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Theor Soc (2014) 43:513546
DOI 10.1007/s11186-014-9231-6
Erica Simmons
Published online: 15 August 2014# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract This article proposes that by studying grievances as not only materially but also ideationally constituted claims, scholars can gain analytical leverage on puzzles of social movement emergence and development. This meaning-laden approach to grievances recognizes that the ideas with which some claims are imbued might be more conducive to motivating political resistance than others. The approach is inherently grounded in contextscholars begin by understanding the meanings that grievances take on in particular times and places. But it is also potentially generalizable; as scholars uncover the ways in which apparently different grievances may index similar ideas across time and place, those grievances can be categorized similarly and their potential relationship to social mobilization explored. Drawing on evidence from the 2000 Bolivian water wars, the article proposes that market driven threats to subsistence resources offer one such potential categorization.
Keywords Social movements . Contentious politics . Meaning-making . Grievances
How and why social movements emerge, develop, strengthen, and fade has long intrigued social science scholars.1 In particular, three frameworks have emerged that dominate the social movement literatureresource mobilization, political opportunity, and the framing process (see McAdam et al. 1996, p. 7). The first two approaches stress factors outside the cause at the center of a movement to explain its emergence, whereas the framing approach suggests the importance of the relationship between the issue at hand and how people come to understand it. They are now largely understood to constitute one approachthe political process model (e.g., see Piven and Cloward 1977; McAdam 1982). Much current scholarship seeks to refine and to specify further how and when we might expect to see particular aspects of the political process models elements at work, or it encourages scholars to push the model towards increased interactivity and attention to social construction (e.g., McAdam et al. 2001). Some scholars argue that attention to grievances can be subsumed by a political opportunity
1See McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (1996) and Tarrow (1998) for an overview of social movement literature.
E. Simmons (*)
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706, USAe-mail: [email protected]
Grievances do matter in mobilization
514 Theor Soc (2014)...