Collective Alienation & Protest. Looking into the Eye (s) of the Storm -- Bases, Contexts, Repertoires, and Repercussions of Mass Insurgency

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Collective Alienation and Protest

Looking into the Eye (s) of the Storm?- Bases, contexts, repertoires and repercussions of mass insurgency

1995 Virgilio RojasDept. of Economic History, Stockholm University, Sweden

“At the moment that a real earnest period of mass strikes begins all these “calculations of costs” change into the project of draining the ocean with a water glass.” (Rosa Luxemburg)

“Like a cork afloat on the sea, it (traditional ideology) has risen above and overcome each wave of history as, one one by one, theyhave rushed up and borken on the shore.” (David Lan)

Introduction

A quick scan of the historical record of mass insurgency reveals an annoying paradox: inbuiltsources of conflict and alienation in stratified societies, insofar as they operate by definitionon the basis of relative degrees of unequal access to power and resources, scarcely emotemass rebellion among subordinate groups. And when the habitual halcyon breaks onoccasion into maelstrom and mass rebellion does take center stage, it weaves a vast anddiverse web of repertoires and forms, meanings, and repercussions that often escapesystematic captivity into the neat models and typologies of theoretical orthodoxy on thesubject.

Not rarely, popular protest pulls the rug from underneath these received tenets bysometimes erupting or evaporating when they are ‘logically’ not supposed to, or assumemyriad forms that remain invisible to the skillful eyes of seasoned scholars. While there isevidence to show that distinct social systems and processes may draw the generalparameters within which broadly identical repertoires of struggles may emerge, in the sensefor example of industrial capitalism breeding typical proletarian movements everywhere,the huge frontier in which intervening forces operate between cause and effect remainsrelatively unexplored. By uncovering these intricate intermediary links, one may make senseof that often bizarre relationship between invariabilities (causes/bases) and variabilities

(forms/repertoires).

Notably, diagnostic flaws seem to stem from dented but durable Procrustean assumptions,parented by vulgar functionalist and structuralist, both Marxist and non-Marxist paradigms,



1For an insightful critical survey, see e.g. Chap. 2, “General theories of social movements: Functionalism and

Marxism”, in Scott, Allan (1990) Ideology and the New Social Movements. London: Unwin Hyman. A more

comprehensive review can be found in Rule, James R (1988) Theories of Civil Disobedience. Berkeley: UCP.

upon which contemporary analyses continue to feed in relative doses.1

Cognitively, these dominant discourses have tended to perceive the origins, dynamics anddiversity of mass insurgency exclusively in terms of either consensus and temporarilymalfunctioning if self-adjusting systems (functionalism), or conflict and productive modes

advancing in succession on the crest of autogenous class contradictions (Marxism), ordramatically advancing economic systems outpacing and short-changing value systems(relative deprivation theories). Inadvertently, cognitive differences intersect normatively inaccounting for wide discrepancies of protest repertoires and repercussions between societiesof what is fashionably labeled today as North and South.

Whether one departs from ahistorical dichotomies, denoted by s-c modern versus traditionalpattern variables, or historically-moored models, like the Marxist distinction betweenanachronistic feudal versus advanced capitalist modes of production defined by exclusivefeatures of base-superstructures, they all appear to share a common teleological attribute

suggesting the inevitable progression of all societies and related institutions (or in our sense,social bases), and by extension, equivalent modes of collective agitation (or repertoires) fromcollectively lower to higher states - from imperfect or inferior to perfect and superior forms.

Emerging in the wake of this allegedly evolutionary process are state of the art popularmovements and organizations armed with modern, rational and thus more effectiveideologies, political programs in which to articulate claims, and organizational technologiesin contradistinction to “primitive” inchoate forms sentenced either to adapt or completelyperish. In the final analysis, contending models, in effect, endorse the “rule” of modernindustrial societies (bases) and movements/organizations /repertoires) as the standard fromwhich to gauge extant forms elsewhere, where disparities are simply seen as temporary

deviations in a predetermined course of evolution heralded by the advanced North.

By graphic empirical illustration, authors under critical review in this limited essay highlightin sundry ways critical limitations and lacunae in conventional thought and introduce anumber of methodological insights for bridging the gap between the theory and practice ofpopular movements. Moving beyond mechanical deductions of expected protest repertoiresand repercussions from theoretically sanctified causes (bases), concerned writers decipherde facto deviations midway (between cause and effect) in terms of complex and interveningsocio-cultural, political and institutional factors and overlapping contexts, which ultimatelypattern and give meaning to the wide spectrum of protest forms and outcomes registered

across time, space and social settings.



From Hobsbawm to Ileto: Problematizing Popular Protest

Contributors discussed in this review locate their critical incisions on different points alongthe standard scale of traditionalism-cum-modernism. Hobsbawm (1969), organizes not so

much a critical foray against standard cognitive and normative biases as a pioneeringexpedition into the hitherto unexpected territory of what he labels “archaic” or “primitive”social movements, i.e., popular movements which are neither traditional nor modern in thefull sense, emerging as they do at the interface between waning feudalism and waxingindustrial capitalism and urbanization in late 18th and early 19th century Western andSouthern Europe.

While this disruptive era in European history has been written off, specially by behavioristtheories, as nothing more than irrational fits of rage as a result of alienating forces unleashedby modernization, Hobsbawm seeks to uncover the transitional social and moral logic, thepolitical and “moral” economies if you like, of diverse and seemingly inchoate rural (social

brigandage, millenarian movements) and urban (riots, labor sects) protest repertoires.Contrary to typical descriptions he shows that the evolution of traditional to modern popularmovements occurs neither in jumps nor straightforwardly, and may indeed be a relativelyprotracted process. As such, the evolutionary process allows for the co-existence of variedforms in a continuum pending the total demise of the old social order.

Harrison (1988), in his limited yet fecund investigation of crowds and crowd events in fourvintage pre-industrial and pre-Victorian English towns, critically revamps crucial cognitiveand normative blind-spots infecting the narratives of crowd historians like Hobsbawm, Rudeand Thompson. These writers, according to him, tend to overstate the case for the pre-

dominance in this pre-industrial age of purely disruptive and confrontational protestrepertoires personified by the classic food riots.

Deploying a much broader repertoire (including ceremonial and celebratory crowds),Harrison teases out the possibility of, as it were, “last minute reconciliations of conflict” aswell as symbolic or quasi-ritualized forms of contention which would have otherwiseremained invisible underneath the cloak of apparently consensual crowd events. Whetherarticulating overtly or covertly, protest repertoires are reproduced and mediated byinterlacing local, national, and socio-cultural contexts and the way in which popularperceptions and definitions of environment and identity change in tandem with general

urban development.

In similar vein, but moving from the preceding gray zone to the opposite ends of the scale,Davis (1975), Worsley (1969), Moore (1978),and Piven and Cloward (1977) apply contextualanalysis in their critical surgery of standard suppositions. Together, they provide empiricalcases for a cross-Atlantic comparison of archetypal Western specimens of traditional versusmodern popular movements. While the first duo takes a nostalgic look at the select exemplarsof traditionalism (feudal youth abbeys/turbulent religious riots in urban France of the late



Middle Ages and, respectively, a heterogenous ensemble of agrarian and urban popularmovements of late 19th and 20th century vintage from the Russian narodniks, North Americanmovements in the South West to “modern” populism in the Third World), the latter writersrecount the tragic fates of modern urban and proletarian movements that failed dismally tofulfil their “historic mission” in the advancing industrial economies of Germany and USA in

the mid 19th

and 20th

centuries. Both Davis’ and Worsely’s recaps, each serve critical notice onthe irreducibleness of traditional repertoires to any one single logic, nor could they simplybe stated in terms of any predesignated or fixed set of mutually exclusive pattern variablesdefining and contr-distinguishing popular movements of traditional versus modern genres(e.g., religious versus secular; affective, communalist and conformist versus rational, class-based, confrontational; customary, defensive versus associational offensive ideologies, politicsand organization).

