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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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View this Workgroup's Listserv ArchivesWorking Group 9:Organizational Theory. Matthew Archibald, Emory University
Why is the state, polity or institutionalized political arena the most significant reference point in the conceptualization of social movements? Because the institutionalized political arena is the most prominent context in which contention over material and cultural societal resources takes place. It also provides academics greater conceptual clarity for theorizing because it sharply delineates the boundaries of the analytic domain. Yet, the public sphere, within which social movement activity takes place, is nothing if not pluralistic. There is a bewildering array of voluntary associations situated within a wide variety of micro-publics. Recent theorizing about this sphere (e.g., Cohen and Arato 1992), suggests that social movements are about the democratization of all institutions in civil society. In a sense, mobilization is not just an attempt to preserve the autonomy of a monolithic civil society against the state, but to defend different versions of civil society. One solution to the dilemma of analytic scope is to conceptualize social movements as collective challenges to authority structures regardless of the institutional context. These authority structures might be political, religious, cultural, civic, corporate, legal or bureaucratic.
Organization theory, especially second generation organizational ecology, or institutional ecology, the nexus of organizational ecology and neoinstitutionalism, offers a unique perspective with which to address the issue of political contention in nontraditional contexts. While it has its disadvantages, the institutional perspective augments the discussion of social movement activity by focusing on 1. organizations and organizational fields (dynamic systems), and, 2. institutionalizing processes that take place in specific social, economic and political sectors (no longer limited to the economic sector see e.g., Minkoff 1997). What is significant is that institutional theory has the potential, at least, to extend its analysis to the full spectrum of institution-building processes, including nontraditional actors and structures, in the public sphere. "Because organizations play key roles in modern societies, the speed and direction of change depend on the dynamics of organizations. In particular, the ability of society as a whole to respond to changing conditions depends on the responsiveness of its constituent organizations and on the diversity of its organizational populations" (Hannan and Freeman 1989, p.3). Increasing and decreasing diversity are essential ingredients in beginning to identify theoretically, the systems which shape organizational populations. The link between social change and organizational theory takes place through the study of the question of diversity and mainly focuses on how outmoded organizational forms are superceded by new ones.
Organizational diversity is important in itself in a society because organizations "constitute a repository of alternative solutions to the problem of producing sets of collective outcomes" (p.7). Loss of variety in forms reduces options for collective problem solving. It seems reasonable to argue that systems with greater organizational diversity are able more successful in dealing with uncertain and changing conditions. The hew and cry over the decline in civil society is a fear about the possibility of decent into incivility, but it is also, in part, a pragmatic concern with the changes in the organizational environment of civil society.
An organizational approach to understanding institutional processes unfortunately narrows the field of action and sharply delimits the roles of different actors (Fligstein 1998). Blending social movement and organizations perspectives compensates for one of the main disadvantages of the latter which includes an overemphasis on prescribed politics as opposed to unconventional, transgressive or emergent forms of struggle over material and cultural resources (Rao, Morrill and Zald 2000). Advances in theorizing a broader challenger-oriented (i.e., social movement) institutionalism along the lines of Stryker's (2000) work on legitimation processes is suggestive of directions this reciprocity might take. Lastly, the question remains how to expand accounts of authority-challenger relations without slipping into the trap of labeling all de-institutionalization as subversive. An organizationally focused social movement theory alerts us to the cultural constraints that limit even the most radical undertakings. Here I am thinking of Clemens' (1996) discussion of organizational form as boundary. In all, one of the main ideas is to create a more comprehensive perspective explaining how organizations, organizational populations, communities and fields, foster and mediate social, political and economic change.