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Motivational Dimensions in Social Movements and Contentious Collective Action
Motivational Dimensions in Social Movements and Contentious Collective Action, by Maurice Pinard . Montreal, CAN: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. 173pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780773538665.
Reading Maurice Pinard’s Motivational Dimensions in Social Movements and Conten tious Collective Action is in many ways like enjoying a class reunion—many “old friends” are re-introduced and shown to retain value and insight that was forgotten as the deprivation/grievance literature gave way to the structural approaches associated with the resource mobilization, political process, and contentious politics perspectives. In this relatively short monograph, Pinard offers a comprehensive review and extension of four-plus decades’ worth of theory and research on social movements and collective action. What Pinard has done is remind his more senior audience and bring to the attention of younger scholars the fact that grievances and deprivations remain important for understanding why people engage in protest and collective action.
The book is organized into six chapters. Chapter One, “Approaches to Motivation in the Social Movement Literature,” offers a convincing argument that deprivations and grievances are important motives for involvement in collective action. In reviewing the transition to the structural approaches, Pinard demonstrates that the initial dismissal of grievances and deprivation has been slowly, but surely, modified. Scholars today largely agree that structure and motive are both important. But they also agree that “internal motive” is more complex than was often presented in the early literature. Deprivations, grievances, emotions, moral obligations, aspirations, expectations of success, and so on may directly and/or in combination influence collective action and social protest.
In Chapter Two, “Controversies and Empirical Evidence regarding the Role of Grievances,” Pinard reviews a body of scholarship to show that grievances do motivate involvement in collective action, that grievances cannot be assumed constant across time, space, and activists, and therefore, grievances and structure are worthy of study. However, the review also shows that scholars have not adopted set definitions of “grievances” or “deprivation,” and that measurement and other methodological issues in part account for conflicting findings over the years. It remains unclear how and why deprivation and grievances are important, and how and why they interact with political and social structures and action.
Methodological issues are addressed in Chapter Three, “Methodological Problems Invalidating Some Research on Grievances.” The complexity of investigating involvement in collective action is addressed. Aggregating different kinds of protest (tax rebellions, insurrection, industrial strikes, low risk vs. high risk, etc.), not accounting for the influence of diversity (religious, gender, ethnicity, leaders vs. followers, militants vs. supporters) on activists’ interpretations, and differences in research design (e.g., cross-sectional vs. longitudinal), among other issues, influence research findings. Hence, “if one cannot be sure of the validity of the measures, one cannot be sure of the validity of the conclusions either” (p. 55).
In Chapter Four, “Other Motivational Components,” Pinard offers more detail on deprivations (“disadvantages”) and disentangles them from aspirations, which are “an individual’s desires for some potential goods, collective or selective, not considered as having been unjustly denied to him or her” (p. 63). He also brings in collective and selective incentives, moral obligation, and expectations of success as additional internal forces that help to motivate collective action. Perhaps the key point is that internal motives not only influence collective action, but they may also influence different kinds of activists in different ways. For example, the aspirations of and response to selective and collective incentives may differ for leaders and followers.
Chapter Five, “A Model of Motivation in Contentious Collective Action,” brings the above into a compelling model that nicely draws on Atkinson’s psychological theory of achievement motivation, arguing that actors are moved by internal motives that push them into action and external incentives that pull them into action, “and by expectancy of success,” (p. 92, emphasis in original). The model is multiplicative and accounts for relevant grievances, aspirations, moral obligations, incentives, and expectations of success. The model provides insight into the motives for involvement in what might be described as traditional movements as well as “new social movements.” Toward the end of the chapter, Pinard offers the important point that motives may vary depending upon the stage of the social movement and collective action. For example, overcoming obstacles may enhance expectations while failure may reduce them.
The final chapter (Chapter Six) brings framing and collective identity more fully into the model and nicely demonstrates their dynamic relationship. Leaders and followers must place grievances, moral obligations, injustice, agency, identity, and emotions into congruent frames that facilitate activists coming together in collective action and protest. Individuals have multiple identities that are subject to change. The salience of those identities is not necessarily constant across activists—what it means to be an activist may differ for leaders versus followers, new recruits versus senior members, men versus women, and so on. Collective identities, which generate “we” feelings and solidarity among activists, are also complex and dynamic. Pinard (drawing on the literature), notes, “Collective identities could precede as well as emerge gradually as a result of collective action” (p. 117). A central feature of the model, and of the book in general, is the notion that involvement in social movements and collective action is part of a dynamic social process of continuous change.
In Motivational Dimensions in Social Movements and Contentious Collective Action, Maurice Pinard offers a concise review of more than four decades’ worth of scholarly research on why people become involved in collective action and social protest. He ends with, “Above all, motivational perspectives remain to be incorporated within more general structural frameworks” (p. 123). This volume offers an important step in that incorporation.
