Social Movements: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics Author(S): Marc Edelman Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol

Social Movements: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics Author(s): Marc Edelman Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 30 (2001), pp. 285-317 Published by: Annual Reviews Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3069218 . Accessed: 19/06/2011 17:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=annrevs. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology.

SOCIALMOVEMENTS: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics

MarcEdelman Hunter College and the GraduateCenter, City Universityof New York,New York, New York10021; e-mail: [email protected]

Key Words collectiveaction, protest, resistance, civil society,globalization * Abstract Theoriesof collective action have undergonea numberof paradigm shifts,from "mass behavior" to "resourcemobilization," "political process," and "new socialmovements." Debates have centered on the applicabilityof theseframeworks in diversesettings, on the periodizationof collectiveaction, on the divisiveor unifying impact of identitypolitics, and on the appropriatenessof political engagementby researchers.Transnational activist networksare developingnew protestrepertoires thatchallenge anthropologists and otherscholars to rethinkconventional approaches to social movements.

INTRODUCTION

The worldwide political effervescence of "the long 1960s" (Isserman& Kazin 2000) contributedto a paradigmcrisis in social scientific thinkingabout collective action. This prolongeddecade of extraordinaryupheaval in New York, Chicago, Berkeley,Paris, Rome, Berlin,Tokyo, Mexico City,Prague, Beijing, andelsewhere was the most intenseperiod of grassrootsmobilization since the 1930s. Civil rights and antiwarmovements, youth and studentrebellions, mobilizations in defense of regional autonomy and the environmentand for the rights of women, gays and lesbians, the elderly, the disabled, and a host of other emergentgroups, identities, andcauses convergedwith an unprecedentedwave of anticolonialand antiimperial insurgenciesin poorerregions of the globe. Social scientistsof variousorientations concerned with geopolitics and revolutionhad ready-madecategories ("national liberation,""subversion") for analyzingevents in the "ThirdWorld." But the tur- moil in the developedNorth highlighted the inadequacyof existing social scientific frameworksand gave rise to new and rich debates. Even thoughanthropologists were well representedas participantsin this tide of unrestand their 1960s sensibilitiescontributed to new conceptualizationsof "inter- stitialpolitics" and of power,gender, colonialism, and the state(Vincent 1990), they remainedto a largeextent on the peripheryof social scientifictheorizing about collective action.One notableexception was the Vietnam-eraagrarian studies tradition 0084-6570/01/1021-0285$14.00 285 286 EDELMAN

(Roseberry1995) pioneeredby Wolf (1969), a work that was an outgrowthof the teach-inmovement. In part,anthropologists' marginal involvement in discussions of collective action reflected an academic division of labor that assigned them peasants, the urban (especially Third World) poor, ethnic minorities, and mil- lenarianor syncreticreligious sects and allocatedother types of mobilization(and national-levelphenomena) to sociologists, political scientists, or historians.Also importantby the mid-1980s, in the United States at least, was anthropologists'fas- cination with "everyday"as opposed to organizedresistance and with microlevel analyses of power a la Foucault(Burdick 1995). Ethnographicresearch on social movements,moreover, tended to resist "grandtheoretical" generalizations because close-up views of collective action often looked messy, with activist groups and coalitionsforming, dividing, and reassembling and with significantsectors of their targetconstituencies remaining on the sidelines. This articletells four long stories in a shortspace. The firstis an accountof the post-1960s paradigmshift in social scientific studies of collective action, which, thoughoverly abbreviatedand canonical, is necessaryfor examiningthe stateof the field today and particularlywhat transpiredwhen theory traveledbeyond Europe and North America. The second is an appraisalof how ideas about periodization shapedcompeting post-1960s analyticalframeworks. The thirdconcerns the cen- trifugaland centripetal,or fragmentingand unifying, impacts of identitypolitics, the disproportionateattention social scientists devote to movementsthey like, and theirinfrequent efforts to theorizeright-wing movements. The fourthstory involves new developmentsin social movements themselves, particularlyan intensifying transnationalactivism, a disenchantmenton the partof diverse activistswith identity politics, and a resurgenceof variedkinds of strugglesagainst inequality. One of the most strikingfeatures of the collective action field is its continu- ing intellectual compartmentalization.Debates have tended to occur along parallel and disconnectedtracks, reflecting differentdisciplinary personal networks and forms of socialization and inquiry and a major divide separatingcase study and grand theory practitioners.One recent effort at synthesis notes that scholars of revolutions,strikes, wars, social movements,ethnic mobilizations,democratization, and nationalism have paid little attention to each other's findings (McAdam et al 2001). Studentsof right-wingmovements rarely engage theories about other kinds of collective action. Despite frequent gestures toward trans- gressingacademic boundaries (and notwithstanding occasional successes), anthropologists on the one hand and sociologists and political scientists on the other have had little impacton or awarenessof each other'sefforts to understandsocial movements.1

'Oneof the few non-regionallyfocused anthologies on socialmovements edited by U.S. anthropologistsis indicativeof this mutualunfamiliarity, despite the inclusionof case studies-virtuallyall first-rate-froma rangeof disciplines.While it may be truethat "thestudy of protestoutside the industrialNorth is largelyunder-theorized" (Boudreau 1996,p. 175),Fox & Starn(1997) suggest-seemingly unaware of a substantialliterature SOCIALMOVEMENTS 287

A short article of broad scope can obviously invoke only some theorists and works (and movements). I emphasize recent work and allude sparingly to the "classics"of the field and more brieflythan I would prefer(or not at all) to various relevantissues. Anthropologists,for reasonsnoted above, are less well represented than scholars from other disciplines. Geographically,the emphasis of this review is on the Americas and Europe, not because significant social movements have not occurredelsewhere, but because these have been prominentsites of pertinent theoreticalproduction. Academic books and specializedjourals-including those devoted to collective action studies, such as Mobilizationand Research in Social Movements,Conflicts and Change-have been key forafor manydebates. Because activists and scholars engage each other (and sometimes are each other), some of the most provocative analyses of social movements' visions, strategies, and practices appear in nonacademic media: hybrid activist-scholarlypublications, small journalsof opinion, 'zines, web pages, organizinghandbooks, and manuals by those who seek to controlparticular kinds of movements.

A CONVENTIONALSTORY OF SHIFING PARADIGMS

In the early 1970s, functionalism still held sway in U.S. sociology. Park and the Chicago School had, since the 1920s, juxtaposed "social organization"- institutionalized,conventional patterns of everyday life-to "collective behavior," a category that included crowds, "sects," fashions, and mass movements, all of which they saw as simultaneouslysymptoms of societal disequilibriaand harbingersof new patternsof social relations(Park 1967). Smelser (1962) rejected the notion of "disequilibria"as "too strong"and attributedcollective behaviorto tensions that exceeded the capacity of a social system's homeostaticmechanisms andthat constituted a sourceof new bases of Durkheimian-stylesolidarity. Related psychological theories explained the rise of totalitarianismas a mass response to economic crises and "magneticleaders" by individuals with a "mob mentality" (Arendt1951) or an "authoritariancharacter" (Fromm 1941). These theoriesabout totalitarianismwere of limited use in analyzingturmoil in largely democratic,af- fluent polities in the 1960s. Olson (1965) advanceda notion that remainsa point of departurefor much theorizing.An economist, Olson rejectedtheories based on the irrationalityof individuals[although he also statedit would "bebetter to turnto psychology" than to economics to understand"fanatic" or "lunaticfringe" movements "in unstablecountries" (1965, pp. 161-62)]. Instead,he posited individuals

on contentiouspolitics-that "we still knowrelatively little about the ampleand charged territorybetween the cataclysmicupheaval of revolutionarywar and the smallincidents of everydayresistance, ... socialstruggles where people enter into open protest yet do not seekthe total overthrow of the socialorder" (p. 3). Moreover,apart from a few individuals in eachgroup whose work genuinely engages historical documentation and scholarship, the vastliterature by historianson collectiveaction tends to be surprisinglyunderutilized. 288 EDELMAN

so rationalthey wouldnot participatein collective endeavors-a ratherodd premise for the turbulent1960s-because each could benefitfrom others' activityas a "free rider,"pursuing low-risk self-interestat the group'sexpense. Like the "tragedyof the commons"model, which was later criticized(Prakash 1998) as divorcedfrom cultureor-alternatively-as a caricatureof a historicallyspecific homo economi- cus, this perspectiveexplained collective actionas the sum of strategicdecisions by individuals,who could only be inducedto join a groupeffort throughincentives or sanctions.Given the stabilityof NorthAmerica and WesternEurope and the high risks many 1960s activists assumed-arrests, police beatings, ruined careers- "rationalchoice" did not appearto be a promisingavenue of interpretation Marxism, still in or close to the mainstreamin Europeanuniversities in "the long 1960s," viewed conflict in capitalist societies as revolving aroundthe fun- damentalcontradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.In all but the most heterodoxMarxist (Thompson 1971) tendencies,class interestand historical agency derivedunproblematically from class position (althoughclasses "in"and "of' themselvesraised less easily resolvedissues of consciousnessand hegemony). This frameworktoo was of little use in making sense of movementsin the 1960s that frequentlyhad largely middle-classleadership and multiclassconstituencies. By the mid-1970s, two distinct perspectivesemerged that attemptedto fill the apparenttheoretical vacuum: the "identity-oriented"or Europeanparadigm [also widely termed new social movements (NSMs)] and the "resourcemobilization" or Americanparadigm (Cohen 1985, Della Porta& Diani 1999, Foweraker1995, Gamer 1997, Larafiaet al 1994, McAdam et al 1996a). Neither comprised an entirelycoherent "school," but for heuristicpurposes the differencesbetween them constitutea suitable,if conventional,point of departure. For Touraine(1988), among the first and most prolific advocates of a NSMs approach,the issue of social movementshas two dimensions,loosely derivedfrom aspectsof Marx'sand Weber's thought. The firstis the notionof a "centralconflict" in society; for Marx, this was the strugglebetween labor and capital in industrial society. But, Touraineargues, with the passage to a "postindustrial"society, labor- capitalconflict subsides, other social cleavages become more salient and generate new identities, and the exercise of power is less in the realm of work and more in "the setting of a way of life, forms of behavior,and needs" (1988, p. 25). The main Weberianelement in Touraine'sapproach is the concept of "theactor" as key protagonistof "social action."In postindustrialsociety, diversecollectivities have a growing capacity to act on themselves and to struggle for "historicity"-"the set of cultural,cognitive, economic, and ethical models ... throughwhich social practices are constituted"(1988, pp. 40-41). Tourainethus posits the "way of life" as the focus of contention;struggles that seek to affect the relationsof dom- ination characteristicof the "way of life" (with its forms of knowledge, mores, and investment)are "social movements."He explicitly excludes from this category, however, forms of "collective behavior"that "defend"the social order or "social struggles"directed at the state. Melucci (1989) arguedthat social movements have threeimportant dimensions: actors' recognitionof commonalitiesand SOCIALMOVEMENTS 289 sharedidentities, objectives, and understandings;adversarial relations with oppo- nents who claim the same goods or values; and actions that exceed the tolerance limits of a social system, thereby pushing it to change. Melucci did a doctorate under Tourainein the 1970s at the Ecole Pratiquedes Hautes Etudes, but this definitionsuggests a move beyond his professor's stress on the structuralprecon- ditions of forms of collective action in postindustrialsociety. Instead, adopting Habermas's(1981) terminology (though not his emphasis on "defensive"movements), Melucci pointedto how the state andmarket rationalize the privatesphere, generatingnew social groupingsand collective action that illuminates"the silent and arbitraryelements of the dominantcodes" and "publicizesnew alternatives" (1989, p. 63). Touraine,Melucci, and other advocates of NSMs theory (Laclau & Mouffe 1985) delineatedcharacteristics they saw as particularto the NSMs and that con- trastedwith the "old"labor or working-classmovement. Although the "old"labor movement upheld class as the primarysocial cleavage, category of analysis, or- ganizationalprinciple, and political issue, the NSMs emerge out of the crisis of modernityand focus on struggles over symbolic, informational,and culturalre- sources and rights to specificity and difference. Participationin NSMs is itself a goal, apartfrom any instrumentalobjectives, because everyday movement practices embody in embryonic form the changes the movements seek. The NSMs diffuse "social conflictualityto more and more numerousrelations." This proliferationof "pointsof antagonism"produces "new social subjects"whose "multiple social positions"complicate interpretationsof political agency based on a single, privilegedprinciple of identity (Laclau& Mouffe 1985). If NSMs theoristsin Europetended to explain collective action as a responseto "claims,"grievances, or postindustrialsociety, on the other side of the Atlantic a growing coterie of social scientists pointed out that the mere existence of discontent, which was presumablyomnipresent, could not explainhow movementsarose in particulartimes and places. Several authorsin particular(McCarthy & Zald 1977, Zald 1992, McAdamet al 1996b) arguedfor a focus on "resourcemobilization."This "strategy-oriented"paradigm (Cohen 1985) took Olson's rational-actor postulate as "one of its underlyingproblems" (McCarthy & Zald 1977, p. 1216) but professed to have solved the "free rider"puzzle by analyzingthe resources- material, human, cognitive, technical, and organizational-that movements de- ployed in order to expand, rewardparticipants, and gain a stake in the political system. Resource mobilization (RM) theory, with its focus on the construction of "social movement industries"made up of "social movement organizations," regardedcollective action mainly as interestgroup politics played out by socially connected groupsrather than by the most disaffected.Movement "entrepreneurs" had the task of mobilizing resourcesand channelingdiscontent into organizational forms. Resource availabilityand preference structuresbecame the perspective's centralfoci ratherthan the structuralbases of social conflict (as in Touraine'sver- sion of NSMs) or state and marketassaults on the privatesphere (as in Melucci's and Habermas'sversions). 290 EDELMAN

