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Scan&Deliver ILLiad TN: 4172216 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 Scan&Deliver Call #: WID WIDLC HM881 .8532004 Borrower: HLS Location: HLS Lending String: HLS 8/22/2013 8:23:06 AM Shipping Address: Patron: Jones, Alison Harvard University - Widener Library Interlibrary Loan Journal Title: The Blackwell companion to social Harvard University movements /edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Cambridge, MA 02138 Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi. Volume: Issue: Fax: MonthNear: 2004Pages: ? Ariel: Odyssey: 206.107.43.109 Email: 206.107.43.109 Article Author: Buechler MaxCost: Article Title: The Strange Career of Strain and Breakdown Theories of Collective Action Special Instructions: ILL Number: 4172215 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 THIS IS NOT AN INVOICEI NON-IFM LIBRARIES WILL RECEIVE AN INVOICE UNDER SEPARATE COVER FOR THIS TRANSACTION FROM HARVARD UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE IN 4-6 WEEKS PLEASE DO NOT SEND PA YMENT UNTIL YOU RECEIVE AN INVOICEI RUUD KOOPMANS 41'1 . PhD d e and the Study of Politics. Amer;· f'len4lfl. l'.lultlOOO) l",ruslng Returns, at epen ene, ,.I" l'u/IlI'oJl .'K'ma RI'I'II'UI, 94, 251-67. R.lmm.trJl. '}tt~tn ,1978) Sozwle Bewegung. Frankfurt am Mam: Suhrkamp. R.... h"f1. Ih"mJ\ R. IIIIMN) Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western t JI'''/rt' I'nn..cton. NJ: Princeton University Press. Rule. I.lme,....nJ (h.lrl~ Tilly (1972) 1830 and the Unnatural History of Revolution. Journal "I'" .. ,.dlu"",. 2ll. 49-76. ,h..ftcl. hlurJ• .And Ch.ub Tilly (1974) Strikes in France, 1830-1968. Cambridge: Cam­ l-tf..JJtr t )rllH'f,!t\ Preu. \nw!Wf. ~d J. \1%21 fhtory of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press. 'now. n.mJ A..and RoOtn D. Brnford (1999) Alternative Types of Cross-National Diffusion 111 the' '-"\AI ",,'emfnt Arena. In Donatella della Porta, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Dieter Rt"hr 1M 1.\;,,1.11 MOl't'mt"1ftS in a Globalizing World. Houndmills: Macmillan, 23-39. '-,ul... '-tr.lh \,...... ) The D\ffusion of an Unsuccessful Innovation. Annals of the American ".~ 01 f'oiltu.J/ .",d .StlClal Science, 566, 120-31. \tr.a~. n..,tJ...oJ John W. Meyer (1993) Institutional Conditions for Diffusion. Theory and "' .....h. H. ·ur'-H I. ,",,,n«. \)"~IJ. AoJ \.auh Soule (1998) Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: trum t htwtd ( om til POlion Spills. Annual Review ofSociology, 24, 265-90. t.."..... ~r tl~~~) I>""o(1acy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy 1965-1975. (htOfJ. (t.art'nd<m. l ...... i P, ... ·.,.., III .\tlll't'mtnt: Social Movements. Collective Action and Politics. Cam­ t>.". ("mhr~ l!nl\'t'rstty Prns. 1Ill., ( lurk, [ ,q~lI i "'"m Moblllzution to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. l.[I" ( "..uk" It)\UW 1111v. and Roblert Tilly (1975) The Rebellious Century, 1830-1930. { .lmt>f~. \1.\ "",,\.uJ Umversity Press. ',,",ITt, Rut ,"ao, I"nh.untv Modd. 8reakdown Model, and the Boston Anti-Busing Move­ motllt "1IlIw"1.....,"'.. " .1"1(/(41 Rel'Int'. 45, 357-69. 1.>4t-.rfl.\'ntldt R. I' ....!\ MOC1\(nts of Madness. Politics and Society, 2, 183-207. 3 The Strange Career of Strain and Breakdown Theories of Collective Action STEVEN M. BUECHLER Since the 1970s, social movement theory has changed dramatically. One reason is that "the study of social movements is volatile hecause the phenomena under consideration change so rapidly" (Garner 1997: 1). In this imagery, theory changes to reflect changes in its subject matter. However, theoretical change often has less to do with faithful reflections of a changing suhject matter than with rapid shifts in assumptions, perspectives, and questions (Kuhn 1962). A hroader sociology of knowledge suggests that theories also change in response to altered sociohistorical Contexts and new generations of theorists who bring different experiences to their theoretical work and to the very definition of their subject matter. Within sociology as a whole, all these factors prompted the paradigm shifts of the post-World War II period. The functionalist orthodoxy of the 1950s gave way to several alternatives in the 1960s because social phenomena changed, social and political currents also changed, and new generations of sociologists hrought differ­ ent experiences to their work. The theoretical disputes between functionalism, conflict theory, critical theory, phenomenology, feminist theory, and other alterna­ tives defined the broader context in which paradigm shifts occurred in subfields like collective behavior and social movements. The story of social movement theory is not just a function of movements themselves, but also of the social and intellectual histories of the countries and disciplines in which the theories evolve. The major paradigm shift in