Surviving Identity

Vulnerability and the Psychology of Recognition

Kenneth McLaughlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136511158
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Today, political claims are increasingly made on the basis of experienced trauma and inherent vulnerability, as evidenced in the growing number of people who identify as a "survivor" of one thing or another, and also in the way in which much political discourse and social policy assumes the vulnerability of the population. This book discusses these developments in relation to the changing focus of social movements, from concerns with economic redistribution, towards campaigns for cultural recognition. As a result of this, the experience of trauma and psychological vulnerability has become a dominant paradigm within which both personal and political grievances are expressed.

Combining the psychological, social, and political aspects of the expression of individual distress and political dissent, this book provides a unique analysis of how concepts such as "vulnerability" and "trauma" have become institutionalised within politics and society. It also offers a critical appraisal of the political and personal implications of these developments, and in addition, shows how the institutionalisation of the survivor identity represents a diminished view of the human subject and our capacity to achieve progressive political and individual change.

This book will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students of critical psychology, sociology, social policy, politics, social movements and mental health.

1 Social Movements Old and New

In order to identify some of the social dynamics that have shaped contemporary forms of individual and group protest, and also to illustrate how many contemporary problems and demands are understood and articulated, it is first necessary to look at what is understood by the term ‘social movement’ and the factors that influence or inhibit their formation, success or failure, expansion or decline. In addition, it is necessary to provide some historical understanding to the present expressions of dissent and alienation. My intention is not to give a detailed analysis of social movement theory since this has been extensively done elsewhere (e.g. Tarrow 1994; Crossley 2002a; Snow et al. 2007a). Instead, I aim to provide an overview within which to situate the overall discussion of the way in which contemporary social problems are both articulated and contested.

Detailing some commonalities and contradictions within social movement theory and practice in historical context will highlight both changes and continuities within both theory and practice. This will also provide an account of the influences on the newer social movements in general, and survivor movements in particular. In so doing, it will become clear that it is not possible to pigeonhole any social movement within a given paradigm. Few, if any, movements are homogenous groups with no internal disagreements over either the exact problem they confront or the tactics with which to do so. At times, it is those who share the same general view of the problem who differ the most in how best to tackle it, as illustrated by the numerous splits and further fragmentations within the radical left of the second half of the twentieth century.

The same is true of those organizations that purport to carry the radical banner today. The ‘environmental movement’, for example, contains a variety of groups with very different aims; from those solely concerned with small-scale local neighbourhood issues to those who harbour revolutionary goals, others will sit somewhere between the extremes while some will traverse various groups at various times. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some current trends and locate some of the factors in their creation that are of central importance in locating the roots of the survivor identity that will be discussed in later chapters.

First, I wish to look at some definitions of social movements and the problems with providing a precise universal analytic category. Second, I look at some theoretical attempts to make sense of social movements and how these have changed historically, specifically related to the changing repertoires of the new social movements (many of which are now quite old). Third, I wish to highlight a trend whereby there is an implicit contempt for the masses contained within an increasingly middle class dominated social movement sphere.

Defining Social Movements

Defining the criteria necessary for a collection of people to constitute a social movement is not as straightforward as it can first appear. At its most basic, Giddens (1997: 511) defines a social movement as a ‘collective attempt to further a common interest or secure a common goal, through collective action outside the sphere of established institutions’. The first problem with such a definition is that it does not tell us how many people are necessary before a group becomes a collective. Is it two, twenty, one hundred, ten thousand? Do they share a united, clear goal or a disparate set of linked goals? The numerical question is also a historical one as definitions are shaped by the circumstances in which they are produced. For example, Wilson defines a social movement as ‘a conscious, collective, organized attempt to bring about or resist large-scale change in the social order by non-institutionalised means’ (Wilson 1973: 8, my emphasis). This emphasis on large-scale change is reflective of the time of organized labour, feminism, gay politics and civil rights. Radical change was on the agenda with competing visions of how to organize society on offer. However, Wilson’s quote also acknowledges that social movements may not be about achieving change; on the contrary many may be actively resisting change to defend the status quo.

An emphasis on large-scale change is still the main criterion for some writers today. However, more recent and detailed definitions have expanded to include not only large-scale social movements but also small, localized group formations, such as NIMBYs (not in my back yard) or other neighbourhood groups. So, for Abercrombie et al. (2006: 358) ‘the aims of social movements can be broad, as in the overthrow of existing government, or narrow, as in the installation of traffic calming measures’. This is instructive not just in the way the conceptualization of social movements has modified over the years. The narrowing of goals from large-scale change to campaigns over road safety does more than conflate the two; the juxtaposition of social revolution with pedestrian crossings also has the rhetorical effect of making the former look ridiculous, the latter reasonable and achievable.

Following a discussion of the pros and cons of a number of definitions, Snow et al. (2007b) favour the following conceptualization of social movements as being

Collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are part.

