A Temporal Model of Community Organizing and Direct Action (original) (raw)
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From Correlation to Causation: The Cruciality of a Collectivity in the Context of Collective Action
This paper discusses a longitudinal field study on collective action which aims to move beyond student samples and enhance mundane realism. First we provide a historical overview of the literature on the what (i.e., antecedents of collective action) and the how (i.e., the methods employed) of the social psychology of protest. This historical overview is substantiated with meta-analytical evidence on how these antecedents and methods changed over time. After the historical overview, we provide an empirical illustration of a longitudinal field study in a natural setting-a newly-built Dutch neighbourhood. We assessed changes in informal embeddedness, efficacy, identification, emotions, and grievances over time. Between t 0 and t 1 the residents protested against the plan to allow a mosque to carrying out their services in a community building in the neighbourhood. We examined the antecedents of protest before [t 0 ] and after [t 1 ] the protests, and whether residents participated or not. We show how a larger social network functions as a catalyst in steering protest participation. Our longitudinal field study replicates basic findings from experimental and survey research. However, it also shows that one antecedent in particular, which is hard to manipulate in the lab (i.e., the size of someone's social network), proved to be of great importance. We suggest that in overcoming our most pertinent challenge-causality-we should not only remain in our laboratories but also go out and examine real-life situations with people situated in real-life social networks.
Collective Actionand Then What?
Journal of Social Issues, 2009
Two aspects of the social psychology of collective action are of particular interest to social movement organizers and activists: how to motivate people to engage in collective action, and how to use collective action to create social change. The second question remains almost untouched within social psychology. The present article delineates research from political science and sociology concerning variables that moderate the effectiveness of collective action and maps these variables against intergroup research. Within intergroup social psychology, there is a theoretical literature on what needs to be done to achieve change (e.g., changing identification, social norms, or perceptions of legitimacy, stability, permeability). The article considers possible testable hypotheses concerning the outcomes of collective action which can be derived from intergroup research and from the synthesis of the three disciplines. For theoreticians and practitioners alike, a program of research which addresses the social-psychological outcomes of collective action and links these to identities, norms, intentions, and support for social change in bystanders, protagonists, and opponents has a great deal of interest.
Beyond protest: Community changes as outcomes of mobilization
Social and community psychologists have recently begun to investigate systematically the psycho-social variables underlying the emergence of social movements and the impact of protest on the larger community. If changes produced by collective action both at the individual level, such as increased social skills, self-efficacy or social identity, and at the collective level, such as increased political influence, collective efficacy, and collective identity, have been thoroughly investigated, less research has been conducted on the identification of the by-products of participation, the effects of citizen mobilization on the larger community, and potentially negative changes associated to protest. Based on a case study, the paper argues that protest can bring about remarkable changes in the local community in terms of empowerment and community development, but can also generate new conflicts and subtle forms of conformism.
Community Organizing and Direct Activism
2010
T HE three selections in this Community Organizing and Direct Activism Cluster move the thinking and practice of antisubordination to a new level, recognizing the dangers of internalizing insidious, invidious values, and envisioning and describing new organizational models, principles and processes without them. The LatCrit movement has long recognized antisubordination as a constantly evolving core. 1 As a first principle, this requires awareness of
The nature of public action: social environments, psychological traits and mobilization
2012
In a democracy, none of us can exert much influence as individual citizens acting alone. This is by design. In a democracy, decision-making promotes and even requires collective efforts. When advancing our personal interests and our notions of the common interest, we must often act cooperatively with others to pursue common goals. When political tasks require more than one citizen to achieve, this is our only practical option. Our actions as individual citizens are significant. Yet to be effectual, we must collaborate with and rely upon others. We must mobilize ourselves as publics. Doing so requires us to reject the notion that "the public" exists automatically when some people are legally recognized as citizens. It requires us to reject the notion that "a public" is equivalent to an audience, created whenever ideas spread through a population. It requires rejecting the premise that citizens belong to a public simply because some actions or issues may affect their lives or the lives of those with whom they share a common identity. For a public to exist, citizens who share common interests or preferences must take action to accomplish a political goal. These