A six-hundred fifty-seven ton North Atlantic trawler with an ice strengthened bow encountered a small fleet of Japanese fishing vessels in the North Pacific in August of 1990. The Japanese vessels were drift netting for whales. The trawler-the Sea Shepherd II-was cruising for drift netters and first approached the Shunyo Maru #8 shortly before dawn.
When the dawn light permitted the proper filming of the event, the Sea Shepherd II rammed the Shunyo Maru #8 at an angle on her port mid-side. The impact severed the million-dollar drift nets being hauled onto the Japanese vessel. In addition to their intended kill, the nets contained squid, sharks, dolphin, and more than 22 species of birds. More than half the species of bird were protected by the treaty signed by both the US and the Japanese governments at the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds in March 1972.
Not only were the offending nets sent to the bottom of the sea, but the power blocks that permitted the use of the nets were destroyed by the impact of the environmentalists' maneuvers. The same fate shortly befell a second ship of the outlaw drift-netting fleet. To pre-empt such a situation, a third vessel voluntarily released her net, and the rest of the fleet fled (Watson 1993).
A decade earlier and thousands of miles away, a Jesuit Archbishop named Oscar Romero was gunned down before his congregation while celebrating mass (Smith 1991). This occurred roughly just one year after the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional successfully overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua through a program of populist, liberationist politics incorporating the kind of theology that Romero was killed for preaching (Foroohar 1989).
Slightly more than 200 years prior, in response to British sanctions in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, four thousand new Englander's converged on the homes of colonial officials in Cambridge, Massachusetts and forced them to resign (Zinn 1980).
Half a world away, "peasants" in Dijon, France sacked the homes of a local counselor to the parliament and of a local miller who were allegedly in league to manipulate the grain market for personal advantage during the great national subsistence crisis of April 1775. The headquarters of the local military commander and the homes of the mayor and of other municipal officers, were also threatened. Within a week, the city "suspended all taxes on grains and flour, as well as imposing controls on bread prices" (Tilly 1986: 23).
In all these incidents we see manifestations of popular contention, typically as facets of larger movements of peoples. These involve contemporary environmentalism, Liberation Theology and the dependentista movement, the American Revolution, and the nascent French Revolution, respectively. These activities may be conceived of as part of "antisystemic movements". Such movements attempt to organize and protest "against the multiple injustices of the existing system and have offered alternatives which they believed would bring about a fundamental change in and/or improvement of the situation" (Amin, et al. 1990: Introduction).
This work endeavors to devise a means to examine the particular
historical conditions under which some antisystemic movements
mobilized. The goal is to move towards a preliminary, systematic
method for historically delimiting the structural pre-conditions
of antisystemic mobilization across time and space. The focus
is on the world-historical macro-structural regularities (in both
their global and local manifestations) that constitute the context(s)
of movement genesis.
The kind of anti-systemic mobilization referred to here tends to attempt to thwart the accumulation of capital. But that is not necessarily its explicitly stated goal. These "social movements" are loosely conceived of as typically confronting accumulation, whether that is a/the primary (explicit) goal of mobilization or merely a constitutive, underlying (implicit) aspect of the dynamic of contention. This is in contrast with Wallerstein (1990a), who presents an overtly anti-capital emphasis as a criteria for inclusion of a movement in his discussions of anti-systemic movements.
Diani (1992) offers a broader, more adaptable definition of "social movements": "networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities" (Diani 1992: 13). But the present analysis differentiates amongst some of the phenomena that Diani lumps together. In particular, mobilization is approached somewhat less generally insomuch as Diani suggests that his definition "changes the idea that social movements are necessarily anti-systemic actors" (Diani 1992: 19).
The conceptualization of "anti-systemic" presented here is probably less radically infused than is Diani's (1992). Yet the present work uses a broader notion of what constitutes the "system" vis-a-vis which the discussed movements are "anti" than does Wallerstein (1990a). This is partly insomuch as capital is not assumed to be necessarily the only organizing force of social relations (and therefore--as a corollary--insomuch as capital accumulation is not the only praxis of protest). Still, even those mobilizations that do not necessarily frame themselves in terms of their relation to capital often tend to exhibit some important similarities--both among themselves and with those movements that overtly address capital--in their relationship to the processes of accumulation. For example, movements such as environmentalism are anti-capital insomuch as accumulation is a motor force driving environmental degradation (see, for instance, Smith [1994]).
It is important to note, however, that "social movement organizations" are not social movements in the parlance employed here. As McAdam (1982) writes,
Without discounting the significance of these phenomena, such groups [most social movement organizations] would seem to resemble public interest lobbies (Common Cause) or formal interest groups (Sierra Club) rather than social movements. Certainly, their broad links to centers of decision-making power and their heavy, if not exclusive, reliance on institutionalized change strategies mark them as different phenomena than social movements popularly conceived. The latter term I would reserve for those organized efforts, on the part of excluded groups, to promote or resist changes in the structure of society that involve recourse to noninstitutional forms of political participation (McAdam 1982: 25).
McAdam's (at least implicit) criteria suggesting that the participants of a movement be drawn solely from "excluded groups" will not be strictly applied here because it unnecessarily limits McAdam's model to only one kind of social movement. For example, "before the liberation theology movement was able to become a mass-based movement of excluded peasants and workers, the movement's leaders had to gain control over the Church's institutional authority and resources through a task logically akin to an organizational takeover" (Smith 1991: 67). Thus strict adherence to McAdam's tenets (formulated for the investigation of the US civil rights movement) might prove disingenuous to the application of his model to the other cases it illuminates.
