Hello Fellow CBSM Section Members!
Attached to this message is the latest edition of CriticalMass Bulletin. My very great thanks to the CM editors Melissa Wooten and Michelle Smirnova! They did an excellent job of editing an issue with interesting discussions and extensive information about CBSM activity at the upcoming ASA Meeting in San Francisco. Please note that our section day is Sunday, which will include all our section sessions as well as our business meeting and reception. Melissa is stepping down after this issue. On behalf of the section and the previous chairs, I thank Melissa Wooten for her excellent work over the past few years with the newsletter! Michelle is staying on, and we are looking for a volunteer to join her in editing the next issue. Also, please vote in the ASA elections, if you have not already, as the ballot closes June 1. Below are some important announcements for late May.
All the best,
Edwin
1. New Resource on Social Movement Outcomes—Jennifer Earl.
2. ASA Mini-Conference, Psychodynamics and the Social—Lynn Chancer.
3. CfP, From Contention to Social Change–Eduardo Romanos.
4. Mobilizing Ideas, Summer Books–Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, and Dan Myers.
1. New Resource on Social Movement Outcomes—Jennifer Earl.
I am pleased to announce the launch of a website containing a bibliographic database on social movement outcomes: http://yapdatabase-yppnetwork.net/. The site was created and is maintained by the Youth Activism Project, which is a part of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. It features a searchable database on research on social movement outcomes where books, chapters, and articles on social movement outcomes are classified by the broad type of outcome (e.g., political, biographical), the specific type of outcome (e.g. legislation passed), mechanisms discussed (e.g., disruptive tactics; mobilization levels), time period, location, and data used. The homepage for the database also showcases helpful review articles.
The database can be downloaded in whole or searched live on the site. It currently features 160 citations plus 12 review articles.
We hope that other scholars will consider adding content to the database, making it a living resource. To suggest additions, just follow the classification system embedded in the dataset and send a row of data representing a single citation to Becka Alper (multiple citations can be sent in the same worksheet, just make sure it’s one citation per row). We hope that through the efforts of our colleagues, this database can grow and become an enduring resource for scholars and activists interested in social movement outcomes.
Please feel free to forward this announcement, post about it, and tweet about it. The more people who use the database, and the more people who contribute new entries to it, the better!
2. ASA Mini-Conference, Psychodynamics and the Social—Lynn Chancer.
Save the Date – August 15th – for the Sixth Annual Psychodynamics and the Social ASA Mini-Conference. Keynote speaker: Prof. Jeffrey Prager. Prof. Patricia Clough, Performance of “The Rosary.” Other speakers: John Andrews, Harriet Fraad, Kevin Moran, Roger Salerno, David Smith, Ilgin Yorukoglu, Gilda Zwerman (and more to be confirmed).
Co-organized by Lynn Chancer and Lauren Langman.
For more information and to RSVP contact: lchancer@hunter.cuny.edu
3. CfP, From Contention to Social Change–Eduardo Romanos.
Call for Papers
ESA Research Network 25 – Social Movements
Mid-term Conference
19-20 February 2015
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
From Contention to Social Change:
Rethinking the Consequences of Social Movements and Cycles of Protests
A considerable amount of recent research has been devoted to the effects of mobilization with the intent of specifying how social movements produce social changes of various sorts. Political outcomes – including the responsiveness of decision-makers – have been studied the most, but scholarly interest in other types of effects is also growing. Among the effects that have drawn the attention of scholars are the changed behavior of economic actors and market institutions (economic effects); opinions, beliefs and collective identities of the movements’ participants and of their audience (cultural impacts); as well as variations in the life-course of individuals who participate in movement activities (biographical consequences). Sometimes these effects are intentional and sometimes not. In fact, on occasion they are contrary to the aims of those who produce them. Still, it is clear that contentious actions – whether they take the form of small local petitions, large street demonstrations or transnational campaigns mobilized on-line – transcend the internal life of social movements and have an influence on the rest of society.
Despite the abundance of research on these themes, some aspects of the consequences of social movements are still understudied.
First, while the role of the contentiousness of protest actions or the number of mobilized activists has been well-discussed, we know relatively little about how important the content of claims is for achieving movements’ goals. Framing has been shown to play a role in shaping political outcomes in some contexts, but more research could be done in this field. For example, how does the deliberative quality of the arguments made by the movement matter for the mobilization of further (the next wave) protests or for political outcomes?
Second, how does the success or failure of the movement affect the attitudes (e.g., perceived political efficacy and responsiveness) and future mobilization of the activists? There is, in general, little known about the failures and disengagement of social movements, but the consequences of such processes should be particularly noteworthy for those interested in the development of civil society.
Third, how the growing use of on-line media in social movement mobilization affect the consequences of social movements? For instance, does it lead to less sustainable mobilisation and thereby more failures? How does the use of Twitter or Facebook affect the cultural or biographical outcomes?
The mid-term conference of the ESA Research Network on Social Movements will focus on the preceding questions and welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that tackle these and closely related issues. Single case studies and comparative studies are equally welcome.
Proposals should include the title of the proposed paper, an abstract of up to 300 words, the author’s name and affiliation. All abstracts should be in English.
The deadline for proposals is 30 September 2014 and they should be sent to both of the organizers (see email addresses below). Decisions will be communicated by 31 October. Participants will be asked to submit their papers no later than 19 January 2015.
The conference venue is the Complutense University’s TRANSOC Institute on Social Transformations, which is sited at the Escuela de Relaciones Laborales, in the city centre (San Bernardo 49, Madrid).
The conference organizers cannot pay for travel and accommodation expenses; however, attendance is free of charge and food and beverage will be provided in coffee breaks and lunchtime. Discount rates at hotels close to the conference venue will be available for participants.
For more information: http://socialmovementsconference.wordpress.com
The conference organizers and Research Network chairs are:
Eduardo Romanos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (eromanos@ucm.es)
Katrin Uba, Uppsala University (katrin.uba@statsvet.uu.se)
________________________________
Dr. Eduardo Romanos
Ramón y Cajal Fellow
Department of Sociology I
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
4. Mobilizing Ideas, Summer Books–Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, and Dan Myers.
Upcoming Mobilizing Ideas posts: Great Books for Summer Reading
On Monday, June 2 Mobilizing Ideas will launch a new essay dialogue to give readers a healthy selection of great books for their summer reading lists. We have invited movement scholars and practitioners to choose recent social movements/protest-related books—whether scholarly, activist, or fiction—and write a short review. Contributors have chosen titles from a variety of genres and offer interesting analyses that are likely to fuel your productivity this summer and beyond. Be sure to visit the blog on Monday to take a look.