Glimpses of the Anti-Sweatshop Movement

Cultural Constructionism

The cultural constructionist school of thought arose out of the concern that political process theorists were giving short shrift to culture in their analyses. Although political process theorists accept the importance of framing, they have tended not to treat culture as particularly important in understanding political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures, or tactical repertoires. Anthony Oberschall’s (1996) analysis of the pro-democracy movements that lead to the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe in 1989 stands out as one of the few analyses in the political process tradition to emphasize the impedance of legitimacy (or the lack thereof) in understanding the political opportunities a movement faces. This important cultural dimension of politics is otherwise conspicuous by its absence from most work done by political process theorists. The concept of framing certainly emphasizes the role of culture in social movements, but many political process theorists lend to shoehorn in anything cultural

into this concept, rendering it overly broad (Goodwin and Jasper 2004a). In Power in
Movement, for instance, Tarrow (1998) discusses the role of collective identity in movements only briefly and then as a variant upon the theme of framing. Cultural constructionists give far more weight to this concept, treating it as something distinct from attempts to strategically convey a message to a wider audience (that is, framing in the strictest sense of the term) and analyzing it in depth.
It is a bit harder to give an overview of the work of cultural constructionists, as they, unlike political process theorists, have nor produced any works that have the ambition of providing a broad overview of the field. The closest to a programmatic statement that this camp has produced is James Jasper’s (1997) The Art of Moral Protest, this book, however, is more an overview of Jasper’s own ideas, rather than an attempt to synthesize the work of a large number of scholars, as Comparative Perspectives (McAdam et al. 1996b) and Power in Movement (Tarrow 1998) were. Nonetheless, a few themes stand out from cultural constructionists’ work. They agree with political process theorists that it is important to look at the ways in which movements interact with their larger social and political environment, but find the concept of political opportunity structure overly narrow in their attempts to do so (Goodwin and Jasper 2004b). Jasper (1997) in particular emphasizes the role movements play in reshaping the larger culture, arguing that their greatest impact comes from their ability to force new issues, such as animal rights, into the wider public discourse, thus changing public consciousness and the terms of the debate. He is rather skeptical, however, of movements’ ability to have a direct impact of state policy. (See also Polletta (2006).)

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Much of the work of cultural constructionists has been focused on the inner life of movements, moving beyond political process theorists’ focus on the effectiveness of mobilizing structures. A key concept for many cultural constructionists is collective identity, the way in which movements forge a common sense among their members of belonging to a larger collectivity, with which they identify and care deeply about (della Porta 2005; Jasper 1997; Kurtz 2002; Taylor and Whittier 1999). Both Winifred Breines (1989) and Francesca Polletta (2002) has done extensive work on participatory democracy in social movement organizations, while both Jasper (1997) and Paul Lichterman (1995, 1996) have examined in depth the ways in which activists create a sense of community. These concepts all overlap in important ways--participatory democracy may be an important element of a group’s collective identity and a sense of community certainly reinforces any collective identity that exists. All these things can
play an important role in terms of mobilizing people, but cultural constructionist theorists emphasize that activists do not simply create collective identities or communities for strategic reasons. Instead, they value community or participatory democracy in and of themselves, seeing them as much a part of their movement’s raison d’étre as achieving external goals. Cultural constructionists have also showed a greater sensitivity to the roles race, class and gender play in the internal dynamics of a movement than political process theorists have (Breines 2006; Kurtz 2002; Lichtennan 1995, 1996; Polletta 2005).
Finally, cultural constructionists have emphasized the role emotions play in social movements, both in the internal dynamics of the movement and in their interaction with their foes (Goodwin et al. 2001; Jasper 1997).

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New Developments

Recently, prominent theorists from both camps have attempted to break with their own past work, crafting new paradigms, ones in which the concepts they spent much of their careers developing apparently do not play a central role. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (2001)--three of the most important political process theorists-- produced the book, The Dynamics of Contention. Here political opportunity structure, mobilizing structures, tactical repertoires and framing disappear from the picture. Instead, they attempt to build a theory of movements using Robert Merton’s concepts of mechanisms and processes, two key terms they never successfully define in a clear way. In doing so, they state that their purpose is to create a more dynamic and relational approach to the analysis of social movements. From the cultural constructionist camp, James Jasper (2006) wrote Getting Your Way, the central concern of which is strategy as a social process. Here Jasper makes his central concept a series of strategic dilemmas that not only social movements but a broad range of social actors must address as they take action in the wider social world.
While these books both introduce some useful new concepts, their authors’ attempt to break with their previous work and create completely new paradigms, more or less from scratch, is in my mind an odd choice. Whatever the problems with both the political process and cultural constructionist paradigms, they both offer invaluable insights into understanding the dynamics of social movements. In this dissertation, 1 attempt to build on the work of theorists in both schools of thought. My work can


probably best be seen as within the political process tradition, but reformulating it in a way that takes into account and synthesizes in many of the issues raised by cultural constructionist theorists.