Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism

Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism

Book by Steven M. Buechler; Oxford University Press, 2000



"I identify a prevalent problem in much recent theory and research. Among other things, this problem is evidenced by a fragmented, ahistorical, decontextualized approach to collective action that has made it difficult to see the structural roots and historical consequences of collective action."

"alternatively, mainstream social movement analysis has been devoid of the critique that animates the social movements it studies." pxii

"struggle has its own partly autonomous history, a history that does not reduce simply to a reflection of the changing organization of production or of the changing structure of state power, a history that in itself influences the organization of production and the structure of state power" ( Tilly, 1995, Popular contention in Great Britain 37)

"Despite superficial similarities with earlier forms of such action, social movements brought a new dimension to collective action because their participants saw the social order as contested and malleable rather than as natural and given. In the words of two European scholars, "[t]he idea of conscious collective action having the capacity to change society as a whole came only with the era of enlightenment" ( Neidhardt and Rucht, 1991:449)"

"Historicity is also the object of ongoing conflict between classes in the form of social movements that struggle over the self-production of society and the direction of social change. Since contemporary society is more dominated than any other by its historicity, and since class relations are about control of historicity (expressed through social movements) it follows that such movements are becoming increasingly central in contemporary society." p6


""Collective actors of the past were more deeply rooted in a specific social condition in which they were embedded, so that the question of the collective was already answered from the beginning through that social condition that accounted as such for the existence of a collective actor" ( Melucci, 1996a:84)." p8

"Throughout the modern era, possible alternatives have been embodied in social movements that have agitated for the transformation of one socially constructed order into another. Although such movements rarely achieve immediate or total victories, they often contribute to reform, change, and development in the social order they challenge. In this sense, contemporary society bears the imprint of numerous past social struggles that have been inscribed in the contours and institutions of the modern world." p16

"As Melucci has noted, "movements are the social domain which most readily escapes the confines of the inherited, and most perceptibly reveals the manner and locus of the society's self-constructive processes" ( Melucci, 1996a:380)." p17

"This variability in theorizing about movements is best understood through the sociology of knowledge, which suggests that the "story of social movement theory can be told only together with the story of social movements themselves" ( Garner, 1997:1). Indeed, the prevailing view of social movements at a given historical moment reflects not just existing movements but also the larger sociohistorical climate, the dominant sociological paradigms, and the biographies of scholars themselves." p19

TYPES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY

1..Early social movement theory focused on crowd behaviour, collective behaviour "there is thus a tendency to view this phenomenon as formless, shapeless, unpatterned, and unpredictable. "

2..A third variant of classical collective behavior theory may be found in approaches that emphasize relative deprivation as the motivating force behind participation in collective behavior. Such approaches rely on a smattering of mainstream sociological concepts with a decidedly social-psychological twist." P28

"It was a fundamental political challenge to the legitimacy of the central institutions of the society that dovetailed with a cultural challenge to the hegemony of the core values of the society." p33 on sixties

"Resource mobilization theory emerged in the 1970s as a distinctively new approach to the study of social movements. According to this perspective, social movements are an extension of politics by other means, and can be analyzed in terms of conflicts of interest just like other forms of political struggle." p34

"The standard argument was that many groups in many times and places have had grievances but have not created social movements; hence, grievances cannot be the critical factor in generating social movements. What has been more variable, and more closely correlated with collective action, is group access to and control over the various resources necessary for effective social movement activism." p35

"The third element involves what McAdam calls cognitive liberation. This subjective factor refers to a change in group consciousness whereby potential protesters see the existing social order not only as illegitimate, but also as subject to change through their own direct efforts." p37

"As the concepts of individual and collective identity became more central in social movement theory with the rise of new social movement theory, practitioners of the framing perspective demonstrated its applicability to questions of identity as well ( Hunt et al., 1994). For example, protagonist framing involves a fundamental distinction between an in-group and an out-group that identifies the allies of the movement and helps to maintain its solidarity. Antagonist framing identifies the enemies of the movement by specifying the source of the problem and villainizing the people framed as responsible for the problem that the movement is addressing. Finally, audience framing identifies the relevant bystanders to a given conflict and their potential for joining either the movement or its opposition." p42


"hese premises have led Marxists to privilege proletarian revolution rooted in the sphere of production and to marginalize any other form of social protest. New social movement theorists, by contrast, have looked to other logics of action (based in politics, ideology, and culture) and other sources of identity (such as ethnicity, gender, and sexuality) as the sources of collective action. The term "new social movements" thus refers to a diverse array of collective actions that has presumably displaced the old social movement of proletarian revolution." p46

NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY CHARACTERISTICS:

1...the attempt to theorize a historically specific social formation as the structural backdrop for contemporary forms of collective action is perhaps the most distinctive feature of new social movement theories.

2...a causal claim that links these new movements to this societal totality; this often means seeing new social movements as responses to modernity or postmodernity.

3..A third theme concerns the diffuse social base of new social movements.

4...a premium on the social construction of collective identity as an essential part of contemporary social activism, and it has led to a belated appreciation of how even "old" class-based movements were not structurally determined as much as they were socially constructed in the mobilization process itself ( Thompson, 1963).

5...cultural side of things presenting a face to hegemony etc..

