This case study of local social movements presents the findings of four years of ethnographic observations in Cactus City, a Southwestern city in the U.S., during the 1990s. The basic unit of analysis is the protest event, and the population of protest events in Cactus City is nearly 900 over the period of study. The central aim of the research is to map the social movement sector and its network structure, or in other words the community level ecology of social movements. One important finding is that the preponderance of protest is generated by a highly interlinked "Activist Community" which extends across issues and movements, including peace, labor, human rights and the environment. Another key finding is that the preponderance of this organizing is done using mainly informal rather than formal organizations, linked in networks. Finally, the motivation of the core of activists most active in public protest is mainly moral concern rather than self-interest. Cognition and emotion both play a role in the framing process. A persistent social movement presence is maintained in the absence of any national protest cycle by a critical mass of individuals and organizations, both in and across specific movements at the community level.

Research within the exchange tradition has focused largely on the effects of network structure (in terms of the positioning of actors within a network) on the distribution of power. While network structure in this limited sense has received considerable attention in the literature, one aspect of network structure, which has remained largely unexplored, is the type of network connection. Emerson (1972) identified two types of network connection: negative connections and positive connections. In a negatively connected network, actors must compete with one another for valued exchanges and thus, these networks are inherently competitive. On the other hand, positively connected networks have the potential to be cooperative since exchange in one relation in the network facilitates exchange in a connected relation. In this dissertation, I argue that the type of network connection affects our expectations for the behavior of our exchange partners and thus affects our evaluations of the fairness of those partners. In addition to network connection, I also examine the role that information about a peripheral network member (one who is not a direct exchange partner) plays in affecting evaluations of the fairness of a direct exchange partner. Thus, this dissertation focuses on this concept of network connection and unites exchange and justice theories by examining the effects of network connection on perceptions of fairness. The research design involves a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial experiment crossing network connection (positive or negative), equality of an exchange partner's behavior (equal or unequal behavior) and information about the behavior of a peripheral network member (full information about this actor's behavior or no information). While the hypotheses were not supported in this experiment, some of the results concerning the underlying mechanisms indicate that network connection remains an important avenue for further research. Several possibilities for the lack of support for the hypotheses are discussed as well as the possible avenues for future research.

College students have historically played a prominent role in many movements and uprisings around the world. However, student protest has received little attention from social scientists. In this dissertation, I examine several questions regarding the factors which influence levels of student protest activity over time, including how political opportunities influence levels of protest, the factors influencing tactic selection, and the dynamics of inter-movement influence and movement overlap. I explore these questions using a dataset of over 2800 protest events which occurred between 1930 and 1990. In Chapter 2, I explore the influence of political elites on levels of student protest. Using event history methods, I demonstrate that elite antagonists within the executive branch lead to increased levels of protest, while elite allies within the legislative branch lead to increased protest activity. These findings suggest that political opportunity theorists need more nuanced conceptualizations of elites, and we need to pay more attention to the mobilizing potential of threat. In Chapter 3, I examine the effect of political opportunities and levels of organization on the protest. tactics used by students. Using event history methods, I demonstrate that elite antagonists lead to an increase in the use of confrontational tactics, including demonstrations and sit-ins. Allies within the legislature lead to an increase in the use of conventional tactics, including petitions and resolutions. Organizational involvement leads to an increase in the use of both types of tactics. These findings suggest a number of scope conditions regarding institutionalization and the effects of organizational involvement on protest tactics. Inter-movement influence and the dynamics of movement overlap are the topic of the fourth chapter. I explore whether diffusion processes lead to a positive intermovement influence, or whether processes of competition lead to a negative influence. I also explore the extent to which different social movements overlap, and the conditions which facilitate such overlap. Using time series poisson regression, I find evidence for both competition and diffusion theories of inter-movement influence. I use historic data to demonstrate that the presence of a common elite antagonist, multi-issue organizations, and issues which cross movement boundaries facilitate social movement overlap.

This dissertation addresses Latino political outcomes using a broadened approach along two dimensions. The first dimension considers contemporary theories of political participation by examining the impact of human capital, political engagement, ethnic identification, and organizational involvement on conventional and unconventional forms of participation. For the second, I extend political opportunity structure and resource mobilization models to make new predictions about how characteristics of the environment in which Latinos are embedded influence participation by Latinos as a group. I test these new predictions using three sets of dependent variables: broad, conventional participation (voting); broad, unconventional participation (e.g., boycotting, attending rallies, protesting); and Latino-oriented, unconventional participation (e.g., attending rallies in support of a Latino issue or concern; contributing money to or volunteering for Latino candidates). Data for the individual-level analysis are drawn from the 1989/90 Latino National Political Survey and the 1999 National Survey on Latinos in America. Using logistic regression, I test predictions about how individual-level factors influence Latinos' participation within the context of the larger political system. I find that resources, especially education, affect the likelihood of conventional and unconventional political participation. As well, organizational affiliation and recruitment increase the likelihood of involvement in conventional and less conventional political acts. The analyses also reveal considerable differences in the likelihood of being politically active among non-Latinos and Latinos as well as between Latino sub-groups. For the contextual analysis, I model the impact of state-level characteristics on electoral and non-electoral forms of political expression. I find some support for resource mobilization and political opportunity theories. Net of individuals' attributes, state-level characteristics affect voting and social activism, suggesting that the receptivity of the political environment influences participation.

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Within the cyclical nature of our lives, the partitions between individuals and public are inveterate. The wall creates zones between the individual, family, and the city. Its design affects the degree of interaction between these groups. Loss of intermediate zones in the planning of the "modern city" had implications for the social, and the architectural context. By reintroducing these spaces into a contemporary context, there are possibilities for renewed forms of interaction between the individual, family, and the city.

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