[lbo-talk] flush *that* social movement thesis?

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 3 08:34:51 PDT 2011


shag: "Or do we go with McAdam's thesis in Freedom Summer? That people get pissed off when their expectations have been raised and then the politicians who've been elected to meet those expectations fail miserably at doing so."

[WS:] That is the J-curve theory of movements, no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chowning_Davies

If memory serves McAdam & Co. argued that personal connection to movement participants are better predictors of participation than the state of mind (i.e. being dissatisfied or agreeing with movement's ideals.)

As I see it, you need both. J curve theory may explain growing dissatisfaction even as living conditions improve, but it does not explain who joins a movement addressing that dissatisfaction. Personal connections do.

Wojtek

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 11:22 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, so the social movement thesis bandied about here has been that
> people are move apt to get pissed off and demonstrate about their
> anger during economically good times.
>
> Does OWS contradict this?
>
> Or do we go with McAdam's thesis in Freedom Summer? That people get
> pissed off when their expectations have been raised and then the
> politicians who've been elected to meet those expectations fail
> miserably at doing so.
>
> shag
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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