"This was obscured for a time by the cliche that resource mobilization theory explained the "how" of movement mobilization whereas new social movement theory explained the "why" of such mobilization ( Klandermans and Tarrow, 1988)." p48

"here are several noteworthy examples of new social movement theories for which the connections between societal totalities and social movements are crucial. For Melucci ( 1996a, 1989), the emphasis falls on the semiotic aspects of a postmodern information society and the numerous ways in which these elements are reflected in contemporary activism. For Castells ( 1983), it is the capitalist transformation of urban space alongside the state's role in collective consumption that provokes important forms of collective action. For Habermas ( 1987, 1984), it is the tendency in advanced capitalism for a systemic political economy to instrumentally dominate and colonize a communicative life world that provokes new forms of social resistance. For Touraine ( 1985, 1981), the nature of postindustrial, programmed society is at the root of contemporary collective action as movements challenge authorities for control of what Touraine calls "historicity." " p50 -51

RESOURCE MOBILISAITON THEORY:

"[t]he content of such work tends to assume a movement so lacking connection to a particular time and place that its existence may well be doubted. This movement suigeneris tends to be scrutinized as if it can be understood without much reference to its particular social roots or its distinctive goals but instead by utilizing an array of generic concepts. ( Darnovsky et al., 1995:xv)" P 55

Utopias in Holland

Utopian Aspects of Social Movements in Postmodern Times: Some Examples of DIY Politics in the Netherlands

Journal article by Saskia Poldervaart; Utopian Studies, Vol. 12, 2001

"The central presupposition of this theory is that life in society is a sum of the behaviour of individuals who make choices based on a rational balancing of costs and benefits. According to this theory, inequality in society is merely the result of individual choices made on the basis of self-interest. But are activists really such autonomous, merely self-interested subjects?"

A fierce attack on the `rational actor' idea of contemporary movements is launched by Ridley (1998: 2) who states: `The moral characteristic of many protest movements is that they have no personal interest to promote, no material gain from the outcome; unlike their opponents, altruism is common.'

"Spectacular protests and
mobilisations here become the public side of the commitments which new
politics' activists are giving to dissident ways of life. In this way
reductive understandings of new politics are avoided, as are
overenthusiastic readings which only seem to notice sensational actions and
which ignore the social networks that make such actions possible (Jordan,
1999: 7)"

"According to Zablocki one may distinguish between various utopian periods. In the first one communities of Essenes and early Christians developed. The next one, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, witnessed the emergence of heretical groups that sought to put into practice the utopia of the first Christian communities. In the third utopian period, in the sixteenth...."

NEGRI ON AUGUSTINE/JOE HILL REVOLUTIONARY MODEL.

Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements

Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements

Book by Derek Wall; Routledge, 1999

prospects for workplace trade unionism: Evaluating Fairbrother's union renewal thesis, The Capital & Class, Autumn 1998 by Gall, Gregor

prospects for workplace trade unionism: Evaluating Fairbrother's union renewal thesis, The Capital & Class, Autumn 1998 by Gall, Gregor

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_199810/ai_n8813669


"Peter Fairbrother has extensively developed the thesis of `union renewal' which seeks to show that the challenges posed to contemporary trade unionism can be met by changes in the form of unionism. This critique, while welcoming the general thrust of the thesis, questions its validity and application as a result of its failure to consider a number of areas and issues."


SO FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THIS THESIS ARE THERE TWO THINGS IN THE OFFING:

SOMETHING ON THE DEMISE OF UNIONS AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT OF THE CLASS??

THE UNION RENEWAL SORT OF THESIS THATS DOTTED THROUGH OUT THE LITERATURE WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE "LIVING COLLECTIVITY" IDEA ADVANCED BY HYMAN?

OR A HOPE FOR NEW FORMS OF SOLIDARITY EMERGING FROM WITHIN WORKERS ENGAGED IN THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT - THE ARGUMENT OF THE MULTITUDE SAY?

"renewal is about the way unions reorganise and recompose themselves to meet the problems of work and employment.... it is in the workplace that unions organise, sustain and renew themselves. ... any move towards union renewal must and will come from the bottom up [i.e. the ordinary members not national officials]. (Fairbrother 1989: 3,4,6)"

Foundation and Empire: A critique of Hardt and Negri Capital & Class, Summer 2005 by Thompson, Paul

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_200507/ai_n14685515/print

"An alternative picture of the new working class from the French view, with its emphasis on technicians and selfmanagement, Italian Marxism drew attention to the struggles of the deskilled or semi-skilled who refused the conditions of work and developed a new, expansive workplace politics. In doing so, it helped to create the conditions for the development of labour process theory (LPT), which has been a crucial resource for critical debates on the workplace and political economy."


"Suddenly, production is presented as biopolitical-an 'uninterrupted circuit of life, production and polities' (p. 64). Companies, states and supra-national agencies, which previously at least had concrete half-lives, are dissolved into the ('paradoxical and contradictory') collective biopolitical body. This shadowy formulation recalls, at one level, the concept of 'social factory' that was developed by Italian autonomists in the icyos to justify their shift of attention from the workplace where, despite some successes, the Communist party still dominated, to broader community struggles."


EMPIRE AS A WORK OF META THEORY

"Horizontally networked enterprises are coordinated through new information technologies that facilitate communication, and break the link between size and efficiency9. One can observe a similar line in the recent work of Gorz (1999: 53), who writes 'post-Fordism, the networked interaction of fractal factories and the "immaterial" economy are based on a wealth production which is increasingly disconnected from work and an accumulation of profit increasingly disconnected from any production'."


