Relational Arenas of Social Movement Activism

This entry is about an imagery with which to approach the study of social movements and of contentious politics more broadly. Imageries are preliminary conceptual schemes through which one sees the empirical world. For social science research, they are pivotal because they affect how research problems are formulated and addressed. To be certain, different imageries for the study of social movements are available. The present imagery builds on established trends in the literature and most notably those trends following McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly's Dynamics of Contention. Accordingly, the notion of relational arenas of social movement activism which is at the center of this imagery resonates with other notions developed in the literature. Most particularly, it resonates with the notion of arenas as developed within James Jasper's strategic interaction approach, that is, arenas as bundles of rules and resources shaping contending players, their strategies, and the outcomes of dynamic interactions. It resonates, too, with the notion of strategic action fields as developed by Fligstein and McAdam, referring to sites of competition and conflict, and with the notion of orders of interaction as developed by scholars influenced by symbolic interactionism, referring to webs of interactive determination. What is more, it offers some parallels with less relational or interactive notions, such as social movement scene, social movement framework, and social movement industry. As part of an imagery, however, the notion of relational arenas of social movement activism lacks theoretical elaboration and thereby remains open to different directions of refinement. What the imagery puts forward about this notion are two overarching commitments: that these arenas are realms of social interaction and, more centrally, relations; and that they are to be considered comprehensively.