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

6. Bringing Organizational Studies Back into Social Movement Scholarship

107 6 Bringing Organizational Studies Back into Social Movement Scholarship Since at least the 1970s, organizations and social movement scholars have recognized the complementary nature of their respective fields, and as a result, many of the central questions in each field have been enriched via cross-pollination between these two distinct areas. For example, some of the most important questions asked by resource mobilization scholars of social movements have drawn on imagery from scholars of organizations. As well, social movement researchers have borrowed insights from organizational ecologists to help explain the dynamics of population change in social movement industries and sectors. Likewise, social movement scholars have drawn on neoinstitutional theories to explain core questions related to organizational forms and fields as well as the diffusion of social movements. Finally, social movement scholars have drawn on insights from the embeddedness approach to organizations to help explain a number of central questions related to network dynamics of social movements (see Diani, chapter 8). On the other side, scholars of organizations associated with the neoinstitutional tradition have drawn on social movement theory to describe how politics and movements (and the sociopolitical field more broadly) impact basic organizational processes. Furthermore, organizational ecologists have drawn on social movement theories to describe some of the factors that affect the emergence and legitimization of new organizational populations, noting that social movement activities are often generative of new organizational forms. Finally, scholars of organizations interested in the effects of social movements on firms and industries have drawn on the body of research on social movement consequences, noting that some of the same factors that explain the Sarah A. Soule sarah a. soule 108 consequences of movements on states also help us understand the impact of movements on firms, corporations, and industries (for a literature review, see Soule 2009). Historically, the nexus of organizations and social movement theories has been a rich area of inquiry, and each of these two fields has learned a great deal from the other. However, in recent years, this once mutual relationship has grown imbalanced , with scholars of organizations embracing social movement scholarship and, at the same time, social movement scholars turning a cold shoulder to organizational scholars. I base this claim on a proliferation of workshops, conferences, edited volumes, and special issues of journals, all of which have been organized primarily by scholars of organizations with the explicit goal of learning from social movement scholars at the same time that movement scholarship that explicitly embraces organizational studies has seemingly declined (for similar observations about this, see Clemens and Minkoff 2004; Caniglia and Carmin 2005; Minkoff and McCarthy 2005).1 Perhaps this is not an entirely fair representation. In fact, Mobilization dedicated a special issue to the topic of organizations in 2005 (Caniglia and Carmin 2005), and as I review later, some movement scholars are still explicitly engaging organizational theory. However, I assert that this relationship has become lopsided, with scholars of organizations wholeheartedly welcoming and engaging social movement scholarship, while social movement scholarship has moved away from explicitly utilizing organizational scholarship. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully analyze why this is the case, but it is worth speculating briefly about some of the possible reasons. First, this may be because many movement scholars have become interested in loosely structured networks of social movement participants that seem to deliberately eschew formal organizations. Thus it could be that organizational theories (or at least those that focus on formal organizational processes) are perceived as less relevant to the current substantive topics of interest in the field. Related to this, many social movement scholars have become interested in online activism, which may be possible without traditional social movement organizations (SMOs) (Earl 2010; see Polletta et al., chapter 2). Again, here it could be that the substantive areas of interest of many in the social movement field dictate that organizational theory is less important than it once was to understanding social movements. Finally, there has always been a tension in the social movement literature between those who think organization promotes mobilization (e.g., McCarthy and Zald 1977) and those who think organization is disastrous for mobilization (e.g., Piven and Cloward 1977). Thus it could be that this tension and debate have made some scholars leery of studying the organizations (at least the formal ones) that comprise social movements. bringing organizational studies back 109 Whatever the reasons may be, I argue that...