(republished as Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion, edited by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Rowen & Littlefield, 2003). The original Sociological Forum articles are available through the electronic library, either JSTOR or SocIndex.
- Goodwin, J. and J. M. Jasper (1999). “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 27-54. The study of social movements has recently been energized by an explosion of work that emphasizes political opportunities – a concept meant to come to grips with the complex environments that movements face. In the excitement over this new metaphor, there has been a tendency to stretch it to cover a wide variety of empirical phenomena & causal mechanisms. A strong structural bias is also apparent in how political opportunities are understood & in the selection of cases for study. Even those factors adduced to correct some of the problems of the political opportunity approach, eg, mobilizing structures & cultural framing, are subject to the same structural distortions. Recommended here is social movement analysis that rejects invariant modeling, is wary of conceptual stretching, & recognizes the diverse ways that culture & agency, including emotions & strategizing, shape collective action. 3 Tables, 1 Figure.
- Tilly, C. (1999). “Wise Quacks.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 55-61. In agreement with many other students of social movements & related phenomena, the critique (1999) by Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper of political process theorizing about contentious politics rightly calls attention to the incomplete, provisional, & sometimes contradictory state of explanations in the field. However, it wrongly indicates that major analysts are unaware of these difficulties, adopts a flawed model of explanation, & proposes remedies that will actually hinder explanation of contentious political processes.
- Polletta, F. (1999). “Snarls, Quacks, and Quarrels: Culture and Structure in Political Process Theory.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 63-70. Political process theories of social movements have relied on a set of oppositions between culture & structure that has limited their capacity to capture the supraindividual, durable, & constraining dimensions of culture. The solution is not to abandon an emphasis on objective political structures in favor of potential insurgents’ subjective perceptions of political opportunities, but rather, to probe the (objective) resources & constraints generated by the cultural dimensions of political structures. Such a perspective would pay closer attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, & political taboos that create & limit political opportunities, & would link the “master frames” that animate protest to dominant political structures & processes.
- Tarrow, S. (1999). “Paradigm Warriors: Regress and Progress in the Study of Contentious Politics.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 71-77. Paradigm warfare is a well-worn way of engaging in the polemics of research, but it frequently reduces paradigms to caricatures & turns complex reports of empirical research into cartoons. This is illustrated by two one-sided accounts of the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico: one based on a simplistic, political opportunity cartoon & the other on a foreshortened culturalist one. Reducing the many-sided (& in some ways ambiguous) approaches of the political process model to a supposedly hegemonic paradigm neglects many substantive contributions & cuts with too broad a stroke at social movements while ignoring the many-branched contributions of research & theory on contentious politics.
- Meyer, D. S. (1999). “Tending the Vineyard: Cultivating Political Process Research.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 79-92. Criticisms by Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper (1999) of various iterations of political process theory are incorrectly applied to the entire developing paradigm. Their indictment offers a rigid & narrow representation of the theory & rejects the social science enterprise of building theory altogether. At the same time, their criticisms raise important puzzles for scholars working on social movements, particularly about defining opportunities, & studying culture. Here, their criticisms of the theory are addressed, acknowledging useful questions & challenges that they offer & suggesting an agenda for future research on social movements.
- Koopmans, R. (1999). “Political. Opportunity. Structure. Some Splitting to Balance the Lumping.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 93-105. A response to Jeff Goodwin & James M. Jasper’s “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory” (1999) argues that, despite the inconsistency of their critique & invalidity of their solution, they have made a valuable contribution to the critique of political process theory. However, three of their claims are directly challenged: (1) the most important component of discrepancies in collective action is a variation in opportunity. (2) Such variations in opportunity are the product of the interaction between social movements, actors, & institutions. (3) Variations in opportunity are influenced by structural factors. Conceding that political opportunity structure is incapable of accounting for most social movements, strategies for correcting the flawed political process theory are offered (eg, clarifying the connection between structures & opportunities).
- Jasper, J. M. and J. Goodwin (1999). “Trouble in Paradigms.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 107-125. A response to comments by Charles Tilly, Francesca Polletta, Sidney Tarrow, David S. Meyer, & Ruud Koopman on the authors’ “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory,” (all, 1999). Whereas Tilly recognized the significance of problems with invariant modeling, Tarrow, Koopman, & Meyer are criticized for failing to acknowledge the previous existence of invariant models. Rather than support the use of political process theory for explaining social movements, it is asserted that its application to civil rights & labor movements have distorted those forms of social action. Moreover, the contention that some movements can be described as nonpolitical because they do not challenge the state is refuted. Political process theorists are charged with disregarding the import of cultural constructionist approaches; delineations of culture as the solution for political process theory are also addressed. Commentators’ recommendations for the future use of political process theory are evaluated.