contexts and recruitment to activism
  5. Della Porta, D. (1988). “Recruitment Processes in Clandestine Political Organizations: Italian Left-Wing Terrorism.” International Social Movement Research 1: 155-169. It is argued that individual propensities to participation in underground organizations derive from political identities & social networks. The possibilities of becoming a terrorist are higher for those who have been part of networks prone to use violence in political action. Data set on 1,200 Italian terrorists, with information coming from trial records & 28 individual interviews. Recruitment processes in clandestine political organziations
  6. Hedstrom, P., R. Sandell, et al. (2000). “Mesolevel Networks and the Diffusion of Social Movements: The Case of the Swedish Social Democratic Party.” American Journal of Sociology 106(1): 145-172.Stable URL

Mobilization Processes

The articles in this section link networks to other factors in the process of mobilizing.

  1. Sherry Cable, Edward J. Walsh, Rex H. Warland. Differential Paths to Political Activism: Comparisons of Four Mobilization Processes after the Three Mile Island Accident. Social Forces, Vol. 66, No. 4. (Jun., 1988), pp. 951-969. Research on the anti-nuclear movement in the area was in the field when TMI went up. This study uses data on activists before and after the accident to examine what their social networks were before and how this affected their level of grievance and forms of action after the accident. Stable URL
  2. Klandermans, Bert, Jojanneke van der Toorn, et al. (2008). “Embeddedness and Identity: How Immigrants Turn Grievances into Action.” American Sociological Review 73: 992-1012. The social and political integration of Muslim immigrants into Western societies is among the most pressing problems of today. Research documents how immigrant communities are increasingly under pressure to assimilate to their “host” societies in the face of significant discrimination. In this article, we bring together two literatures—that on immigrants and that on social movement participation—to explore whether Muslim immigrants respond to their societal situation by engaging in collective political action. Although neither literature has given much attention to immigrant collective action, they do provide predictive leverage relative to the influence of grievances, efficacy, identity, emotions, and embeddedness in civil society networks. Our analyses are comprised of three separate but identical studies: a study of Turkish (N = 126) and Moroccan immigrants (N = 80) in the Netherlands and a study of Turkish immigrants (N = 100) in New York. Results suggest that social psychological mechanisms known to affect native citizens’ collective action function similarly for immigrants to a great extent, although certain immigrant patterns are indeed unique.

Network Structures & Processes

  1. Passy, F. (2001). “Socialization, Connection, and the Structure/Agency Gap: A Specification of the Impact of Networks on Participation in Social Movements.” Mobilization 6(2): 173-192. Networks perform three fundamental functions: socialize and build identities, offer participation opportunities (structural connection), shape individuals’ preferences before decisions. Focus on mechanisms, integration structural & rationalist theories. Uses both quantitative (survey) & qualitative (life history) data of participation in the Berne Declaration SMO to examine hypotheses. An important synthesis
  2. Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen. “Specifying the Relationship Between Social Ties and Activism.” MS 145-157. AJS 99: 640-667. 1993. Stable URL
  3. Diani, Mario Social Movements and Social Capital: A Network Perspective on Movement Outcomes. Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 129-147. Social movements and social capital
  4. Kitts, J. A. (2000). “Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Participation in Social Movement Organizations.” Mobilization 5(2): 241-257. Ties multivalent, can inhibit as well as promote participation.
  5. Mustafa Emirbayer, Jeff Goodwin. “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 6. (May, 1994), pp. 1411-1454. A theoretical critique of network analysis that cites and uses a lot of the social movements examples (among others). Our focus is less on the critique of formal network analysis and more on whether and how we can use these insights in studying social movements. Stable URL
  6. Osa, M. (2001). “Mobilizing Structures and Cycles of Protest: Post-Stalinist Contention in Poland, 1954-1959.” Mobilization 6(2): 211-231. Archival data identifying membership in eighteen social action groups provide the basis for social network analysis of the opposition domain in Poland under authoritarianism. Network development is traced during three phases of mobilization. The opening of political opportunity in a non-democratic setting stimulates both civic association & contention.
  7. Matsueda, Ross (2006). “Differential social organization, collective action, and crime.” Crime, Law and Social Change 46(1): 3-33. Conceptualizes organization in favor of, and against, crime as collective behavior. Integrates theoretical mechanisms of models of collective behavior, including social network ties, collective action frames, and threshold models of collective action. Iillustrates the integrated theory using examples of social movements against crime, neighborhood collective efficacy, and the code of the street.
  8. Lim, Chaeyoon (2008). “Social Networks and Political Participation: How Do Networks Matter?” Social Forces 87(2): 961-982. Using the Citizen Participation Study data, this study shows that contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature, there is little evidence that strong ties are more effective than weak ties in recruiting activists. Ties formed in civic associations, however, are more effective than other ties in recruiting protest participants. Neighborhood ties are more effective in recruiting community activists, but not in other types of activity. I conclude that the contents of relationships and the identities shared by two people, rather than tie strength, form the basis of interpersonal influence in political activism.
  9. Chapters in Mario Diani & Doug McAdam, eds., Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action (Oxford University Press) 2003. This edited collection was popular and widely cited in the 2000s.

