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Sociology 435-01
Sociology of Social Movements

Fall 2004

Morton Hall 316
T 3:55-6:45 P.M.

Required Readings:

1) FJ: Jo Freeman & Victoria Johnson, eds. 1999. Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

2) SJ: Jackie Smith and Hank Johnston, eds. 2002. Globalization and Resistance. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

3) RR: Reserve Readings at the Salmon Library

4) Student Suggested and other readings, to be determined


Recommended Reading:
SB: Steven Buechler. 1990. Women's Movements in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

General Information

This course offers a general introduction to the Sociology of Social Movements. We will focus on several of the most common themes of concern to scholars in this area. As sociologists, these scholars' primary interests are not on specific movements, but on general social processes. These include issues regarding mobilization and recruitment, organization and tactics, identity and ideology, success and failure, as well as the social and political context in which social movement activism takes place (or fails to take place). Still a secondary interest of many scholars is, of course, with particular movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, or the Pro-Life Movement. Thus, most of our readings will use one or another movement to exemplify or elucidate some theoretical theme or process that, if sociologically important, will be applicable to many movements.

Course Expectations  

The basics: You are expected to attend each class and take excellent notes on the lecture material. You are also expected to keep up with the reading of all assigned materials. Your note taking and readings must be sufficiently active and engaged (as opposed to passive and disinterested) to ensure that you develop a deep (rather than surface) understanding of the material.

The "400-level part": As a 400-level course there is more independence of work and thought expected - and assessed - in this course. You are expected to draw both upon research and study skills assumed to have been learned in your previous studies and the specific conceptual tools address in class lectures and readings, to work on two major papers - one that requires you to independently find, read, analyze, and cogently critique four scholarly articles, and one term paper that requires you to independently search the literature on a particular coherent theme and write a paper that summarizes and critiques the studies you encounter.

The exams will generally be designed to assess the level of your engagement with, and understanding of, the material. A few short writing questions will assess whether you can articulate the meaning of a concept, theory, trend, or fact at a level of sophistication expected of upper level university students. Longer essays will assess not only whether you have engaged and understood the material, whether you can organize your thoughts in such a way as to weave through several themes and findings to produce a useful explanation of how various phenomena are interrelated.

Evaluation

The breakdown of the grades will be as follows:

Both exams will include short answer and essay questions.
For both exams a portion of the exam will include questions handed out in advance.

Other Assignments, Attendance, and Participation

Attendance is required. Please drop this course if know that you will have to miss several classes, even if you will have very good reasons for your absence.

A Note on Email: I will likely send many announcements regarding the course out via email. On the Information Sheet you are required to supply me with an email address that you check regularly (i.e. several times per week). If you do not supply me with one, I will use the email address that the university has supplied you, and I will assume that you check it regularly.

TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE (subject to changes)

Reserve Readings at the Salmon Library Reserve (Circulation) Desk:

1. Snow, David A. and Robert D. Benford. 1992."Master Frames and Cycles of Protest." Pp. 133-155 in Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClung Mueller, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.
 
2. Noonan, Rita. 1995. "Women against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in Chile's Transition to Democracy." Sociological Forum 10(1):81-111.
 
3. Hewitt, Lyndi and Holly McCammon. 2004. "Explaining Suffrage Mobilization: Balance, Neutralization, and Range in Collective Action Frames, 1892-1919." Mobilization. 9(2):149-166.
 
4. Valocchi, Steve. "Riding the Crest of a Protest Wave? Collective Action Frames in the Gay Liberation Movement, 1969-1973."Mobilization, 1999, 4, 1, Apr, 59-73
 
5. Gamson, Joshua. 1995. "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma." Social Problems 42(3): 390-407.
 
6. Berbrier, Mitch. 2002. "Making Minorities: Cultural Space, Stigma Transformation Frames, and the Categorical Status Claims of Deaf, Gay, and White Supremacist Activists in Late Twentieth Century America." Sociological Forum 17(4):553-591.
 
7. Mirola, William A. 2003. "Asking for Bread, Receiving a Stone: The Rise and Fall of Religious Ideologies in Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement."Social Problems. 50(2): 273-293."
 
8. Fetner, Tina. 2000. "Working Anita Bryant: The Impact of Christian Anti-Gay Activism on Lesbian and Gay Movement Claims." Social Problems. 48(3):411-428.
 
9. Amenta, Edwin and Michael P. Young. 1999. "Making an Impact: Conceptual and Methodological Implications of the Collective Goods Criterion." Pp.22-41 in Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, eds., How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
 
10. Kane, Melinda.2003. "Social Movement Policy Success: Decriminalizing State Sodomy Laws, 1969-1998." Mobilization. 8(3):313-334.
 
11. Gusfield, Joseph. 1981. "Social Movements and Social Change." Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change. 4:317-339.