Organizing Spaces: Meeting Arenas as a Social Movement Infrastructure between Organization, Network, and Institution

Abstract

In recent years, social movement scholars have shown increasing interest in the internal lives of social movements, but this turn from "social movements as actors" to "social movements as spaces" has not yet led to a conceptual apparatus that addresses the key role of face-to-face meetings, especially in the interorganizational domain of mesomobilization. Building on the concept of "partial organization", the paper develops the concept of "meeting arena" as a hybrid of three forms of social order: organization, institution, and network. It is argued that the complex figuration of meeting arenas in a social movement or protest mobilization constitutes an infrastructure that synchronizes the dispersed activities of movement actors in time and space. This infrastructure is not an entirely emergent phenomenon but is also the result of conscious decisions by organizers. Heuristic, methodological, and theoretical implications of this novel perspective on social movements are discussed, highlighting especially the potential of the distinction between organizing and mobilizing as two intertwined but essentially different types of social movement activity.

Recreative activism in Romania How cultural affiliation and lifestyle yield political engagement

“…They provided spaces where network connections could be further intensified, in a way similar to Haug's account of meetings (Haug 2013).…”

Participatory Spaces of Mental Health Service User Organizations in the Post-deinstitutional Era: Mapping Roles and Challenges

“…Such spaces are valuable resources for the mobilization of alternative perspectives and oppositional identities (Haug 2013) and are a requisite for citizen engagement moving beyond legitimization of the current system (Habermas 1996). Popular spaces might be perceived as 'laboratories of self-interest,' where service user groups can unite around political positions and demands before communicating these in other participatory domains (Cornwall and Schattan Coelho 2007, p. 18).…”

Complete and Partial Organizing for Corporate Social Responsibility

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