"The lineage is, however, much longer. Wright (2002: 163) shows that by the mid-1970s, Negri and operaismo had ceased to say much about the mass worker, reaching out instead to a new class subject within which productive intelligence, drawing on intellectual and technical labour, had become determinate. This was not another equivalent of the mass worker, but a means of embracing the whole prole-tariat or anyone in struggle, including students ('pre-workers'), under the concepts of 'socialised worker' and the expanded reproduction of capital."

"For all the Marxist language of immaterial labour and self-valorisation, this is fundamentally the same idea as that promoted by management theorists and, as discussed earlier, of the 'free worker' for whom knowledge enables the reversal of power. Or, as another leading organisation theorist put it, 'power in the knowledge economy resides more with workers than owners or managers. Serving the needs of these workers is a leadership imperative' (Bennis, 1999: 37)."

"Hardt and Negri are clear that any analysis is deficient that does not give 'a coherent indication of what type of political subjectivities might contest and overthrow the forces of Empire' (p. 205)."


"Instead, Hardt and Negri continue to believe that the refusal of work in general, and of factory work in particular, still lies at the heart of the attack on what is now called, with a nod to Foucault, the disciplinary regimes of capitalist labour (p. 261)."

"In 1981, Negri wrote that the new political generation was more revolutionary because it was without memory (see Wright, 2002: 174-5). Furnished with a partly new language and context, Empire is Negri's (and Hardt's) offering to yet another new generation. This paper has been a contribution to the recovery of memory about a flawed and failed doctrine."

from capital and class

Foundation and Empire: A critique of Hardt and Negri
by Thompson, Paul


Change the World Without Taking Power
by Holloway, John

From the mass worker to the multitude: A theoretical contextualisation of Hardt and Negri's Empire
by Bowring, Finn

Counter-hegemony, anti-globalisation and culture in International Political Economy
by Worth, Owen

Hidden forms of resistance among Turkish workers: Hegemonic incorporation or building blocks for working class struggle?*
by Yücesan-Özdemir, Gamze

Post-Marxism: An Intellectual History
by Gupta, Suman

Fighting to win: The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
by Shantz, Jeff'


Trade Unions and the Management of Industrial Conflict
by Cumbers, Andy

absence of class politics in Northern Ireland, The
by Coulter, Colin

prospects for workplace trade unionism: Evaluating Fairbrother's union renewal thesis, The
by Gall, Gregor

Defining the fault lines: New divisions in the working class
by Yates, Charlotte

Death of Class, The
by Harvie, David

"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

"What have the Romans ever done for us?" Academic and activist forms of movement theorizing

Colin Barker (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Laurence Cox (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp8.html

" Secondly, the 'field' of social movements theory was expanded considerably (on a practical level, this enabled its construction as an 'international' field, since RMT was held to be 'American' and NSMT to be 'European') by the construction of a synthesis on the basis of the belated recognition that the two theories were in fact talking about different things. As Cohen (1985) put it, NSMT offered a 'why' and RMT a 'how"

ed. Dalton&Kuechler Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements In Western Democracies. (Polity Press, 1990)

ed. Dalton&Kuechler Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements In Western Democracies. (Polity Press, 1990)

Dalton, Russel J, Kuechler Manfred, and Burklin, Wilhelm. The Challenge of New Movements.


"On the ideological level these movements advocated a new social paradigm, which contrasts with the dominant goal structure of Western Industrial societies. New social movements also illustrate a style of unconventional political action - based on direct action - that contrasts sharply with the traditional neo-corporatist pattern of interest intermediation in a many contemporary democracies." p5


this is a bit of a dodgy attempt to create a complete historical disjncture between new and old social movements, escpecially given a glance of Rude and Thompsons study of the french and english crowd;

" Activists in new social movements often hold intense feelings about their cause , but these sentiments fall short of the primoridal frustration aggression emotions that spawned food riots and tax revolts in the eighteenth and the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth." p7


Three mainstream models of approaching social movements:

Manbchurs Olsens rational choice model applies a cost benefit analysis to them

The resource mobilisation model of political action - dissatisfaction always exists but depends on existence of organisations to mobilise it - the challenge of new social movements is then to mobilise this base..




Differnces of new social movements in academic literature:

base of support is non class based

goals are non instrumental to individuals but collective

decentralised organisational structure

political styles is less spontaneous



on page 30 Karl Werner Brand describes origins in sixties steady economic growth

"the sixties saw a dramatic shift of personal attention and energies to the public sphere. The consensus about the prevailing petit-bourgeoise, privatistic values broke down. The complacency of the 1950s gave way to the critical view of and moral outrage about the shadowy side of the "affluent society.""


