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Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies
edited by Jo Freeman

Longman, 1983
(Out of print)

Table of Contents
Reviews

Published in 1983 by Longman Inc., this anthology combines original articles and reprints from journals. Together they reflect the new approach to the study of social movements by younger scholars who came of age in the 1960s. Until put out of print in 1987, it was widely used as a textbook in college courses.

Social Movements

Out of Print— but often available used


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Copyright Acknowledgments

Foreword by Michael Harrington

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Origins

1. On the Origins of Social Movements
by Jo Freeman.

Part 2: Moblization

2. Mobilization of Membership: The Black and Brown Lung Movements
by Bennett M. Judkins.

3. The Transformation of a Constituency into a Movement: Farmworker Organizing in California
by J. Craig Jenkins

4. The Men's Movement: Personal Versus Political
by Alan F. Gross, Ronald Smith, and Barbara Strudler Wallston.

5. Mobilizing the Disabled
by Roberta Ann Johnson.

6. Protest and the Problem of Credibility: Uses of Knowledge and Risk Taking in the Draft Resistance Movement of the 1960s
by Barrie Thorne.

Part 3: Organization

7. A Decentralized but Moving Pyramid: The Evolution and Consequences of the Structure of the Tenant Movement
by Ronald Lawson.

8. Movements of Revolutionary Change: Some Structural Characteristics
by Luther P. Gerlach.

9. Structure and Strategy in the Antinuclear Movement
by Lynn E. Dwyer.

10. Countercultural Organizations and Bureaucracy: Limits on the Revolution
by Leonard Davidson.

11. Generational Change and Primary Groups in a Social Movement
by Robert J. Ross.

Part 4: Strategy

12. A Model for Analyzing the Strategic Options of Social Movement Organizations
by Jo Freeman.

13. Organization or Disruption? Strategic Options for Marginal
Groups: The Case of the Chicago Indian Village
by Deborah LeVeen.

14. The Social Context of Strategic Success: A Land-Use Struggle in Hawaii
by James A. Geschwender.

15. The Use of Terrorism by American Social Movements
by Ernest Evans.

16. Conservative Tactics in Social Movement Organizations
by David P. Gillespie.

Part 5: Decline

17. The End of SDS and the Emergence of Weatherman: Demise Through Success
by Frederick D. Miller.

18.The Decline of the Civil Rights Movement
by Douglas McAdam.

19. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: Rise and Fall of a Redemptive Organization
by Emily Stoper.

20. Repression and the Decline of Social Movements: The Case of the New Religions
by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe, Jr.

21. The New York City Transit Strike of 1980: A Case Study of Organizing a Movement Within an Institutionalised Social Movement
by Steve Burghardt.

Index

About the Authors

REVIEWS

Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 6, November 1984, pp. 706-7.
by Carl M. Hand, and Thomas C. Hood.

This book appears exactly ten years after John McCarthy and Mayer Zald's first publication, the pamphlet The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization. That year also saw the publication of Freeman's well-received analysis of the origins of the women's liberation movement. Freeman notes that the contributors to this volume have been shaped by their experiences in the sixties and seventies. The resource mobilization perspective associated with Zald and McCarthy and with Gamson is even more influential.
This book differs from some treatments of the topic in its focus on community-based or localized organizations as examples of social movements. The book gives information about approximately eighteen different movements and even more organizations related to them. The environmental movement and religious movements of the sixties and seventies appear underrepresented. The book's emphasis is on social movement organizations (SMOs), their origin, mobilization, organization, strategy, and decline. An expansion of Freeman's well-known article on origins of the women's liberation movement sets the style by providing evidence about a movement and theoretical interpretation of its significance.
Taken as a whole, the mobilization section represents an indictment of the utilitarian logic of the resource-mobilization perspective. While such scholars ad Judkins, Jenkins, and Johnson eschew the traditional "hearts and minds" approach, their work provides evidence that solidary (and not just "selective") incentives and the existence of solidary networks represent essential capital for achieving resource mobilization. Attention to such incentives should be important in future study.
Organization is undoubtedly an essential element of movement success, but no necessarily successful or ideal organizational form exists. The articles agree that movements need not be the bureaucratic and oligarchic form to sustain movement goals; rather, movements are "...segmentary, polycephalous, and reticulate" in structure (Gerlach, 134). "Functional specialization," as Lawson puts it, allows a social movement to operate more efficiently in a heterogenous society, attracting a broader base of commitment and maintaining flexibility in a mutable social movement climate.
Naturally, organizational structure reflects in part the movement's goals and tactics. Ultimately, the choice of strategy depends on what segments of society a movement wishes to organize, among other things. Freeman notes that when "people change" takes precedence over institutional reform, a larger amount of resources must be devoted purely to group maintenance. The LeVeen and Geschwender studies reveal that movements among the poor and marginal are limited in their resources and strategy options; confrontational and disruptive strategies appear to be the only effective means of communicating grievances and demands. Gillespie counters, arguing that choice of strategy depends on the movement's expectations about how specific actions will affect the appointed target group.
The final section posits various reasons for movement decline; for example, repression, cooptation, success, and failure. But each chapter must also deal with why movements begin in the first place and how the raison d'être for their existence changes over time. McAdam's analysis of SDS and Stoper's of SNCC show that, contrary to classical movement analysis, movement organization can resist cooptation and compromise and become more radical, although at the cost of increased repression and loss of institutional effectiveness.
The articles in the book provide interesting material and sound interpretive insight. The articles discuss micromobilization processes -- such as solidary networks, ideology, and internal organizational pressures -- as well as how changing fiscal fortunes, relations to external control agents, and public support affect a movement's organization and growth. Grievance among the constituent base is a factor in mobilization. Whether and how such grievance is articulated, organized, and brought to focus on tangible (or perhaps intangible goals is contingent on the interplay of both internal and external social processes, none of which can be easily described in convenient movement models. The book's major weakness is its failure to show how groups like the antinuclear movement which have some national connections differ from neighborhood associations, community interest groups, and disenfranchised labor union members.
This book should be in all libraries with an interest in social movements. It will be very useful for teaching classes in social movements and intentional change as a book of case studies in a common comparative framework.


Amazon Customer Review by Barron Laycock
November 18, 2003

 


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