For Davies, traditional repertoires signified by youth abbeys and religious riots may, far from just being transmission belts of conservatism, indeed serve as double-bladed conduits for bothconformism and change, in terms of reinforcing, on the one hand, old norms and communityvalues and for symbolically communicating political critique, on the other.

Moreover, as poignantly portrayed by popular religious hostilities bearing no systematiccorrelation with socio-economic disputes, she suggests that pending qualitative socialtransformation, it is possible to demarcate the boundaries of relatively autonomous andoverlapping hierarchies (in the sense of multiple bases representing different axes of power,property and control, e.g., productive versus emotional resources) which are “not reducibleone to the other,” and whereby diverse and distinct repertoires may derive. Hence, akin tothe moral economy logic of Thompsonian food riots of the pre-industrial era, religious conflictpossesses if you like its own brand of moral economy.

Worsley’s comparative exposé of a motley collection of populist movements strikes a similarchord. Contrary to the common view reducing populism to a coherent ideology (particularlywith agrarian communalist overtones), politics and organization (ambiguously defined by thenotion of “will of the people” and direct contact with popular leaders) thriving in thebackwaters of traditionalist cultures and pre-modern movements in transition, the evidencedemonstrates that apart from assuming a variety of forms depending on the final mix ofspecific socio-economic base, cultural and political contexts in different settings, it exhibits infact the capacity to cross-fertilize and survive even in believe it or not, well-acknowledgedmodern movements.

If one follows Davis’ line, Worsley adumbrates not only the multiplicity of bases andrepertoires within a given context, but also across a panorama of contexts traversing bothtraditional and modern. Populism is rather a constantly recurring style of politics, which forall intents and purposes can, under specific conditions, be mobilized in the service of a broadspectrum of modern political ideologies from Right to Left.



The apparent diversity of repertoires and repercussions of politically significant popularoutrage is highlighted at the opposite end by Moore and Piven and Cloward’s revealinghistorical anecdotes of modern labor and urban movements of mid- and late industrialcapitalism in Germany and the United States. Both writers address a number of irritating“flies in the ointment” of Marxist orthodoxy and classic resource mobilization theories by

bringing in historical, socio-cultural (Moore) and politico-cultural (Piven and Cloward)contexts into the analytical picture. Moore asks why, contrary to Leninist assertions of thehistorical inevitability of proletarian revolutions heralding the reconstruction of new socialistideals of justice and equality, proletarian revolutions have, particularly in the capitalisthomelands of the North, remained such a rare collectors’ item. Despite standardization of theliabilities of misery following in the wake of industrial capitalism, the major contingents ofthe working class have invariably pulled their punches and remained enigmatically docile.

Drawing from social contract theories, Moore explores the psychological, social, moral andpolitical forces that conspire in the making or breaking of this puzzling “social anaesthesia;”and the conditions under which subordinate groups turn to collective action as a “last resortantidote” to perceived social injustices. Indeed as Moore’s comparative study of the distincthistories of two adjacent trades - the coal miners and steel and metal workers in the Germanindustrial hub of the Ruhr from mid 19th to 20th century - suggests, the proletariat has in factbeen more socially composite than hitherto assumed, perceiving and behving with referenceto standard material deprivations in contrasting, and not rarely, contradictory modes.

That the locus of collective activism has historically been situated rather among privilegedand articulate than underprivileged segments of the working class, viz., the coal miners withdeeply rooted socio-cultural institutions and tradition of bargaining and belligerency,underscores the fact that subordinate groups do by no means subjectively volunteer to high

risk revolutionary projects simply by the fiat of intensifying objective conditions of immersionunless they are able to acknowledge a radical breach in commonly subscribed traditions ofauthority, moral codes and social arrangements.

The heritage of strong corporate identity and negotiating practices from artisan and guildforebears - surviving well into the early 20th century, partially due to the constraints of laborintensive technology in mining - enjoyed by the Ruhr coal miners not only made them moresensitive to violations of moral codes and social contracts in the face of the new andbourgeoning individualist morality of the market economy, but also equipped them with thecultural furniture by which to articulate their griefs. Provisionally, Moore concludes that

spontaneous conceptions among “pre-factory workers, factory workers, and modernrevolutionary peasants have been mainly backward-looking. They have been attempts torevive a social contract that has been violated.” Epic “trans-valuation” from moral complianceto confrontation, from local to sectoral or even national arenas punctuate the stage only veryrarely and occur when the social order is under extreme duress and normal institutional andprivate life undergo massive “de-routinization.”



2See Esckstein, S. ed (1989) Introduction in Power and Pop ular Pro test: Latin American So cial

Movements . Ber kley: UCP.

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Across the Atlantic, marked de-routinization of the social order and disruption of institutionalnorms during the Great Depression and the two World Wars, as Piven and Cloward report,also fueled widespread dissension among American urban poor and working classes. Theyprobe into the track record of four major urban movements - the unemployed, industrialworkers’, civil rights, and relief movements - as they evolved from disruptive and extra-

institutional forms of mass mobilization to institutionalized formal organizations.

Searching for clues as to why these initially vibrant and virile mass movements eventuallyeither met limited success or patent failure, concerned writers place the main thrust of theirstudy on the politico-cultural context of urban struggles. With cruel irony, Piven andCloward’s findings show that given the structure and climate of politics in the United States,organizational scaling-up rather than upping the odds for popular political empowerment,participation and resource transfer lead in the long run to the scaling down of mass militancyand, by that virtue, the dilution of the single most effective source of political power. Oncehooked up with the larger polity via the electoral representative system, popularorganizations operating along instrumentalist lines tend to become vulnerable to the“civilizing” effect of formal bargaining procedures and co-optive machinations of powerfulstate and elite forces in exchange for cosmetic reforms.

At the end of the day, conclude the writers, protest movements are essentially shaped byinstitutional conditions and not by purposeful efforts of organizations and leaders withinwhich boundaries collective defiance acquires latitude. And since periods of profound socialdislocation and institutional mayhem as well as opportunities for effective protest viadisruptive forms are few and far between, it is the ability of popular forces to exploit thepolitical space that “historical circumstances had already made ready for them” that makesthe makes the difference between winning and losing.

While revolutions and mass insurgencies, according to the allusions of previous contributions,appear to be a luxury item in the modern industrial economies of the North, the opposite istrue as far as the traditional agrarian societies of the South are concerned., Indeed, these stilllargely rural societies have by any standard been the reputed treadmills of revolutionarystruggles and broader protest repertoires2 incorporating both armed and unarmed modes.Why so? Neither mainstream structural (Marxist) nor functionalist (modernization) paradigmscan adequately account for this discrepancy since the relative standardization of invokedcauses have, despite the noted general frequency of civil disobedience, by no meansguaranteed indiscriminate outbreaks of collective defiance everywhere in the South (if one

follows vulgar Marxist models), nor have relatively industrialized economies there (e.g., NICcountries) equipped with modern institutions on par with their Northern counterparts(following the logic of modernization theories), been immune from the contagion of popular



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radicalism.