In underscoringthe importanceof mobilization processes and well-endowed organizations(and competitionamong the latter),the RM paradigmtended to dis- regardsituations in which social movements, usually of the very poor, emerged with few resourcesor whereovert organization-in contextsof extremeinequality, severe repression,and hopeless odds-endangered participants,producing "shad- owy" (Piven & Cloward 1977), "submerged"(Melucci 1989), or "hidden"forms of resistance (Scott 1990) that might or might not lead to collective action (Bur- dick 1998). By viewing social movementsas interestgroup politics, the paradigm understood"success" primarily as the achievement of policy objectives rather than in relation to broaderprocesses of culturaltransformation. RM proponents eventually conceded as well that their frameworkdid not deal adequatelywith "enthusiasm,spontaneity, and conversionexperiences" or the "feelings of solidarity and communalsharing" that rewardedmovement participants (Zald 1992, pp. 330-31). Several scholars influenced by the American paradigm advocated incorpo- rating a focus on states and on "political opportunitystructure" (POS) into the RM model's concern with the internaldynamics of organizations.The POS approach tended to examine movement strategizingin the context of the balance of opportunities-threatsfor challengers and facilitation-repressionby authorities (Tarrow1998). Some POS scholarswho workedwith Europeancase materialsem- phasizeda diachronicapproach, studying the frequencyof contentiousevents over long durations(with methods influenced byAnnales historians' "serial" history and theirdistinction between "events," "conjunctures," and "longues durees") (Shorter & Tilly 1974, Tilly 1986). OtherEuropeanists (Tarrow 1989) examinedthe opening and closing of POSs over much shorterperiods. A complementaryapproach involved analyzing conflicts occurringaround the same time in relationto space, within a given region or nation(Shorter & Tilly 1974), or as partof a cross-national comparison(Gamson & Meyer 1996). This synchronicapproach had antecedents, not always acknowledged,in Europeanstudies of early industrial-eraprotest, such as Hobsbawm & Rude (1968), who analyzed, for 1830-1832, types of repression and disturbancesaccording to frequency,geographical location, categoriesof personstargeted, and damages inflicted. Criticsnoted thatthe POS perspectivegave little attentionto discursiveaspects of identity,gender, the social constructionof POS itself, or its local and international aspects (Abdulhadi1998). They furthercharged that POS was too broadand imprecise,"a dustbin" (Della Porta& Diani 1999, p. 223) or "a spongethat soaks up virtuallyevery aspectof the social movementenvironment... an all-encompassing fudge factor ... [which] may explain nothing at all" (Gamson & Meyer 1996, p. 274). Increasingly,POS proponentscame to see it as one element of a broaderpo- litical process, which includedgreater emphasis on the cultural-historicalsources of discontent,protest, and mobilization(and which was distinctfrom-and appar- ently incognizantof-the similarlynamed perspective that evolved out of Manch- ester anthropology).By the 1990s, proponentsof the political process approach echoed Cohen's (1985) call for fusing the European and American paradigms SOCIALMOVEMENTS 291

and professed to have an "emergingsynthesis." This included "political opportunities," "mobilizing structures,"and "framing,"a category encompassing the ways in which collective identities arose, as well as the interpretative,discursive, and dramaturgicalpractices that shaped movement participants'understandings of theircondition and of possible alternatives(McAdam et al 1996a, 2001; Tarrow 1998). By the end of the decade, political process enthusiastscould claim that the model occupied a "dominant"(Garner 1997) or "hegemonic"(Giugni 1999) place in the study of social movements.

INTERROGATING THE CANON

It is remarkablehow little attentionhas been devoted to understandingwhy con- trastingapproaches originated on differentsides of the Atlantic.Melucci attributed the rise in the United States of RM theory,with its presumptionof rationalityand metaphorsabout "entrepreneurs,"to the "unprecedenteddevelopment of organization theory in the analysis of business and administration"and to the weakness of Marxist or radical thought in U.S. sociology (1989, p. 194). Della Porta & Diani (1999) indicate that in the 1980s, rising disillusion with a strong Marxist intellectual traditionin Europe contributedto a search for new non-class-based dimensions of conflict. Foweraker(1995), looking at the sociopolitical context of theory, suggests that in western Europe the "social democratic consensus," developed welfare states, and powerful labor organizationsand corporatisttradi- tions contributedto making NSMs look genuinely "new" and to producingex- planationsthat stressed major societal transformations.In contrast,in the United States, in the absence of a strong labor movement or a social democraticclass pact, outsider groups (the civil rights movement was the paradigmaticcase for RM theorists) had to mobilize resources to gain representationin the political system (McAdamet al 2001, Morris 1999). A furthercause of trans-Atlanticdif- ferences was the isolation in which theorists of the two traditionsworked; only in the mid-1980s were there sustained contacts between and joint conferences of social movements scholars from Europe and North America (McAdam et al 1996a). How did NSMs and POS theories fare when they traveledoutside Europeand North America?Latin America, in particular,has been fertile territoryfor studies of collective action, thoughlargely by scholarsand scholar-activistsinfluenced by NSMs (Escobar& Alvarez 1992, Alvarez et al 1998) or historical-structuralpers- pectives (Eckstein1989).2 Even thoughRM andPOS perspectiveson movements'

2"Historical-structural"approaches "show ideology, values, traditions, and rituals to be of consequenceand trace the importanceof cultureto group,organization, and community dynamicsand to otherfeatures of socialstructure. Yet they never presume that protest is mechanicallydetermined by socialstructure. They show the patterningof defianceto be contingenton historicalcircumstances" (Eckstein 1989, p. 3). 292 EDELMAN

interactionswith states were pertinentin Latin America (Foweraker1995), they had less appeal outside developed northerndemocracies because it was difficult, especially under authoritarianregimes, to imagine political opportunityas a significant explanatorycategory; tellingly, in the few works on Latin America that make explicit use of a POS perspective,such as Schneider's(1995) ethnographic tour-de-forceon Chile's urbanpoor underthe Pinochetdictatorship, the theoretical frameworkis understated.Davis (1999, p. 586) arguesthat NSMs theory'sempha- sis on civil society appealed"to the lived experienceand normativeideals of Latin Americanintellectuals." Also important,however, were the ties to Latin America of NSMs theorists in Europe.Touraine, who spent the mid-1950s at the Univer- sity of Chile and developed his ideas about "historicity"in dialogue with Latin Americansociologists in the early 1970s (Touraine1973), has had continuingties to the region. The writings of Laclau, a native of Argentinaestablished in Europe who shifted from Althusserianismto a poststructuralismthat drew selectively and idiosyncraticallyon Gramsci(Laclau & Mouffe 1985), have been widely read in Latin America since the early 1970s. It is likely, furthermore,that in the 1970s and 1980s visceral anti-U.S. sentiments(especially in Mexico and among exiles there) and a strong Europhile streak (particularlyin Buenos Aires) predisposed Latin American intellectualsto embraceNSMs perspectivesand to ignore those from U.S. academia.Anthropologists were drawnto NSMs perspectivesfor similar reasons, as well as for the centralrole thatNSMs accordedto culturalpractice as a force for political transformation(Alvarez et al 1998, Escobar & Alvarez 1992). WithinLatin America, recent studies of collective actioncluster geographically, mirroringthe concentrationof earliersocial scientificproduction in certainselected places. The 1994 Zapatistauprising in the southernMexican state of Chiapashas inspiredan extraordinaryoutpouring of scholarlywork, much of it directedat in- forming a sympatheticpublic or mobilizing solidarity.Drawing on three decades of work on Chiapas,Collier (1994), producedless than a year after the Zapatis- tas' rebellion, remains an essential reference. Emphasizingagrarian rather than indigenous sources of insurgency,especially the constitutionalmodifications that effectively ended land reform,Collier describeshow communityfactionalism and populationgrowth generated an exodus of disaffectedmigrants to remotejungles in easternChiapas. Although the Zapatistascondemned the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and warned of its deleterious consequences for Mexico's peasantry,linking the insurrectionto NAFTA, Collier says, was a "pre- text," because other grievanceshad kindled the movement during years of clan- destine organizing.In 1994, the origins of the ZapatistaNational Liberation Army (EZLN)were unclear.Harvey (1998), whose researchbegan nearly a decadebefore the uprising,details the multiple strandsof peasant,indigenous, and studentorga- nizing thateventually coalesced in the EZLN. In analyzingthe Zapatistas'struggle on behalf of ChiapasIndians and the Mexican poor in general, Harveymaintains thatthe constructionof democracyin Mexico often dependson informallocal and SOCIALMOVEMENTS 293 regional,rather than formalnational-level processes.3 Womack (1999) introduces a first-ratecollection of primarydocuments on Chiapasand extends inquiryfor- ward and backwardin time. He relates the erraticcourse of EZLN-govemment negotiations and also traces the notorious intransigence,venality, and bigotry of contemporaryhighland elites to their conquistadorancestors' schemes to defraud the Crown of tribute and to racialize space in their urban centers. Drawing on a decades-long involvement with Chiapas, Nash (1997) indicates how Zapatista outreachcampaigns are elements of a broaderproject of mobilizing civil society and of redefiningmodernist notions of democracyin a pluriethnicMexico. The Zapatistacase is significant not only for its reverberationswithin Mex- ico, but also because it figures as a prototype for sometimes rhapsodic claims about a new period characterizedby "informational"(Castells 1997) or "post- moder" (Nash 1997) movements and "democratic"(Touraine 2000) guerrillas. Most Zapatistainternet activity is carriedout by a small numberof sympathetic individualsand nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs), but theirpresence on the net has allowed them to communicatedemands, foster alliances, and represent themselves as part of a global struggle against neoliberalcapitalism. Among the most in-depthand singulartreatments of this phenomenonis a U.S. Army-funded RAND Corporationstudy (Ronfeldt et al 1998) that provides a glimpse of how counterinsurgencyplanners view this new form of politics. Apart from the high-profileZapatistas, diverse Latin American struggles led social scientiststo reconsiderapproaches to collective action and NSMs theory,in particular.Two outstandinganthologies (Escobar& Alvarez 1992, Alvarez et al 1998), among the few in which anthropologists(as well as Latin America-based scholars) are well represented,provide a useful guide to the field as it developed in the 1990s. Despite the wide scope of these anthologies,which rangefrom examinationsof the state (Fals Borda 1992) and democratization(Calderon et al (1992) to cyber- politics (Ribeiro 1998) and grassroots(Baierle 1998; Yudice 1998) and transnational (Alvarez 1998) organizing, two broad areas are conspicuously absent, or nearly so. Peasant movements receive relatively short shrift, apart from Starn (1992). This is perhaps surprising,given that in Mexico outside Chiapas (Pare 1994, Williams 2001), in CentralAmerica (Edelman 1998, Edelman 1999), and elsewhere, these have been in the forefront of opposition to neoliberalism and that in Brazil social movementsresearch has concentratedheavily on strugglesof small farmersand the landless (Houtzager& Kurtz2000, Maybury-Lewis1994, Pereira 1997, Stephen 1997). Right-wing movements are another area largely ignored in these volumes, reflecting in all likelihood a reluctanceon the part of

3Thisparallels Rubin's (1997) innovative work on theleftist Zapotec movement COCEI in Juchitan,Oaxaca. Both works critique state-centered understandings of Mexicanpolitics (Castells1997). 294 EDELMAN

NSMs scholars to acknowledgethat conservativeresponses are also an outcome of proliferatingsocial tensions, rapid culturalchange, the advance of democratization, and the progressivemovements themselves (Calhoun 1994, Payne 2000, Pichardo1997). When NSMs perspectivestraveled outside of social democraticEurope, the inclusion in theirpurview of majormovements in LatinAmerica-human rightsand democratization,indigenous and minoritypeoples, Christian-basedcommunities, the urban poor, street children-entailed a recognition of economic and power inequalitiesas key dimensions of collective action. This did not mean a resortto an obsolete, unidimensionalclass analysis, however, because the actors in mo- tion went way beyond the traditionalproletariat and because investigationsof real movements nearly always uncovered participantsfrom a range of class origins and intense contentionover issues of identity and representation.This continued significance of class or distributiveconflicts led many Latin Americaniststo es- chew NSMs terminology altogetherand to speak instead of "popular"(literally, "people's")movements (Foweraker 1995).

