What is the point of Social Movement Theory (SMT)?
Social Movement Theory (SMT) seeks to both describe and explain when, how, and why people act collectively to achieve goals. By employing SMT, we can understand why groups act the way they do, and make predictions about their actions in the future. Social Movement Theory also analyzes the degree of success groups achieve based on their strategy.
Is there any reason we couldn't use the same analytical frameworks to study, say the American Civil Rights Movement and movements for political change in the MENA region?
The primary advocacy of Dr. King in the American Civil Rights Movement was to establish a collective and nonviolent stance against segregation. While opposed by more violent groups like the Black Panthers and the SNCC later on, nonviolence preached by Dr. King was a very effective tactic, as explained in A Force More Powerful. SMT can be used to describe why and how the ACRM was successful because the movement in the United States had clearly distinguished leadership, adequate resources, and (for the most part) defined and universally accepted end goals. In contrast, my understanding of many social movements in MENA is that some movements lack universally accepted end goals, and leadership in organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood is fractured, which manifests in infighting and diminishing political capital. Joel Beinin and Frederic Vairel explain in their article Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East that the lack of unifying leadership and dilution of resources plagues many social movements across MENA, making them more difficult to analyze or even to isolate. The "Arab Spring," for example, is a term which homogenizes many unique social movements. On the whole, though, the most salient reason why SMT may be difficult to apply to MENA compared to the United States is because of Orientalism and preconceived notions about the differences in the ways humans operate in "that" region of the world--stereotypes that are frequently perpetuated by Western media outlets.
What use can SMT be in understanding the success of Islamist movements?
Social Movement Theory can be used in the analysis of Islamist movements on the condition that individual movements are isolated and studied individually. For example, Eric Trager, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, gave a talk at American University last semester detailing "Two Islamisms" and the difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State. The success of each of these actors is largely independent of the other, and the means by which they intend to achieve the same end (politicization of Islam) are also very different. Because both ISIL and the MB have a clear hierarchy of leadership, explicit goals and tactics, and a reasonable stream of resources, I am confident that they can be studied using Social Movement Theory.
Ryan - I'm glad you brought up Orientalism, because that's a really crucial issue I want you all to think about early on in the semester (we'll talk more about this when we meet IRL). I'd say Orientalism is why many observers think SMT isn't useful in explaining MENA dynamics, because it produces an image of the Middle East as being different, exotic, and "backwards." In actuality, people there live with the same aspirations as everyone else and are quite as capable of organizing for change. What is true, however, is that the MENA region suffers from a 'democracy deficit' and is dominated by security-obsessed autocratic states. This makes social movement formation difficult, but it has nothing to do with Orientalist notions of religion and 'primordial hatreds,' but is the product of particular historical processes and - not least- the presence of oil...
ReplyDelete