The Strange Career of Strain and Breakdown Theories of Collective Action

Buechler, Steven M.

doi:10.1002/9780470999103.ch3

Cited by 113 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The idea that economic or other kinds of hardship create grievances that lead to protest behavior is an old one in social movement theory. So-called grievance or breakdown theories have very much stressed this aspect at least since the 1950s (see Buechler 2004 for a review). These theories were largely dismissed starting from the late 1970s, when resource mobilization and political process theory took over, but have been revamped especially since the advent of the Great Recession.…”

Section: The Economic Crisis As Opportunitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens and the Crisis: The Great Recession as Constraint and Opportunity

Giugni

Grasso

2018

Citizens and the Crisis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: The Economic Crisis As Opportunitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens and the Crisis: The Great Recession as Constraint and Opportunity

Giugni

Grasso

2018

Citizens and the Crisis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This holds true for analysis of movements as phenomena of mass societies, the break-down model, structural functionalist, Marxist and collective behaviour approaches. They all emphasised current social structure or social change as causes for the existence of social movements, which was often seen as grounded in social grievances, dissatisfaction, or anomie (Buechler 2004). The New Social Movement (NSM) debate (esp.…”

Section: Implications For Protest Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse, Power, and Governmentality. Social Movement Research with and beyond Foucault

Baumgarten

Ullrich

2016

Social Theory and Social Movements

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. (2012) Discussion papers of the WZB serve to disseminate the research results of work in progress prior to publication to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic debate. Inclusion of a paper in the discussion paper series does not constitute publication and should not limit publication in any other venue. The discussion papers published by the WZB represent the views of the respective author(s) and not of the institute as a whole. Terms of use: Documents in Copyright remains with the author(s). Das Urheberrecht liegt beim Autor.Contact and affiliation of the authors other than WZB: In this article some ideas will be outlined, on how protest research can be stimulated, enriched and reformulated by (post-)Foucaultian thinking. We argue that Foucault and his very concepts of discourse and power provide a perspective on social movements that avoids too simple rational actor concepts, is more long-term oriented and pays more attention to the diverse aspects of the context of social movement action than does mainstream social movement research. Britta BaumgartenWe focus on four types of processes that can be analysed from a Foucaultian perspective.1. Discourses define the boundaries for what can be thought of and communicated at a given point of time in a given society. These boundaries also apply for social movement actors.2. Within these boundaries of the generally unthinkable we can analyse the framing of social movements and how they contribute to discourses.3. Further, there are internal communicative practices of movement knowledge generation. These can be viewed as a set of (productive as well as restrictive) discursive regularities.4. Discourses shape the subjectivity of the people, and thus impact on the mobilizing potential of social movements. Referring to governmentality studies we show how changing rationalities may influence the likelihood of social critique and protest.

show abstract

“…Recent scholarship in this tradition finds a synergy between such collective action theories and classical Mertonian strain (opportunity) theories (Buechler 2004). …”

Section: Peace Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%