PERIODIZATION DEBATES:SO WHAT'S NEW?

One irony of the stress on newness of NSMs was that emerging movements of women, environmentalists,gays and lesbians, and oppressedminorities, as well as anticolonialforces in the Third World, sought to uncover hidden histories of their political ancestors in order to fortify their legitimacy and forge new collective identities. This rediscoveryof the complexity of old and first-wavesocial movementswas partof wider effortsto theorizeperiodizations of collective action throughexamining "origins,""waves," "cycles," and "protestrepertoires." The discussion of movements in terms of origins has occurredchiefly in relation to environmentalism.Two recentworks highlightwhat is at stake (Grove 1995, Judd 2000). Efforts to theorize the Northernenvironmentalist movements that arose in the 1960s, while acknowledgingtheir diversity,usually arguedthat affluenceand urbanizationproduced an appreciationand need for naturalamenities. Melucci, in an uncharacteristicallyblunt declaration, insinuated that contemporary environmental movements are offspring of a "new intellectual-politicalelite" living in a "gilded but marginalizingghetto" (Melucci 1996, p. 165). Similar "postmaterialist" premises extendedto explanationsof nineteenth-and early twentieth-century conservationcampaigns as projects of "enlightenedelites" or even of "a gentry overwhelmedby industrialization"(Castells 1997, p. 121). Against this predom- inant outlook, Grove (1995) attributesthe rise of environmentalismto Europe's encounterwith the tropics and to the devastationcaused by rapaciousplantation economies. Judd, focusing on ruralNew England, also challenges the thesis of the elite origins of conservation,which he says derives from a "tendencyto glean evidence of rising concern about forests from federalpublications, national jour- nals, or writings of prominentthinkers" (2000, pp. 90-91). In a meticulous study SOCIALMOVEMENTS 295 of local sources, he finds a pervasiveconservation ethic, rooted in common uses of forest, pasture, and farmland,which supersededprivate propertyrights until well into the nineteenthcentury. After 1870, "conservationtook on class over- tones" (2000, p. 178) as genteel anglers, hunters, and federal bureaucratstook up the cause, reshaping notions about the place of "nature"in agrarianland- scapes, as well as nature itself. The thesis of conservation's upper-class origins, Judd maintains, contributesto demagogic efforts today to paint envi- ronmentalismas an elite conspiracy unfairly implemented at great cost to the workingpoor. Guha & Martinez-Alier(1997) traceearly environmentalismto the destruction wrought by the industrialrevolution at home and in colonial territoriesand to a heterogeneouscollection of thinkers,such as Aldous Huxley, MahatmaGandhi, and urbanistLewis Mumford. The main contributionof the work, however, is its trenchantcritique of developed-countryoverconsumption and its elaborationof commonalitiesand distinctions between movements.They findpostmaterialist en- vironmentalismsin the "empty-belly"South ("essentialisteco-feminism," which sees poor women as embodying intrinsic"naturalness," and "deep ecology" tendencies, which reverebiotic integritymore than humanneeds), as well as ones in the "full-stomach"North (environmentaljustice movements), which deploy the language of class and, at times, race to organize. "Social conflicts with ecolog- ical content"include struggles against "environmentalracism" (siting dumps in minoritycommunities), "toxic imperialism"(waste disposal in poorercountries), "ecologically unequalexchange" (based on prices which do not reflect local ex- ternalities),the North "dumping"subsidized agriculturalsurpluses in the South (to the detrimentof small farmersthere), and "biopiracy"(corporate appropria- tion of genetic resourceswithout recognition of peasantor indigenousintellectual propertyrights). Withinfeminism, the periodizationdiscussion has been cast in termsof "waves," a convention that reveals and conceals key continuities and rupturesin forms of exclusion and of women's collective action. The demands of different national "first-wave"women's movements are usually said to have centered on suffrage and political rights [although it is also clear that issues of sexuality and male violence were importantin contexts as varied as Germany (Grossmann 1995) and Puerto Rico (Findlay 1998)]; "second-wave"movements in the 1960s and 1970s demandedequity in the workplaceand domestic unit, exposed the political foundationsof seemingly personalcircumstances, and championeda rangeof new rights, from access to abortionto protectionfrom sexual harassment;and "third- wave" feminists, generally born after 1963 and active in the 1990s and after,take culturalproduction and sexual politics as key sites of struggle, seeking to fuel micropoliticalstruggles outside of formal institutionalchannels. Historianswho located first-wavefeminism in the mid-nineteenthto the early twentiethcentury usually did so provisionally,concerned that such clear-cutcate- gorizationsobscured significant antecedents as well as majorvariations between, say, the United States and Norway, or India and France (Sarah 1983); indeed, 296 EDELMAN

argumentsfor the inclusion of women in "the rights of man" reach back to the French Revolution (Scott 1996) and the early abolitionist movement (Keck & Sikkink1998, Lerner1998), althoughthey werenot alwaysbacked by collective action. Discussions aboutthird-wave feminism, in contrast,reflect the emergence(in the UnitedStates, at least) of a deeply felt generationalidentity defined against both older second waversand conservativepostfeminists of the 1980s (Baumgardner& Richards2000, Heywood & Drake 1997). The waves formulationis problematicalin thatit privilegespolitical generations andtends to maskvariation among movement participants and organizations along lines of age, class, race, and sexual orientation,as well as between- and after-wave activity.In the United States, for example, linking the firstand second waves were the elite-led NationalWomen's Party (which providedmany alumnae to the second wave) and the Communist-dominatedCongress of AmericanWomen, which for 5 years following WorldWar II boasted some 250,000 members(several of whom were leading historiansof the firstwave and activistsof the second wave) before it dissolved duringthe 1950s red scare (Rosen 2000). Whittier(1995) points out that numerouslocal radical feminist collectives were active during the hostile 1980s intervalbetween the second and thirdwaves but thattheir rejection of mainstream politics often renderedthem invisible to social movements scholars whose main focus was nationalorganizations. Political process theorists did not generally draw sharp distinctions between waves or between new and old movementsbut some nonethelessposited a significant breakbetween the "parochial,"defensive forms of collective action characteristicof Europeup to the mid-nineteenthcentury (charivaris, machine-breaking, field invasions, food riots) and the modem repertoireof contentionthat flowered after 1848 with the consolidation of nation-states.Tilly (1986, p. 392), for example, describedthe social movement as a challenge to the state that employs a protestrepertoire of public meetings,demonstrations, and strikesand thatattempts to bargainwith establishedauthorities on behalf of its constituency. Tarrow(1998), also employing a political process perspective, sharedTilly's notion of a fundamentalshift in protest repertoiresaround the mid-nineteenth century. For Tarrow,however, the principal concept for periodization was the "protestcycle" [which in laterwork (1998) he termedcycle of contention],a time of heightenedactivity typically involving more than one movement. Although the claims of some 1980s NSMs enthusiaststhat NSMs represented a fundamentalrupture with a putative,unitary old movement were quickly rec- ognized as "spurious"(Escobar & Alvarez 1992), even recent work sometimes maintainsa markednew-versus-old distinction, arguing, for example, thatthe tra- ditional Left did not consider the relationbetween cultureand politics a "central question"(Dagnino 1998, p. 34). Such assertions,likely rootedin social scientists' curious underutilizationof the "vast numberof accounts by historians... on the culturalactivities of political movements"(Eyerman & Jamison 1998, p. 12), became difficultto sustainas sympathizersof the 1960s movementsrecovered earlier, forgottenhistories of activism. Some pointed to the identity-baseddimensions of SOCIALMOVEMENTS 297 old working-classmovements, which in the United States (Calhoun 1993, Flacks 1988, Freeman2000; Mishler 1999) andelsewhere (Fisher 1999; Waterman1998) took up such issues as child labor, work environments,women's status, housing, health,community life, education,and access to public services. The middle class, the supposedlydistinctive source of new movements,was also prominentin many older ones, notablycampaigns in Europeand the United Statesfor abolition,prohi- bition, reproductiverights, and suffrage(Grossmann 1995, Lerer 1998, Pichardo 1997). How, though, were these earlier versions of culturalpolitics forgotten in the initialenthusiasm about NSMs? Some scholarsbelieve that"the specific tacticsand methods of state repression"and their impact on movements"have received little systematic attention"(Carley 1997, p. 153).4 Adam (1995) traces the sources of some NSMs theorists'"amnesia" about earlier militant traditions to both the crisis in Marxism,which allowed leftist scholarsto "see" non-class-basedactivity they had previouslyoverlooked, and to the impactof totalitarianregimes in Europeand the Cold Warred scare in the United States, which destroyeddiverse progressive movements. Although some collective action theoristsdeplore the lack of "a theorythat ex- plains the relationshipbetween preexisting protest traditions and the rise... of new social movements"(Morris 1999, p. 536), evidence aboundsof activistcontinuities from one era to anotherand across movements.Among the approachesin the liter- atureon the United States are those thatemphasize broad cultural transformations, the life trajectoriesof groupsof activists,the role of institutionsand organizations, andthe reinventingof musical andother traditions. Flacks (1988, p. 181) notes that as the U.S. New Deal generationretreated politically in the 1950s andconcentrated on family life, many triedto apply humanisticand democraticvalues in the home, producingoffspring predisposed to question mainstreamculture. Togetherwith a "vibrantsemi-underground current of anarchisticmockery of conventionalauthority" (Flacks 1988, p. 181) embodied in the Beat poets, Mad magazine, risque satiristslike Lenny Bruce, and rock and rhythm-and-bluesmu- sic, which discredited"the notion thatcreativity obeyed a color line" (Isserman& Kazin 2000, p. 19), this quiet culturalshift laid the groundworkfor rebellion in the 1960s. Some accounts of the 1960s argue that future student activists "grew up with little or no contact with a previous generationthat had been radicalized by the Depression"(Fraser et al 1988, p. 17). However,veteran radicals disillu- sioned with earlier traditions-Communism, pacifism, Trotskyism-had by that time often discarded old dogmas while retainingpolitical ideals, contacts, and skills that contributedmightily to the civil rights, antinuclear,anti-Vietnam War,

4Hart(1996. p. 238), in a magnificentstudy of the GreekResistance, makes a similar observationbut then goes on to providean impressive oral historical account of ColdWar- erapolitical repression. Usually, however, such assertions reflect intellectual and political isolationfrom those (Arditti1999, Feldman1991) who havemade repression a central objectof study. 298 EDELMAN

and women's movements (Freeman2000, Rosen 2000, Whittier 1995). Institu- tions that survivedMcCarthyism also servedas bridgesbetween the protestcycles of the 1930s and 1960s (Horton et al 1990). The rediscovery and nurturingof musical and other artistictraditions are importantfeatures of social movements' action repertoiresand continuity (Eyerman& Jamison 1998), although expres- sive culturehas also sometimesconstituted a source of intramovementcontention (Monson 1997).

