The extensive sociological literature on social movements has traditionally focused on movements in the United States and Western Europe since the 1960s, but there is an increasing awareness amongst scholars that comparable examples of collective action have existed since at least the eighteenth century. This course uses concrete case studies of collective action from early modern England to the Occupy movement to investigate questions about how movements mobilize activists, how they communicate with their publics, the importance of mass media, what unites a movement, and what makes a movement successful. In the process, we will cover the rise of communism and fascism, feminist organizing, terrorism, religious groups, and youth subculture over the past two hundred years.

 

Themes of the course

Why do people join social movements?

What social/political/technological conditions do social movements need?

Is “social movement” an analytically useful category in the early modern world? What other terms could we use to talk about collective action in this period?

How do different types of media and communication methods contribute to the social movements?

How important are expressed grievances in motivating people to join social movements?

How do existing ties (workplaces, neighborhoods, sporting clubs) contribute to social movement formation?

How does ethnicity, gender, or class influence social movement participation?

Are movements the result of group identities, or do they create them?

To what extent does the success or failure of a movement depend on the political opportunities available to activists?

What role do existing organizations (such as churches or sporting societies) play in sustaining social movements?

To what extent does the symbolism and aesthetics of a movement contribute to its success or failure?

Why would rational people join social movements? What is in it for them?

How does violence impact social movements? How does police repression shape social movement behavior?

 

Required Reading

Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 1768-2012 (Third Edition) (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013).

E. P. Thompson. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.

Eric J. Hobsbawm. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959.

Roger V. Gould. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Karen Offen. European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Carl E. Schorske. Fin-de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.

Laura Downs, “‘Each and Every One of You Must Become a Chef’: Toward a Social Politics of Working-Class Childhood on the Extreme Right in 1930s France,” The Journal of Modern History, 81/1 (2009): 1-44.

Richard Ivan Jobs, “Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968,” American Historical Review, 114/2 (2009): 376–404.

Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Marek Payerhin and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, “On Movement Frames and Negotiated Identities: The Case of Poland’s First Solidarity Congress,” Social Movement Studies, 5/2 (2006): 91-115.

Sam Halvorsen, “Beyond the Network? Occupy London and the Global Movement,” Social Movement Studies, 11/3-4 (2012): 427-433.

 

Lectures

Definition and Problems

Media and support for John Wilkes

Weapons of the weak: Peasant Revolts in Italy and Spain

Class conflict in the French Revolutions of 1848 and 1871

Feminism as a transnational movement

Mobilizing for and against Jews

Fascism as a Social Movement: England and France

Student protest in 1968: Police Repression and Movement Frames

The Aesthetics of Protest: Romanian Fascism and Northern Ireland

Organizing in authoritarian states: Poland and East Germany

Social Media and Revolution: Moldova and Ukraine

Transnationalism and the Occupy Movement in Europe

The Anti-Austerity Protests in Spain and Greece

 

Assignments

Map quiz on Europe in 1900 and 2000.

Seminar leaders: You will sign up to lead one of the class discussions. Discussion leaders will be expected to submit a set of five discussion questions to the professor before class and then to use those questions to lead the class in discussion. You will be assessed on how effectively you generate discussion and on how well your questions address the major themes of the course.

 

Essay One

Is “social movement” a useful category for analyzing collective action and social protest prior to the twentieth century? Why/why not?

 

Essay Two

What unites members of social movements? To what extent does group cohesion increase/decrease a movement’s ability to achieve its goals?  You should choose two of the movements listed below to use as case studies, and you are expected to do your own additional research into these movements. One of the movements must be from before 1900 and one must be from after 1900. Movements you can choose from and recommended readings on those topics include:

 

John Wilkes

Boulton, James, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke. London: Routledge, 1963.

Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Cash, Arthur H., John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Mullan, John and Christopher Read, Eighteenth Century Popular Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Rude, George, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.

Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage, 1963.

Tilly, Charles, and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 1768-2012 (Third Edition). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013.

 

Nineteenth Century English Working Class Politics

Benson, John, The Working Class in Britain, 1850-1939. London: Longman, 1989.

Biernacki, Richard, The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Clark, Anna, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.

Engels, Friedrich, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. London: Allen and Unwin, 1950.

Hearn, Frank, Domination, Legitimation, and Resistance: The Incorporation of the Nineteenth Century English Working Class. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Hobsbawm, E. J., Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour. London: Weidenfeld, 1968.

Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage, 1963.

Tilly, Charles, “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758-1834.” Social Science History 17 (1983): 253–280.

