The Future of Social Movement Research: Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes

Discussion: Opening the Black Box of Dynamics in Theory and Research on the Demand Side of Protest

79 Discussion: Opening the Black Box of Dynamics in Theory and Research on the Demand Side of Protest Discussing the chapters in this section of this book has been an inspiring enterprise. As an experimental social psychologist studying collective action against collective disadvantage, I particularly appreciate the broad, diverse, and insightful contributions that all chapters make to our knowledge of when, why, and how people protest. For instance, Klandermans (chapter 1) provides a thoughtful overview of the dynamic demand side of protest, whereas Taylor (chapter 3) discusses important social–psychological dynamics such as the role of emotions in the politicization of grievances. The dynamics of the politicization of identity similarly play a large role in Van Doorn, Prins, and Welschen’s (chapter 4) discussion of how narratives can reveal insights about the content of disadvantaged group members’ identity. Finally, Polletta and colleagues (chapter 2) discuss how the advent of the Internet (and, in particular, the dynamic nature of social media) might alter the very practice of mobilization. I found all contributions to be thought provoking, yet I could not escape the sense that something was lacking from all contributions. The word dynamics united these contributions by making visible a considerable gap in their collective focus: a lack of explicit theorizing about the psychological processes that constitute these dynamics. This resembles a black box: something goes in (e.g., identity, grievances, emotion), and something comes out (e.g., mobilization , protest), but too little is said about the psychological processes in between. This box is not Pandora’s—in fact, I believe that opening it will be fruitful rather than destructive. For instance, many approaches still focus implicitly or explicitly on individuals’ instrumental motivations to protest, assuming an underlying Martijn van Zomeren martijn van zomeren 80 cost–benefit calculus (e.g., Polletta et al., chapter 2). However, individuals are often unable and/or unwilling to carefully calculate thus (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Instrumentality is just one way by which situations can become psychologically self-relevant—a precondition for any motivated action (Lazarus 1991). Events can also become self-relevant through individuals’ identity, emotion, and morality concerns (Lazarus 1991). Yet a clear theory of how self-relevance translates into different motivations for action is typically missing from the literature. As such, important aspects of the demand side of contention are not yet sufficiently grounded in psychological theories. It thus remains unclear whether often implicit assumptions about what makes individuals tick accurately and comprehensively reflect what actually makes them tick. Therefore I suggest that more integration is needed between different approaches and that scholars should more strongly ground their models in psychological theory and research. A beneficial consequence of this development would be that psychological research will then also be better equipped to learn from different approaches because they share similar assumptions about what makes humans tick. These recommendations fit with the ideas that explaining individuals’ motivation to participate in collective action requires an understanding of their psychology and that a key challenge for the field is to integrate psychological explanations with social and political explanations (Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears 2008). This requires an accurate understanding of what makes individuals tick, and therefore we need to open the black box of dynamics. The Need to Open the Black Box I start with arguing that there is such a thing as a black box of dynamics and that it needs to be opened. For instance, Van Doorn, Prins, and Welschen note that the concept and operationalization of politicized identity is often ambiguous . This is unfortunate because it has become a key concept in predicting social movement participation and collective action more generally (Simon and Klandermans 2001; Van Zomeren et al. 2008). This theoretical fuzziness is traceable to a lack of psychological theorizing because identity scholars in the social movement tradition typically do not differentiate between self and identity. As a consequence, they rely on the assumption that individuals are motivated to protect and maintain established identities (e.g., Simon et al. 1998; Stürmer and Simon 2004), which in fact makes it hard to explain how such established identities change or transform (e.g., McGarty et al. 2009). This is somewhat ironic because the transformation of an established identity (e.g., being gay) into a politicized identity (e.g., being a member of the gay movement) should increase participation in collective action. discussion of part i 81 Research suggests that identity formation...