IDENTITY-BASED AND ANTI-IDENTIT''YPOLITICS

The "inventionand creationof new rights"(Dagnino 1998, p. 50; Melucci 1989), rooted in the strugglesof emergentsocial groups, clearly acceleratedin "the long 1960s" along with the mass adoptionand refashioningof views and practicesthat were earlier peculiar to small cultural and political avant-gardes(Flacks 1988, Fraseret al 1988, Isserman& Kazin 2000). For Castells (1997) as for his mentor Touraine,"identity" is a process throughwhich social actorsconstruct meaning on the basis of culturalattributes that are given priorityover other potential sources of meaning. Calhoun (1994) historicizes the category in relation to the rise of individualismsince the ProtestantReformation, the advent of nation-states,and Enlightenmentappeals to nature as a "moral source."Whether and under what conditions the recent proliferationof particularidentities producedopportunities for new alliances or merely political fragmentationremains much debated,as are the related tendencies of identity-basedmovements to oscillate between down- playing and celebratingdifferences from majoritygroups or to lose theirpolitical characteraltogether. Among the dramaticshifts occurringout of strugglesfor new rightsis the changing view of disability.Charlton (1998) chronicleshow people considereddisabled in southernAfrica, Asia, and the Americas organized,often againstthe wishes of paternalistic,able-bodied advocates, to make notions of normalitymore inclusive and to "breakwith the traditionalperception of disability as a sick, abnormal, and pathetic condition" (p. 10). Disability oppression has interrelatedsources: poverty and powerlessness, resulting from both economic exclusion and under- development(four fifths of the world's disabled live in poor countries);views of the disabled as degradedand aberrant,which legitimize exclusionarypractices; and internalizationby the disabled themselves of attitudesof self-loathing and self-pity, which hinderunderstanding of their situationand organizingaround it. To perhapsa greaterextent than with other movements,the aspirationsof the disabled intersectwith strugglesagainst other forms of discriminationand for housing and veterans'rights, a ban on land mines, the democratizationof technology and scientific knowledge, and the creation or preservationof workplace opportunities and social safety nets. They also, however, complicate the demands of othermovements in ways outsidersseldom anticipate.Saxton (1998), for example, SOCIALMOVEMENTS 299 in a searing critique of assumptions about prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion,challenges the belief that the quality of life for disabled people is necessarily inferior and that raising a child with a disability is an undesirable experience. The reproductiverights movementemphasizes the right to have an abortion; the disabilityrights movement,the right not to have to have an abortion. (p. 375; emphasis in original). Otheridentity-based social movementshave found expandingmainstream con- ceptions of normalitya source of internalcontention. This is dramaticallyillus- tratedin the course of gay and lesbian politics since the 1969 Stonewallrebellion. Early gay liberation movements practiced consciousness raising, exalted long- repressedsexualities, contested the dominantsex/gender system, openly occupied public space, and struggled for nondiscriminationand the depathologizationof homosexuality.The "assimilationist"advocacy groups that emerged out of more radical and inclusive gay liberation movements of the early 1970s engaged in a denial of difference intended to gain access to mainstreamsocial institutions and in positing an artificiallyhomogeneous "gay essence" intendedto build political unity (Cohen 2001). With the advent of AIDS and rising homophobiain the 1980s, and a shift to confrontationaltactics spurredby "the urgency of im- pending death"(Hodge 2000, p. 356), activists attemptedto destabilize the "gay white middle-classidentity," which had dominatedthe movementand to ally with a wider range of sexually, economically, and racially marginalizedcollectivities. In contrastto the assimilationists,this involved an assertionof fundamentaldif- ference with "heteronormativity,"as well as a greater acknowledgmentof how gay and lesbian identities were plural,socially constructed,and inflected by race, class, and national origin (Adam 1995, Stein 1997). This "queer"challenge to earlier gay activism professed to have resolved a central conundrumof identity politics by privileging"affinity," a sharedopposition to class-, race-, and gender- based power and a common AIDS catastropherather than particularvarieties of sexual desire. Some scholar-activists,however, maintain that academic "queer theory" is still mired in privilege, fails to follow the lead of the radical street movement,and gives scant attentionto political-economicaspects of power at all levels, from the state and social class structureto the everydaypractices that shape public space (Hodge 2000). The lattermisgiving is sharedby critics who question whetherthe category"queer" is an "overarchingunifier" or just "anotherfraction in the overall mosaic of contemporarygay and lesbian organizing"(Adam 1995, p. 164). The danger that identity-basedpolitics could become a form of "narcissistic withdrawal"impelled by aspirationsfor individualself-realization and "political tribalism"(Melucci 1989, p. 209) has producedsimilar commentaries from various directions.Claims of difference can fortify demandsfor new rights, but they can imply an abdicationof rights as well. In a scathing attack on "cultural"or 300 EDELMAN

"difference"feminism, di Leonardo(1998) points out that journalisticand New Age "women's culture tropes" ignore political-economic dimensions of gender oppression and presupposean immanentand superiorfemale morality and nur- turingcapability that is held up as an alternativeto the destructivemilitarism and environmentalruin caused by aggressive,patriarchal men. The implicationof such argumentsis that women deserve a place in society not because of any inherent right but because of their innate capacity to make things better,a stance that no other oppressedgroup is requiredto take. "Beneath the current black-female-student-chicano-gay-elderly-youth-disabled, ad nauseam, 'struggles,"'Reed (1999) proclaims in an acerbic yet cogent analysis of postsegregationAfrican-American politics, "lies a simple truth:There is no coherentopposition to the present administrativeapparatus" (p. 55). He attributesthe "atrophyof oppositionwithin the black community"to the breakdown of the civil-rights-era consensus, a media-anointedleadership so enamored of "authenticity"and "corporateracial politics" that it is incapableof acknowledging class and interest-groupdifferentiation within the supposedly unitary "community," and an "academichermeticism" that is isolated from political action and disinterestedin distinguishingchallenges to socioeconomic hierarchyfrom politically insignificant"everyday resistance" fads (1999, pp. 56, 151). Although it would not be hard to take issue with Reed's categorical gloom (or his indiffer- ence to other struggles in his ad nauseaminventory), his largerpoint-that class dynamics arise from and operateautonomously within and across identity-based collectivities-remains an unavoidablelimitation on the emancipatorypotential of movementsdefined in purely identityor differenceterms. A relatedpitfall of identity-basedmobilizations is the facility with which many become little more than fodder for lucrativecorporate marketing crusades. In an astutediscussion of how brandingpractices have generatedanticorporate activism, Klein (1999) maintainsthat "diversity" is now "themantra of global capital,"used to absorbidentity imagery of all kinds in orderto peddle "mono-multiculturalism" across myriaddifferentiated markets (p. 115). Warren's(1998) insightful study of pan-Maya activists, however, highlights complicationsboth of identity-basedmobilization and of calls for a new class politics. Beginning in the mid-1980s, in the aftermathof genocide and in the midst of continuingcivil war, alongside and sometimes againstpopular movements that demandedsocial rights (land, freedom to organize, an end to militaryimpunity), pan-Mayaintellectuals launched an unabashedlyessentialist culturalproject that includesrevitalizing Indian languages, revalorizing ancient calendrical and numer- ical systems (andmore generally,ethnically specific epistemologies, spiritualities, and leadership practices), and overturningreceived Ladino versions of history with new readingsof indigenousand Spanishchronicles. Their movementsclaim a privileged authorityin representingMayan peoples, and strive for a "pluricul- tural"nation in which they have collective, as well as individual,rights. The pan- Maya movements' carving out of political space via essentialist practices leads Warrento argue for a middle groundin the analysis of identity politics, focusing SOCIALMOVEMENTS 301

on "the coexistence of multiple politics and histories...hiddenby the antagonism of... anthropologicalconstructions" (1998, p. 179).5 Transcendingsuch constructionsin the pursuitof a groundedanalysis of multiple politics is a challenging task. Chhachhi& Pittin (1999) question approaches that either consider the primacy of one identity over anotheror simply "add to- gethergender, ethnicity and class" (p. 68). Instead,they suggest viewing women's possibilities for action through the prism of time, space, and place in order to understandhow their "very multiplicity of roles and plethora of pressures may provide both the impetus and the necessary networking"for them to press demands at various work sites (p. 74). They suggest that "the question of women's consciousness"remains an "underdeveloped"area in theorizingiden- tity politics. A considerableethnographic literature on women in situationsof national conflict, however, suggests that this projectis furtheralong than Chhachhi & Pittin believe. Hart's (1996) oral historical account of women in the Greek Resistance, Abdulhadi's (1998) examination of Palestinian women's efforts to carve out autonomous space within a larger nationalist movement, Aretxaga's (1997) work on gender politics in NorthernIreland, and Arditti's (1999) study of grandmothersof the disappearedin Argentinaare notably successful efforts to move beyond formulaic "additive"approaches and to comprehendhow multiple identities emerge from and configure each other and political action, subjectivity, and memory. Debates continue over the limitations and potentialities of multiple politics (Stephen 1997), including mobilizing around motherhood and the extent to which this implies essentialist notions of womanhood(Gledhill 2000).

RIGHT-WINGAND CONSERVATIVEMOVEMENTS

Even though identity-basedmovements sometimes walk a fine line between cel- ebratingparticularities and promotingexclusivity or intolerance,the former di- mension has received vastly more attentionthan the latter.NSMs scholars have largely skirtedthe issue of right-wing collective action, in part due to Touraine's (and others') limiting of the field to movements that seek "historicity"and in

5Inthis she echoesfeminists who call for "risking"essentialism in the formativestages of movements(Calhoun 1994). Although Warren locates the origins of pan-Mayamovements in 1940sCatholic activism and in thecrisis of theGuatemalan state in the 1980s,Forster's (1998)reconstruction of ethniclabor migration streams in the 1940spoints to a proto-pan- Mayanblurring of specificindigenous identities in the piedmontplantation belt. Grandin (2000),who tracespan-Maya ideology to the nineteenth-centuryindigenist liberalism of K'iche'elites, argues that "the danger faced by manyof the currentproponents of Mayan nationalismhas to do with theirtrading in the sortof universalismsthat will renderthe creationof an indigenousidentity meaningless to the majorityof rural,poverty-stricken Maya"(pp. 228-29). 302 EDELMAN

