Thesis advisor: Willaim A. Gamson / What are the class culture differences among US progressive social movement groups? This mixed-methods study finds that activists speak and act differently depending on their class background, current class and upward, downward or steady class trajectory, confirming previous research on cultural capital and conditioned class predispositions. In 2007-8, 34 meetings of 25 groups in four movement traditions were observed in five states; 364 demographic surveys were collected; and 61 interviews were conducted. I compared activists' approaches to six frequently mentioned group problems. * Lifelong-working-class activists, usually drawn in through preexisting affiliations, relied on recruitment incentives such as food and one-on-one relationships. Both disempowered neophytes and experienced powerhouses believed in strength in numbers, had positive attitudes towards trustworthy leaders, and stressed loyalty and unity. * Lifelong-professional-middle-class (PMC) activists, usually individually committed to a cause prior to joining, relied on shared ideas to recruit. They focused more on internal organizational development and had negative attitudes towards leadership. Subsets of PMC activists behaved differently: lower professionals communicated tentatively and avoided conflict, while upper-middle-class people were more assertive and polished. * Upwardly mobile straddlers tended to promote their moral certainties within groups. A subset, uprooted from their working-class backgrounds but not assimilated into professional circles, sometimes pushed self-righteously and brought discord into groups. * Voluntarily downwardly mobile activists, mostly young white anarchists, drew the strongest ideological boundaries and had the most distinct movement culture. Mistrustful of new people and sometimes seeing persuasion as coercive, they had the weakest recruitment and group cohesion methods. Analysis of class speech differences found that working-class activists spoke more often but more briefly in meetings, preferred more concrete speech, and used more teasing and self-deprecating humor. The professional-middle-class (in background and/or current class) spoke longer but less often, preferred more abstract vocabulary, and used less negative humor. Group styles were formed by the interplay of members' predominant class trajectories and groups' movement traditions. Better understanding these class culture differences would enable activists to strengthen cross-class alliances to build more powerful social movements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101618 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Leondar-Wright, Betsy |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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