Protest

A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements

James M. Jasper

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780745686707
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Every day around the world there are dozens of protests both large and small. Most groups engage the local police, some get media attention, and a few are successful. Who are these people? What do they want? What do they do to get it? What effects do they ultimately have on our world? In this lively and compelling book, James Jasper, an international expert on the cultural and emotional dimensions of social movements, shows that we cannot answer these questions until we bring culture squarely into the frame. Drawing on a broad range of examples, from the Women's Movement to Occupy and the Arab Spring, Jasper makes clear that we need to appreciate fully the protestors' points of view - in other words their cultural meanings and feelings - as well as the meanings held by other strategic players, such as the police, media, politicians, and intellectuals. In fact, we can't understand our world at all without grasping the profound impact of protest. Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements is an invaluable and insightful contribution to understanding social movements for beginners and experts alike.

1

What are Social Movements?

The street as an arena: the Wilkes movement

John Wilkes was one of the most memorable Englishman of the eighteenth century. Cross-eyed and generally unattractive, he was witty and charming, what used to be called “a lady’s man,” and one of the most aggressive muckrakers of any era. Separated from a wealthy wife, whose fortune gave him a seat in parliament in 1757 (it cost him £7,000), he was indignant when his faction of the Whig Party was excluded from government in 1762. Wilkes launched a weekly pamphlet, The North Briton, for the sole purpose of attacking King George III and his appointed prime minister, the incompetent Lord Bute. One of his innovations was to name the government ministers he was attacking instead of using the customary initials followed by dashes (Lord B–––). Within a year Wilkes was indicted for treasonous libel when, in issue number 45, he suggested that King George had lied in a speech to parliament.

Over the next several years Wilkes won a remarkable series of legal victories against the King and government, striking down search warrants against unnamed persons, allowing newspapers to reprint parliamentary debates, and preventing parliament from overturning elections simply because it found a candidate unsuitable. The number “45” became a common graffito, proudly scrawled on doors and walls, and “Wilkes and Liberty” became a rallying cry for a number of related causes. Wilkes, who siphoned considerable money from his charities to buy alcohol and prostitutes, became a symbol of sundry types of liberty. Large mobs formed to support his re-elections to parliament, as the King clumsily intervened against him. According to sociologist Charles Tilly (1995, 2004), these mobs – part election campaign, part agitation for civil liberties, and part drunken festival – comprised the first modern social movement.

There were several components to this new political vehicle. Wilkes was a master of the media, not only writing obscene attacks on Bute and the King (and the King’s mother), but also attracting attention for his dramatic actions and pithy quotes (yesteryear’s soundbites). In addition, he brought together two arenas that had been separate: parliament and the street. His followers organized marches and rallies to put pressure on elected officials, and much of that pressure was devoted to the rights of association, assembly, and free speech – the central tools of the social movement. They borrowed from guild ceremonies, veterans’ parades, Methodist revival meetings, and more. There were more coercive tactics, too, such as stopping carriages and forcing the fancy occupants to shout “Wilkes and Liberty,” but the balance of tactics overall was shifting from force to persuasion. The street was increasingly important as a political arena.

Wilkes was a pioneer in another way: although the largest mobs were in London, where they could intimidate politicians and the royal family, they could also be found in towns around Britain, eagerly following the newspapers that had become cheap and ubiquitous. There were new webs of political influence, with which protestors became entangled, learning to interact on the basis of new indignation and claims, with new kinds of players, and with new hopes.

Here we see the importance of remarkable individuals, with personality quirks and idiosyncratic motivations, but they get their way through social movements in familiar ways: by forming social networks, exploiting the news media, and getting people into the streets to pressure officials.

The modern social movement

People protest in whatever ways they can. Slaves, servants, and others under close surveillance find subtle means, such as spitting in the master’s food, playing dumb when given orders, performing tasks in a shoddy way, stealing or breaking valuables. If challenged, they can sometimes deny any intention of resistance, although this does not always prevent a beating (Scott 1985). Some of these weapons of the weak provide only private satisfaction or gain, but others are performed with audiences in mind. Some require solidarity, such as private jokes, gossip, and rumors that undermine the perceived power and dignity of your oppressors. Something as simple as rolling your eyes can undermine authority, with its suggestion of how silly or clueless the boss is.

Subordinates are usually cautious about their resistance, especially when they can be killed for insubordination. They rely on hidden transcripts, meanings that run counter to the dominant viewpoints and are expressed privately, in order to understand and criticize their situations (Scott 1990). This kind of surreptitious resistance can nonetheless leave a public impression, as with graffiti that thousands of passers-by can view. Other weapons of the weak are more coercive than persuasive – barn burning, the maiming of livestock – although a burning building not only does direct damage but also sends a message: it can be seen for miles, broadcasting the existence of resistance and encouraging copycats.