(Snow et al. 2007b: 11)

Snow et al. also differentiate between social movements and interest groups. While acknowledging that there can be many overlaps in terms of shared goals and objectives, they nevertheless see three crucial distinctions. First, interest groups are generally defined in relation to the government or polity, whereas social movements have connections to a much wider range of social institutions. Second, being generally embedded within the existing political sphere, interest groups tend to have some degree of political legitimacy; social movements, on the other hand, can be opposed to the existing polity and/or be in the process of attempting to achieve recognition as a political actor. Third, tactical differences are evident, with interest groups mainly using institutional means such as political lobbying, while the tactics of social movements can include demonstrations, boycotts, industrial action and sit ins. I purposefully avoided listing violence as a tactic specific to social movements. While it most certainly is a tactic at times, to list it solely as a potential attribute of social movements fails to acknowledge the use of violence by institutional bodies of the state such as the police and border control agencies. This runs the risk of pathologizing movement violence and both naturalizing and neutralizing state violence.

Even allowing for the many overlaps between social movements and interest groups, Snow et al. conclude that they are

not so much different species as members of the same species positioned differently in relation to the polity or state. But that differential positioning is sufficiently important to produce different sets of strategic and tactical behaviours, and thus different kinds of collectivities.

(Snow et al. 2007b: 8)

The contention that social movements invariably lie outside the sphere of established institutions, and also outside the state, reflects the majority view that tends to view social movements as challenging current views and practices condoned by those with institutional power. Again though, things are not quite so clear cut. Many professionals work to destabilize institutional power at the same time as being part of the institution. For example, the ‘Radical Social Work’ movement’s slogan of ‘Both In and Against the State’ embodied the tactic of attempting to subvert the system from within. Similarly, the loose umbrella of professionals given the collective rubric of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in the 1960s contained many individuals who wielded substantial institutional power, but who nevertheless attempted to use this against traditional medical paradigms and practices. This tradition continues within both psychiatry and psychology (e.g. Thomas 1997; Parker 2007). It also chimes with Tarrow’s claim that social movements can be defined as collective challenges ‘based on common purposes and social solidarities in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities’ (Tarrow 1998: 4). The emphasis on interaction does not negate working with or even within the organization of social work, psychology or psychiatry for those respective activistprofessionals.

This brief discussion highlights the difficulty of finding a universal definition of social movements and their aims and objectives. There is no clear delineation between the constitutive parts of various social movements in terms of numbers, tactics, goals, leadership, organization or non-organization. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify specific social movements, albeit in the knowledge that we are at times using heuristic models to conceptualize fluid entities. In similar vein, it is possible to locate some of the factors in social movement formation.

Theorizing Social Movements

The theoretical focus on social movements has differed not only historically but also geographically. Influenced by Marx and Hegel, European scholars favoured an approach that looked at key contradictions and conflicts in society and how they give rise to social movements that attempt to address them. In the USA, while the dialectical approach had some influence, there was more of a focus on a broader range of movements, with the aim of locating the empirical conditions that allowed or inhibited their emergence and ‘much less concern to pin these movements to the dialectics of history or a specific type of society’ (Crossley 2002a: 11).

My approach favours the historical-dialectical approach in that I am interested in exploring the way that societal conflicts and contradictions are articulated and discontent expressed. However, I wish to go beyond a class conflict analysis. While class is certainly an important social dynamic, class consciousness and class mobilization are no longer such powerful social forces as they were in the past. The decline of class consciousness and working class organization does not mean that the problems they confronted have gone away, but changes in both subjective and objective conditions influence their expression and articulation. It may be the case that much of the alienation and distress of modern society has a class base, but increasingly that is not how it is felt privately or expressed publicly.

Within the social movement literature, different theoretical positions provide various views of social actors and the movements that they make up. Whereas ‘collective behaviour’ theories tended to view social movements as irrational psychological responses, as ‘mobs’ exhibiting some form of collective hysteria, ‘rational actor’ theory sees individuals as pursuing specific goals to maximize gains and minimize losses or hardship. The latter approach was adapted from economics, particularly the cost-benefit analytic approach; it was not just individuals that were rational but movements also (McCarthy and Zald 1977).

Much early work on social movement formation focused on their emergence under conditions of expanding political opportunities. Making demands directly of the state, around such things as labour and civil rights, they were located within the political process. As such, ‘political process theory’ was arguably the dominant theoretical approach in the 1970s and into the 1980s (Goodwin and Jasper 2004). The latter decades of the twentieth century also saw increasing examination of the cultural side of social movements and, more recently, there has been greater interest in the role of emotions in protest (e.g. Tarrow 1994; Gould 2004).

