Putting Social Movements in their Place. Explaining Opposition to Energy Projects in the United States, 2000‐2005McAdam, Doug and SchafferBoudetHilary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2012), 266 p., ISBN 978‐1‐107‐65031‐2

Abstract

"Putting Social Movements in their Place" by Doug McAdam and Hilary Schaffer Boudet is not only a conventional research monograph but also a strong plea to put social movements "in their place" in terms of social phenomena, literature and scholarship. On the one hand they argue for a more humble place of social movements events and on the other hand they portray convincingly the evolution of the field of study over 40 years that has become increasingly narrow and self-referential. To challenge these tendencies is the rationale of the book. It reports the findings of a comparative qualitative study of twenty communities that are earmarked as "risky" by an official Environmental Impact Statement for siting energy facilities in the United States. The research questions guiding the enquiry are: How much oppositional mobilization does one actually witness across those twenty communities? What "causal conditions" explain the variation in mobilization? What are the outcomes of mobilization and finally, why did wider regional movements develop in some parts of the country and not in others -wanting to explain the mechanism of scale-shift. The answers to these questions do not only illuminate the socio-political forces within the mentioned context, moreover they serve also as a signpost, cautioning and redirecting social movement scholarship for the future -a future that shall be increasingly Copernican rather than abiding to Ptolemy.Analogies to cosmology are the enveloping argument of the authors. The authoritative first chapter consisting of a literature review begins on an anecdotal note situating the social movement field (in the 1970ies) within the studies of 'irrational crowd behaviour' (p.4) in the discipline of psychology. The scholarship has indeed come a long way since then: Starting within a Copernican perspective drawing from various fields and accounting of larger socio-political and economical factors towards a Ptolemyian spirit of movement-centric preoccupation. They commendably demonstrate the development of social movement theories being paralleled by historical events mainly in the USA and Europe. The physical space of movements study is not given the attention it deserves, as "putting in their place" mainly refers to the trans-Atlantic sphere until now. Within the review the authors not only dissect particular theories pinpointing the lacuna, rather they argue with a solid grip over the entire scholarship. Their conclusion: First, the frequency and importance of social movements is distorted, as scholars tend to select on the dependent variable being successful movements. Second, actors are narrowed down to social movement activists. Third, broad national movements are studied to the detriment of local emergent contention. To challenge these observed conceptual shortcomings the authors come up with a theoretical approach and methodology that deserves special attention, as it is innovative, inventive and inspiring for further research. The authors try to overcome the narrowness at a conceptual level in...