This would all suggest some congruence between the aspects of
Diani's (1992) position
relevant to the present inquiry (insomuch as the movements investigated
here find themselves in conflict with a system from which they
are largely excluded from formally directing) and the working,
implicit definition of the kinds of activity designated here alternately
as "antisystemic movements," "mobilizations,"
"contentions," "insurgencies," and so on.
A more precise definition of "social movements" is eschewed
in light of the varied nature of contention and in consideration
of the applicability of the methodology developed here to the
investigation of a wide variety of phenomena.
This work attempts to work towards an answer to the question, "What configuration(s) of social structures foster(s) contentious activity?" This work does not attempt to answer the questions, "Why do particular individuals participate in movements while others do not?" nor "What is it about the internal structure of mobilization itself that facilitates anti-systemic activity?" These three questions roughly correspond to the three areas of inquiry Tilly (1986) suggests one should investigate to understand a people's "prevailing modes of collective action": opportunity, interest, and organization (Tilly 1986: 8). Smith (1991) drawing on McAdam (1982) calls similar categories "political opportunities, insurgent consciousness, and organizational strength" (Smith 1991: 65). This thesis investigates the first third of this triad. For reasons that will be explored, Tilly's more general labeling of this third, "opportunity"--rather than Smith's "political opportunities"--is the preferred nomenclature.
In contradistinction with the focus of this thesis--a complete exploration of contention would not only investigate which conditions are "necessary" for mobilization but also what variables are "sufficient" to produce mobilization in those conditions. Tilly's (1986) triumvirate is a notable effort towards delineating both the "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions of French contention during the past four hundred years. Studies such as McAdam's (1982) investigation of the US civil rights movement, Costain's (1992) treatment of the 20th century US women's movement, and Smith's (1991) explanation of Liberation Theology strive towards similarly holistic treatments of particular cases of mobilization. These works utilize the general model McAdam (1982) calls "political process".
This thesis develops a system of investigation through the consideration of social movement theory and research. This development is tempered by insights gleaned from political economy and occurs within the context of comparative, historical sociology. This "system" focuses on the structure of opportunity contexts in the genesis of anti-systemic activity. This "specific" work is an attempt to contribute towards a more "general" explanation of contention. This method and model will produce the most complete understanding of social movements yet constructed when fully utilized and combined with other investigations focusing on the other realms of variables (comprised of interest and organizational attributes) that turn "necessary" contexts into "sufficient" conjunctions of mobilization creating factors.
The most applicable branch of social movement theory utilized
will be a response to (sometimes considered a refinement of) resource
mobilization theory typified by--but not limited to--the study
of the role of political opportunity structures in the drama of
contention. McAdam
(1982) terms a similar approach to the study of social movements
"the political process model." It is based on the contention
that the "insurgent potential of excluded groups comes from
the 'structural power' that their location in various politico-economic
structures affords them" (McAdam
1982: 37). The approach developed here, however, will extend beyond
the investigation of formal political contexts that has dominated
this field of inquiry. Cultural, economic, and demographic--as
well as political--structures will be examined.
A particular methodology for the comparative, historical analysis of the contexts of cases of anti-systemic mobilization will be developed. Various branches of social movement--and other areas of social scientific--theory will be considered. The potential for mobilization contexts to be systematically described and compared via a set of standardized variables will be explored.
For purposes of organization, the variables are divided into four general groups: the local political contexts, the local economy and industrialization, the processes of urbanization, the educational environment (especially in terms of literacy levels), and the international (world-systemic) arena. Other means of division may be envisioned (e.g., "the cultural, the political, and the economic"). Grouping variables for purposes of organization presents the danger of ideologically infusing the potential findings of the methodology used. For example, were the variables to be divided into the "cultural" and the "material", one might have to attempt to discern to what extent culture may act as a context in which material forces give rise to antisystemic movements and mobilization may utilize culture to effect social change. But the variables employed will not be grouped into sets intentionally beholden to particular social theoretical stances. Perhaps ideally, a neutral form of organization would be employed. Lacking one, I have chosen a form of organization that is utilitarian (insomuch as it coincides with some of the demarcations of the available literature) and that is as unencumbered by ideological baggage as I can reasonably construct. So, though the extent to which particular variables investigated consistently foster mobilization may suggest to what extent some general category of factors may appear more determinant in the genesis of mobilization, such a result is not the goal of this thesis nor of the methodology.
To illustrate the approach and to move towards a preliminary set of understandings regarding the necessary pre-conditions involved in the genesis of contention, the following cases will be examined:
The contexts of the sample cases will be investigated with the aim of demonstrating the theory and methodology underlying the kind of investigatory apparatus that has been constructed.
Finally, this thesis will move towards some preliminary hypotheses
regarding the particular opportunity structures that may allow
antisystemic action in one set of historical conditions while
preventing/inhibiting movements of protest in an otherwise similar
conjunction of circumstances. As discussed above, these illustrative
findings will be suggestive of what kinds of conditions may be
necessary for contention but will not determine which conditions
are sufficient to cause mobilization. Avenues for further
investigation (somewhat implied by the shortcomings and tentative
nature of this work) will then be addressed.
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