Inglehart gives an excellent analysis of neo-corportist practices on page 69


Claus Offe: "These are "new" movements to the extent that they persist as political movements, that is, they do not retreat into literary, artistic religous or other cultural forms of collective expression and the folklore of life styles but continue to claim a role in the generation and utilisation of political power. Movements are "new" in that their very existence and persistence testifies to the limited and perhaps shrinking absorbtion and political processing of established political actors and the procedures of "normal politics" as well as of institutions within civil society." p233

Offe is an ignorant fucking oaf" "They are incapable of using the grammar of political change that was common to the liberal and the socialist traditions. This grammar basically consists of two dichotomies: the dark past versus the bright future, and the progressive "we" against the selfish and reactionary "them". Instead of such grandiose ideological constructs , we find a scattered set of issues and the incoherant expression of complaints, frustrations and demands which do not add up - either ideologically or for that reason, organisationally to a unified force or vision." p234

ed. Beilhurx, Peter. The Bauman Reader. (Blackwell, 2001)

ed. Beilhurx, Peter. The Bauman Reader. (Blackwell, 2001)

FROM THE WORK ETHIC TO THE AESTHETIC OF CONSUMPTION

"The market might have already picked them up and groomed them as consumers, and so deprived themof their freedom to ignore its temptations, but on every successive visit to the market place consumers have every reason to feel in command. They are the judges, the critics and the choosers." p315

"'Economic growth', the main modern measure of things being normal and in good order, the main index of society working as it should be, is seen in the consumer society as dependent not so much on the "productive strenght of the nation"(healthy and pletiful labour force, full coffers and daring entrepreneurship of the capital owners and managers), as on the zest and vigour of its consumers. The role once performed by work in linking together individual motives, social integration and systematic reproduction has now been assigned to consumer activity." p315

"Nothing truly lasting could be reasonably hoped to be erected on this kind of shifting sand. Purely and simply, the prospect of constructing a lifelong identity on the foundation of work is , for the great majority of people) except for the time being at least, the practitioners of a few highly skilled and highly privliged professions), dead and bured." p317

"Perhaps it would be more to the point to speak of self identity in the plural: the life itinerary of most individuals is likely to be strewn with discarded and lost identities." p317

"A society of consumers is resentful of all legal restrictions imposed on freedom of choice, of any delegalisation of potential objects of consumption and manifests its resentment by widespread support willingly offered to most "deregulatory" measures." p319

"The activity of consumption is a natural enenmy of all co-ordination and integration. It is also immune to their influence, rendering all efforts of bonding impotent in overcoming the endemic lonliness of the consuming act. Consumers are alone even when they act together." p320

"As we have seen before, work has lost its privliged position - that of an axis around which all other effort at self constitution and identity building rotate. But work hsa also ceased to be the focus of a particularly intense ethical attention in terms of being a chosen road to moral improvement, repentence and redemption. Like other activities, work now comes first and foremost under aesthetic scrutiny. Its value judged by its capacity to generate pleasureable experience. Work devoid of such capacity - that does not offer "intrinsic satisfaction" - is also work devoid of value." p322

MODERN, TIMES, MODERN MARXISM (1968)

"To use the modern terminology we can say that Marxist social science aims at a "hologram" of man instead a series of photographs. It is the basis of methodological premise and at the same time, the discriminating feature of the Marxist approach to social science that "economic man" "social man," "cultural man," "political man" and similar products of scientific division of labor are nothing but model constructs, creatios of a long process of abstraction maturing in institutionally seperated micro-social settings." p40

"Managerial demand is the only demand organised and articulated, and combining lucid goal formation with adequate material resources. The alternative demand is, on the contrary, so diffuse and inarticulate that it can be easily overlooked and neglected. One can - as happens so often - doubt wheter it exists at all. Its social basis is incomparably broader, but it is not sheer numbers which count but the level of organisation." p43

to read from cox's website...

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/szentext.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/cc.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp3.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/isa.htmlhttp://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp7.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp7.html


http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/six.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/six.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/irnes.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/papers.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/activism.html

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/revolution.html


http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp8.html


definite read: http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp8.html

Reasoning Rebellion: E.P. Thompson, British Marxist Historians, and the Making of Dissident Political Mobilization

Presentations 1: Legacies of E. P. Thompson


Reasoning Rebellion: E.P. Thompson, British Marxist Historians, and the Making of Dissident Political Mobilization
Bryan D. Palmer

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/50/palmer.html

Laurence Cox: Eppur si muove: thinking 'the social movement'

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp9.html

So much for "the social". But what is "the social movement"? Raschke writes:

"The concept of movement became 'a key concept of self-understanding in the "age of revolutions"'. Movement became used as a metaphor for social change. The concept of movement also served for the deciphering of the inner connections of social development ('laws of movement')�

Applied to a partial force within society and abstracting from its social-structural basis, early liberals from the 1830s spoke of themselves as movement in the sense of the only political direction which opposed the forces of inertia: of the 'party of movement' or the movement party� (6)

The 'social movement' is first discovered as the workers' movement: the concepts of social movement and workers' movement become accepted in the course of the 1840s. The concept is thus first applied to a movement with 'social' goals, i.e. to a collective with socialist answers to the 'social question'. The chronologically preceding liberal, national and democratic movement was not yet grasped with the concept of social movement; this only becomes possible with growing neutralisation of the term social movement." (1988: 23)









"Another phrase for "the social movement", in other words, is class, in the active sense used by writers such as Thompson. It is important to note what is not being said here. It is not that class is something other than, and explaining, the social movement: "Let us not say that the social movement excludes a political movement. There is no political movement which is not at the same time social." (Marx 1963 (orig. 1847): 244)"

Because the social movement is a threat, in other words, and a powerful one, the dominant order cannot exist without continually responding to it, and modifying its responses as and when they prove ineffective. Or, as Thompson put it,

"The notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship � we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other." (1966: 9)

"This would not be a history of a single "movement" in the conventional sense, whether that movement was the labour movement, the peace movement or the women's movement. It would, however, be a history of the shifting attempts to develop effective organization and theory, identities and everyday routines from below in the face of a powerful ruling-class offensive. It would place the interconnections between "movements" at the centre of the analysis, as against the fragmented discussion of single movements. Most crucially, the story would not hold "class", or "gender", or "ethnicity", outside the analysis, as "independent variables" relating to "structure", any more than it would treat "globalisation" or "the Cold War" as outside factors."