Furthermore, popular movements, particularly when they take on national trappings andpolitical trajectories, are often submitted by mainstream models as hard evidence of anincontrovertible break in the progressive evolution of collective protest repertoires from

traditional to modern forms. Concurrently, many textbook narratives of the modern historiesof nation states in the South frequently begin with the rise of forward-looking anti-colonial andnationalist movements radically breaking away from the anachronisms of past tradition,insofar as they now are enlightened and led by modernizing ideologies, political agendas(liberal bourgeois or Marxist) and social agents ( petite bourgeois or proletarian) and operateunder rational and secular procedures and norms of organization.

That the gelling of “modern” nationalist movements might just as well signify popularattempts at making sense of and creatively resolving contemporary social crisis by re-linking(rather than de-linking) with the cultural identities and traditions of the past is the commonthread which ties together the separate but equally culturally sensitive accounts (in waysreminiscent of both Davis’ and Harrison’s respective works in French religious riots and pre-Victorian English celebratory crowds) of Lan and Ileto on the popular struggles for nationalindependence in Zimbabwe and the Philippines. In fact, as both writers hint at, the successfulfusion of traditional and modern political and cultural streams could very well be decisive inthe mobilization of vast segments of the populace to national revolutionary projects.

Lan’s detailed field study of one of ZANLAs (the military wing of Mugabe’s ZimbabweAfrican National Union, ZANU) key guerilla operational bases in the Zambezi Valley duringthe national liberation struggle in the 1970s depicts how massive peasant mobilization andsupport to the anti-colonial struggle (in recent as well as previous abortive rebellions) had

been crucially facilitated and legitimized by local spiritual mediums and “makers of rain,” theacknowledged spokesmen of traditional Shona folk ideology and political authority.

Rhyming closely with Lan, Ileto’s trail-blazing reinterpretation of the symbolic and ritualmeaning of the 1896 Revolution for national independence in the Philippines – attributed bymainstream Filipino historians to the innovative leadership of the ascending native middleclass, the so-called illustrados, the standard bearers of modern ideas of nation, state, anddemocracy, similarly notes by way of contextual analysis of Tagalog folk liturgy, popularpoems, songs, scattered autobiographies, etc., how the spirit and language of folk religioustraditions and communitarian values and ideals popularized by antecedent peasant

brotherhoods and millenarian movements had been recycled rather than junked by therevolutionary leadership. This connection articulates, according to Ileto, the double entendreoftraditional religious and cultural repertoires: while usually promoting passivity andreconciliation rather than conflict, the very same repertoires have latent meanings that can berevolutionary.



3This section has drawn from the comprehensive reviews of Rule (1988) and Scott (199 0), and from the

abridged summaries o f Walton, J & Ra gin, C (199 0), Piven & Cloward (1977), Har rison (19 88). Enlightenment on

the general dispute between functional, structural, and human agency approaches employed by historians and

sociologists derives from Burke, Peter (1992).

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To “rewind,” we return briefly to our general issues:

I. What “switches” collective alienation “on or off” to collective defiance, or conversely, to apathyand approbation vis-à-vis regimes of authority? (i.e., what are the origins/causes or in ourterms, bases of tension and contention between superordinate and subordinate groups

in society?)II. Within what specifiable context (s) do(oes) collective defiance happen or not happen?III. When it does occur, collective defiance takes on a variety of shapes and forms (or in the jargon

used here, repertoires) across time, space, and social settings. What then accounts for thiscopious variability?

IV. What determines the limits or latitude of the net-impact or effect of collective defiance?

Clearly, there are as many answers as there are questions on this subject. Contributors underscrutiny here have only provided us with some partial ones and hit their highest scores morein the area of methodological fine-tuning rather than grand theorizing.

To systematically appraise the merits of these contributions, the following sections will:

A. critically abstract the main arguments and assumptions posited by selected paradigms(functionalist, structuralist, and so-called middle-range theories on collective protestand social movements) relative to the central issues of this paper (i.e., the bases,contexts, repertoires, and repercussions of collective protests);

B. critically assess the analytical and methodological “market value” of sundry writers’contributions. “Vertically,” in conjunction with selected paradigms they explicitly orimplicitly link up with and toward which they direct their attempts at repudiationrectification or refinement. “Horizontally,” by highlighting points of cleavage and

confluence between respective contributions;C. Conclude by a resume of salient empirical and methodological insights and problems.

Theoretical and Methodological Discourses- Macro, Meso and Micro-level Approaches3

In the search for substantive answers to the recurring classic Hobbessian conundrum as towhat presupposes or suspends civil strife and rebellion, postwar scholars in the social scienceshave broadly borrowed intellectual material from three towering theoretical streams, which,

albeit distinct divisions, dovetail in terms of positing causal explanations, viz., macro-level



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functionalist and structuralist (both Marxist and non-Marxist versions) and micro-psycho-causal theories (e.g., behaviorist and utilitarian/rational choice models).

It is important to note at the outset that while said divisions can formally be delimited, theselines are certainly neither absolute nor rigid, and that one can in fact find instances of psycho-

causal models departing from higher levels of aggregation (cf relative deprivation theory) aswell as intersecting points between the three streams.

Critically, the cause-detecting ambitions of these models tend by design or accident to amongothers relegate contextual factors to the back-burner. While these dominant theories do enjoyempirical weight in a host of verifying cases, this has been countervailed by a correspondingset of falsifying examples elsewhere.

The recurring dilemma of accounting for “the other half” of popular protest so to speak hasprovided strong impetus to the recent wave of empirical enquiry on the subject in the late1970s and onwards, drawing inspiration from so-called middle-range theories (meso-levelapproaches) and putting context high on the research agenda. A trend which marks the shiftfrom specifications of necessary, but insufficient invariabilities, to conjunctural and context-dependent factors governing the variabilities of popular protest.

Turning now to the idiosyncrasies of dominant discourses as they intrude upon the origins ofmass insurgency. One main artery of contention is given by the different coordinates on whichvarious models plot te causes of rebellion. Similarly, albeit for different reasons, bothstructuralist and functionalist models attach the locus classicus of causes to structures (to eitherclass structures emanating from socio-economic relations of production or functionallyoperating social institutions), whereas psychologically oriented explanations inflect on the

centrality of human agency.

Further, certain cognitive and normative biases, which for better or for worse, as we shalldiscuss later ahead, impinge upon and impart crucial implications to respective method-ologies.

Causes, Contingencies, and Consequences of Mass Insurgency- Macro versus Micro-level Approaches

Returning to the Hobbessian question, what then presupposes civil compliance ordisobedience? Differentially packaged micro-level approaches commonly address this issuefrom the perspective of individual psychologies, two of which merit particular attention here:behaviorist and rational choice theories.



4Behavio rist psychology is ultra-empiricist in terms of confirm ing psycholog ical investigatio ns exclusively

to measurable and o bservable behavior, w hile excising the causal role of inte rnal, covert o r mental processes in

explaining human behavior. Behavioral d isorder , whether collective or individ ual, is assumed to re sult from

“unfortunate conditions n the life of the individual (s) leading to the acquisition of maladaptive beh aviors. Thomas

Hobbes himself had flirted with a s imilar po sition long befor e behaviorism stru ck roo ts in the early 20th century. See

Reber, A (1985).

5culled from Eckstein, S. (1989).

