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.

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