Ultimately, Thompson's history is a history of the development of a single movement (struggling against a more powerful and opposing movement). That movement is embodied in different themes (industrial, political, religious, ritual) at different times and places, sometimes formed into complex alliances, sometimes fragmented and isolated, but developing and changing. It is not a single network, with a common shared identity, as in Diani's (1992) definition: rather, such networks and identities are themselves occasional achievements in the developing self-consciousness and self-activity of the social movement:

"the outstanding fact of the period between 1790 and 1830 is the formation of 'the working class'. This is revealed, first, in the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all those diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organization. By 1832 there were strongly based and self-conscious working-class institutions - trade unions, friendly societies, educational and religious movements, political organizations, periodicals - working-class intellectual traditions, working-class community-patterns, and a working-class structure of feeling." (1966: 212 - 213)

Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley, eds., Ninth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest: a selection of papers from the conference.Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2002

Laurence Cox: Eppur si muove: thinking 'the social movement'

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp9.html

So much for "the social". But what is "the social movement"? Raschke writes:

"The concept of movement became 'a key concept of self-understanding in the "age of revolutions"'. Movement became used as a metaphor for social change. The concept of movement also served for the deciphering of the inner connections of social development ('laws of movement')�

Applied to a partial force within society and abstracting from its social-structural basis, early liberals from the 1830s spoke of themselves as movement in the sense of the only political direction which opposed the forces of inertia: of the 'party of movement' or the movement party� (6)

The 'social movement' is first discovered as the workers' movement: the concepts of social movement and workers' movement become accepted in the course of the 1840s. The concept is thus first applied to a movement with 'social' goals, i.e. to a collective with socialist answers to the 'social question'. The chronologically preceding liberal, national and democratic movement was not yet grasped with the concept of social movement; this only becomes possible with growing neutralisation of the term social movement." (1988: 23)









"Another phrase for "the social movement", in other words, is class, in the active sense used by writers such as Thompson. It is important to note what is not being said here. It is not that class is something other than, and explaining, the social movement: "Let us not say that the social movement excludes a political movement. There is no political movement which is not at the same time social." (Marx 1963 (orig. 1847): 244)"

Because the social movement is a threat, in other words, and a powerful one, the dominant order cannot exist without continually responding to it, and modifying its responses as and when they prove ineffective. Or, as Thompson put it,

"The notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship � we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other." (1966: 9)

"This would not be a history of a single "movement" in the conventional sense, whether that movement was the labour movement, the peace movement or the women's movement. It would, however, be a history of the shifting attempts to develop effective organization and theory, identities and everyday routines from below in the face of a powerful ruling-class offensive. It would place the interconnections between "movements" at the centre of the analysis, as against the fragmented discussion of single movements. Most crucially, the story would not hold "class", or "gender", or "ethnicity", outside the analysis, as "independent variables" relating to "structure", any more than it would treat "globalisation" or "the Cold War" as outside factors."

Ultimately, Thompson's history is a history of the development of a single movement (struggling against a more powerful and opposing movement). That movement is embodied in different themes (industrial, political, religious, ritual) at different times and places, sometimes formed into complex alliances, sometimes fragmented and isolated, but developing and changing. It is not a single network, with a common shared identity, as in Diani's (1992) definition: rather, such networks and identities are themselves occasional achievements in the developing self-consciousness and self-activity of the social movement:

"the outstanding fact of the period between 1790 and 1830 is the formation of 'the working class'. This is revealed, first, in the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all those diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organization. By 1832 there were strongly based and self-conscious working-class institutions - trade unions, friendly societies, educational and religious movements, political organizations, periodicals - working-class intellectual traditions, working-class community-patterns, and a working-class structure of feeling." (1966: 212 - 213)

New Project Time Table

Deadline: Monday July 3rd

1. Interviews completed and transcribed and coded.
2. Lit review completed and submitted.

Meet on Friday July 6th to discuss Lit Review, initial coding and analysis of interviews.

Deadline: Monday the 31st od July.

1. Analysis chapter completed first draft.
2. Methodology chapter completed first draft.

Meet on friday the 4th of August to discuss the first draft of analysis and conclusions.

Deadline: Thursday 10th of August

1. Second draft of analysis chapter.
2. Conclusion first draft.

meet on Monday the 14th of August to discuss analysis and conclusions.

Deadline: Thursday the 24th of August

1. Final draft of thesis.

meet on thursday August 31st to discuss thesis. This is the last meeting as from September 1st Aileen is working in Maynooth.