6informed by neo -classical economic theory, this style of analysis (mostly amon g economists and political

scientists) rose to prominence in the late 1960s, at about the same time as theorists treating violent p olitical action as

rational pursuit of group interest. From Olson, Oberchall to Popk in, this model has undergo ne successive facelifting

to further sophisticate arguments on the ov er-decisiven ess of self-interest and to check the patent neglect given to

collective motives in accou nting for the orig ins and dyna mics of collective mobiliza tion. Particularly notable is

Samuel Popkin’s (1 979) sensitization of this model to collective motives in his classic study o f peasant mobilizations

in rur al Vietnam

7Rule (98 8), Scott (1 990), Ekstein (1989), op.cit .

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Drawing from the tenets of behaviorist psychology,4 the former tends to view rebelliouscollective behavior as the aggregated expression of maladaptive individual behaviorsprovoked by certain disruptive external stimuli or “unfortunate” contingencies in the life ofindividuals.

Psychological explanations in this genus emphasize character traits and stressful states of mindthat dispose individuals to rebellion. Individuals who are alienated and anomic (Kornhauser,1959); who feel frustrated and deprived relative to others with whom they compare themselves(Davies 1962, Feierabend & Feierabend 1979, Gurr 1970), and who are attracted to new normsand values (Smelser 1963), have all been portrayed as defiant types and their defiant actionsas irrational.5

While behaviorism sentences mass insurgents to the black-box of unexplained aberrations,rational choice theorists6 (e.g., Olson 1965, Oberchall 1973, Popkin 1979) mold dissentingindividuals in the image of self-interested, instrumental, rationally strategizing actors. Themainspring of collective action and mobilization here is not collective motives or goals, butrather individual self-interested decisions based on cost-benefit calculations of often high-riskstrategies of non-compliance with the status quo. Rational actors with inherently divisibleinterests are disinclined to assume the risks of mobilization for essentially indivisible“collective goods” (Olson 1965) because they can “ride free.” Collective defiance is likely onlywhen actors receive selective incentives for their participation in anti-status-quo movements,and, correspondingly, when effective penalties are meted out on no-participating “free-riding”members.

However, as some critics7 have argued, this model, insofar as it restricts the rationale ofcollective action entirely to egocentric motives of actors, cannot account for the ways group



8Scott, ibid .

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solidarities, moral commitment to the collective, and other non-rational values may mobilizepeople to act independently of individual self-interest. Nor can they account for the net-impactacts of defiance produce, since there can never be any warranty that projected resultsmotivating rebellion in the first place will tally with the actual outcome of the executed act ofdefiance. The introductory quote on Luxemburg reminds us only too well in terms of how the

final score of revolutionary struggles invariably flies in the face of many cost-calculatingengineers of rebellion!

Unyielding constraints on the ability of rational human agency to single-handedly determinethe final destination of calculated courses of action bring some grist to the mills of macro-levelmodels insisting on the primacy of structural and functional determinants of collective action.The general controversy between structuralist and functionalist theories in the social sciencesis well known and off-shoots of these rival approaches in their various shades /either in mixedor “pure” form) extend into the study of mass movements and insurgencies.

Whereas functionalist models (specially those hewing closely to Durkheimian and Parsoniansociology) tend to decipher the latter as “safety valve” mechanisms ( or occasional but in thefunctionalist sense, necessary dysfunctions, exceptions confirming the rule) which in the finalanalysis paradoxically operate in favor of reinforcing consensus and cohesion within existingsocio-cultural institutions and solidarities. Structuralists (specially in the vocabulary oforthodox Marxism) are inclined to see them as systematic expressions of conflict arising fromgenetic antagonisms in economic relations of production and class structures. Whereas bothdeduce the logic of civil disorder from macro-structures, these are contrastingly depicted aseither self-calibrating homeostatic systems of conflict-reproducing modes of production boundto self-detonate at some point in time to bring about social change.

What crucial factor (s) tilt (s) the balance in either direction between social compliance andconfrontation? Key destabilizing factors to functionalist systems-maintenance are perceivedas dramatic violations of implicit social and institutional arrangements and contracts, hand inglove with massive breakdown of institutional control and regulation. For much of orthodoxMarxism, social change via revolutionary upheaval is thought to occur when an objectivelocation and conscious identity coincide, i.e., when social actors become class actors.8

At bottom, this process of objective enlightenment leading, as it were, towards revolutionaryvoluntarism among paragon class actors - proletarians - is preconditioned by objectiveeconomic pressures, i.e., capitalist-bred immiserization reaching breaking-point. Similarly,

psycho-structuralist streams, like contemporary expositors of the more liberal de



9This classic stre am links the variabilities of collective behavio r unleashed by structural strains to

differences in fulfilment of socio-psychological core standards of satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

10See Piven And Cloward (1977), op cit .

11Smelser, N (1962).

12

Tocquevillean model of rising expectations (relative deprivation theory),9 pinpoint rapideconomic change engendered by, for example, industrialization and urbanization, as thenerve-center of social tension, but reverse Marxist arguments nonetheless by claiming thatperiods of economic advance rather than intensifying misery may generate expectations thatoutpace the rate of actual economic gain, thus exacerbating frustrations and forcing mass

rebellion to erupt.10

Still, other macro-level attempts, straddling the borders between functionalism andstructuralism to find common causal processes for all incidents of collective behavior,11 specifya set of necessary conditions, chronologically ordered and operating in “knock-on” sequenceof episodes of collective behavior (defined as mobilization on the basis of belief whichredefines social action) to occur. Concomitantly, these determinants include: structuralconduciveness (permissiveness of social arrangements to the generation of social movements),structural strain (existence of ambiguities, deprivation, tensions and conflicts in society), andthe breakdown of social control.

Critical authors have indicted macro-causal theories on several counts. Itemized in their “rapsheet” reports are the following compulsive infractions. Functionalism’s consensualisticprejudices make it analytical insensitive to vital variables behind social conflict, change, andinnovative collective actions. Also by “functionalizing” the causes of collective protest, i.e.collapsing its cause and effect, they tend to fertilize circular arguments. For orthodox Marxism,a familiar delinquency is that of economic determinism. Certainly, economic relations arenecessary conditions and sources of tension and defiance.. Yet, by no means do theymechanically determine how and when economically subordinate groups rebel. In addition,apart from the fact that economic relations cannot be restricted to purely productive ones (cf.economic spheres of distribution and consumption), British Marxist single-base assumptions

ride roughshod over a wide range of equally relevant, relatively autonomous potential basesof social tension like gender, ethnicity, and religion.

For relative deprivation theories, singularly invoked socio-psychological standards ofsatisfaction/dissatisfaction, although endemic in most societies, can and have in a multitudeof cases been overridden by a host of other considerations like moral and cultural elements.And for Smelserian structural-functionalism, the “value-added logic” governing the tightchronology of structural determinants appears to be more sustainable under “laboratory”rather than actual “field” conditions. No doubt, Smelser’s determinants do exist, but they do



12This po int is instructively illustrated in a recent mu ltivariate cross-national study of p opular reactions to

IMF-Wor ld Ban k structural adjustment prog rams in over 250 countries, where broadly identical strains gen erated by

austerity programs have spaw ned a gamut of urban poor reactions and repertoires with varying political outcomes.

Walton and Ragin (1990), op cit .

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not have to follow the neat sequence he once envisioned. Moreover, his model can hardlyaccount for which features of the social structure fo condition the array of responses to strain,and those which pattern outcomes of collective defiance. Consequently, it leaves little roomfor historical variability.12

As Piven and Cloward (1977) once argued, while the weakening of social controls escortingruptures in social life may be an important precondition for popular uprisings, it doesn’tnecessarily follow that the infrastructure of social life simply and completely collapses . Nordo those who react to these disturbances by protesting are also those who suffer the sharpestpersonal disorientation and alienation. It may well be the opposite, that those whose lives arerooted in some institutional context are best able to confederate in some mode of collectiveprotest.

