Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Constructive Side of Social Movements

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the constructive aspect of social movements. Although attention and research often focus on contentious actions like strikes and protests, movements also seek their goals through a range of constructive strategies and tactics such as proactively creating alternative economic institutions. This study will investigate how a solutions agenda fits into the pursuit of collective goals and what the effects of simultaneous use of constructive and contentious actions are. Findings will increase theoretical understanding of social movements and also will be useful to policy makers and public representatives who seek to negotiate solutions to pressing social issues. This project uses the tools of ethnography in multiple sites to analyze the general social movement practice of "resist and build" in the context of a specific campaign of financial divestiture. The research design triangulates interviews, observations, and documents collected at three social movement organizations: a grassroots nonprofit, an intermediary convener, and a transnational social movement organization. Bringing scholarship extending theories of contentious politics into dialogue with theoretical debates in sociology, the project asks why actors paired repertoires of contention and construction and how the resulting practice has shaped the social movement. As a baseline study, the project seeks to establish a new theoretical bridge between two substantive areas of sociology and to inform social movement practice by broadening the scope of inquiry to a new set of repertoires. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.