Reading List

How new are the new social movements? / Kenneth H. Tucker SLC PC 17447

The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture, Social Movements Stanley Aronowitz


Transforming Politics: Power and Resistance (Explorations in Sociology S.) Paul Bagguley (Editor), Jeff Hearn (Editor)

Tilly, Chris. - Work under capitalism / Chris Tilly and Charles Tilly. - Boulder, Colo.; Oxford : Westview, 1998. GEN 306.36/TIL

Stories, identities, and political change / Charles Tilly 2002 303.484

Barchiesi, Franco. 2004. ‘Social Citizenship, the Decline of Waged Labour and Changing Worker Strategies’. http://spip.red.m2014.net/article.php3?id_article= 30 [m2014.net]

Euro Mayday. 2004. ‘MAYDAY, MAYDAY!! Why precari@s, intermittents, cognitari/e are rebelling across NEUROPA...’, http://www.euromayday.org/lang_eng.html [euromayday.org]

Huws, Ursula. 2000. ‘The Making of a Cybertariat? Virtual Work in a Real World’, in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (eds), Socialist Register 2001: Working Classes: Global Realities. London: Merlin, New York: Monthly Review. Pp. 1-24

Hyman, Richard. 1999. ‘Imagined Solidarities: Can Trade Unions Resist Globalisation?’, in Peter Leisink (ed), Globalisation and Labour Relations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Pp. 94-115.
Hyman, Richard. 2005. 'Marxist Thought and the Analysis of Work' in Paul Edwards, Marek Korcynski and Randy Hodson, eds, Social Theory at Work, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Waterman, Peter. 1988. ‘Needed: A New Communications Model for a New Working-Class Internationalism’, in Southall, Roger (ed), Trade Unions and the New Industrialisation of the Third World. London: Zed: pp. 351 378

Waterman, Peter. 2002. ‘The Still Unconsummated Marriage Of International Unionism and The Global Justice Movement: A Labour Report On The World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 31-February 5, 2002. http://groups/yahoo.com/groups/GloSoDia [groups], http://www.commoner.org.uk/01-5groundzero.htm [commoner.org.uk]


P. Waterman: Emancipating Labor Internationalism (from the C20th working class, unions and socialism)

P. Waterman: The Agony of Union Internationalism 2001

‘New Social Movements,’ NGOs: New Forms of Representation of ‘Labour’ on a
Worldwide Scale?
Peter Newell (Brighton), ‘Managing Multinationals: Lessons from the Environmental
Movement.’

Gallie, D. (1996) ‘Trade Union Allegiance and Decline in British Urban Labour Markets’, in Gallie et. al. (eds) Trade Unionism in Recession, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Waddington, J. and Whitson, C. (1997) ‘Why Do People Join Unions in a Period of Membership Decline?’ British Journal of Industrial Relations, 35, 4: 515-46.

Losing control? : sovereignty in an age of globalization 320.15
Global networks, linked cities / edited by Saskia Sassen

Cities and the creative class / Richard Flori

Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise
EO Wright - The American Journal of Sociology, 2000 - JSTOR
Class counts : comparative studies in class analysis / Erik Olin Wright

Harvey, David The condition of postmodernity : an enquiry into the origins of cultural change G 909.82

Spaces of hope / David Harvey

Citizenship rights and social movements : a comparative and statistical analysis
Tarrow. Democracy and disorder : protest and politics in Italy, 1965-1975 322.44

http://www.apl.org.ph/APLPrimer/aplprimer_part4.pdf


From Solidarity to Fluidarity: social movements beyond'collective identity'--the case of … - group of 3 »
K McDonald - Social Movement Studies, 2002 - Taylor & Francis

Unions in transition : entering the second century / edited by Seymour Marti. - San Francisco, Calif. : ICS Press, 1986. GEN 331.880973

Strategy and Trade Union Effectiveness in a Neo-liberal Environment
P Boxall, P Haynes - ingentaconnect.com

The politics of trade unionism: evidence, policy and theory
P Fairbrother, J Waddington - Capital and Class, 1990

New frontiers in European industrial relations / edited by Richard Hyman, An. - Oxford : Blackwell, 1994
GEN 331.094/HYM

Kelly, John E., John Edward, 1952-. - Rethinking industrial relations : mobilization, collectivism and long waves. - London : Routledge, 1998. - (Routledge studies in employment relations
GEN 331/KEL

the Politics of Identity; Class, Culture, Social Movements (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415904374/sr=8-1/qid=1145454391/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5162034-7556903?%5Fencoding=UTF8


New Issues for Labour Internationalism
Trade Union Internationalism in the Age of Seattle
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8330.00187

Regulation, Theory, Post-marxism and the new social movements

Steinmetz, George. "Regulation Theory, Post-marxism and the new social movements." Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 36, No. 1. (Jan, 1994) pp176-212.


page 4 contains a good sketch of what distinguished NSM

How do people become empowered? A case study of union activists. Human Relations, Vol. 53, No. 10, 1357-1383 (2000)

"Taking all these definitions into account, we define empowerment as a
developmental process that promotes an active approach to problem solving,
increased political understanding, and an increased ability to exercise control
in the environment."


according to Kieffer, 1984 there are four stages to empowerment

the era of entry - the era of advancement - era of incorporation - the era of commitment

Imagined Solidarities: Can Trade Unions Resist Globalization? Richard Hyman

Imagined Solidarities: Can Trade Unions Resist Globalization? Richard Hyman http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/hyman2.html

"mythic solidarity (‘solidarity forever’) may historically have provided inspiration and perhaps helped generate a reality approximating to the ideal, but probably can no longer do so; and that collectivism, particularly of an encompassing character, is therefore a project demanding new forms of strategic imagination."

"Trade unions, in other words, are agencies whose role in the aggregation of interests may also involve the (re-)distribution of gains and losses: not only between workers and employers but also among workers themselves. Typically the definition of union-relevant interests has reflected systematically the existing distribution of power within the working class."