partbecause researchersoverwhelmingly choose to study "attractive"movements with which they sympathize(Calhoun 1994, Hellman 1992, Pichardo1997, Stam 1999). Political process theorists typically emphasized Western civic movements and largely sidesteppedin-depth analysis of troublingquestions raised by the "violent, sectarian, and self-enclosed identity movements" of the 1990s (Tarrow1998, p. 204). Apartfrom some attemptsto systematizeconcepts such as backlash and reaction (Hirschman1991) or to view conservativemovements as merely reactionarymirror-images of identity-basedNSMs (Gamer 1997), studies of the right constitute yet another parallel universe in collective action research, with inconsistent connections to larger traditions of social movement theory. The exceptions suggest a variety of moves to specify the objects of study.For Ginsburg(1998), "conservatism"involves "a complex balancing act between a libertariancelebration of individualism,economic freedom, and capitalism, and a traditionalistemphasis on community,moral order,and the like" (pp. 47-48). She describes fieldworkwith pro-choice and antiabortionactivists-surely itself a balancing act-and charts the changing composition of the right-to-life movement, as evangelical Protestantmen-many inclined to violence-displaced the moderatewomen who had been local leaders in North Dakota. Diamond (1995), in a far-reachinganalysis of U.S. right-wing politics, objects that conservatism implies reticence aboutchange and thus fails to capturewhat many self-described conservativesare about. "To be right-wing,"she argues,"means to supportthe state in its capacity as enforcerof orderand to oppose the state as distributorof wealth and power downwardand more equitablyin society" (p. 9, emphasis in original). Berlet& Lyons (2000), in a landmarkstudy of Americanright-wing populism from Bacon's rebellion in 1676 to the militias of the 1990s, note that classifying populist movements(which make antielitistappeals to "thepeople") along a right-left spectrumis often misleading.In contrastto Diamond,they stressthat some rightist movements have advocateddownward distribution of wealth and power, though not to everyone,and that some rejectthe statealtogether and have triedto overthrow it (pp. 5-6). In an examinationof putschistmilitary officers in Argentina,homi- cidal landownersin Brazil, and violent paramilitarybands in Nicaragua,Payne (2000) defines her object as "uncivil movements,"which employ deliberatevio- lence and threats, as well as more conventional tactics and appeals to threatened identities, to advance exclusionarypolicies in democraticpolities. Echoing Melucci's discussion of NSMs, she declares that uncivil movements "emphasize identity over interests.They use culturalsymbols to empower new movements" (p. 17). The emergence of antiimmigrantmovements in Europe is among the cases that indicate the urgency of grasping how the right deploys cultural politics. Stolcke (1995) contends that new "doctrinesof exclusion" differ from older va- rieties of organicistracism in positing irreduciblecultural differences and deeply ingrainedpropensities to fear andloathe strangersand to wish to live amongpeople SOCIALMOVEMENTS 303 of the same national group. This new cultural fundamentalismeschews claims about innate inferiority in favor of a rhetoric of difference. It posits a supposedly generic human attribute-anxiety about the "other"-in order to construct an antiuniversalistpolitics, assiduously avoiding rhetorictoo directly suggestive of fascist and Nazi racism. Stoler (1999), in a brief paper on the far-rightFront Nationale (FN) in Aix-en-Provence,calls attention-like Stolcke-to a peculiar situationwhere racialdiscourse looms large and is simultaneouslyeffaced or irrel- evant.However, in contrastto frameworksthat distinguish a new "culturalracism" from earlier "colonial racism," she indicates that the old racism also spoke "a language of cultural competencies, 'good taste' and discrepant parenting values" (p. 33), while the contemporaryFN draws from a broaderFrench cultural repertoirethat includes a toned-downracism but also patrioticrepublicanism and anxieties about Europeanintegration and globalization. In the United States, a basic theme of right-wing populist narrativesis "producerism,"which "posits a noble hard-workingmiddle group constantly in conflict with lazy, malevolent, or sinful parasites at the top and bottom of the social order"(Berlet & Lyons, p. 348). Althoughthe ChristianRight employs coded scapegoatingto identify social problemswith low-income communitiesof color, far-rightwhite supremacists endorse an explicitly biological racism.Each tends to reinforcethe otherin public discourse.NSMs theorists,as well as governmentagencies, media, and humanre- lations organizations,frequently brand right-wing movements "irrational" (Cohen 1985, pp. 666-67). Berlet & Lyons (2000) warn against such "centrist/extremist" interpretations,which see such movements as fringe phenomena.This, they argue, "obscuresthe rationalchoices and partiallylegitimate grievances that help to fuel right-wing populist movements, and hides the fact that right-wing bigotry and scapegoating are firmly rooted in the mainstreamsocial and political order" (p. 14). They give only passing attention, however, to how the owner- ship and content of communicationsmedia shape notions of common sense and facilitate growth of right-wing movements. The impact of hate radio and inter- net sites seems to have been covered most by scholars interested in monitor- ing (Hilliard & Keith 1999), ratherthan theorizing (Castells 1997), reactionary movements. Stock (1996) considers producerismalmost synonymous with the "ruralpro- ducerradicalism" that (along with a "cultureof vigilantism")has been a constant of U.S. small-farmerpolitics for 200 years. Early twentieth-centuryreform liberalism, such as the Farmer-LaborParty of the 1920s, had ties to ruralproducer radicalism, but more recent "compensatoryliberalism" neglected the values of many ruralAmericans. The U.S. farm crisis of the 1980s gave rise to armedright-wing groups(Stock 1996) and to antimilitarist,conservationist organizations influenced by Christiannotions of land stewardship(Mooney & Majka 1995). Clearly,"the roots of violence, racism, and hatredcan be and have been nourishedin the same soil and from the same experiencesthat generated rural movements for democracy and equality"(Stock 1996, p. 148). 304 EDELMAN

TRANSNATIONALMOVEMENTS: GLOBALIZATION-FROM-BELOW?

At the same time that some U.S. farmers turned to right-wing populism, others gravitated to movements-many of them transnational-influenced by environmentalism, feminism, and opposition to unfettered free trade (Mooney & Majka 1995, Ritchie 1996). From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, farmers' protests at GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) meetings galvanized a growing international movement critical of the lack of democratic accountability of supranational institutions, of the terms under which agriculture was included in free- trade agreements, and of how neoliberal policies and industrial farming threatened rural livelihoods, human health, genetic diversity, and the resource base (Brecher et al 2000). Small-farmer opposition actions and transnational organizing flourished in areas where regional economic integration and supranational governance were making their weight felt at the local level. In France, farmer Jose Bove demolished a McDonald's, attracting worldwide attention and national acclaim for his denunciations of agribusiness, free trade, and "la malbouffe," a word he coined that may be roughly glossed as "junk food" (Bove et al 2000, pp. 77- 84). The action of Bove and his collaborators was modeled in part on events in India, where peasants in Karnataka destroyed a Kentucky Fried Chicken out- let and ransacked facilities owned by the multinational seed company Cargill (Gupta 1998). In North America, the Canadian National Farmers Union spear- headed links with counterpart groups in Mexico and the United States in order to influence the NAFTA negotiations (Ritchie 1996). In Central America, peasant leaders forged contacts with European, Canadian, and Indian activists, created a regional transnational lobbying organization, and played a major role in the formation of a global small farmer network called the Via Campesina/Peasant Road (Edelman 1998). In 1993, Falk introduced the phrase globalization-from-below to refer to a global civil society linking "transnational social forces animated by environmental con- cerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and a vision of human community based on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an end to poverty, oppression, hu- miliation, and collective violence" (1993, p. 39). Explicitly directed against elite and corporate-led "globalization from above," the multistranded opposition that Falk described involved diverse sectors organizing across borders and raising connections like those that small farmers made between livelihood, health, intellectual property, environment, human rights, and the expanding dominance of supranational governance institutions. The Barbados meetings in the 1970s and after that brought together native activists and anthropologists from throughout the Americas (Brysk 2000), the global women's meetings sponsored by the United Nations in the 1980s and 1990s (Alvarez 1998), the 1992 Earth Summit (Gupta 1998), the NGO forums held in tandem with World Bank, International Monetary Fund, (IMF) and Group of Seven Industrialized countries meetings, and a multitude of similar events connected issues and activists in postmaterialist and identity- and SOCIALMOVEMENTS 305 class-basedmovements as neverbefore (Adam 1995, Brecheret al 2000, Charlton 1998). Just a few years ago, one of the foremost observersof this process could state that the new internationalismshave been "subject to little strategic reflection" and have "as yet little or no theoreticalstatus" (Waterman 1998, p. 4). Appadurai (2000) recentlyremarked that "the sociology of these emergentsocial forms-part movements,part networks, part organizations-has yet to be developed"(p. 15). Researchon transnationalorganizing has, however,flourished in the mid- to late 1990s. Initially, it usually looked at organizationsthat crossed one or two ad- jacent borders, such as issue-orientedbinational coalitions of U.S. and Mexican activists(Fox 2000), the sanctuarymovement that aided Central American refugees (Cunningham1999), or anti-NAFTAcoalitions (Ayres 1998). Increasingly,scholars have examined globalization-from-belowin terms of its antecedents,protest repertoires,geographic reach, and theoreticaland strategicunderpinnings. Risse- Kappen (1995) investigates how internationalgovernance structureslegitimize transnationalactivists' efforts, increase their access to nationalpolities, and bol- ster their capacity to form effective coalitions. Smith et al (1997) analyze a wide range of transnationalactivism and advancea broaderproject of relatingcontem- porary organizing to previous cross-borderefforts, earlier theories of collective action, and debates about global governance.Waterman (1998) provides a subtle discussion of emerging labor internationalisms,grounded in a thorough understanding of old working-classtransnational solidarities. Keck & Sikkink (1998) focus on transnationaladvocacy networks, which they distinguishfrom coalitions, movements, and "civil society" by their "nodal"organization and their use of information,symbolic, leverage,and accountabilitypolitics. They employ a concept of "network"that potentiallyincludes social movements,but also media, unions, NGOs, and intergovernmentaland governmentalorganizations. When the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize was awardedto the InternationalCampaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams, the ICBL had to wait for nearly a year to receive its half of the award money because it had no bank account and no address and was not an officially registeredorganization anywhere in the world (Mekata2000). Acephalous,horizontal, loosely networkedalliances, of which the ICBL was emblematic,have emerged as majoractors on the world scene and are frequentlysaid to have importantadvantages vis-a-vis hierarchicalorganizations, particularlystates, but also supranationalgovernance and financial institutions. Al- thoughall-embracing definitions of the termnetwork are common (Castells 1997), more restrictedinterpretations are most revealingas regardsconcrete instancesof collective action. Among the most developed discussions of networksis the pre- viously cited RAND study of the Zapatistas(Ronfeldt et al 1998). Distinguishing between "chain,""star" or "hub,"and "all-channel"networks, depending on the degree and type of interconnectionbetween nodes, the RAND authorsare mainly interested in developing a counterinsurgencystrategy to replace 1980s "low- intensityconflict" doctrine. Among theirconcerns are "swarming," when dispersed nodes of a networkconverge on a target(as humanrights NGOs did in Chiapas), 306 EDELMAN

and "sustainablepulsing," when "swarmers"coalesce, disperse, and recombine for attackson new targets(as in anti-Maastrichtmarches in Europeand, one sup- poses, morerecent demonstrations in Seattleand elsewhere). According to RAND, combating networksrequires mimicking their form with interagencyand multi- jurisdictionalcooperation. States seeking foreign investmentare most vulnerable to "netwar"campaigns that may damage their image or generate perceptionsof instability.Giant corporationsthat invest heavily in linking brandimages to con- sumer identities may be similarly threatenedby informationalcampaigns, such as the antisweatshopmovement, that expose perniciousenvironmental and labor practices(Klein 1999, Ross 1997). Fox (2000) specifies with greater clarity than most theorists differences between transnationalmovements, coalitions, and networks,according to the extent to which they engage in mutualsupport and joint actionsand share organized social bases, ideologies, and political cultures (with movements united along the most dimensionsand networks along the fewest). He cautionsthat although the concepts are often used interchangeablyand the categoriessometimes blur,such analytical distinctions are necessary to keep in view imbalances and political differences within what might otherwiseappear from the outsideto be cohesive "transnational movements."Like Keck & Sikkink (1998), he is circumspectregarding hypothe- ses about "global"civil society because in their "hardversion" such assertions suggest that changing internationalpolitical norms and new technologies have fundamentallyand universally altered the balance of power between state and society. Appadurai(2000) also points to the limited success thattransnational networks have had in "self-globalization"and attributesit to "a tendency for stakeholder organizationsconcerned with bread-and-butterissues to oppose local interests againstglobal alliances"(p. 17), somethingamply documented by otherresearchers (Edelman 1998, Fox & Brown 1998). His assertionthat networks' greatestedge vis-a-vis corporationsis that "they do not need to compete with each other"is perhapsless persuasivebecause networksand theirnodes collaborateeven as they vie for funding, supporters,and political access, and it is their loose, horizontal structureinstead that confers advantagesover hierarchicalorganizations, as the RAND group (Ronfeldt et al 1998) worries. Similarly, the notion that "one of the biggest disadvantagesfaced by activists working for the poor in fora such as the World Bank, the U.N. system, the WTO [WorldTrade Organization],[and] NAFTA... is their alienationfrom the vocabularyused by the university-policy nexus" (Appadurai2000, p. 17) is belied by a range of investigationsfrom various world regions that demonstratelevels of sophisticationon the part of grassroots activists that sometimes exceed those of their elite antagonists (Edelman 1998, Fox & Brown 1998, Gupta 1998). Otherpower differentials,beyond purely discursive ones, clearly skew contention between activists and these formidable institutions. "Civil society"-"global," "national,"and "local"-continues nonetheless to generate considerable excitement and an outsized literature,most of it beyond SOCIALMOVEMENTS 307