In sum, As Scott (1990) notes, the general limitation of macro-causal theories of one or theother denomination stems from the shared pre-occupation with establishing necessary yetinsufficient conditions for mobilization. This inclination compels them to ignore a priorirelevant questions relating to social agents and the specific context of their actions, like whymobilization occurs and why it assumes the specific form it does.

However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that in the presence of all specific pre-conditions socialmovements will actually appear, or that agents will be inspired to act collectively. Theappearance or otherwise of such movements will certainly depend upon a host of other factorswhich are context-specific and can’t simply be deduced from socio-cultural conditions alone- e.g., the presence and absence of emotive issues and potential leading actors, the reaction ofauthorities, social agents’ calculations of the possible benefits of action versus inaction.

Further agents are either treated as fundamentally irrational, or at least, non-rational; or theiractions only become relevant when they coincide with the course of action thoughtappropriate given a specific theoretical understanding of the social structure, class andmaterial relations, etc.

Equally crucial, as Eckstein (1989) adds, are the intervening roles played by “local institutionalstructures and cultural milleux, inter-class ties and alliances, and perceived options to “exit”in determining whether and how shared grievances are defied and resisted.”

Lastly, despite cognitive and methodological cleavages (consensus versus conflict),

structuralist and functionalist models both forge an enduring cease-fire on similar normative



13Scott (1990), op cit : 39.

14

grounds – in qualifying qualitative discrepancies, whether between institutions or movements,they use a set of idealized positive criteria from which negative or deviant cases are gaugedand defined. Unmistakably, the evolutionistic grammar in which such opposing qualifiers –e.g., modern versus traditional; pre-modern versus modern movements; vertical non-classversus horizontal class-based solidarities – is couched reflects these competing models’

common allegiance to a universal and uni-linear blueprint of societal development.

Once again, Scott (1990) captures this point eloquently:

“Despite .... methodological differences, social movements are accorded no less anachronistic status within

structural Marxism than they w ere within functionalism, though for rather different reasons. Social movements

are defined negatively as non -quite-class movem ents. Like institutions in functionalism , class movem ents in

Marxism pr ovi de a norm against which other forms of activity are m easured: a norm in term s of which other

social mov ements constitute dev iant cases.”13

From Causes to Contexts, Contingencies and Consequences of Mass Insurgency

– Meso-Level Approaches

Diminishing returns on intellectual investments in single-ordered explanations and causalmodels hiked the demand for meso-level or middle-range theories in the late 1970s andonwards. This budding trend in the study of popular protest pulled the fulcrum of inquiryaway from causes to mediating contexts, contingencies and diverse consequences – fromcontext-free invariabilities to context-dependent variabilities of mass insurgency. The taskwas to fill in the vacuum of unanswered questions previous approached had left behind.

Indeed, many of the contributions discussed in this essay can be sorted under this category,

Although lines of kinship with macro- and micro-level models are often thinly veiled, andtherefore tend to blur distinctions, what relatively marks fish from fowl here is the particularfocus on middle-level issues and units of analysis (e.g., mobilization problems of formalorganizations like resource mobilization theory of RMT) and complex contexts whichconjunct to produce diverse, but patterned protest repertoires and outcomes.

However, these distinctions are, in my opinion, not so much substantive (i.e., theoretically,these bear more modest pretensions than the grand theories they reject or seek to rectify andrefine) as they are methodological (albeit with significant theoretical implications). Since wewill in a short while assess the merits of selected works, which incidentally do toe kindred

middle-range lines, that discussion shall not be anticipated here. But before moving on, a briefsummary of an early meso-level tradition – resource mobilization theory, RMT – againstwhich one major work to be examined further on (Piven and Cloward 1977) has leveled fierce



14 Ibid ; Eckstein, op cit ; Rule, op cit ; Walton and Ragin, op cit.

15

flak, in order.

Resource mobilization theory (RMT) is perhaps the most well-formulated non-Marxist schoolof thought that attempts to explain social movements at the meso (organizational)-level. 14

RMT argues that grievances are endemic to social structure, and that they therefore can’t in

themselves account for the emergence of social movements. Like the rational choice theorists(cf functionalism), RMT proponents see movement actions as rational responses to the costsand rewards of different lines of action. Unlike them, however, they emphasize thatmovements are contingent, above all, upon resources, group organization, and opportunitiesfor collective action.

RMT posits that when groups share strong distinctive identities and dense interpersonalnetworks, members are readily mobilizable – identities and networks provide a base forcollective incentives. Outside entrepreneurs or movement operators can be crucial mobilizingagents, specially among deprived groups with minimal political and organizationalexperiences. Factors external to a polity are important, but are mediated primarily by theirimpact on states and regimes. In drawing attention to these factors, RMT has been sensitiveto the inherent constraints and instability of collective action, a factor which macro-theorieslargely disregard. Nevertheless, in contrast to contextualizing meso-level approaches, RMTskirts the content and socio-political context of collective action. It is concerned with thedynamics of collective action per se , independent of context and the actual aims of such action.

Homing in on Theoretical and Methodological Frequencies- “Vertical” and “Horizontal Linkages”

Sundry writers under review broadly belong to the league of, what Söderstedt (1972) hadonce labeled, “piece-meal engineers” (referred to elsewhere as middle-range theories) thangrand theorists. The basic thrust uniting them appears to be the filtering out of complexintermediary contexts which link invariable causes with the variable effects (repertoires andrepercussions) of protest, inductively and successively building theory from the bottom-up.

In greater or lesser degrees, however, vertical linkages with macro-structuralist/functionalistand micro-rationalist thinking manifest themselves at several junctures – inter alia,

a) in the specification of general objective causes/dynamics (i.e., acknowledged necessary but

insufficient explanations) as well as subjective imperatives of protest;

b) in the way cause and effect (bases and repertoires/repercussions) are contextualized;



16

c) in the conceptualization and normative definition of what precise features constitutepopular/social movements.

In turn these vertical linkages tend to horizontally polarize concerned writers in terms ofvarying methodological approaches and ways of empirically operationalizing used concepts

and addressing posed theoretical issues.

Causes and Dynamics of Popular Protest – Single Versus Multiple Bases

Let us dwell into the first linkage point: objective causes and dynamics cum subjectiveimperatives of protest. General assumptions from the above grand trio ae sophisticatedlyrecycled into the popular meso-level theories to which some of our protagonists here,implicitly or explicitly, attach – viz., “transition to order/restraint” and so-called “socialbreakdown, disorganization, de-routinization” theories.

These explanations expect the Pandora’s box of popular protest to pry open as a result of thedisruptive impact of the Leviathan forces of capitalist industrialization, urbanization or“abnormal” tensions caused by economic crises, wars, etc. on normal social institutions,arrangements and routines regulating everyday life. Such rare disruptive episodes apparentlycorrelate with outbursts of collective militancy and insurgency, particularly because short-circuiting institutions “throw people out of orbit” and cause disenchanted subordinate groupsto seek redress elsewhere via extra-institutional channels.

Institutional breakdown may mark the qualitative shift from anachronistic social moralarrangements and solidarities to the innovative sanctioning mechanisms of cohesion, thus

signaling in the same vein the transition from the old to the new order (as testified, forinstance by the classic progression from feudal to capitalist orders). This transition implies theinstitutionalization of new shared values (e.g., feudal collectivistic and agrarian communal-istic progressively being undermined by waxing individualistic market-oriented capitalistethos) to which contracting superordinate and subordinate groups and parties subscribe andon which new social contracts are forged. It appears concurrently that transitions from oldto new orders may be bloody and messy, up to a point when the regulatory and cohesivepowers of novel contracts are effectively installed and fully operative.