"What are often presented as expressions of the general interests of the class have traditionally been in large measure representations of the particular interests of relatively protected sections."

craft workers > coal workers > mass worker constituted model trade unionists

this is mechenical solidarity

"what is normally conceived as a crisis of trade unionism as such may be better understood as a crisis of a particular model of trade unionism"


His three thesis for decline:

"1. increased internal differentiation within the working population (linked to diagnoses of ‘individualism’) (Zoll, 1993);

2. intensified competition, restructuring and ‘deregulation’ (often conceptualised within a ‘globalisation’ perspective) turning intra-class bargaining increasingly into a zero- (or negative-) sum game (Golden and Pontusson, 1992) and encouraging micro-level ‘solutions’ to macro-problems;

3. the erosion of egalitarian commitments within labour movements (Swenson, 1989), reflected both in increased internal differentiation among trade unions; and in the eclipse of the communist political model and the exhaustion of the social-democratic."

AN EMERGING AGENDA FOR TRADE UNIONS? Richard Hyman University of Warwick http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/gewerkschaft/hyman.html

PROJECT TIME TABLE

June


Discuss Initial analysis of data


Anaysis of data and write up completed in July (draft one)


June 9th/12th? – meet to discuss the guide for the interviews and some discussion on methods of coding and good practice on how best to get the most from open ended interviews.


June 16th – interviews to be completed&written up


June 30th Submit chp 1: A run down of the academic field on union decline. (Meet July 6th?)




July


Discuss initial write ups





July 10th Submit chp 2: The rise and debate on new social movements with a particular focus on the ideas of social movement trade unionism in academia (meet July 14th?)


July 31th – some version of two chapters analysing data to be submitted. (meet August 4th ?)


August


Discuss Second draft of thesis


Thesis completed in August


Working towards a final coherant draft of thesis for august 15th with an added chapter of over all conclusions, to be discussed at a meeting in mid august and then worked on by myself till satisfied as the submission date is 30th September 2006 but you are free of obligations in mid august.

Beck, Ulrich. The Brave New World Of Work. (Polity Press, 2000)

"The upshot is that the more work relations are "deregulated" and "flexibilised" rgw faster the work society changes into a risk society." p3

his "social structure of ambivilance" sounds like a weberian structure..

"it can not be concealed for long that the bases of the much praised welfare state and a lively every day democracy together with the whole self image of a worker citizen society based on "institutionalised class compromise" are falling apart" p4

"what appears as a final collapse must instead be converted into a founding period for new ideas and models, a period that will open the way to the state, economy and society of the 21st century." p5

concepts of post modernity versus the idea of a reflexive modernity or modernities second stage


"globalisation threatens national soverignty and the identity of the "homeland" but it does so not through open rivalary, conquest or subjection but by subversively, intensifying economic dependence, transnational decision making powers and multicultural influences." p26

"labour is local, capital is global" p28 !?!?!

"it is also true today that kids get the hang of computers by playing computer games. Are they freely shaping themselves in the act of play or are they potential employees of the computer game and entertainment industries who put hard work even into play? The autism of computer games would seem to point to the latter." p62


"Nevertheless, the Fordist growth regime, consisting in mass production, mass labour and mass consumption, did not only mean fixed times for holidays and other activities that underpinned and standardised life together in family, neighbourhood and community. It was also shaped and reinforced by a "mode of regulation" which supported the growth regime culturally, politically and legally. This involved a wide range of strategies , actors and conditions which tied company management, banks, trade unions and political parties as well as governments, to a relatively uniform philosophy of growth and a corresponding set of measures held out a promise of growth." p69


"Whereas the Fordist regime brought about the standardisation of work, the risk regime involved no individualisation of work, the risk regime involves an individualisation of work. Whereas fordism took no account of damage to the enviroment, the risk regime makes central the question of how capital and labour handle both the "goods" and the "baths" of prosperity." p70


"A lifeworld process of detraditionalisation means that the standard biography becomes an elective or do it your self biography, a risk biography. Work is "chopped up" by time and contract. And there is also an individualisation of consumption that is individualised products and markets emerge." p75

Beck Ulrich. The Risk Society. (Sage, 1992)

"What follows is written in the mode of an ealry 19th century observer on the lookout for the contours pf the as yet unknown industrial age emerging from behind the facade of fading feudal agrarianism." p9

"modernity beyond its classical industrial design" p10

"industrial society exits the stage of world history on the tip toes of normality." p11

new social movements are an expression of reflexive modernisation beyond the outlines of industrial society.

"risks of modernisation sooner or later also strike those who produce or profit from them. They contain a boomerang effect which breaks open the pattern of class and national society." p23

socially recognised costs contain political explosives.

"what was untill now considered unpolitical becomes political...suddenly the public extend their rule into the private sphere of plant management." p29

"there is no expert on risk" p29

some sense of an abstract

Just as the term globalisation has led to heavily contested discussions attempting to sketch its consequences for society, its side effects in the world of work has led to an equally abundant literature on the shifting sands of the employment terrain. Trade unions have traditionally being seen as an expression of class identification, but in recent years they have been characterized by a marked decline in density in the western economies (Fairbrother and Griffan, 2002) this decline in class based organisation has led many to make the conceptual leap that class itself is no longer relevant as an analytical lens in discussions of the distribution of inequality or even as a cogent force for social change (Becks, Giddens, Sennet, Baumann). In an Irish society increasingly delineated through its globalised economy, trade union decline echoes the experience of counterparts elsewhere in spite of a localised phenomenon of national partnership agreements here designed in some sense to protect the stature of unions.

