-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Angela G. Mertig, Putting Social Movements in Their Place: Explaining Opposition to Energy Projects in the United States, 2000–2005 By Doug McAdam and Hilary Schaffer Boudet Cambridge University Press. 2012. 280 pages. $28.99 paperback, $99.00 hardback, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 3, March 2016, Page e73, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou039
- Share Icon Share
Extract
McAdam and Boudet liken the current state of social-movement research to a Ptolemaic view of the universe, where social movements (like Ptolemy's view of Earth) are at the center instead of being rightfully (as in a Copernican view of Earth) considered just one component in a larger field of possible outcomes in situations of potential social conflict. Their aim is to “put social movements in their place” (as Copernicus did for our view of Earth) by analyzing communities at “risk” for social mobilization. By analyzing a (mostly) random sample of 20 communities slated for large-scale energy projects in the early 2000s, they find that social-movement activity is actually a rarer occurrence than readers of social-movement literature might presume (given the field's tendency to select on the dependent variable and preoccupy itself with successful instances of mobilization). Likewise, they find support for other elements of their critical analysis of the field, namely that other actors—not just social-movement actors or groups—play influential roles in instances of potential social conflict and that levels of contentious protest activity, as opposed to routine, institutionalized activity, are actually relatively minimal in cases of possible mobilization.