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Networks, Interaction, and Conflict: A Relational Sociology of Social Movements and Protest

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Social Theory and Social Movements

Abstract

In this chapter I consider how social movements and protest are conceptualized within a relational-sociological approach. Relational sociology affords particular attention to processes of social interaction, the ties that interaction generates and which act back upon it, and the networks which form as ties concatenate and impact upon one another. However, this chapter focuses upon networks in particular, discussing their crucial role in social movement mobilization. The chapter begins with a general discussion of the relational approach, followed by a brief introduction to networks and social network analysis (SNA). The discussion then turns to networks and social movements more specifically, considering both how networks shape and facilitate collective action but also how they themselves are formed. In this latter connection the chapter also briefly considers the impact upon the process of network formation of the need which some movements have to remain covert. Special attention is also afforded to the role of networks in recruitment to collective action.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A firm or organization may be regarded as an actor in its own right (a corporate actor) when it involves decision-making processes, resources, and/or a legal status which is irreducible to any given individual human actor or to a simple aggregate of human actors.

  2. 2.

    To say that two actors are tied or related, as I use those terms, is to say that they have an ongoing history of interaction (or active avoidance) and that how they interact in the present is shaped both by their history of interaction and their anticipation of future interaction (or the lack of it).

  3. 3.

    Two-mode networks involve two types of nodes which can only enjoy direct ties with nodes of a different type to their self: e.g. we might have a network of actors and events, recording relations of participation between given actors and given events. A single-mode network, by contrast, involves nodes of one type only and relations between those nodes.

  4. 4.

    All network graphs used in this chapter were drawn, and all network measures derived, using the Ucinet software package (Borgatti et al. 2002).

  5. 5.

    As defined here some activists could have fallen into more than one camp. Some “Trotskyists”, for example, also belonged to new social movement (NSM) groups, and some NSM activists also belonged to charitable pressure groups. To make the categories mutually exclusive it was decided that members of Trotskyist groups would be categorized as “Trotskyists” whatever other groups they belonged to (a decision which accords with the strong tendency for Trotskyism to be the master frame through which they who subscribe to it appropriate other issues and concerns); non-Trotskyists who participated in direct action protests were categorized as “NSM activists,” such that mainstream actors were defined by their decision not to engage in extra-parliamentary activities. Again this categorization resonates with qualitative observations—that the identity and modus operandi of NSM activism tends to prevail amongst those who combine this type of activism with more mainstream forms of involvement.

  6. 6.

    This is not entirely true. In network theory the location of nodes in two-dimensional Euclidean/Cartesian space has no meaning and is not interpreted. In practice, however, nodes are often positioned using algorithms and techniques (e.g. multidimensional scaling) which locate nodes close to others which have a similar profile of connections (although locations can and may be altered, for esthetic reasons, by analysts).

  7. 7.

    Freedom Summer was a project, in 1964, which involved bringing affluent college students from elite universities in the north of the USA down to the south to help the efforts of civil rights groups there: e.g. by helping with voter registration and political education. Three volunteers were killed by the Ku Klux Klan within the first few days of the project and most participants experienced considerable hostility and often violence.

  8. 8.

    I do not have space to engage in technicalities here. Suffice it to say that “prominence” entails being both central in a network and linked to others who are also central.

  9. 9.

    Briefly stated, the argument for a high degree of centralization is that it keeps path lengths short in a network (since most nodes are linked through a central hub), therefore reduces the number of transactions, which in turn reduces vulnerability because each transaction exposes the network to risk. The argument for a low degree of centralization, by contrast, is that hubs are very vulnerable since they could be betrayed by any of the many alters with whom they are connected, and that this makes the network vulnerable since the hubs are so central to the network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Nick Crossley

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  1. University of Wrocław, Willy Brandt Center for German and Europ University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Jochen Roose

  2. Institut für Soziologie, Georg-August University of Göttingen Institut für Soziologie, Göttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Hella Dietz

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Crossley, N. (2016). Networks, Interaction, and Conflict: A Relational Sociology of Social Movements and Protest. In: Roose, J., Dietz, H. (eds) Social Theory and Social Movements. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13381-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13381-8_9

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