The academic themes that paint this union decline are remarkable in their similarities. The globalisation of the economy brought with it a by-passing of the state by corporations, then there is the undermining of traditional welfare rights through a neo-liberalist state doctrine and the creation of a mobilised workforce kept on its toes and forced to limit its demands due to the threat of a highly technologically charged capitalism with the ability to skip country at will. Overall this creates a condition of instability for those outside of neo-liberal power, and has undermined organizations like unions that challenged such power in the past through their dependency on a post war institutionalised class compromise in the form of Keynesian economics premised on the sovereignty of the nation state. While in Ireland, corporatist practices still dominate industrial relations the power of non-union multinationals and the shift in density of employment away from traditional mass industries with a union base to a services sector has seen a demobilisation of union participation and organisation.

Sennet's discussion of how the lack of a coherent life narrative can contribute to the decline of wider social institutions and group loyalties seems apt in describing the emerging relationship between new generation's of workers and their supposed institutions. A restructuring of work along a precarious lines more traditionally associated with the global south (Beck 2000) has pushed the image of the mass worker of the Fordist era off the historical stage and with it the premise of liberation based on this identity. Beck argues that we have reached an advanced stage of modernity that is tearing itself free of the contours of traditional industrial society and moving towards a “social structure of ambivalence (Beck, 2000)” where the world of work transforms itself into a risk society of individuated victim hood amidst a patchwork quilt of employment. The similarity of academic response to the changing terrain of work echoes through Becks, Giddens and Castells with the creation of a “project identity” replacing the “worker citizen” foundation of 20^th century societies.

With such change, as Castells posits non-class-based identity movements are the only "potential subjects of the information age.¹ But as Silver has pointed out it is impossible to escape the irony that early 20^th Century observers of the structural transformations associated with Fordism were certain that these changes in production spelled the death of the labour movements². In particular the idea that there is no alternative to this analysis has had a powerful demobilising impact on labour movements the "idea of power" itself has been an important source of workers' power. The working class, according to Antonio Negri, is a ‘dynamic subject, an antagonistic force tending toward its own independent identity’ (Negri 1988, 209). This continued renewal of class identity brings us to the point that the vision of class and its organisation used by those academics that seek to move beyond it has always been an ahistorical stationary one premised on brief historical windows. In discussions on social movement unionism Peter Waterman has pointed out that "utopian ideas have always been central to or lain beneath emancipatory movements, particular labour and socialist ones in their emancipatory moments³." It is in such emancipatory moments that working class organisations were originally forged. In the past decade the issue of alternative sources of power through new social movements has reinvigorated the optimistic case for structural change along a radical egalitarian manner. There has been an increase in the visibility of and participation in popular social movements that define themselves broadly against the structures of contemporary capitalism and by extension its work discipline. These social movements variously characterised as movements for global justice or anti-capitalist carry an emancipatory agenda emphasised in the renewed spread of a pre-figurative politics that bears a striking similarity to the early labour movement in its utopian moments and declarations of an alternative world. Through interviews with social movement participants this thesis aims to explore the relationships between these new subjects of social change, their objectives for social change and their experiences of the world of work and trade unions.

1Silver, BJ. Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge, 2003) p2

2Silver, BJ. Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge, 2003) p6

3Peter Waterman, "From Decent Work to the Liberation of Life from Work" (http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/03/24/170247)

Open Ended Interview Questions.

Work Biography

Where are you working at the moment? (If not working tell me about your last job?)


How long have you been there? (If not working tell me why you left?)


Do you think you'll be staying there for much longer?

Where were the last three places you worked prior to this?


Why did you leave employment in these places?


Do you see yourself as following any particular career path at the moment?

Why are you working in this particular job?

What do you use your income for?

In the workplace.

What sort of atmosphere have you experienced in workplaces?

What's sort of dynamic have you experienced between the workers?

Do you share much in common with the others outside of work?


Is there a big divide between management and staff in your workplace?

Have you ever engaged in any serious misbehaviour within the workplace such as stealing company property or dossing off when you should be working?

Is there much work place humour? What sort of forms does it take?

Do you find work stressful or are there any aspects that you really don't like?

Have you or your colleagues developed any coping strategies to deal with these sort of issues?

Would you talk about problems in work outside of work?

The relationship to unions

Have you ever had problems in work with employesr?

Did you do anything to solve them?

What institutions if any would you appeal to in order to solve any situations that may arise in work?

What sort of contact have you had with trade unions?

Is there anything specifically in your work to encourage or discourage trade union activity?

Are your parents in a union?

The social movement

When did you first become aware of contemporary social movement activity?

When did you make the leap to actually becoming politically active?


What are you active on at the moment?

What are your political objectives?


In your organising how do you discuss and plan activity? Can you expand a little on how these structures work?

Do you have personal relationships with people you are politically active with outside of that activity?


Do you share a common culture with each other?

Do you see the idea of class relating to your politics?

Relationship to unions

What's your honest opinion of contemporary unions?

What sort of relationship does your political movement have with unions?

Does it do anything to promote unionisation?

Have you ever worked on union related issues outside of your workplace?

Do you think you share any common goals with traditional trade unionism?

Do your political objectives go beyond the demands of traditional trade unionism?


Could your experiences in political activity contribute to workplace organisation?