As political opportunities open up, it makes it easier for people to join a social movement, and via their collective action they create new opportunities which can lead to the formation of other social movements. This begs the question of what exactly is a ‘political opportunity’? For Tarrow, they are those ‘dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to take collective action by affecting their expectations for success or failure’ (Tarrow 1994: 85). This would indicate an acknowledgement that political opportunities are not solely objective entities waiting to be discovered, but are things that are open to interpretation. The weighing up of whether the ‘incentives’ are worthwhile and meet ‘expectations’, implies a degree of subjective interpretation. With this in mind, it has been suggested that there is a need to abandon invariant theoretical models that attempt to subsume the complexity of social movements into a universal framework (Goodwin and Jasper 2004). There is also a need to recognize the way culture permeates not only social movement agents but also social movement theorists.

Social movements are often seen as being the political expression of public dissatisfaction with some aspect of societal relations, as giving political voice to disparate actors. An interesting rider to this, though, is given by Honneth (2003), who argues that this prioritization of small groups of social movements as being representative of demands for social justice and recognition ignores a multitude of other human injustice and discontent. In other words, certain forms of social injustice are moved to the centre of public political life, while others, what Honneth terms the pre-political, are downgraded or ignored. Honneth’s work has proven influential and will be discussed further in Chapter 2.

It is commonly assumed that before there can be the formation of a social movement there has to be both grievance and strain. Put simply, there has to be something to oppose before there can arise an oppositional social movement. Such grievances do not in themselves create the conditions for mobilization; people often put up with abhorrent treatment without it leading to collective action. Strain, where opposition to these practices is voiced, is also necessary before such grievances are articulated (however inadequately) and collective mobilization achieved. In discussing the grievance/strain requirement, Crossley (2002a) points out that, while they are a prerequisite, they require at least five additional conditions to achieve social movement formation: movement culture; opportunities and the responses of agents of control; pre-existing networks; resources; and trigger events.

The culture of the movement is important as it has to agree, however tentatively and despite many possible disagreements and contradictions, a schematic that locates the grievances outside the individuals concerned. As Crossley (2002a: 146) puts it, if ‘groups collectively attribute their misfortune to their own personal failings then they are unlikely to form an oppositional movement’. The existence of pre-existing networks can facilitate formation. If members already belong to one group they are more likely to be in a position to form another. Resources can also be crucial, for example to pay full-time activists an income and to hold meetings, provide transport to events and organize demonstrations, etc. Trigger events, which can encapsulate group anger about some aspect of policy and practice, can also prove influential in mobilizing oppositional forces. For example, the mental health user/survivor-led campaign group Mad Pride was formed, at least in part, in response to government proposals for more coercive mental health legislation in England during the late 1990s.

A ‘trigger event’ in itself does not necessarily lead to movement formation; this is dependent on a combination of the other factors. For example, the catalyst for the civil rights movement in the USA is often credited to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the city of Montgomery, the capital of the state of Alabama. The subsequent furore and the boycott of the bus company by the black population is seen as a pivotal moment in race relations history. However, Rosa Parks was no downtrodden black woman who finally resisted discrimination on that eventful day. On the contrary, she was a seasoned activist who had made similar protests in the past which had generated little publicity or public outrage, far less a sophisticated campaign. Following her arrest on this occasion, the Black Church proved very effective in mobilizing its constituency, with Martin Luther King informing people that all the ministers in Montgomery fully endorsed the boycott plan and had promised to promote it to their congregations on Sunday at church (Morris 2004). Not only did the church endorse the boycott, thereby giving it legitimacy within the black population, but it also provided the emergent movement with essential resources such as the use of its extensive communication networks, organized congregations and vast financial and cultural assets.

The emotional power of religion, along with nationalism, is identified by Tarrow (1994) as a recurring factor in social movement mobilization due to its ‘ready made’ symbolism and rituals that can be utilized by movement leaders. It is in this regard that Morris (2004) is critical of those writers (e.g. Snow 1992) who contend that the central frame of the civil rights movement was one of ‘rights’. While this was certainly an important aspect, it downplays the church’s emphasis on respect and religion, which tapped into the emotional, cultural and material world of much of the black population in that locality at that time. The ‘knowledge’ that ‘God was on their side’ also helped motivate the congregation.

In attempting to move social movement theory forward, Crossley (2002a) incorporates the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically his concepts of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’, into his analysis of social movements. For Bourdieu the concept of the habitus is important because with it,

you can refer to something that is close to what is suggested by habit, while differing from it in one important respect. The habitus, as the word implies, is that which one has acquired, but which has become durably incorporated in the body in the form of permanent dispositions.

(Bourdieu 1993: 86)

In other words, the ‘habitus’ refers to the way in which social, cultural and moral codes are absorbed by social agents becoming embedded within them. This can involve linguistic schemas, ‘appropriate’ ways of behaving in various social contexts, cultural competence, belief systems, etc. However, this is not a culturally deterministic model but an agentic one; Bourdieu recognizes tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Social movements old and new
• 2. Recognising identity
• 3. Surviving trauma
• 4. Surviving psychiatry
• 5. The rise of therapeutic identity
• 6. The imposition of a vulnerable identity
• Conclusion
• References
• Index