the scope of this article. Scholars have devoted extensive attentionto the geneal- ogy and boundariesof the concept (Cohen 1995, Comaroff & Comaroff 1999, Walzer 1995), its Gramscianroots (Nielsen 1995), and-more germane in con- sidering social movements-to conservative and progressive variants of "civil society" discourse (Macdonald 1994, White 1994) and to the complicated relations between movements and other organizationalforms which make up civil society, particularlyNGOs (Alvarez 1998, Edelman 1999, Fox & Brown 1998, Gill 2000), but also political parties (Schneider& Schneider2001). The key wa- tershed in discussions from a wide variety of viewpoints and regions is the end of the Cold War, which at times is attributednot just to the failure of centrally planned economies to keep pace with informationaland technological innova- tions but also to civil society itself, either its rise in the East (Chilton 1995) or its activities in the West (Tirman 1999). The end of superpowercompetition opened political space not only in erstwhilesocialist societies but also in capitalist states where corruptionand authoritarianismin political life could no longer be justified by the struggle against internationalcommunism. Weller (1999) shuns the term civil society as Eurocentricand insufficientlyattentive to informalcom- munity ties in his examinationof institutionsin Taiwan and China "intermedi- ate" between the state and family. He nonetheless develops a suggestive thesis about how village temples and informal local associations, often led by women and mobilizing aroundidioms of traditionalChinese culture,energized national- level environmentalstruggles in Taiwan.He indicates that comparablegroups on the mainland already back underreportedprotest movements and could evolve as components of a gradualprocess of democratization.Schneider & Schneider (2001) trace the emergence of antimafiacivic movements in Sicily, which they locate in the expansion after WorldWar II of urban,educated, outward-looking social groups and the erosion in the post-Cold War era of an anti-Commu- nist landowner-ChristianDemocratic-organized crime alliance. Like Weller,who emphasizes the political polivalence of traditionalChinese institutions and the significance of local practices in a rapidly changing national and international context, the Schneidersdemonstrate that the struggle to retake social space from the mafia and its allies entails contention in neighborhoods,kin groups, work- places, schools, and state institutions,as well as nurturingalternative civic sensibilities and debunkingassumptions about the ancientroots of the mafiain Sicilian society. The end of the Cold War,while opening political space for all mannerof civil society initiatives, also broughtaccelerated economic liberalizationand pressure on welfare-stateinstitutions in developed and developing countries.Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, duringthe free-markettriumphalism that swept much of the world in the 1980s, it became increasingly artificialto envision NSMs as unengaged with the state. Indeed, fiscal austerity and draconian"adjustments" in public-sectorservices made states key targetsfor forces seeking to safeguard historic social conquests and prevent furtherrollback of healthcare,education, housing, and transportationprograms. It is by now commonplaceto indicatehow 308 EDELMAN

globalizationgenerates identity politics (Castells 1997), how attackson welfare- stateinstitutions fire resistance movements (Edelman 1999), andhow supranational governanceinstitutions (NAFTA, IMF, World Bank, WTO) are part and parcel of each process (Ayres 1998, Ritchie 1996). It is less frequentto find analyses that link these trends to the expanding movement against corporatepower and unfetteredfree trade which burst into public consciousness in 1999 during the Seattle demonstrationsand riots againstthe WTO.6 At first glance the anti-free trade coalition of environmental,labor, and farm activists would seem an unlikely combinationof social forces, demands,and political practices.Brecher et al (2000) arguethat an "epochalchange" is occurring, as disparatemovements find common groundand press not just for new rights,but for adherenceby corporations,states, and suprastateinstitutions to generallyheld norms. Accordingto these authors, the apparentopposition among strengtheninglocal, national,and global institutions is based on a false premise: that more power at one level of governance is necessarily disempowering to people at others. But today the exact opposite is the case. The empowermentof local and nationalcommuni- ties and polities today requiresa degree of global regulationand governance (p. 40). Although duly cognizant of the divisions that afflict social movements, they point to successful campaignsto securedebt forgiveness for underdevelopedcoun- tries, to derail the proposedMultilateral Agreement on Investment,to secure rati- ficationof a global climate treatyand a protocolregulating genetically engineered organisms,and to stall the WTOMillennium Round as examplesof how grassroots pressuremay establish and enforce new norms of conduct that betterbalance the public interestand special interests. With a lucidity and empiricalfoundation far beyond anythingby Habermasor Melucci, Klein (1999) examines how market-basedinvasions of public space and individuals' "life-worlds"have become an impetus for anticorporateactivism. Global corporations' outsourcing of production had allowed them to concen- trate on branding and on efforts to insinuate brand concepts into the broader culture via sponsorships,advertising, and "synergies"with the sports, arts, and entertainmentworlds. In North America and elsewhere, this was taking place alongside privatizationof services, forcing schools, neighborhoods,museums, and broadcastersto turn to corporationsfor support,thus commercializingwhat remainedof the public sphere.Superstore-studded malls were reshapingcommu- nities into newly privatizedpseudo-public spaces. Brandingbecame so entangled with culture,space, and identitiesthat consumers increasingly felt bombardedand

6Thesudden media attention to anti-free-tradeactivism in the aftermathof the Seattle demonstrationsraises the question of theeffectiveness of socialmovements' use of disrup- tiveand violent versus moderate tactics, about which there has long been substantial debate (Giugni1999, Piven & Cloward1977, Tarrow 1998). SOCIALMOVEMENTS 309

complicit in and threatenedby corporate wrongdoing. High-profile events in 1995-1996 that pitted environmentaland huian rights activists against some of the world's most powerfulcorporations-the "McLibel"trial of anti-McDonald's activists in England, Aung San Suu Kyi's denunciationsof labor conditions in Burma, Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution during the Ogoni people's mobilization against Shell Oil-led growing numbers to link particularproblems to a broadercorporate assault on democracy,on communities, on culturalproduction (concentrationof culture industries,restrictions on artisanalfoods), and on the environment.The new willingness of establishedhuman-rights and envi- ronmentalorganizations to protest corporatemalfeasance further fed the "rising bad mood" regardingtransnational corporations and supranationalgovernance institutions.

CONCLUSION

Recent writings on collective action suggest several areas of potential cross- fertilization that could invigorate social movements research. Political process and NSMs theoristscould benefit from a greatersensitivity to the historical and culturalprocesses throughwhich some of theirmain analyticalcategories (frames, submergednetworks, movement culture)are constructed,as well as a more gen- uine appreciationof the lived experienceof movementparticipants and nonpartici- pants, somethingthat is accessible primarilythrough ethnography, oral narratives, or documentaryhistory. Ethnographicanalyses of social movements have been most persuasivewhen they transcendthe single-organizationor single-issue focus of much collective action researchin favor of broaderexaminations of the political and social fields within which mobilizations occur. Although ethnographers have often provided compelling, fine-grainedaccounts of collective action, they have been less consistent when it comes to developing dynamic analyses of either the largerpolitical contexts in which mobilizationsoccur or the preexisting militanttraditions and the organizingprocesses that constitutemovements' prox- imate and remote roots. To anthropologists,some of the issues (rationality,free riders) that continue to engross the grand theorists of contentious politics may appearmisplaced or peculiarlydevoid of culturalcontent, but others of their con- cerns certainly merit greaterattention (cycles of contention, protest repertoires) if anthropologistsare to avoid revertingto their traditionaldisciplinary predilec- tion for advancingahistorical pseudo-explanations for phenomenawith profound historicalroots. The role of ethnographyin the study of social movementshas been significant but seldomtheorized. Ethnographers-like historianswho workwith documentary or oral sources-may have privileged access to the lived experience of activists and nonactivists,as well as a window onto the "submerged"organizing, informal networks,protest activities, ideological differences,public claim-making,fear and repression,and internaltensions, which are almost everywherefeatures of social 310 EDELMAN

movements. Some of these aspects raise questions that can be addressed only though ethnographicor ethnographicallyinformed historical research.Weller's (1999) study of how environmentalismemerged from local temples in Taiwan, Whittier's(1995) specificationof how lesbian communes contributedto keeping radicalfeminism alive in the 1980s, and the Schneiders'(2001) attendanceat rural Sicilian picnics wheremafiosi and antimafiosi feasted together, uneasily aware that they were antagonistsin a largercultural-political struggle, are merely a few exam- ples of the kinds of processes availableto ethnographicobservers but largely invisible to those workingat a temporalor geographicaldistance from the activitiesthey are analyzing. As a collection of methods, however, ethnographyalone-as tra- ditionallyconceived-is hardlysufficient for studyingthe deep historicalroots or wide geographical connections of most contemporarymobilizations. Nor does ethnographynecessarily innoculate researchersagainst the common pitfalls of overidentificationwith the movements they study, accepting activist claims at face value, or representing"movements" as more cohesive than they really are (Edelman 1999, Hellman 1992). If anythinghas distinguishedanthropological, as opposed to other,students of social movements, it may well be a greaterpreoccupation with the researcher's political engagement, from the "reinvented"anthropology of the early 1970s to the "barefoot"anthropology of the 1990s (Burdick 1998, p. 181). For some, the "committed"stance is an unproblematicmatter of preexisting ethical-political principles, as when one U.S. anthropologist-newly arrivedin South Africa- identifiedherself in a squattercamp as "a memberof the ANC [AfricanNational Congress]" (Scheper-Hughes1995, p. 414). An astute scholar of rural Mexico (Pare 1994, p. 15) observes, For many of us it turned out to be impossible to record acts of repression and forms of exploitation and to witness the difficulties the peasant organizations had in making their voice heardwithout taking sides.... Participa- tion-whether directly in the organization,in advising groups, in collective analysis with the organizationsthemselves, in negotiations, in publicity, in solidarity,in communications,or in the governmentas a planner, functio- nary or technician-necessarily implies taking a position, a "committed" vision. Ethnographersof social movements who share these sensibilities frequently indicate that their own political involvement(Charlton 1998, Cunningham1999, Schneider 1995, Stephen 1997, Waterman1998) or their location in groups per- ceived as sympathetic or suffering a similar oppression (Aretxaga 1997, Hart 1996) is precisely what permits them access to activist interlocutors.Yet un- problematicversions of this position potentially mask vital movement dynamics and may even limit researchers'political usefulness for activists. Real social movementsare often notoriouslyephemeral and factionalized(Brecher et al 2000, Tilly 1986), manifest major discrepancies among leaders and between leaders SOCIALMOVEMENTS 311

and supporters(Edelman 1999, Morris 1999, Rubin 1997), and-probably most important-rarely attractmore than a minority of the constituencies they claim to represent(Burdick 1998). To which faction or leader does the ethnographer "commit"?What does that commitment imply about hearing dissenting or un- interestedvoices or grasping alternativehistories, political projects, or forms of cultural transformation?If commitment is a sine qua non of social movements ethnography,how are we to understandmovements about which we do not feel "intenselyprotective" (Hellman 1992, p. 55) or which we may, in fact, not like at all? The tendencyof collective action scholarsto focus on groupsand organizations with explicit programsfor change is, as Burdicksuggests, in effect an acceptance "of the claim of the movement to be a privileged site in the contestation and change in social values." Elevating the question of lack of participationto the same level of importanceas mobilization, he charges that much "sociological writing on the 'freeloader'problem ring[s] a bit hollow and even a bit arrogant in its presumption... that social movement organizationalaction is the only, or best, social change game in town" (1998, pp. 199-200). In a candid account of his efforts to place researchfindings at the service of his activist interlocutors,he argues that accompanyinga movement may, for the ethnographer,most usefully entail "reportingthe patternedtestimony of people in the movement's targeted constituencywho on the one handheld views andengaged in actions very much in line with movementgoals, butwho on the otherhand felt stronglyput off, alienated, or marginalizedby one or anotheraspect of movementrhetoric or practice"(1998, p. 191). In order to accomplish this, though, it is not the movement itself that becomes the object of study, but ratherthe broadersocial field within which it operates(cf. Gledhill 2000). The widening of social fields implied by the rise of transnationalactivism suggests thatthis challengewill be even harderto meet in the eraof globalization-from- below. Over the past threedecades, theoristshave had to scrambleto keep up with the rapidlyevolving formsof contentiouspolitics. Fromidentity-based movements that allegedly eschewed engagementwith the state, to mobilizationsthat targeted neoliberalefforts to decimate social-welfareinstitutions, to more recent struggles against corporatepower and supranationalgoverance and internationalfinancial institutions,"scholars have come late to the party"(Keck & Sikkink1998, p. 4). Part of the difficultyis recognizingtransformative moments as they are being lived and even whatcomprises "movement activity." The new anticorporateactivism, for example,employs an actionrepertoire that combines decidedly postmodern elements (informationalpolitics, cyber-attacks,and "swarming")with othersthat hark back to early nineteenth-centuryforms of direct action, albeit with global ratherthan local audiences (uprootinggenetically modified crops, ransackingcorporate fran- chises). Whetheror not we areon the verge of a new cycle of NSMs, it is alreadyevi- dentthat understanding today's mobilizations will requirenew conceptionsof what constitutesethnography, observation, participation, and certainlyengagement. 312 EDELMAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Jimmy Weir and Susan Falls for research assistance, to the nu- merous colleagues who provided bibliographical advice, and to John Burdick and Khaled Furani for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this review.

Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org

LITERATURE CITED

AbdulhadiR. 1998. The Palestinianwomen's Berlet C, Lyons MN. 2000. Right-WingPop- autonomousmovement: emergence, dynam- ulism in America: Too Close for Comfort. ics, and challenges. Gend. Soc. 12(6):649- New York:Guilford 73 Boudreau V. 1996. Northern theory, south- AdamBD. 1995. TheRise of a Gay andLesbian ern protest: opportunity structure analysis Movement.New York:Twayne. Rev. ed. in cross-national perspective. Moblization Alvarez SE. 1998. Latin American feminisms 1(2):175-89 "go global": trends of the 1990s and chal- Bove J, DufourF, LuneauG. 2000. Le Monde lenges for the new millennium.See Alvarez n'est pas une Marchandise. Des Paysans et al 1998, pp. 293-324 contre la Malbouffe.Paris: Decouverte Alvarez SE, Dagnino E, EscobarA, ed. 1998. BrecherJ, Costello T, Smith B. 2000. Global- Culturesof Politics/Politics of Cultures:Re- izationfrom Below: ThePower of Solidarity. VisioningLatin American Social Movements. Boston: South End Boulder,CO: Westview Brysk A. 2000. From Tribal Village to Global AppaduraiA. 2000. Grassroots globalization Village:Indian Rights and InternationalRe- and the research imagination.Public Cult. lations in LatinAmerica. Stanford, CA: Stan- 12(1):1-19 ford Univ. Press ArdittiR. 1999. SearchingforLife: TheGrand- BurdickJ. 1995. Uniting theoryand practicein mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Dis- the ethnographyof social movements:notes appeared Children of Argentina. Berkeley: towarda hopefulrealism. Dialect. Anthropol. Univ. Calif. Press 20:361-85 Arendt H. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarian- Burdick J. 1998. Blessed Anastdcia: Women, ism. New York:Harcourt, Brace & World Race, and Popular Christianity in Brazil. AretxagaB. 1997. ShatteringSilence: Women, New York:Routledge Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Calder6n F, Piscitelli A, Reyna JL. 1992. Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Social movements: actors, theories, expec- Univ. Press tations. See Alvarez et al 1998, pp. 19-36 Ayres JM. 1998. Defying Conventional Wis- CalhounC. 1993. "New social movements"of dom:Political Movementsand PopularCon- the early nineteenthcentury. Soc. Sci. Hist. tentionAgainst NorthAmerican Free Trade. 17(3):385-427 Toronto:Univ. TorontoPress CalhounC. 1994. Social theoryand the politics Baierle SG. 1998. The explosion of experience: of identity.In Social Theoryand the Politics the emergenceof a new ethical-politicalprin- of Identity,ed. C Calhoun,pp. 9-36. Oxford, ciple in popularmovements. See Alvarezet al UK: Blackwell 1998,pp.118-38 Carley M. 1997. Defining forms of successful BaumgardnerJ, RichardsA. 2000. Manifesta: state repressionof social movement organi- Young Women,Feminism, and the Future. zations:a case studyof the FBI's COINTEL- New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux PRO and the American Indian movement. SOCIALMOVEMENTS 313

Res. Soc. Move. Conflict Change 20:151- Dagnino E. 1998. Culture, citizenship, and 76 democracy: changing discourses and prac- Castells M. 1997. The InformationAge: Eco- tices of the LatinAmerican left. See Alvarez nomy,Society and Culture.Vol. 2. ThePower et al 1998, pp. 33-63 of Identity.Oxford, UK: Blackwell Davis DE. 1999. The power of distance: re- CharltonJI. 1998. Nothing About Us Without theorizingsocial movementsin LatinAmer- Us: Disability Oppression and Empower- ica. TheorySoc. 28(4):585-638 ment. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. Press Della Porta D, Diani M. 1999. Social Move- Chhachhi A, Pittin R. 1999. Multiple iden- ments:An Introduction.London: Blackwell tities, multiple strategies:confronting state, Diamond S. 1995. Roads to Dominion: Right- capital and patriarchy.In Labour World- WingMovements and Political Power in the wide in the Era of Globalization:Alternative United States. New York:Guilford Union Models in the New WorldOrder, ed. di Leonardo M. 1998. Exotics at Home: An- R Munck, P Waterman,pp. 64-79. London: thropologies, Others, American Modernity. Macmillan Chicago:Univ. Chicago Press Chilton P. 1995. Mechanics of change: so- Dudziak ML. 2000. Cold War Civil Rights: cial movements,transnational coalitions, and Race and theImage ofAmericanDemocracy. the transformationprocesses in EasternEu- Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniv. Press rope. See Risse-Kappen 1995, pp. 189- Eckstein S, ed. 1989. Power and Popular 226 Protest: Latin AmericanSocial Movements. Chomsky A, Lauria-SantiagoA, eds. 1998. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. Press. Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the EdelmanM. 1998. Transnationalpeasant poli- Nation-State:The LaboringPeoples of Cen- tics in CentralAmerica. Latin Am. Res. Rev. tral America and the Hispanic Caribbean. 33(3):49-86 Durham,NC: Duke Univ. Press. EdelmanM. 1999. PeasantsAgainst Globaliza- Cohen CJ. 2001. Punks, bulldaggers,and wel- tion: RuralSocial Movementsin Costa Rica. fare queens: the radical potential of queer Stanford,CA: StanfordUniv. Press politics? In SexualIdentities, Queer Politics, EscobarA, Alvarez SE, eds. 1992. The Mak- ed. M Blasius, pp. 200-27. Princeton, NJ: ing of Social Movementsin Latin America: PrincetonUniv. Press Identity,Strategy, and Democracy. Boulder, Cohen JL. 1985. Strategy or identity: new CO: Westview theoretical paradigms and contemporary EyermanR, JamisonA. 1998. Music and So- social movements. Soc. Res. 52(4):663- cial Movements:Mobilizing Traditions in the 716 TwentiethCentury. Cambridge,UK: Cam- Cohen JL. 1995. Interpretingthe notion of civil bridge Univ. Press society. See Walzer 1995, pp. 35-40 FalkR. 1993. The makingof global citizenship. Collier GA [with E Lowery Quaratiello].1994. In Global Visions:Beyond the New WorldOr- Basta! Land and the ZapatistaRebellion in der, ed. JB Childs, J Brecher, J Cutler,pp. Chiapas. Oakland, CA: Inst. Food & Dev. 39-50. Boston: South End Policy Fals Borda0. 1992. Social movementsand po- ComaroffJL, ComaroffJ. 1999. Introduction. litical power in Latin America. See Escobar In Civil Societyand the Political Imagination & Alvarez 1992, pp. 303-16 in Africa, ed. JL Comaroff,J Comaroff,pp. FeldmanA. 1991. Formationsof Violence:The 1-43. Chicago:Univ. Chicago. Narrative of the Body and Political Terror Cunningham H. 1999. The ethnography of in NorthernIreland. Chicago: Univ. Chicago transnationalsocial activism: understanding Press the global as local practice. Am. Ethnol. Findlay EJ. 1998. Free love and domesticity: 26(3):583-604 sexuality and the shaping of working-class 314 EDELMAN

feminism in Puerto Rico, 1900-1917. See Retreat of the Bolivian State. New York: Chomsky& Lauria-Santiago1998, pp. 229- ColumbiaUniv. Press 59 GinsburgFD. 1998 [1989]. Contested Lives: FisherD. 1999. "Aband of little comrades":so- The AbortionDebate in an American Com- cialist Sunday schools in Scotland. In Pop- munity.Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press. 2nd ed. ular Education and Social Movements in Giugni M. 1999. Introduction. How social Scotland Today, ed. J Crowther,I Martin, movements matter: past research, present M Shaw, pp. 136-42. Edinburgh:Natl. Org. problems, future developments.See Giugni Adult Learn. et al 1999, pp. xiii-xxxiii Flacks R. 1988. Making History: The Ameri- Giugni M, McAdam D, Tilly C, eds. 1999. can Left and the AmericanMind. New York: How Social MovementsMatter. Minneapo- ColumbiaUniv. Press. lis: Univ. Minn. Press Forster C. 1998. Reforging national revolu- Gledhill J. 2000. Power and its Disguises: An- tion: campesino labor struggles in Guate- thropologicalPerspectives on Politics. Lon- mala, 1944-1954. See Chomsky & Lauria- don: Pluto Press. 2nd. ed. Santiago 1998, pp. 196-226 GrandinG. 2000. The Blood of Guatemala:A FowerakerJ. 1995. Theorizing Social Move- History of Race and Nation. Durham,NC: ments. London:Pluto Duke Univ. Press Fox JA. 2000. Assessing Binational Civil Soci- GrossmannA. 1995. ReformingSex: The Ger- ety Coalitions: Lessonsfrom the Mexico-US man Movementfor Birth Controland Abor- Experience. Work.Pap. No. 26. Santa Cruz: tion Reform,1920-1950. New York:Oxford Chicano/LatinoRes. Cent., Univ. Calif. Univ. Press Fox JA, Brown LD, eds. 1998. The Strug- Grove RH. 1995. Green Imperialism: Colo- gle for Accountability. The World Bank, nial Expansion, TropicalIsland Edens and NGOs, and Grassroots Movements. Cam- the Origins of Environmentalism,1600- bridge, MA: MIT Press 1860. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Fox RG, Starn 0, eds. 1997. Between Resis- Press tance and Revolution:Cultural Politics and Guha R, Martinez-AlierJ. 1997. Varietiesof Social Protest. New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers Environmentalism:Essays North and South. Univ. Press London:Earthscan FraserR, BertauxD, Eynon B, Grele R, Le Gupta A. 1998. Postcolonial Developments: Wita B, et al. 1988. 1968: A StudentGener- Agriculturein the Making of ModernIndia. ation in Revolt. New York:Pantheon Durham,NC: Duke Univ. Press Freeman JB. 2000. WorkingClass New York: HabermasJ. 1981. New social movements.Te- Life and Labor Since World War II. New los 49:33-37 York:New Press Hart J. 1996. New Voices in the Nation: Fromm E. 1941. Escape from Freedom. New Women and the Greek Resistance, 1941- York:Holt, Rhinehart& Winston 1964. Ithaca,NY: CornellUniv. Press GamsonWA, Meyer DS. 1996. Framingpolit- Harvey N. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion: The ical opportunity.See McAdam et al 1996b, Strugglefor Land and Democracy. Durham, pp. 274-90 NC: Duke Univ. Press GarnerR. 1997. Fifty years of social movement Hellman JA. 1992. The study of new social theory:an interpretation.In Social Movement movements in Latin America and the ques- Theoryand Research:An AnnotatedBiblio- tion of autonomy. See Escobar & Alvarez graphical Guide, ed. R Garer, J Tenuto,pp. 1992, pp. 52-61 1-58. Lanham,MD: Scarecrow Heywood L, Drake J, eds. 1997. Third Wave Gill L. 2000. Teetering on the Rim: Global Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Restructuring,Daily Life, and the Armed Minneapolis:Univ. Minn. Press SOCIALMOVEMENTS 315