social movement theory is indexed hy the inelegant but revealing nomenclature of "collective behavior/social movements"; the forward slash testifies to the conceptual confusion and disagreement that characterizes this area. It was not always so. For much of the twentieth century, there was a consensu­ ally designated subfie1d called "collective behavior," and social movements were seen as one subtype of collective behavior along with panics, crazes, crowds, rumors, and riots. During this time, a major explanation for the emergence of all kinds of 48 STEVEN M. BUECHLER . h . ds of strain and breakdown gcncrate collective collectIve behavIOr was t at peno .' II .' . behavior because the social controls and morallmperatlves that norma J l<mstr~m such behavior are weakened or absent. Strain and breakdown theones were thus tled to a whole series of assumptions about the nature of collective hehavior and the subsumption of social movements under that rubric. When those assumptiOl:s were challenged and that rubric was undermined, theorists began to emphasIze the differences between collective behavior and social movements, and to focus more exclusively on the latter as requiring a separate analysis. In so doing, strain and breakdown theories were both actively challenged and passively marginalized as part of a broader paradigm shift. As often happens, the role of strain and breakdown in precipitating collecnve behavior was probably overstated by the collective behavior paradigm and under­ stated by its critics. Tracing the strange career of strain and breakdown theories promises to restore some balance to our understanding of the role of such factors in collective action while also shedding light on how paradigms shift. This chapter is organized into four parts. First, I summarize the role of strain and breakdown theories in the earlier collective behavior paradigm. Second, I trace the demise of these theories with the decline of the collective behavior paradigm and the emer­ gence of the resource mobilization approach. Third, I document how such theories nonetheless persisted throughout the predominance of resource mobilization theory. Finally, I identify how they have returned, in a new guise and nomenclature, to a central role in the analysis of collective action. THE CLASSICAL ERA OF STRAIN AND BREAKDOWN THEORIES The concepts of strain and breakdown imply a social order whose normal condition is one of integration. If the social order remains sufficiently integrated, strain and hreakdown may be avoided altogether and collective behavior may be precluded. In this logic, all roads lead to Durkheim's overriding concern with social integration and the problematic consequences of insufficient integration in modern societies (Ourkheim [1893] 1964). Premodern societies were less problematic as the con­ science collective and mechanical solidarity underwrote social integration and min­ imized strain and breakdown. With the decline of the conscience collective and increases in dynamic density and social differentiation, modern societies became more prone to such problems. In theory, the emergent division of labor would provide the functional integration and organic solidarity to bind modern societies together. In reality, Durkheim was well aware that modern societies did not conform to the theoretical expectation. His classic analyses of anomie and egoism identified breaches in the social order that could lead to chronic strains or acute breakdowns. One indication of such problems was elevated suicide rates, but suicide was merely one example of a range of antisocial, dysfunctional behaviors that could result from strain and breakdown (Durkheim [1897] 1951). The remedy was increased social integration through more explicit normative regulation to guide conduct and srrengthened social bonds to contain excessive individualism. While Durkheim said relatively little about collective behavior as the term came to be understood in the ~entieth ~entury, his analysis provided a major foundation for subsequent theones of stram and breakdown as explanations of such behavior. STRAIN AND BREAKDOWN THEORIES 49 A more direct link between social breakdown and collective behavior was forged by European theorists of crowd behavior who were Durkheim's contemporaries. In their view, "The cause of civil violence ... was the breakdown of rational con­ trol over human behavior through the spread of what one might call 'crowd mentality'" (Rule 1988: 83). Crowds were theorized to act under the sway of intense emotional states generated by physical proximity; such behavior was in marked contrast to the rational and orderly behavior that prevailed in conventional social settings. It was Robert Park (Park and Burgess 1921; Park 1972) who introduced this tradition into US sociology by positing a fundamental distinction between social integration
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