Movement Communities & Non-organizational connections

  1. Staggenborg, S. (1998). “Social Movement Communities and Cycles of Protest: The Emergence and Maintenance of a Local Women’s Movement.” Social Problems 45(2): 180-204. (HTM copy of text.) Movement communities developed as a context, communities maintain movements. Related to Taylor’s abeyance arguments.
  2. Pamela E. Oliver. 1989. “Bringing the Crowd Back In: The Nonorganizational Elements of Social Movements.” Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 11: 1-30. Showing how crowds and consciousness can be integrated in collective action and social movement theory. PDF
  3. Roger Gould. 1991. “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871.” MS 133-144. ASR 45: 787-801. An important contribution. Stable URL

Spatial Structures

  1. Zhao, Dingxin. “Ecologies of Social Movements: Student Mobilization during the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement in Beijing” American Journal of Sociology; 1998, 103, 6, May, 1493-1529. Networks, space. Stable URL

Gerlach and Hine

Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine’s 1970 book People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation, was very influential among the scholars of the 1970s, but the book went out of print and became rarely cited, despite its influence. It foreshadows network and field ideas in arguing that social movements are decentralized, reticulate, and polycephalus. The two cases are Black Power and Pentacostalism. There is more in the book, e.g. the “glass wall” between insiders and outsiders. The book is available to be checked out as an ebook through the Internet Archive (which operates like a library, no more copies can be checked out than they own copies of.)

There are several articles that provide a recap of the arguments in the book.

  • Gerlach, L. P. and V. H. Hine (1968). “FIVE FACTORS CRUCIAL TO THE GROWTH AND SPREAD OF A MODERN RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 7(1): 23-40. Explanations for the spread of a modern religious movement are sought within the dynamics of the movement itself. Five key factors are identified and functionally analysed: (1) an acephalous, reticulate organizational structure, (2) face-to-face recruitment along lines of pre-existing significant social relationships, (3) commitment generated through an act or experience, (4) change-oriented ideology, and (5) real or perceived opposition. It is suggested that these five factors are common in other types of movements and that when they are present and interacting, the conditions which were causal in the genesis of the movement become facilitating only and are not essential to its spread.
  • Gerlach, L. P. (1970). “Movements of Revolutionary Change: Some Structural Characteristics.” American Behavioral Scientist 14(6): 812-836.  This one recapitulates the argument as it ended up in the book, with special emphasis on radical movements, especially Black Power.
  • Gerlach, L. P. (2001). The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and its Opponents. Networks and netwars : the future of terror, crime, and militancy. J. Arquilla and D. F. Ronfeldt. Santa Monica, CA, Rand. Chapter 9: “Editors’ abstract. Get ready for the “SPIN cycle.” Gerlach (University of Minnesota) provides an excellent summary on the organizational and strategic dynamics that characterize all manner of “segmented, polycentric, integrated networks” found in American social movements. This is one of the few studies that discusses social movements from a thoroughgoing network perspective. We believe that many of his observations also apply across the range of “uncivil-society” actors. This chapter stems from his contribution 1 to Jo Freeman’s and Victoria Johnson’s edited volume, Waves of Protest (1999), Lanham, Mass.: Rowman and Littlefield, a study of social movements since the 1960s. Reprinted by permission.”

Notes: 1) km=Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Carol McClurg Mueller. 1987. The Women’s Movements of the United States and Western Europe. Temple University Press. 2) CP= D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. N. Zald. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. New York, Cambridge University Press 1996.