 

Nineteenth Century Peasant Movements in Europe

Baumgarten, Albert I. ed., Apocalyptic Time. Boston: Brill, 2000. [See me for a copy of this.]

Corbin, J. R., The Anarchist Passion: Class Conflict in Southern Spain, 1810-1965. Aldershot: Avebury, 1993.

Evans, Richard. The German Peasantry : Conflict and Community in Rural Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Filoramo, G., “Memory and the Metamorphosis of Apocalyptic Time in an Italian Millenarian Movement: The Case of David Lazzaretti and his Followers,” Studies in the History of Religions, 86 (2000): 363-372. [See me for a copy of this.]

Hobsbawm, E.J. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1959.

Kaplan, Temma, The Anarchists of Andalusia, 1868-1903. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Landsberger, Henry. Rural Protest: Peasant Movements and Social Change. New York: Macmillan, 1974

Lida, Clara, “Agrarian Anarchism in Andalusia,” International Review of Social History, 14/3 (1969): 315- [See me for a copy of this.]

Lichbach, M. “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary? Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Collective Action.” World Politics 3 (1994): 383–418.

Markoff, John, “Peasants Help Destroy an Old Regime and Defy a New One: Some Lessons from (and for) the Study of Social Movements.” American Journal of Sociology 102/4 (1997): 1113–1142.

 

Protest and Revolution in Nineteenth Century France

Elton, G. E., The Revolutionary Idea in France, 1789-1871. New York: AMS Press, 1971.

Johnson, Martin Phillip, The Paradise of Association: Political Culture and Popular Organizations in the Paris Commune of 1871. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Gould, Roger V. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Harsin, Jill, Barricades: The War in the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830-1848. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Sewell, William. Work and Revolution in France : the Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Shorter, Edward,  and Charles Tilly, Strikes in France, 1830-1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Tilly, Charles, European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

 

Feminist Movements in Nineteenth Century Europe

Applewhite, Harriet, ed., Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.

David, Katherine, “Czech Feminists and Nationalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy: ‘The First Austria’.” Journal of Women’s History 3/2 (1991): 26–45.

Canning, Kathleen. Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850-1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).

Morgan, Simon. A Victorian Woman’s Place: Public Culture in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Nolte, Claire, “‘Every Czech a Sokol!’: Feminism and Nationalism in the Czech Sokol.” Austrian History Yearbook 24 (1993): 79–100.

Paletschek, Sylvia ed., Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century a European Perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2006.

 

Zionism and Jewish Political Movements, 1870-1930

Everett, L.P. “The Rise of Jewish National Politics in Galicia, 1905-1907,” in Nation-Building and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian Galicia, in Andrei S. Markovits and Frank E. Sysyn eds., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 149–177.

Frankel, Jonathan, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Friedman, Isaiah, The Rise of Israel: From Precursors of Zionism to Herzl. New York: Garland, 1987.

Mendelsohn, Ezra. Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers Movement in Tsarist Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge Univervisty Press, 1970.

Pawel, Ernst, The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodore Herzl. New York: Farrar, 1989.

Presner, Todd Samuel. Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration. London: Routledge, 2007.

Schorske, Carl E. “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” in Fin-de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981, pp. 116-180.

 

Antisemitic Organizing at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Boyer, John, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Brustein, William. Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Caron, Vicki. “Catholic Political Mobilization and Antisemitic Violence in Fin-de-Siècle France: The Case of the Union Nationale,” The Journal of Modern History 81/ 2 (2009): 294-347.

Clark, Roland, European Fascists and Local Activists: Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael. PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh (2012), pp. 36-104. (http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11837/1/ETD_Thesis_-_Clark.pdf)

Hanebrink, Paul, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890-1944. Ithaca  NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Harris, Ruth, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010.

Rose, Paul Lawrence, Revolutionary Anti-Semitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Schorske, Carl E. “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” in Fin-de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981, pp. 116-180.

 

Fascist Movements in Interwar Europe

Downs, Laura, “‘Each and Every One of You Must Become a Chef’: Toward a Social Politics of Working-Class Childhood on the Extreme Right in 1930s France,” The Journal of Modern History, 81/1 (2009): 1–44.

Gottlieb, Julie. Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923-1945. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000.

Irvine, William D. “Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix De Feu.” Journal of Modern History 63 (1991): 271–295.

Mann, Michael. Fascists. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004.

Passmore, Kevin. “Boy Scouting for Grown-Ups? Paramilitarism in the Croix De Feu and the Parti Social Francais.” French Historical Studies 19/2 (1995): 527–557.