By placing people closer together in greater anonymity, cities encourage different forms of protest, especially riots and other kinds of crowd actions. It takes less advance planning to get a crowd together in a city than in the countryside. Even ancient cities had disruptive crowds. In Alexandria, Egypt in 485ce, when a new student was hazed – in truth, beaten up – by older ones, the local Christian community interpreted the event as an anti-Christian attack and within 48 hours the bishop had rounded up enough of his flock to sack a nearby pagan temple. In the following weeks, the pagans fought back through an official investigation, but the political trajectory toward Christian dominance was clear. Also clear was the bishop’s manipulation of rumors to fabricate an opportunity to attack his rivals (Watts 2010). Christianity – one of the world’s most successful religious movements – did not conquer the Roman Empire by turning the other cheek.

Although humans have always found ways to show their displeasure, the social movement, as we recognize it today, arose in the modern world. We might even say that it emerged in late eighteenth-century Britain and America, partly to take advantage of increasingly powerful parliaments grounded on the idea of citizenship (even if parliament is known as Congress in the US). These new arenas contributed even more than urbanization to the birth of the social movement. As in other countries, later, social movements demanded rights and recognition for groups that were excluded from political participation but that felt they were part of the nation. The very idea of the “nation” implies a “people” with some solidarity just by virtue of where they were born or the blood in their veins, regardless of their social class. If we are all “English” or “Russian,” how can some own others as serfs, or rule us without our consent? Ideas about freedom and democracy spread widely in the eighteenth century, even though few governments acted on them – yet.

Democracy is both a goal and a means for movements. It promises a great deal (promises that even today are not entirely fulfilled anywhere). It offers protections from arbitrary actions by the state (human rights), as well as several political rights: some participation in government decisions, or at least major decisions; some accountability by the state for its actions, and especially its mistakes; and some transparency in how it makes decisions and takes action. In addition to these elements of political citizenship, later forms of democracy have also promised some minimal level of economic well-being: health, housing, food. When groups feel that their government is failing to provide such things, they learn to band together into social movements. Because regimes that claim to be democratic promise so many things, ironically, there are more potential sources of indignation than in autocratic regimes. Expectations are higher.

Some sort of elected legislature is the centerpiece of democracy, and social movements arose to pressure the representatives in those bodies. In 50 years of research on France and Britain, Tilly (1986, 1995) showed how protest gradually shifted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from direct attacks on landlords, tax collectors, misbehaving neighbors, and other targets of indignation, to indirect efforts – through letters, petitions, and public demonstrations – to sway elected officials. Participants less often pulled and burned down houses, tarred and feathered their targets, or played raucous music beneath the window of someone who had broken village norms. More often they made speeches, marched through the streets chanting slogans and singing songs, and painted banners and signs. They now sent messages to elected officials, the media, and the broader public.

A legislature is one example of a strategic arena. Courtrooms are another, an especially well-defined arena with clear rules about who can participate and what they can do. News media are another arena, less clearly defined, in which players struggle over what statements and images will appear on websites, television broadcasts, and printed newspapers. Protestors usually promote their causes in several arenas at the same time. Blocked in one, they may try to enter another, seeking an arena where their resources and personnel have the most advantage (much like seeking the high ground on a field of battle). A modern society offers dozens of arenas to potential protestors.

Arenas offer openings for some kinds of protest and discourage other kinds. For this reason they have been called political opportunity structures, since they sometimes provide opportunities for protestors to mobilize large numbers of supporters and to win concessions from the state. An entire theory of protest was built on this idea, as we’ll see. Because researchers in this tradition focused on the state, they showed that different nations have different political opportunity structures and, as a result, different kinds of protest (Kriesi et al. 1995). In some countries political parties are more open to new demands, providing an opportunity for protestors, while in other nations parties adhere to ideologies that preclude openings to new issues. In Germany and the United States, legal courts have a lot of authority, so protestors file lawsuits; they do not file many suits in France, where courts have less power. Protestors use the channels available to them. They may also try to invent new arenas or modify existing ones, like the Wilkites who pursued new legal rights.

In addition to these long-run structural horizons, political opportunities also come in short-run versions, windows of opportunity that open or close. When a gunman kills 20 children in a school, citizens send letters and march in the streets to demand stricter controls on firearms; politicians see a chance to win votes by supporting these controls; and the news media draw in audiences by reporting on all of it. Oil spills, nuclear accidents, and other disasters can also focus attention for a while, with just enough time to mobilize some protest. After a few weeks or a few months, attention turns elsewhere, and the window of opportunity closes. Wilkes’s supporters seized the opportunity offered by the government whenever it harassed, jailed, or barred Wilkes from taking the parliamentary seat to which he had been elected. Every new outrage was a short window for mobilizing the street. Even today, outrageous government actions are probably the most common windows of opportunity.

