925 Flanner

MW 11:45-1:00

Professor Dan Myers

Office: 735 Flanner, 631-3839

Office Hours: MW 10:45-11:45 or by appointment

Web Page for this course: http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/courses/471sp99/

Purpose of the Course:

This course is concerned with how people act together to pursue collective political aims via extra-institutional forms of behavior: When and why do people go outside the conventional political structure to address social issues important to them? During the course we will examine political behavior ranging from the relatively mild (like a letter writing campaign) to the severe (like rioting, looting, and killing). We will also discuss aspects of collective behaviors that are less political in nature (like panics and fads). Some of the social movements we will discuss include the civil rights movement, the women's, the anti-war movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, pro-life and pro-choice movements, and the environmental movement (among many others). In the end, we will try to explain how grievances, resources, the political environment, repression, individual decision-making, and movement tactics all contribute to the success and failure of protest movements, their impact on social change, and the future of activism.

Required Texts:

1. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood

2. McAdam and Snow, Social Movements: Readings on their Emergence, Mobilization, and Dynamics

3. McAdam, Freedom Summer

4. Adam, The Rise of A Gay and Lesbian Movement

5. Bloom and Breines, Takin' it to the streets

Course Requirements:

Grade Scale: A: 93-100% A-: 90-92

Details about requirements.

1. Reading Memos

This course should be viewed primarily as a seminar which means that your thoughts, criticisms, and interests will drive the course. Good discussion requires you to be prepared. If you take the time to read and write up your thoughts prior to class, we will undoubtedly have better discussions, therefore I will require you to prepare a memo each week of 1-2 pages on the readings for the week. These memos should NOT be summaries of the readings, but rather should be reactions to, questions about, or commentaries on specific points in the reading you found particularly interesting and would like to discuss further in class. I have arranged for a listserv that we will use to distribute our comments to each other. I will give you details on how to use the listserv during the first class.

You must submit your comments to the listserv by class time on Monday. This will allow everyone time to read each other's comments before the discussion on Wednesdays. Over the course of the semester, you must submit a total of 10 memos (this gives you 2 vacation weeks).

2. Leading Discussions

On Wednesdays, we will engage in a discussion of the week's readings. Each week two students will be assigned to lead the discussion that week. Prior to the class, the two "presenters" should meet together to identify the most important issues and questions raised in the week's readings. You should also carefully read all of the memos written that week and incorporate them into your presentation. Your presentation should last only 10-15 minutes and in it you should identify what the important issues are, give some examples of situations in which these issues come up, talk about author's arguments about these issues, and identify some areas of critique -- what have the authors missed or where have they gone astray? It is not your task to solve these issues, merely to introduce them in an interesting way to encourage further conversation about them. You should also develop a list of follow-up questions to turn to when the conversation seems to stall, becomes redundant, or gets completely off track.

3. Research Paper

The main requirement of the course is a seminar or research paper. The idea of the paper is for you to investigate either some particular movement, campaign, tactic, or issue in greater depth. The specific nature of the paper will depend on your background and interests. I expect the paper to be something like article length -- that is, about 20 double spaced pages. I am not at all particular about length though, so this is merely a rule of thumb. The paper should, however, be well polished and a full analysis of your topic. Last minute drafts or extremely narrow foci (an analysis of one book or papers that draw only on course readings) are not acceptable and your grade will reflect this. It is my hope that the course stimulates you to think about movements in ways that you have not before and your thinking will inspire much more than regurgitation. In terms of research, you can choose to go in many different directions. You can actually collect data yourself by becoming involved with a group, studying primary sources (pamphlets, internal documentation from organizations, etc.), interviewing activists and so forth. If you decide to do this--start early -- it is time consuming. If you are statistically inclined, there are data sets readily available you could analyze. Research can also mean a careful synthesis of work produced by other people. This means that a comprehensive literature review is an acceptable format. You might also consider using popular press sources to track the trajectory of a specific movement. There are many possibilities. Don't not forget, however, that this class is about theory--that is--explanations for collective behavior. You must delve into the why and how questions to do a good job on your papers. You are not a journalist reporting what happened to me (although that certainly is part of it). You must engage the theoretical questions we are discussing in the class and show how your paper topic speaks to these theories (that is, supports, refutes, complements, or extends the prior explanations). I am also not opposed to you writing papers in pairs, but the paper will obviously have to be considerably better if it is product of two people's work.

4. Group Presentations

To broaden or deepen your exposure to different movements and issues in the study of movements, you will be broken into groups according to shared interests and required to make a presentation about your shared interest. Group may range in size from 2 to 5. We have four class periods set aside for the group presentations, therefore your group will have about 15 minutes per person for your presentation. This does not mean each person should talk for 15 minutes, but if you have 3 people, your total time should be not more than 45 minutes, etc. Your group presentations may reflect material in your papers, but it does not have to. Again, you could choose to present on a group, movement, tactic, or movement-related issue. For example, past presentations have been about a radical feminist group and the tactics they used, the different ways movements use the media and technology, media coverage of the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, a comparison of literature distributed by pro-life and pro-choice activists, conceptualizing 12-step self-help groups as social movements, and so on. The idea is to educate your classmates about some movement or issue that we have not covered fully in class.

Course Outline:

MS: #1

Turner and Killian, The Field of Collective Behavior

MS: #4, 6, 8

McCarthy and Zald, Resource Mobilization

MS: #5, 35

Taylor and Whittier, Collective Identity

Plotke, What's so New about New Social Movements?

Freedom Summer

BB Ch. 1

MS: #13

BB Ch. 8

Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood

The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement

BB pp. 596-607

MS: #27

Fogelson, Violence as Protest

Tomlinson, The Development of a Riot Ideology

Tolnay and Beck, A Portrait of the Lynching Era

Bergesen, Race Riots of 1967

MS: #15, 29

BB Ch. 6

Marx, External Efforts to Damage...

MS: #14, 16, 17

MS: #10, 12, 36

MS: #31, 32, 34

MS: #18, 19, 20

BB Ch. 3