The structuralist and functionalist implications of these models lie in : the substantive role

ascribed to changing economic relations, hierarchies, and values brought about by capitalistexpansion (structuralism) and its dissolving impact on traditional forms as ultimate bases oftension blended with the largely consensualist (functionalism, insofar as conflict articulatedin mass insurgency tends to be seen rather as occasional outbursts under extraordinaryconditions of structural breakdown) and thermostatic functions assigned to institutions,whether old or new.



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Rationalist sometimes mix with structural-functionalist assumptions in the specification ofsubjective imperatives – in the sense of modernizing middle-operators and leading agentsintroducing secular and universalistic goals, ideologies, political programs, rational andeffective organizational technologies. However, the rationality attached to, for example,modern as opposed to traditional movements (allegedly more predisposed to non-rational

moralistic standards) assumes a plurality of connotations and normative definitions. Rationalchoice assumptions of instrumentalist and self-interested actors are in this case deformedbeyond recognition, a fact which reflects the relative dominance of structural-functionalistdiscourses among concerned writers.

If we thus compare them on this point, there seems to be broad consensus on general causesand dynamics, although there may be disagreement on whether these derive exclusively fromsingular bases (economic relations) or co-extensively from relatively independent multiplebases (including non-economic relations). Vertical linkages with structuralism/functionalismare ost pronounced in the works of Hobsbawm and Piven and Cloward, who, althoughaddressing different theoretical issues (the former theorizing on transitional but distinctprotest repertoires/social movements, while the latter, focusing on problems of mobilizationin modern organizations), tend at the same time to view causes in terms of singular bases.

The latter point is most clearly overstretched in Hobsbawm’s transition thesis, which basicallysuggests that even though the process of the complete dissolution of his “archaic” socialmovements might be uneven, and in some cases, protracted, they would inevitably succumbor vanish in the wake of modern class-based movements spawned by the logic andcontradictions of economic class relations in capitalist production.

In Hobsbawm’s imagery, so it seems, “pre-political” essentially “reformist” and “evolutionary

backward” movements dynamized precariously by the logic of disintegrating “moraleconomies” meet their tragic fate as “anomalous historical footnotes in the general trajectorytowards modern labor and socialist movements.” The subjective determinants he engages aretransparently class-specific with strong Marxist connotations. Simultaneously, there is afunctional component to Hobsbawm’s arguments: structurally destabilizing causes of massconflict at transitional interface are eventually upset by the functionally stabilizing effects ofmodern institutions and organizations of the new social order (transition-to-order thesis).

In Piven and Cloward’s study of modern American urban movements, primarily a rejoinderto mainstream RMT discourse, Hobsbawm’s relatively dignified subjective determinants are

subsumed entirely to the whim of structural constraints. Although unlike Hobsbawm theyrefer more to political structures, like him these writers trace the ultimate causes of disruptionand civil strife to episodic dislocations in the economy leading to temporary de-routinizationof civil life and institutional systems-breakdown.



15Togethe r, this quartet app ear to play the c ultural/semiotic/semiological structuralist tunes populari zed by

the likes of Lévis-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Saussure and some of the French Annalists. For a brief summary, see

Burke (1992), op cit .

18

Harrison’s and Moore’s separate accounts of English urban crowds and German workers’movements, albeit also reflecting vertical linkages fundamentally by way of breakdown andde-routinization assumptions, do keep safer distance from the overstatements issued by theprevious duo.

In different ways, they seem to suggest that protest repertoires don’t necessarily have toderive from any one single logic. These may be keyed instead on other equally decisive bases,or more stringently put, on the way economic and non-economic bases interact. In the caseof Harrison’s pre-industrial towns (i.e., typically commercial rather than industrial), theurbanization process and the deep symbolic structures it breeds may provide more criticalbases of contention (as well as cohesion) than purely economic ones.

Moore shows that while the capitalist economic logic may be primary lid-openers of conflictand change, its assumed homologous dissolving logic may in varying degrees be mitigatedby the presence or absence of other non-economic forces producing, indeed, contrastingrepertoires, both compliant and confrontational ones.

Pitching in his share against structural determinism and single-base logic, Worsley’scomparative study of different strains of popular movements illustrates rather how structuralrelativism in the sense of a wide spectrum of structural settings and societies from North toSouth, generates broadly similar, but “indigenized” or vernacular variants of the populistprotest repertoire.

Lastly, the staunchest exponent of the multiple-base perspective can be found in Davis whospeaks of multiple and co-existing hierarchies of sundry kinds of power, property andcontrol. Within this framework, certain protest repertoires may directly arise from purely

non-economic bases, like in the case of religious riots and the rites of misrule performed byyouth abbeys of the French Middle Ages, which by no means systematically coincided witheconomic or class-based relations.

In a sense, Ileto’s and Lan’s peasant-based revolutionary and socio-religious movementstangent this theme of multiplicity when they talk separately about the significant role of deepand durable (traditional) structures other than economic ones vis-à-vis mass arousal,mobilization, and the making of mass rebellion. Like Davis and Harrison, these two zoom inon structural bases of protest of another currency,15 viz., synchronic structures or systems ofthought (mentalities) and culture rather than diachronic economic ones, in which as if the

fundamental categories of culture were timeless.



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Contextualizing Complexes: At the Clearing Stations Between Causes and Effects

Notwithstanding above dispute on the nature of general causes (single versus multiple bases),there seems to be a cessation of hostilities on the necessity of contextualizing them in termsof intermediary complexes, meso-structures and institutions, and thereby cutting analytical

slack on perplexing protest outputs and repertoire variabilities. Contextualization strikes atthe heart of corporate intellectual investments, and it is also in this central area that majorassets and liabilities are deposited. Vertical linkages as well as horizontal methodologicalextensions are resurrected by the contributors’ diverse contextualizing efforts.

As earlier noted, the existence of a wide range of disparate protest forms and outputsconvincingly shows that the relationship between causes and effects is far from simple andautomatic. Popular causes of alienation (e.g., structural strains engendered by industrial-ization and urbanization, widespread material deprivation, etc.) Have simply not switchedon to militancy and mass insurgency. And even when it did, both the forms and the net-results (or impacts) manifesting protest were clearly multifarious and hardly predictable.

Metaphorically, so it appears, standard causes pass through and are processed midway atspecifiable “clearing stations” of contexts, which in the final analysis sculpture the quality(whether docility or militancy), shape /particular repertoire assumed), size (relative impact,spelling the difference between success and failure) of variable products of collectiveresponse. Indeed, our piece-meal engineers provide salient missing pieces to the jigsawpuzzle of variabilities.

Which contextual “clearing stations” are subpoenaed to testify by litigating writers? ForHobsbawm’s “primitive” social movements, the context in which patterned responses to the

structural strains unleashed by advancing capitalism occurs, is provided by the transitionalstate of pre-existing social institutions. Marginal groups at the interstices of the transitionbetween the disintegrating traditional feudal social and political institutions of kinship andpatronage and the integrating blossoming ones of modern capitalism, are extremely volatileand prone under given conditions to articulate nostalgic moral claims and mobilize throughdisruptive, but in themselves, transitional protest repertoires of rural social brigandage,millenarian movements, urban riots and labor sects.