We can see how “Wilkes and Liberty” helped define social movements by comparing it to our definition. It was sustained, or at least it reappeared with great regularity as long as Wilkes was battling Bute and the King. Its intentions were clear enough, encompassing both specific protections for Wilkes and broader rights for all. It was outside the normal political channels that authorities controlled. But the agitation fell short in a couple ways. It relied on and reinforced social networks that could be reused, but it did not generate formal organizations other than Wilkes’s original newspaper. And it only gradually came to formulate its demands in broad ideological terms, putting aside the specific demands on Wilkes’s behalf. Wilkes and his supporters were feeling their way to a new form of protest. (Before Wilkes, protest had fallen short of full social movement status in even more ways.)

In the United States the social movement developed in two stages. The Revolution relied on the networks, rallies, and rhetoric of the protest movement that had formed in response to a series of unpopular actions by the British government, most notably the 1765 Stamp Act (which imposed a tax, payable only in British currency, on the kind of paper used for newspapers and printed documents – precisely the media colonists were using to express their opinions and make their demands). The colonists considered themselves British citizens but they had no representatives in parliament: just the kind of situation that raises expectations – and frustrations.

The next step occurred in the 1830s, as a wave of national movements linked personal choices to public problems, the most prominent “sins” being slavery and alcohol. From now on moral reformers would hold individuals personally responsible for far-flung evils. They built national networks, often beginning with Baptist and Methodist preachers, developed a massive publishing and mailing industry, boycotted certain merchants, used direct, illegal actions to tackle the “sins,” and formed their own parties and lobbying organizations (with bylaws, regular meetings, and elected leaders) – tactics still deployed by today’s protest movements (Young 2006).

The social movement of today attempts to send messages to a variety of audiences, especially its own members and potential members, but also legislators, other agencies of the state, and the media. Movements formulate moral visions and try to entice others to share in them. But even if they specialize in persuasion and performance, they have not entirely given up other means of getting their way.

Coercion, money, words

These are the three great families of means that people employ in their strategic engagements, whether those are business deals or wars, politics or protest. They try to get their way through physical force or blockage, by paying people, or by persuading them. Social movements, even though they may use all three, are largely defined by their specialization in persuasion. To the extent they rely on coercion instead, they shade into revolutionary armies or criminal gangs; to the extent they rely on money instead they become bureaucratic interest groups.

Because of the importance of persuasion, it is especially useful to understand social movements through the lens of rhetoric, namely culture deployed in order to have an effect on others, with public speeches as the original model. A related perspective is to see politics as a set of performances embodying information, feelings, and morals intended to inspire others (Alexander 2011). In either case we view strategic players as audiences for each other’s words and actions (although money and coercion also have cultural components: they must be interpreted). Like an orator in a public square, movements seek audiences and try to persuade them to feel, believe, or act in a certain way. And even in the age of the internet, much communication still takes place via orators in public squares, from Zuccotti to Tahrir.

In non-democratic regimes – which include the majority of states that have existed in human history – public issues are mostly settled by physical force. Nations go to war over disputed territories; a monarch suppresses revolt by chopping off hundreds of heads. In some settings even today, violence (or the threat of violence) prevails – especially police violence directed against protestors. Rhetoric arose in the ancient Greek world at the same time democracy did, as an alternative to coercion; now you might hope to persuade others, especially to vote a certain way in the assembly or on juries.

Social movements may be linked to democracy and to persuasion, but they also sometimes resort to physical force, as when striking workers obstruct an assembly line or rioters ransack a shop. As we’ll see in chapter 7, coercion is a risky strategy for protestors, often succeeding by embarrassing the authorities, but even more often failing because it allows authorities to justify severe repression. Some militants are pushed to violent, even military, means in response to actions by the state.

This is where revolutions come from: there is no other way to change a despised regime than by overthrowing it (as Jeff Goodwin suggests in the title of his book about revolutions, No Other Way Out). When regimes systematically prevent public participation, and tiny elites monopolize the military, media, and economy, revolution becomes a common goal for protestors. Unions and leftwing parties often make seizure of the state their primary goal, but most social movements today want to influence the state, not own it.

Coercion comes in violent and nonviolent forms. It is one thing to break the law by stopping traffic, another to break store windows, and a very different action to break people’s bones. Almost all social movements today advocate the civil disobedie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables and Sidebars
• Preface
• Introduction: Doing Protest
• 1 What are Social Movements?
• 2 Meaning
• 3 Infrastructure
• 4 Recruiting
• 5 Sustaining
• 6 Deciding
• 7 Engaging Other Players
• 8 Winning, Losing, and More
• Conclusion: Humans as Heroes
• References and Suggested Readings
• Index