Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-20T19:27:10.771Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The biographical impact of participation in social movement activities: beyond highly committed New Left activism

from Part I - People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Marco Giugni
Affiliation:
University of Geneva
Maria T. Grasso
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Lorenzo Bosi
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Marco Giugni
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Katrin Uba
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Studying the outcomes of social movements is important if we want to elucidate the role of collective action in society. While most works have addressed aggregate-level political outcomes such as changes in laws or new policies, a relatively small but substantial body of literature deals with the personal and biographical consequences of social movements at the micro-level, that is, effects on the life-course of individuals who have participated in movement activities, due at least in part to involvement in those activities (see Giugni 2004 for a review). In general, these studies converge in suggesting that activism has a strong effect both on the political and personal lives of the subjects. Most of the existing studies, however, share a number of features that limit the scope of their findings. First, they focus on a specific kind of movement participants, namely movement activists, most often New Left activists, who are strongly committed to the cause. Yet, as suggested by McAdam (1999a), not more than between 2% and 4% of the American population took part in New Left activism of the 1960s. As a result, we cannot directly generalize from these findings to the biographical impact of participation in social movements by less strongly committed people who, in addition, might belong to other ideological areas, not necessarily to the New Left. Second, they use only a limited number of subjects and often do not analyze non-activists. The possibility of generalizing the findings is therefore very limited due to the small samples used and the lack of a control group of non-activists. Third, they look at a specific geographical and area and historical period, namely the United States (or often even more circumscribed geographical areas) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As such, we do not know from these studies how movement participation may affect the lives of people more generally. Thus, overall, in spite of the crucial insights that these works provided, they have little to say about the effects of more “routine” forms of participation.

In this chapter we try to go beyond the traditional focus on highly committed New Left activism to investigate the impact of protest participation on political life-course patterns amongst the general population. Our main research question is the following: Does participation in social movement activities, such as participation in protest activities, have an enduring impact on the subsequent political life of individuals?

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Stephen I. and Nassi, Alberta J.. 1981Keeping the Faith: Psychological Correlates of Activism Persistence into Middle Adulthood.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 10: 507–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, Henry E., Verba, Sidney, and Scholzman, Kay Lehman. 1995. “Beyond SES? A Resource Model of Political Participation.” American Political Science Review, 89: 271–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalton, Russell, van Sickle, Alix, and Weldon, Steven. 2010. “The Individual-Institutional Nexus of Protest Behaviour.” British Journal of Political Science, 40: 51–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demerath, N.J., Marwell, Gerald, and Aiken, Michael. 1971. Dynamics of Idealism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Fendrich, James M. 1974. “Activists Ten Years Later: A Test of Generational Unit Continuity.” Journal of Social Issues, 30: 95–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fendrich, James M. 1977. “Keeping the Faith or Pursuing the Good Life: A Study of the Consequences of Participation in the Civil Rights Movement.” American Sociological Review, 42: 144–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fendrich, James M. 1993. Ideal Citizens. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Fendrich, James M. and Tarleau, A.T.. 1973. “Marching to a Different Drummer: Occupational and Political Correlates of Former Student Activists.” Social Forces, 52: 245–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fendrich, James M. and Krauss, Elis M.. 1978. “Student Activism and Adult Left-Wing Politics: A Causal Model of Political Socialization for Black, White and Japanese Students of the 1960s Generation.” Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, 1: 231–256.Google Scholar
Fendrich, James M. and Lovoy, Kenneth L.. 1988. “Back to the Future: Adult Political Behavior of Former Political Activists.” American Sociological Review, 53: 780–784.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giugni, Marco. 2004. “Personal and Biographical Consequences.” In Snow, David A., Soule, Sarah, and Kriesi, Hanspeter (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford: Blackwell, 489–507.Google Scholar
Grasso, Maria. 2014. “Age-Period-Cohort Analysis in a Comparative Context: Political Generations and Political Participation Repertoire.” Electoral Studies. 33:63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard G.. 1981. Generations and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, David. 2005. “Two-Wave Panel Analysis: Comparing Statistical Methods for Studying the Effects of Transition.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 67: 1061–1075.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klatch, Rebecca. 1999. A Generation Divided. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maidenberg, Michael and Meyer, Philip. 1970. “The Berkeley Rebels Five Years Later: Has Age Mellowed the Pioneer Radicals?” Detroit Free Press, February 1–7.
Marwell, Gerald, Aiken, Michael, and Demerath, N.J.. 1987. “The Persistence of Political Attitudes among 1960s Civil Rights Activists.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 51: 359–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1989. “The Biographical Consequences of Activism.” American Sociological Review, 54: 744–760.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1999a. “The Biographical Impact of Activism.” In Giugni, M., McAdam, D., and Tilly, C. (eds.), How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 117–146.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1999b [1982]. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970, Second edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug and Paulsen, Ronnelle. 1993. “Specifying the Relationship Between Social Ties and Activism.” American Journal of Sociology, 99: 640–667.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, David S. and Tarrow, Sidney (eds.). 1998. The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Nassi, Alberta J. and Abramowitz, Stephen I.. 1979Transition or Transformation? Personal and Political Development of Former Berkeley Free Speech Movement Activists.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 8: 21–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Passy, Florence. 2003. “Social Networks Matter. But How?” In Diani, Mario and McAdam, Doug (eds.), Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 21–48.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca and Jasper, James M.. 2001. “Collective Identity and Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology, 27: 283–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherkat, Darren E. and Jean, Blocker T.. 1997: Explaining the Political and Personal Consequences of Protest. Social Forces, 75, 1049–1070.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Verta and Raeburn, N. C.. 1995. “Identity Politics as High-Risk Activism: Career Consequences for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Sociologists.” Social Problems, 42: 252–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 2011. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Aelst, Peter and Walgrave, Stefaan. 2001. “Who is that (Wo)man in the Street? From the Normalisation of Protest to the Normalisation of the Protester.” European Journal of Political Research, 39: 461–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyke, Nella Van, McAdam, Doug, and Wilhelm, Brenda. 2000. “Gendered Outcomes: Gender Differences in the Biographical Consequences of Activism.” Mobilization, 5: 161–177.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Brady, Henry E.. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Whalen, Jack and Flacks, Richard. 1980. “The Isla Vista ‘Bank Burners’ Ten Years Later: Notes on the Fate of Student Activists.” Sociological Focus, 13: 215–236.Google Scholar
Whalen, Jack and Flacks, Richard. 1984. “Echoes of Rebellion: The Liberated Generation Grows Up.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 12: 61–78.Google Scholar
Whalen, Jack and Flacks, Richard. 1989. Beyond the Barricades. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Wilhelm, Brenda. 1998Changes in Cohabitation across Cohorts: The Influence of Political Activism.” Social Forces, 77: 289–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×