Social Movement and Contentious Politics

Some people change when they see the light, others when they feel the heat.

These days signs of ‘anti-status quo’ politics, from Sydney street rally on equal marriage to petitions for refugee rights in the Trafalgar Square, are proliferating. Tarrow offered a scholarly testament to this, analysing what he labelled as contentious politics – confrontations that take place when ordinary people come together to fundamentally challenge the power holders of the status quo.

Tarrow argued that contentious politics emerge when political opportunities and constraints are changing and, therefore, prompting people, who lack access and (or) resources to get their voices heard through existing institutions (e.g: the parliament), to mobilise themselves. When these people are able to mount persistent interactions against their opponents, as a result of their ability to weave, operate, and sustain solid social networks and collective action frames amongst their constituents, contentious politics evolve into the so-called social movement.

The existence and success of social movements depends on some factors such as: leadership and organisation, resources, and life within groups (connective structures).

Tarrow, however, believed that it is changing political opportunities and constraints that act as the trigger.

Therefore, certain periods of human history has the dynamics of contentious politics and social movements whilst others do not. Tarrow’s analysis is laudable on this aspect, yet it lacks considerable details on the role of culture. The fact that it was Berkeley and Paris that became the epicentre of social movements in the 60s to the 80s or France during the Enlightenment Age surely pinpoint to the importance of socio-cultural and political setting in accelerating the development of contentious politics and social movements. 

Employing a different approach to that of Tarrow’s, Maddison and Scalmer focused on the history of social movements. Maddison and Scalmer divided social movements into two groups: the old social movements and the new social movements. The old social movements were essentially ‘social movements’ in an ideological sense because it grew out of socialism and its adherents were almost exclusively the working class within the socialist sphere of influence.

Unlike what we have today, the old social movements lacked ‘the army of labour’ and, due to its narrow ideological flavour and its relative insignificance, it did not win the hearts of the people at large. The new social movements, in contrast, are seen as ‘non-ideological’. They captured the diversity of interests amongst different groups of people.Thus, in the 60s, we witnessed the emergence of various groups ranging from anti-Vietnam War movements to women’s rights movements.

Not only they were more diverse, this time, they were better equipped, better organised, and had the number to raise their voices. As optimism and excitement burst, many questions, however, are left unanswered. Firstly, echoing Melucci, diversity also means that the new social movements are fragmented. Capitalism and socialism are no longer the only departing point for human progress. There are diverse, conflicting idealisms and manners employed to achieve even the same idealism by different movements. Now, which group can claim to constitute a social movement and on what basis? Who has the authority and credibility to verify those claims?

Although problematic, certainly social movements still have their role in creating social changes. Maddison and Scalmer believed that this can be achieved through strategic combinations of expressive and instrumental actions. Expressive actions refer to actions that are symbolic and expressive, often taking the form of public protest with chanting, banners, and other symbolic actions.

Their purposes are to inspire and convey messages to wider audiences. Instrumental actions, on the other hand, refer to measures that are strategically taken to induce changes from ‘within the system’. Examples include lobbying and advocacy that take place on a regular basis and, often, away from the mass-based expressive actions.

With their differences, it is widely acknowledged that often there will be tensions between expressive and instrumental actions. Amidst limited resources, activists are ‘torn between the need to excite and the need to achieve’. Yet, these two can also be complementary.

 Expressive actions can pave the way for instrumental actions.

By creating awareness, they can reframe public discourse on issues that otherwise would have been overlooked and, therefore, help to mobilise public opinions in favour of those movements. Instrumental actions can bring this to the next step. By pushing for legislative moves, they virtually turn social aspirations into social realities.

Indeed, it is important to note that there are no fixed rules and formula in this. In some circumstances, activists need to employ expressive actions before they can effectively score political victory through instrumental actions. Yet, in other cases where expressive actions are deemed counterproductive or ineffective (e.g: in a conservative society), instrumental actions might need to come first.

The tension between the means and the ends is also featured in Alinski’s work. A fervent believer of pragmatism, Alinski believed that, in practice, ethics and morality often come last and every action should be viewed in its particularistic context. Alinski postulated 11 ‘rules’ to guide activists out of this perplexity.

Some of them were:  ‘In war the end justifies any means’; ‘in the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue’; ‘you do what you can and clothe it with moral garment’. While his scholarly attempt offers useful insights on the significance of Realpolitik within social movements, it suffers from some weaknesses as a result of reducing ethics into an absolute case-by-case relativism. 

Firstly, despite its diverse implementations and forms across times and places, there are certain overarching ethical values that define and govern our humanity as a whole. That is why using terrorism as a way to create social changes can hardly be justified. Secondly, this ethical umbrella forms the very basis of social movements. Social movements arise precisely because some people are outraged by the fact that human development occurred without taking ethics much into account.  Anti-war movements stemmed from the US’ military brutality in Vietnam, ecological movements emerged due to Chernobyl disaster, and so on.  Social movements without ethics are vacuous for ethics define progress of our humanity; which is the aim of all social movements. Hence, although we acknowledge that there are grey areas within ethics, that, in itself, cannot justify Alinski’s position on putting ethics as mere ‘garment’.

    

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alinski, S., Rules for Radicals, Random House, New York, 1971. 

Maddison S., and Scalmer, S., Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tensions in Social Movements, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2006.

Schoeder, C., ‘Quotes of the Heart’, http://www.heartquotes.net/Change.html, Quotes and Proverbs on the Web, consulted 31 August 2010.

Tarrow, S., Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2^nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.