These marginal movements of the peasantry and the more heterogenous urban menu peupleare bound to modernize into more homogenous, cutting-edge class-based labor and socialist

movements following their full incorporation in and consolidation of capitalist class relationsand institutions. The schizophrenic state of affairs (the menu peuple having one foot in thefeudal past and another in the capitalist present, albeit still at the periphery) to which thecontext of transition subjects Hobsbawm’s “primitive rebels” is endogenously expressed bythe binary opposition of revolutionism and reformism in “archaic movements.”



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“Primitive revels” obviously bear the mark of, to paraphrase Moore, revolutionary “iron intheir souls,” but it is a brand of moral awakening and commitment which has essentially beeninformed by backward-looking conservative ideologies and reformistic world-views,nonetheless. Conveniently, but controversially, Hobsbawm’s periodization of the golden ageof “primitive, pre-political” protest repertoires co-extends well too neatly with the

tumultuous age of European pre-industrialism in the late 19th

to mid-20th centuries.

Harrison, revisiting this historical flash-point of contention, the notorious age of “king andmob,” argued that for all its worth, Hobsbawmian transitional arguments are in factstrategically de-contextualizing. Alongside of capitalist industrialization, the process ofurbanization and overlapping structures of urban and national political cultures could verywell be sources of tension and contention in their own rights.

While there is evidence to support the general transition of distinct repertoires of protest toanother (“primitive” disruptive to “modern” stable forms) in line with the completeconsolidation of capitalist class relations, as suggested by Hobsbawm, this may very be prima facie if not superficial. Beyond nitty-gritty economic forces, intervention of urban and nationalpolitical cultures may, insofar as they provide alternative venues and standards for popularexpressions of corporate self-identity, operate in ways that can, as it were, subliminallydisguise contention in quasi-ritual and seemingly consensual repertoires, like celebratorycrowd events, rather than patently conflictual ones such as mobs and riots.

Such possibility of ritual “smoke-screening” casts a shadow on Hobsbawm and other crowdhistorians’ arguments resting heavily on conflictual repertoires as quintessential indicatorsof transition from old to new social orders. As Harrison intimates, national celebratory eventscould, for example, be the strategic loci of contention rather than consensus, symbolically

encapsulating politico-cultural antagonisms arising from perceived violations of local civicimage and corporate identities rather than stereotype class contradictions.

The moratorium of sorts on intervening contexts other than economic and class structures isnowhere more lucidly reliefed than in Davis’ back-tracking investigation of the blue-print anddynamics of French religious riots and purificatory rites of misrule among village and urbanyouth and guildsmen. In contrast, but on par with secular urban food riots, there is if you likea distinctive religious moral economy. To the extent that the degree of correspondencebetween divisions separating religious crowd antagonists (Protestants versus Catholics) waspretty minimal, it is possible to delimit shifting “boundaries” in some spheres of urban

activity between sacred and secular as well as the different popular responses engendered bythese shifts, particularly during the interregnum between qualitative social transformations.

Apart from reincarnating Harrison’s point on the functional dualism of popular pageantryand festive repertoires, Davis highlights the resilient character of these repertoires as conduitsof popular definition of self and community carried over from one generation to another.



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These may change more in form than in substance, as the history of transformation of ruralto urban abbeys of misrule succinctly demonstrates. Strongly, the French case suggests thatchanging forms synchronized well with the changing needs of urban growth and attendantsocial differentiation, without relinquishing basic functions of mediation of self-identity andcollective values.

But whatever happened to Hobsbawm’s invincible modern social movements? The historicalrecord speaks more of ignominious blunders rather than victories. For all their vaunted poolof resources and opportunities for mass mobilization, expected subjective voluntarism amongsubordinate groups had not rarely defaulted on revolutionary projects. When they did rarelyvolunteer, mass participation had been short-lied and eventually ended in dramatic retreat.This lesson can be drawn in the separate cases of urban and working class movements inMoore’s Germany and Piven and Cloward’s United States.

Moore’s detailed anecdote of differential responses (militancy versus docility) among Germanindustrial worker to the more or less standard social strains of modern capitalism poignantlyshows how variations in collective action are comprehensively patterned by the conjoiningforces of social, political, cultural, historical, and psychological contexts. These interveningparameters extend in both directions between local and national arenas of contention. At theshop and sectoral levels of industry, like in the coal and steel industries of the German Rurh,the relative proclivity of different proletarian segments to either militant or conformistrepertoires of collective action hinged on the presence or absence of traditional (cfHobsbawm’s contrasting verdict on traditionalism as liability rather than asset) of socio-cultural and political (in terms of paternal legitimation by state and political authorities)institutions and moral standards of collective bargaining and belligerency.

Through such institutions, key requisites for disciplined strategic mobilization are mediated,not least ideological and psychological cohesiveness and sensitivity to “social contract”violations, new options and alternative moralities. Once local struggles and conflict enter thelarger polity, a squadron of factors intervene – political realignments and balance of forces,different options to exit (e.g., quasi-ritualization of popular disenchantment through electoralinstitutions), varying elite responses, specific character of national political culture, etc. Sincethe probability that all these requisites would conjunct all at once is obviously limited, theodds against nationwide rebellions to precipitate would indeed be imposingly formidable.

In the same manner, structural and contextual constraints worked against initially promising

urban mass mobilizations in the United States during the war and inter-war Depression years,according to Piven and Cloward. More than Moore, these two writers underscore the (over-)decisive role played by political institutions and culture in undermining both thesustainability and success of mobilization and mass participation. However, there tends tobe a slight touch of overkill in their contextualizing arguments. Simply put, these writersclaim that mass insurgency failed not despite organizational formalization (RMT advocates’



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sine qua non for resource maximization and thus for any movement’s success), but because ofit.

Apparently, if we are to take Piven and Cloward’s arguments at face value, what structuraldislocations and temporary institutional disarray giveth (maneuvering space for disruptive

extra-institutional mass mobilizations) institutional normalization (e.g., restabilization ofrepresentative electoral systems, return to normal political alignments within elite ranks, andre-institution of predominant political cultures) taketh away. Once mass movementstransform into formal organizations in tandem with political institutional normalization, thestrong tendency of movement leaders to be co-opted by elite power-holders – in exchange fornominal reforms and mass demobilization coupled with the emasculating ritualization ofpolitical conflict via electoral systems – effectively destroys initial gains delivered by informalmilitant mass struggles.

While revolutionary failures abound, some struggles, like those in the Philippines (1896) andZimbabwe (1979) did succeed. What accounts for these success stories? Here, as well as infaltering cases, the conjunction of several contextual streams played a decisive hand in thecourse of events. Pace Hobsbawm’s traditional-modern dichotomy, these examplesgraphically portray the reconcilability rather than irreconcilability of binary opposition thatmade the difference.

Thus, in both revolutions, despite temporal and spatial distance, traditions of folk religion(Shona rituals and practices around mhodoro royal ancestry in Zimbabwe and indigenizedCatholic ideology and ritual practices in the Philippines), political authority and its leadingagents (Zimbabwean spiritual mediums and Filipino charismatic leaders of socio-religious,millenarian movements and secret peasant brotherhoods and sects) merged positively with

their modern counterparts (socialism and liberal bourgeois ideologies, armed socialistguerillas and enlightened middle-class intelligentsia) and provided both impetus and impactto mass mobilizations.

This fusion, as Lan noted in Zimbabwe, reveals the deep symbolic meaning of revolution andthe dialectical process of continuity and discontinuity – where “in a changing world (folk)ideology and ritual constantly seek out new material, to feed upon, ingest and absorb in orderto grow and meet challenges change brings and in order to remain essentially unchanged.”

