Political Sociology and Social Movements
Andrew G. Walder
Annual Review of Sociology
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/toc/soc/forthcoming
Andrew G. Walder
Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
94305-2047; email: walder@???
Until the 1970s, the study of social movements was firmly within a
diverse sociological tradition that explored the relationship between
social structure and political behavior, and was preoccupied with
explaining variation in the political orientation of movements: their
ideologies, aims, motivations, or propensities for violence.
Subsequently, a breakaway tradition redefined the central problem,
radically narrowing the scope of interest to the process of
mobilization—how social groups, whoever they are and whatever their
aims, marshal resources, recruit adherents, and navigate political
environments in order to grow and succeed. Critics would later insist
that the construction of meaning, the formation of collective
identities, and the stimulation and amplification of emotions play a
vital and neglected role in mobilization, but these alternatives did
not challenge the narrowed construction of the problem itself. The
resulting subfield has largely abandoned the quest to explain
variation in the political orientation of movements. Research in
related fields—on revolution, unions, and ethnic mobilization—have
retained an interest in explaining political orientation, although
they often view it primarily as a by-product of mobilization. Reviving
theories about the impact of social structure on movement political
orientation will require integrating insights from research on related
but widely scattered subjects.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of
Sociology Volume 35 is July 07, 2009. Please see
http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx
for revised estimates.
----------------------------------------
Tommaso Vitale
Dipartimento di Sociologia e della Ricerca Sociale
Università di Milano Bicocca
via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, 8
20126 Milano
tel: ++39.02 6448 7477
skype: tomvita
Papers and pre-prints:
http://homepage.mac.com/tommaso.vitale/
New book:
www.carocci.it/politichepossibili
New issue of the Scientific Journal "Partecipazione e conflitto":
http://www.francoangeli.it/Riviste/sommario.asp?IDRivista=152