Hilliard RL, Keith MC. 1999. Wavesof Ran- de Union Movement,1964-1985. Philadel- cor: Tuning in the Radical Right. Armonk, phia: Temple Univ. Press NY: Sharpe McAdam D, McCarthyJD, Zald MN. 1996a. HirschmanAO. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reac- Introduction: opportunities, mobilizing tion: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Cam- structures,and framingprocesses-toward a bridge, MA: HarvardUniv. Press synthetic,comparative perspective on social HobsbawmE, Rude G. 1968. CaptainSwing: A movements. See McAdam et al 1996b, pp. Social History of the GreatEnglish Agricul- 1-20 tural Uprisingof 1830. New York:Pantheon McAdam D, McCarthyJD, Zald MN, eds. Hodge GD. 2000. Retrenchmentfrom a queer 1996b. ComparativePerspectives on Social ideal: class privilege and the failure of iden- Movements:Political Opportunities,Mobi- tity politics in AIDS activism.Environ. Plan. lizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. D 18:355-76 Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniv. Press Horton M, Kohl J, Kohl H. 1990. The Long McAdam D, TarrowS, Tilly C. 2001. Dyna- Haul: An Autobiography.New York: Dou- mics of Contention.Cambridge, UK: Cam- bleday bridge Univ. Press Houtzager PP, Kurtz MJ. 2000. The institu- McCarthyJD, ZaldMN. 1977. Resourcemobi- tional roots of popular mobilization: state lization and social movements:a partialthe- transformationand rural politics in Braziland ory.Am. J. Sociol. 82(6):1212-41 Chile, 1960-1995. Comp. Stud. Soc. Hist. MekataM. 2000. Building partnershipstoward 42(2):394-424 a common goal: experiences of the interna- IssermanM, Kazin M. 2000. AmericaDivided: tional Campaignto Ban Landmines.In The The Civil Warof the 1960s. New York:Ox- ThirdForce: TheRise of TransnationalCivil ford Univ. Press Society, ed. AM Florini, pp. 143-76. Wash- JuddRW. 2000. CommonLands, CommonPeo- ington, DC: CarnegieEndow. Int. Peace ple: The Origins of Conservationin North- MelucciA. 1989.Nomads of thePresent: Social ern New England. Cambridge,MA: Harvard Movementsand IndividualNeeds in Contem- Univ. Press porary Society. Philadelphia:Temple Univ. Keck ME, Sikkink K. 1998. Activists Be- Press yond Borders: Advocacy Networks in Inter- Melucci A. 1996. Challenging Codes: Collec- national Politics. Ithaca, NY: Corell Univ. tive Action in the InformationAge. Cam- Press bridge, UK: CambridgeUniv. Press Klein N. 1999. No Logo: TakingAim at the Mishler PC. 1999. Raising Reds: The Young Brand Bullies. New York:Picador USA Pioneers,Radical SummerCamps, and Com- Laclau E, Mouffe C. 1985. Hegemonyand So- munistPolitical Culturein the UnitedStates. cialist Strategy: Towardsa Radical Demo- New York:Columbia Univ. Press cratic Politics. London:Verso Monson I. 1997. Abbey Lincoln's straight LarafiaE, JohnstonH, GusfieldJR, eds. 1994. ahead: jazz in the era of the civil rights New Social Movements:From Ideology to movement. See Fox & Star 1997, pp. 171- Identity.Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press 94 Lerer G. 1998. The meaning of Seneca Falls: Mooney PH, Majka TJ. 1995. Farmers' and 1848-1998. Dissent 45(4):35-41 FarmWorkers' Movements: Social Protest in MacdonaldL. 1994. Globalising civil society: AmericanAgriculture. New York:Twayne interpretinginternational NGOs in Central Morris AD. 1999. A retrospective on the America.Millennium J. Int. Stud.23(2):267- civil rights movement:political and intellec- 85 tual landmarks.Annu. Rev. Sociol. 25:517- Maybury-LewisB. 1994. The Politics of the 39 Possible: The BrazilianRural Workers'Tra- Nash J. 1997. The fiesta of the word: the 316 EDELMAN

Zapatistauprising and radicaldemocracy in The Case Against the Global Economy and Mexico. Am. Anthropol.99(2):261-74 for a Turntoward the Local, ed. J Mander, Nielsen K. 1995. Reconceptualizingcivil soci- E Goldsmith, pp. 494-500. San Francisco: ety for now: some somewhatGranscian turn- SierraClub ings. See Walzer 1995, pp. 41-67 Ronfeldt D, ArquillaJ, Fuller GE, Fuller M. Olson Jr.,M. 1965. TheLogic of CollectiveAc- 1998. The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mex- tion:Public Goodsand the Theoryof Groups. ico. SantaMonica, CA: RAND Corp.Arroyo HarvardEcon. Stud., Vol. 124. Cambridge, Cent. MA: HarvardUniv. Press Roseberry W. 1995. Latin American peasant Pare L. 1994. Algunas reflexiones metodo- studies in a 'postcolonial'era. J. LatinAmer. logicas sobre el analisis de los movimientos Anthro.1(1):150-77 sociales en el campo.Rev. Mex. Sociol. 61(2): Rosen R. 2000. The WorldSplit Open:How the 15-24 ModernWomen's Movement ChangedAmer- Park RE. 1967. On Social Control and Col- ica. New York:Viking lective Behavior: Selected Papers, ed. RH Ross A, ed. 1997. No Sweat: Fashion, Free Turner.Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press Trade, and the Rights of GarmentWorkers. Payne LA. 2000. Uncivil Movements: The London:Verso ArmedRight Wingand Democracy in Latin RubinJW. 1997. Decentering the Regime:Eth- America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins nicity, Radicalism and Democracy in Ju- Univ. Press chitdn, Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. PereiraAW. 1997. The End of the Peasantry: Press The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Sarah E, ed. 1983. Reassessments of "First Brazil, 1961-1988. Pittsburgh:Univ. Pitts- Wave"Feminism. Oxford, UK: Pergamon burghPress Saxton M. 1998. Disability rights and selective PichardoNA. 1997. New social movements:a abortion.In Abortion Wars:A Half Century criticalreview. Annu. Rev. Sociol. 23:411-30 of Struggle,1950-2000, ed. R. Solinger,pp. Piven FF, Cloward RA. 1977. Poor People's 374-93. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. Press. Movements:Why They Succeed, How They Scheper-HughesN. 1995. The primacy of the Fail. New York:Pantheon ethical:propositions for a militantanthropol- PrakashS. 1998. Fairness,social capitaland the ogy. Curr.Anthropol. 36(1):409-20 commons: the societal foundations of col- Schneider CL. 1995. Shantytown Protest in lective action in the Himalaya. In Privatiz- Pinochet'sChile. Philadelphia:Temple Univ. ing Nature:Political Strugglesforthe Global Press Commons,ed. M Goldman,pp. 167-97. Lon- SchneiderJC, SchneiderPT. 2001. Reversible don: Pluto Destiny: Mafia,Antimafia, and the Struggle Reed A, Jr.1999. Stirringsin theJug: BlackPol- for Palermo. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. Press itics in the Post-SegregationEra. Minneapo- Scott JC. 1990. Dominationand the Arts of Re- lis: Univ. Minn. Press sistance: Hidden Transcripts.New Haven, Ribeiro GL. 1998. Cyberculturalpolitics: po- CT: Yale Univ. Press. litical activism at a distance in a transna- Scott JW. 1996. Only Paradoxes to Offer: tionalworld. See Alvarezet al 1998, pp. 325- French Feminists and the Rights of Man. 52 Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniv. Press Risse-KappenT, ed. 1995. Bringing Transna- Shorter E, Tilly C. 1974. Strikes in France tional Relations Back In: Non-StateActors, 1830-1968. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Domestic Structuresand InternationalInsti- Univ. Press tutions. Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniv. Smelser NJ. 1962. Theoryof CollectiveBehav- Press. ior. New York:Free Ritchie M. 1996. Cross-borderorganizing. In Smith J, Chatfield C, Pagnucco R. 1997. SOCIALMOVEMENTS 317

TransnationalSocial Movementsand Global Clases Sociales en America Latina, ed. R Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State. Syra- Benitez Zenteno, pp. 3-71. Mexico City, cuse, NY: SyracuseUniv. Press Mex.: Siglo XXI Starn0. 1992. 'I dreamedof foxes and hawks:' Touraine A. 1988 [1984]. Return of the Ac- reflections on peasant protest, new social tor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Soci- movements, and the rondas campesinas of ety. Transl.M. Godzich. Minneapolis:Univ. northernPeru. See Escobar & Alvarez, pp. Minn. Press (FromFrench) 89-111 Touraine A. 2000. Can We Live Together? Starn 0. 1999. Nightwatch: The Politics of Equalityand Difference.Stanford, CA: Stan- Protest in the Andes. Durham, NC: Duke ford Univ. Press Univ. Press VincentJ. 1990. Anthropologyand Politics: Vi- Stein A. 1997. Sisters and queers: the decen- sions, Traditions,and Trends.Tucson: Univ. tering of lesbian feminism. In The Gen- Ariz. Press der/SexualityReader: Culture,History, Po- WalzerM, ed. 1995. Towarda Global Civil So- litical Economy, ed. RN Lancaster, M di ciety. Providence,RI: BerghahnBooks Leonardo,pp. 378-91. New York:Routledge Warren KB. 1998. Indigenous Movements StephenL. 1997. Womenand Social Movements and their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in in LatinAmerica: Powerfrom Below. Austin: Guatemala. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Univ. Texas Press Press Stock CM. 1996. Rural Radicals: Righteous WatermanP. 1998. Globalization,Social Move- Rage in theAmericanGrain. Ithaca, NY: Cor- ments and the New Internationalisms.Lon- nell Univ. Press don: Mansell Stolcke V. 1995. Talking culture:new bound- Weller RP. 1999. Alternate Civilities: Democ- aries, new rhetoricsof exclusion in Europe. racy and Culturein Chinaand Taiwan.Boul- Curr.Anthropol. 16(1):1-34 der, CO: Westview Stoler AL. 1999. Racist visions for the twenty- White G. 1994. Civil society, democratization first century: on the culturalpolitics of the and development.I. Clearing the analytical French radicalright. J. Int. Inst. 7(1):1, 20- ground.Democratization 1(3):375-90 21, 33 Whittier N. 1995. Feminist Generations: The Tarrow S. 1989. Democracy and Disorder: Persistence of the Radical Women'sMove- Protest and Politics in Italy 1965-1975. Ox- ment. Philadelphia:Temple Univ. Press ford, UK: Clarendon Williams HL. 2001. Social Movements and TarrowS. 1998. Power in Movement:Social EconomicTransition: Markets and Distribu- Movementsand ContentiousPolitics. Cam- tive Conflict in Mexico. Cambridge, UK: bridge, UK: CambridgeUniv. Press. 2nd ed. CambridgeUniv. Press TaylorDE. 2000. The rise of the environmental Wolf ER. 1969. Peasant Warsof the Twentieth justice paradigm.Am. Behav. Sci. 43(4):508- Century.New York:Harper & Row 80 WomackJ, Jr. 1999. Rebellion in Chiapas: An ThompsonE. 1971. The moral economy of the Historical Reader. New York:New English crowdin the eighteenthcentury. Past YuidiceG. 1998. The globalization of culture Present 50:76-136 and the new civil society. See Alvarez et al Tilly C. 1986. The ContentiousFrench. Cam- 1998, pp. 353-79 bridge, MA: HarvardUniv. Press Zald MN. 1992. Looking backwardto look for- TirmanJ. 1999. How we ended the cold war: ward: reflections on the past and future of peace activists' demand for an end to nu- the resourcemobilization research program. clear madnessplayed a decisive role. Nation In Frontiersin Social MovementTheory, ed. 269(14):13-21 AD Morris,C McMueller,pp. 326-48. New TouraineA. 1973. Las clases sociales. In Las Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press