goals can take a number of forms. Citizens can attempt to select who holds elective office. They can attempt to shape the priorities of those elected. They can attempt to participate in the administration of justice by sitting on juries. They can attempt to disrupt social and economic practices they find unjust. Different as these goals may be, each involves influencing an authoritative decision-making process by taking action. Each involves many people directing their energy toward the same end. Understood in this way, the capacity of publics to achieve goals comes down to the decisions of individual citizens. It is not inevitable that a public will emerge to pursue a particular goal. Nor is it inevitable that a public will succeed. To exist and to be effective, publics must be mobilized. Someone must organize efforts that appeal to citizens. Citizens must then participate in these efforts. The challenges that can arise are notorious. Citizens can benefit from outcomes, even if they do not contribute to the public actions that create them. When political goals require the efforts of many, and the benefits to the individual remain uncertain, citizens may refrain from taking action. Of course, if no one takes action, or if too few do, individual and collective interests can go unrealized. Understanding the challenges of
Successfully fighting for a government measure improving the lives of tens of thousands of people looking after their sick relatives at home. Humanely getting rid of stray dogs terrorizing a housing estate. Demolition of a derelict building, and finding a solution to the housing problem of its inhabitants. Making the metro barrier free, stopping evictions, and saving plenty of trees. It is impossible to enumerate what can be achieved through grassroots initiatives that work using community organizing methods. Indeed, on can hardly assess all that our communities have achieved during a one-year program supported by the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE), but we will nevertheless give it a try in the form of this publication. And, of course, the above examples are all outcomes of our extremely fruitful 2017-18 program year.
Collective action and psychological change.
1996
The study comprises an analysis of processes of psychological change among participants at an environmental protest. A participant observation study found evidence of a radicalized self concept among a number of crowd members, and indicates a link between radicalization, an asymmetry of categorical representations between protesters and the police, and the subsequent interaction premised on these divergent representations. The analysis supports an elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour . It is argued that, in order to account for both social determination and social change in collective behaviour, it is necessary to analyse crowd events as developing interactions between groups. Where crowd members hold a diåerent understanding of their social position to that held by an out-group (e.g. the police) and where the out-group has the power to treat crowd members in terms of its understandings, then those members who act on the basis of one understanding of their social relations ®nd themselves in an unexpected and novel set of social relations. This then provides the basis for a series of changes, including the self-understanding of crowd members.
Doing Democracy: The Social Psychological Mobilization and Consequences of Collective Action
Social Issues and Policy Review, 2013
Participating in collective actions, or acts of social protest, is one of the primary means that citizens have of participating in democracy and seeking social change. In this article, we outline the ways in which: social identity provides a psychological foundation for collective actions; social norms shape the mobilization and particular direction (disruptive vs. conventional) of that protest; and participating in collective actions is psychologically consequential and sociopolitically complex. We use this platform to put forward a series of practical implications for activists, social movement and nongovernmental groups, and authorities, who seek to mobilize consequential collective action. We conclude that collective action is a fundamental tool in the battle for social equality and justice. To better understand, and engage with this phenomenon, policy makers and practitioners need to attend to its origins in collective, group-based psychology.
Sociological Inquiry, 1985
This paper presents a model of the mobilization of people into movements that is compatible with a resource mobilization perspective on social movement organizations as the unit of analysis, but substitutes a cognitive social psychology based on attribution theory and the sociology of knnwledge for the incentive model typically used in this perspective. We focus on the problem, neglected by resource mobilization thenrists, of explaining the translation of objective social relationships into subjectively experienced, collectively defined grievances. O n a macro level, our model gives independent causal weight to ideology without discounting the role that resources also play in defining group goals. O n a social psychological level, we identify three distinct organizational strategies-conversion, coalition, and direct action-for mobilizing persons as participants and examine some cognitive and organizational consequences of each strategy. We conclude that incorporation of a more adequate social psychology of individual participation is not only compatible with the organizational focus and emphasis on rationality of the resource mobilization perspective, but can provide important insights into problems both social movement theorists and social movement organizers see as significant.