So, off-and-on I’ve been a “member” or “participant” in various social movement organisations. I take a Marxist approach, mostly. That is, Groucho Marx, especially the bit where he said “I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member. ”
Below is a glossary (inevitably) of terms and a couple of books that you might find useful, but first, a video I did (with the help of a good friend) in 2010 about how little traction climate activists get, and why that isn’t surprising.
VIDEO
Three very cool books
Blee, K. 2012. Democracy in the Making: How Activist Groups Form . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Louis, D. 1972/1997 And we are not saved: a history of the movement as people . The Press at Water’s Edge
Staggenborg, S. 2015. Social Movements . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fiction: Vida, Local Deities, Mud, Death is Part of the Process, etc – see review here.
My fiction – “The Defiant Ones ” – an academic and an activist chained together, on the run…
Other glossary terms here (some/all will be integrated).
Glossary
Abeyance
Absorptive Capacity
Accountability
Action technologies
Affinity Groups
Antinomian movements
Anxiety-management rituals
Assets, intangible
Assets, tangible
Astroturf
Avuncularitis
Barricades
Biographical Availability
Bonding capital
Bridging capital
Burnout
Capabilities, dynamic
Capabilities, operational
Capital, bonding
Capital, bridging
Charivari
Cliques
COINTELPRO
Collective Competence
Co-optation
Corporate Opportunity Structures
Cycles of protest
Decruitment
Demonstrations
Direct Theory
Discursive Repertoires
Dynamic capabilities
Ecological Modernisation
Ego-fodder
Emotathons
Emotions (in Social Movements)
Expectational Gap
Facipulation
Framing
Friendship networks
Greenwash
Groupthink
Intentional communities
Initiator Movements
Intangible assets
Issue attention cycles
Issue entrepreneurs
Law of Two Feet
Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Logistics
Marches
Meetings
Mobilisation
Mobilisation technologies
Movement-building
Movement cultures
Movements, initiator
Movements, spin-off
Movement Action Plan
Multi-organisational field
No-one ever is to blame
Open Space
Operational Capabilities
Post-ecological thinking
Prefigurative politics
Production technologies
Rallies
Recruitment
Repertoires
Resource-mobilization
Retention
Rhizome
Ritualistic behaviour
Sage on the Stage
Sensitise the elite decision-makers
Significant Life Experiences
Single Point of Failure
Sit-ins
Smugosphere
Social capital
Social Movement Ecosystems
Social Movement Learning
Social Movement Marketplace
Spill over
Spin-off movements
Strategy
“Study the Rich ”
Tactics
Tangible assets
Technologies, action
Technologies, mobilisation
Technologies, production
Transactive Memory Systems
Tyranny of Stucturelessness
Unconferences
Zombie repertoires
Like this: Like Loading...