INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKING GROUPS
Movements as Collective Challenges to Authority Structures
University of Notre Dame August 14-15, 2002
Meets: Wednesday, August 14th, 10:30 am - 12:15 pm
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Thursday, August 15th, 10:30 am - 12:15 pmPost a Message to this Workgroup Listserv
View this Workgroup's Listserv ArchivesWorking Group 1: Social Movements in 'the Absence' of Authority. Jennifer Johnson, University of Chicago
This workgroup will explore social movements that attempt to "take the law into their own hands" in response to a perceived absence of authority or to challenge prevailing notions of who or what constitute legitimate rule-makers and enforcers. In a global age in which effective centralized states are believed to be "fading" or in decline, many sources and types of authority exist outside the bounds of the institutionalized political arena. Many contemporary movements have crystallized precisely to fill this void or to fashion themselves as alternative "authority structures" in contradistinction to "the state."
Vigilante movements in the U.S. and abroad provide important empirical examples. In urban areas around the globe, anti-crime vigilante movements have gained momentum where states have lost their ability to protect citizens from common criminality. Here the Guardian Angels in New York City and various neighborhood-based associations in Latin America come to mind. More radical challenges to the state's monopoly on legality and violence come from vigilante groups that draw on sectarian values and belief systems. For instance, the Ku Klux Klan and other far-right movements in the U.S. as well as indigenous justice movements in the developing world seek to supplement or supplant rather than complement the rational-legal orders purportedly upheld by modern states.
To stimulate comparative, systematic analysis of movements that are said to "take the law into their own hands," we might consider the following:
1. Is there really a common conceptual thread that unites these radically different empirical cases? If so, what is it? A shared notion of state authority structures as ineffectual? On these grounds alone can we justify lumping movements as diverse as the Ku Klux Klan and indigenous justice movements together in the same conceptual category? Or do differences in political orientation and propensity to employ violence against out-groups outweigh possible similarities? How useful (or not) is the category "movements that take the law into their own hands" as a tool for comparative analysis?
2. Is authority ever truly "absent" in a state society? Do these movements emerge to fill an already existing void left by the state's withdrawal or inadequacy? Or do these movements themselves act in ways that wittingly or unwittingly manufacture the appearance of an absence of authority?
3. What discursive resources and strategies do these movements use to justify "taking the law into their own hands." Here we might explore the mimetic aspects of these movements, that is, the ways in which they appropriate the forms and language of states to further movement goals. We might ask, for example, whether lynching constitutes the appropriation of the state's death penalty by vigilante groups.
4. What's new--if anything--about contemporary movements that "take the law into their own hands?" Is there a link between globalization and the rise of these kinds of movements in both the industrial and developing worlds? Does the tenacity of such movements in disparate parts of the world reveal anything about the fate of the nation-state in the post-modern era?
Please consider joining us. If you would like to know more about the kinds of movements that we will discuss, some workgroup participants have posted written summaries of their own research in relation to the topic on the group's listserv. If you have conducted research on a movement that seems to fit this category we encourage you to post a brief statement of your own. You may also propose additional discussion questions in advance of our meetings by contacting Jennifer Johnson at jljohnso@midway.uchicago.edu, or simply attend and pose your questions then. We look forward to your input and to a productive exchange in South Bend.