From Culture to Claimsmaking

Abstract

Conceptual approaches to claimsmaking often feature the overarching symbolic templates of political culture or else the strategic actor of the social movement framing approach. Both approaches have value, but neither shows adequately how cultural context influences claimsmaking in everyday situations. To better understand cultural context and situated claimsmaking together, we retheorize the concept of discursive field, showing how such a field is sustained through interaction. Claimsmakers craft claims from basic symbolic categories, in line with the appropriate style for a scene of interaction. Scene style induces external and internal boundaries to a discursive field, making some claims illegitimate and others inappropriate or else subordinate in a given scene. Conceptualizing how culture works in a discursive field helps us better understand what claimsmakers can say, how, and where. We illustrate the theoretical reconstruction with an ethnographic and archival study of different settings of a housing advocacy campaign.

Narrating Institutional Logics into Effect: Coherence Across Cognitive, Political, and Emotional Elements

“…In a critique of Geertz's famous theory of culture as webs of meanings, Obeyesekere (1990: 285) poignantly observed, ''[I]n reading Geertz I see webs everywhere but never the spider at work.'' My study joins a longstanding effort in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and organization theory to explore how cultures are worked out by their ''spiders,'' people residing within their regimes (e.g., Swidler, 1986;Schudson, 1989;Sewell, 1992;Ridgeway and Smith-Lovin, 1994;Eliasoph and Lichterman, 2003;Lounsbury and Glynn, 2019;Lichterman and Dasgupta, 2020). By zooming in on decision-making interactions, slowing down to follow their sequential and relational details, and looking at them in their immediate and more-distant contexts, I shed new light on the process by which institutional logics come into effect on the ground.…”

Contentious Tactics as Jazz Performances: A Pragmatist Approach to the Study of Repertoire Change

“…In summary, the prevailing interpretations of the repertoire metaphor led to a problematic situation insofar as most scholarly work ends up “involv[ing] relatively little theorizing about how claimants get from broad symbolic templates to claims making in particular settings ” (Lichterman and Dasgupta 2020, italics added). Without a theory of action, repertoires are conceived either as a “grab bag of available tactics, or an unstructured arsenal awaiting strategic actors” (Ring-Ramirez, Reynolds-Stenson, and Earl 2014:406), thus reproducing the problem Tilly originally faced when attempting to explain repertoire change.…”

Introduction: Movements and Morality

“…In doing this, they frame their claims as morally superior and justifiable toward their constituency and other political actors (Snow et al, 1986). At the same time, internally, meaning-making helps create, sustain, and negotiate collective identities, providing common moral ground that may motivate protest (Melucci, 1989;Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003;Lichterman & Dasgupta, 2020) as well as political altruism and solidarity activism on behalf of individuals who are perceived as victims according to the moral order of the group's culture (Tilly, 2001;Giugni & Passy, 2001;Passy, 2013). In light of its centrality in these processes, it is odd that the concept of morality rarely figures centrally in contemporary scholarship on movements.…”