Collective Identity and Informal Groups in Revolutionary Mobilization: East Germany in 1989

Abstract

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 support@jstor.org.. Oxford University Press and Social Forces, University of North Carolina Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces. AbstractEast Germany's unanticipated revolution in 1989 poses an interesting challenge to social movement research. The relatively spontaneous, peaceful revolution that toppled the communist regime cannot be fully explained by the prevailing theories of revolution and collective action. While both structurally oriented and identity-oriented theory offers insight into the revolutionary process, neither are completely satisfactory. Most theories assume a relatively open field of political contestation and conditions of relative social freedom that were absent in East Germany. I suggest a synthetic, historically specific approach in which collective identities are situated with small-scale social networks. The crucial factors in making the revolution possible were shared grievances and the expectation of social solidarity. Though they were politically subordinated, ordinary East Germans expressed grievances and nurtured opposition in small circles of confidants. Reference to collective identities helped to mobilize and frame opposition in East Germany making a swift, unexpected revolution possible once the state began to founder.The massive popular demonstration in Leipzig on the evening of 9 October, 1989 marked a crucial moment in the East German revolution. Seventy thousand East Germans, chanting "We are the people!" (Wir sind das Volk!), peacefully rejected the course of "really existing socialism" in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and called for democratic reform. Incredibly, despite widespread expectations that Honecker's regime would make good on its threat of a "Chinese solution" to the problem of large-scale social unrest, the state security forces stood by and allowed the demonstration to progress. Coming on the heels of the mass exodus of East Germans to the West (made possible by new gaps in the Iron Curtain) and Gorbachev's visit to the GDR, the regime's unwillingness to suppress this direct manifestation of popular opposition represented a turning point. Building on this victory in coming weeks, the opposition movement pressed the floundering regime for ever-greater concessions. Initiated from below by "people power," the Leipzig protests signaled the end of Communism. Only a month later, on 9 November, the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled another turn as attempts to reform the GDR, led by the democratic socialists of the civic movement, were gradually displaced by a groundswell of support for unification with West Germany.The rapid pace of the East German revolution startled observers both outside a...

Neo-fascist or revolutionary leftist: Family politics and social movement choice in postwar Italy

“…Consistent with this premise, Snow et al (1980: 798) claim social networks 'are of equal, and perhaps greater, importance than dispositional susceptibilities in the determination of differential recruitment'. Network research on movements thus emphasizes relational conditions such as structural proximity, countervailing ties and interaction with movement members (Fernandez and McAdam, 1988;Gould, 1995;Kim and Bearman, 1997;Mische, 2008;Pfaff, 1996).…”

“Taking the State at Its Word”: The Arts of Consentful Contention in the German Democratic Republic

“…23 Ewick and Silbey (2003) demonstrate how stories of resistance to legal authority in a liberal democratic society may disseminate social knowledge about power structures, perhaps eventually facilitating collective political action in some way. For the East German case, a number of researchers have credited critical speech with cultivating oppositional networks and dissident subcultures that contributed to radical protest (e.g., Kantner 1996;Pfaff 1996). Whether anecdotes about consentful contention functioned in this way will have depended on how they were interpreted.…”

“…For example, much of the research on contention in the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) in recent years was stimulated by the contrast between the relative infrequency of open protest and the startling overthrow of the regime in 1989. 3 Many researchers have interpreted unobtrusive or smallscale subversive activities, as well as informal networks of critical dissent, in light of the widely publicized cascade of open protest demonstrations, culminating in the downfall of Communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe (e.g., Deess 1997;Johnston and Mueller 2001;Kantner 1996;Knabe 1998;Lindenberger 1999;Mueller 1999b;Pfaff 1996;Pfaff and Yang 2001;Stoltzfus 1997). Such research has turned increasingly to what James Scott (1990) calls the "infrapolitics" of subordinate social groupsthe use of "clever tricks" and subterfuge to maintain a sphere of mental and discursive autonomy from the state-but still with an eye to uncovering the origins of future, more "transgressive" mobilization.…”

The Hinge

“…Through their social relations, smallscale networks build solidarity through grievance frames that larger units cannot easily generate, overcoming fears of retribution by state actors (Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982;Gould 1993;Pfaff 1996). Commitment may be so powerful that even failure does not produce disillusionment (Summers-Effler 2010).…”