Beyond Resource Mobilization? Emerging Trends in Social Movement Theory

Abstract

Resource mobilization theory became the dominant paradigm for studying social movements in the 1970s because it was better able to account for the 1960s cycle of protest than previous theories of collective behavior. After almost two decades of theoretical development, the resource mobilization framework is now under increasing challenge. Drawing on research on women's movements in the United States, this article identifies ten issues which collectively pose a major theoretical challenge to the dominance of resource mobilization theory and which may initiate a paradigm shift to a new framework for the study of social movements.

Changing anarchism: Anarchist theory and practice in a global age

“…The first suggests that social movements are concerned with resource mobilisation or distribution. This argument is advanced by writers such as McCarthy and Zald (1977) and Bluechler (1993). The second is led principally by Melucci (1996), who contends that new social movements are occupied less by political actions than by symbolic and cultural challenges.…”

Capability Building as Potential to Protest Gender and Caste Injustice: Poor Women in Rural India

“…In the case of public goods, there is a possibility of the free rider dilemma which leads to movement/movement organizations offering selective incentives to participants and withholding it from non participants. This economically based assumption overlooks the moral and purposive basis of peoples' participation in movements (Fireman and Gamson 1979;Ferree 1992;Buechler 1993). The role of non-economic incentives in motivating participation is also significant in the creation of intangible resources.…”

“…Capability building views individuals as important in themselves; not just as 'resources' for organizations, and integrates the more cultural and social psychological approaches that have risen in recent years with some of the more fruitful insights of RM (Ferree and Miller 1985;Ferree 1992;Buechler 1993). I draw from two main streams of literature: the capabilities literature and social movement theory to develop a capability building model for protest.…”

Collective Identity, Organization, and Public Reaction in Protests: A Qualitative Case Study of Hong Kong and Taiwan

“…Rooted in European traditions of social theory (Castells 1997;Cohen 1985;Klandersman 1991;Melucci 1985;Touraine 1981Touraine , 1985, they emerge out of the failure of resource mobilization theory to make sense of movements and constituencies organized around issues or identities (Buechler 1993), and as a response to the classical Marxist reductionism of activists to their economic class and their motivations to strictly economic logics. Thus, these theories share the qualities of an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of ideology and identity (identity-based movements), the recognition of postmaterialist values as criteria for unity and mobilization (issue-based movements), and the affinity between a fluid middle-class in transformation and new social movements (Buechler 1995).…”