Perhaps a more comprehensive symptomatic expression of this dialectical theme can be seen

in the compulsive recurrence of populist politics – marked by a charismatic leadership indirect rapport with the people – which despite context-specific variations are, as Worsley’scomparative study of populist movements reports, reincarnated time and again irrespectiveof context.



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Normative Concepts, Defining Subject Actors, Social and Popular Movements– Captive or Creative Agency

Finally, vertical and horizontal linkages intersect on how concerned writers elect to define thecentral object of their inquiry, i.e., social action, actors, and movements. Among some of the

authors, these categories are more empirically defined or context-specific. Piven and Clowardpremise their definition of movement on the mode of action, whether or not it takes todisruptive methods of mobilization. Social action and movement arising from certainspecifiable spheres like the religious movement of Davis, Ileto’s socio-religious movements,or Harrison’s association of collective action manifested in different types of crowds andcrowd events. Others like Worsley speak more in terms of shared political style than coherentmovements, as in the case of populism. Still others, most obviously Hobsbawm, apply classicMarxist class norms in reconstructing the differentia specifika of social action and movements,a datum against which other movements can be defined. Here, a contradistinction is madebetween revolutionary (modern) versus reformist (traditional) movements, as those eitherpossessing or lacking strategic goals and programs designed to qualitatively transform pre-existing social and class structures.

At another level, however, above cleavages tend to subside with respect to evaluating thelimits and latitude of collective action. How far are social actors to be credited for the failureor success of action? Or to put it in the jargon of mainstream social science disputants: Dostructures presuppose human agency or vice versa in the final analysis? The tilt of the evidenceat large seems to point in favor of intermediary contexts and meso-structures – or, as in somecases, “other” durable deeper structures f symbols and meanings – over human agency, butstructures nonetheless.

Although the authors scrutinized here muster powerful evidence in terms of the limitingimpact of these intervening middle-structures on elected course of action, there is certainly noreason to throw the baby with the bath-water on human agency ( a caveat particularly leveledat Piven and Cloward’s structural determinism), insofar as social actors are themselvesmediating forces, whose actions do, in lesser or greater degrees of calculation, have varyingimpacts on conditioning structures. In this sense, social actors are both captives and creatorsof structures (see earlier section on the general hazards of structuralism).

Conclusion – Empirical and Methodological Insights and Problems

Syndicated empirical efforts (of course with some few exceptions) help rectify recklessgeneralizations rampant in mainstream discourses on the theme of popular protest move-ments. Together, the separate empirical accounts offer relevant clues to the haunting riddle ofvast variabilities, despite standard object conditions, of forms and outcomes of protest. Below,



24

we list some of the key insights delivered by reviewd inputs.

Firstly, the empirical inclusivity rather than exclusivity of binary opposites (traditional versusmodern) in most of the cases presented convincingly demonstrates the analytical bankruptcyand midget utility of stereotype dichotomies.

Secondly, the same cases also strongly suggest that different protest repertoires andrepercussions cannot be deduced a priori from any one single causal base. Althougheconomic/class relations may well be primary sources of tension and contention, they mayunder certain conditions be offset or overridden by other equally decisive, albeit intermediary,sources (e.g., religion, political culture, and other non-economic relations). Moreover, theformer are endogenously “segmented” rather than uniform relations (market-based versusproduction-based economic relations, wherein individual “segments” can by all meansmidwife particularized forms of conflict and protest repertoires and repercussions. Thismultiplicity can partially explain variabilities, although it may be difficult to exactly delineatethe boundaries of various bases, since they often overlap in reality.

Thirdly, the evidence reviewed here also indicate that contemporary protest repertoires mayactually be popular attempts to understand and change unfavorable situations by, as it were,re-linking rather de-linking with the past. In fact, the logic of this statement is quite simple:collective traditions of the past give meaning and form to collective modes of action in thepresent. To some extent, the propensity of different fractions among subordinate groupstowards either militant or docile modalities of collective action may depend on inherited socio-cultural and institutional property. Segments with strong institutional links are usually orlogically also those with greater sensitivity to perceived “contract” violations, and would bythe same token likely be able to articulate claims. Mobilizability is nothing automatically given

by dint of position within pre-existing class structures.

Fourthly, another lesson learned from the empirical depositions is that one shouldn’t judge thebook by its cover. Consensualist-looking repertoires of collective action should not be readilydismissed as some sort of counterfeit alternative to the more “authentic” or visibly moreconfrontational protest forms. In fact, the former may just be symbolic means of articulatingcritique in highly repressive or power-laden socio-political contexts. Contention then wouldmost likely be camouflaged in the shape of quasi-rituals and pageantry.

Above assets from noted insights now merit juxtaposition with cost-deductions in order to

balance the ledger on reviewed contributions. Apart from the caveat on the tendency ofdownplaying human agency in favor of meso-structures, other notable problems inviteattention and vindication.

A central flaw in much of the text reviewed concerns empirical comparability and validity.Certainly, this is the price that has to be paid for detail. Firstly, selected cases of movements



25

span a wide range of collective action repertoires – from urban to rural, millenarianmovements, labor sects, relief, unemployed, civil rights movements, classic workers and labormovements, peasant guerilla movements, secret confraternities, populist movements, etc.Such repertoires are in essence highly context- and historically-specific in a way that lendsthese cases problematically to analytical comparisons.

Secondly, comparability is also compounded by the fact that selected cases tease out clues toand address a variety of themes and questions within the general problematique of popularprotest – from the dynamics of mass mobilization, the impact of protest, the semiotics andsemiology of protest, to the history of transitional repertoires.

Thirdly, as previously mentioned, conceptual references and normative terminologies, like thecriteria used to assess success and failure, differ between some of the contributions, adiscrepancy tending to further thwart comparability. In fact, some central concepts, likeMoore’s psychological requisites for militant mobilization or Piven and Cloward’s “trans-valuation,” are extremely difficult to empirically operationalize and validate (or for that matterinvalidate).

Another cavity, one associated with the occupational hazards of contextualizing arguments,manifests in tendency towards tautology. Without raising contextualizing output to higheraltitudes of generalization via comparative research, elements of tautology and circularityincubated by such arguments may intensify, insofar as their basic design implies that variableeffects (protest repertoires and repercussions) are given the variabilities of the very contextsinvoked.

Lastly, the contributions show at close inspection that old conceptual biases die hard.

Although some authors (Davis, Harrison, Ileto and Lan) have avoided solipsistic hangoversstemming from functionalist and structuralist macro-theories, delinquencies still occur amongothers. Solipsistic tendencies thrive, for instance, in the rigid dichotomization of repertoiresof collective behavior and action, movements and social institutions into functionalistconsensual versus structuralist confrontational forms. In operationalizing this dichotomy onetends to focus only on the “literal translations” in reality of binary opposites. Disruptiverepertoires like riots are perceived in this sense as self-evident expressions of conflict, whereasfestive and celebratory forms are readily written off as manifestations of consensus. Yet, asearlier argued here, consensualist repertoires may under given conditions just as well, orperhaps even better, serve as Trojan horses for contention. Repertoires “pretending” to

concede than contend through critical symbolism and dissimulation may be more dis-empowering to those in power when the latter do not sense any immediate threat to theirpower.



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Documents

Collective Alienation & Protest. Looking into the Eye (s) of the Storm -- Bases, Contexts, Repertoires, and Repercussions of Mass Insurgency