Paxton, Robert. French Peasant Fascism : Henry Dorgère’s Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Spurr, Michael. “‘Living the Blackshirt Life’: Culture, Community and the British Union of Fascists, 1932-1940.” Contemporary European History 12/3 (2003): 305.

Winston, Colin. Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900-1936. Princeton  N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.

 

Europe in 1968

Bischof, G̈unter, Stefan Karner, and Peter Ruggenthaler eds., The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.

Della Porta, D., “Unwanted Children: Political Violence and the Cycle of Protest in Italy, 1966-1973.” European Journal of Political Research 14 (1987): 607–632.

Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker  eds., 1968: The World Transformed.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Hendrickson, B., “March 1968: Practicing Transnational Activism from Tunis to Paris,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 44/4 (2012): 755-774.

Jobs, Richard Ivan, “Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968,” American Historical Review, 114/2 (2009): 376–404.

Koopmans, Ruud, “The Dynamics of Protest Waves: West Germany, 1965 to 1989,” American Sociological Review, 58 (1993): 637-658.

Kurlansky, Mark, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. New York: Ballantine, 2004.

Portelli, Alessandro, The Battle of Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Suri, J. “The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960-1975.” American Historical Review 114/1 (2009): 45–68.

Tarrow, Sidney, “Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of Contention,” Social Science History, 17/2 (1993): 281-308.

 

Organizing in Northern Ireland

Bell, J. B., The IRA, 1968-2000: History of a Secret Army. London: Frank Cass, 2000.

Dillon, Martin. God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 1998.

English, Richard. Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

MacDonald, Michael. Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986.

Mulholland, Marc, Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Nagle, John, “Challenging Ethno-National Division: New Social Movements in Belfast,” Social Movement Studies, 7/3 (2008): 305-318.

Patterson, Henry, Ireland since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict. London: Penguin, 2007.

Smithey, Lee A., and Michael P. Young, “Parading Protest: Orange Parades in Northern Ireland and Temperance Parades in Antebellum America,” Social Movement Studies, 9/4 (2010): 393-410.

Thompson, J. L. P., “Deprivation and Political Violence in Northern Ireland, 1922-1985:

Wells, Ronald, Hope and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Dublin: Liffy Press, 2010.

A Time-Series Analysis,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33/4 (1989): 676-699.

Special Issue: Northern Ireland Ten Years after the Agreement, Ethnopolitics, 7/1 (2008).

 

Solidarity and Anti-Communist Organizing in East-Central Europe

Beyer, Gerald, Recovering Solidarity: Lessons from Poland’s Unfinished Revolution. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.

Goodwyn, Lawrence, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Kenney, Padraic, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Kubik, Jan, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Opp, Dieter, and Gern, “Dissident Groups, Personal Networks, and Spontaneous Cooperation: The East German Revolution of 1989.” American Sociological Review 58/5 (1993): 659–680.

Payerhin, Marek, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, “On Movement Frames and Negotiated Identities: The Case of Poland’s First Solidarity Congress,” Social Movement Studies, 5/2 (2006) pp. 91-115.

Penn, Shana, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Perdue, William. Paradox of Change: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity in the New Poland. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.

 

Moldova’s Twitter Revolution

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change,” The New Yorker, 86/30 (Oct 4, 2010): 42

King, Charles, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Poli.tics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000.

Morozov, Evgeny, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs, 2011.

Mungiu, Alina and Igor Munteanu, “Moldova’s “Twitter Revolution”,” Journal of Democracy, 20/3 (2009): 136-142.

Newspapers: Spiegel International; International Herald Tribune; The Guardian; The Times of London; Huffington Post; Le Figaro (in English)

 

The Occupy Movement in Europe

What is Occupy? Inside the Global Movement. New York: Time Books, 2011.

Gelder, Sarah Van, This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2011.

Karamichas, John, “The December 2008 Riots in Greece,” Social Movement Studies, 8/3 (2009): 289-293.

Lang, Amy Schrager, Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement. Oxford: New Internationalist , 2012.

Taylor, Astra, Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America. London: Verso, 2011.

The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (2005) (http://libcom.org/library/coming-insurrection-invisible-committee)

Special Issue: Occupy! Social Movement Studies, 11/3-4 (2012) [See me for selected articles]

Newspapers: Spiegel International; International Herald Tribune; The Guardian; The Times of London; Huffington Post; Le Figaro (in English); The Occupied Wall Street Journal; Occupy!; Mobilizing Ideas Blog.