Defeat Frames and Social Movements

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This is a study of social movements. It is designed to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of development and decline by systematically assessing the impact of cultural elements on collective action. This research will investigate the impact of one important aspect of movement culture, the "frame" used to interpret setbacks and defeat. It asks whether the explanations and interpretations activists give for social movement defeats help to preserve the commitment, organization, and solidarity of participants. %%% These issues are explored by examining the British "new union" movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This movement, which began in the late 1880s, attempted to build a broad-based and politically progressive labor movement. There were two waves of militancy, one which occurred in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and the other which occurred in the years preceding World War I. In the first wave, a period of explosive growth and heightened strike activity was followed by setbacks and defeat. In the second wave, a new burst of organizing and strike activity culminated in permanent organizational and political gains. %%% These two waves will be examined to determine whether or not the "lessons" or narratives that activists constructed to explain strike failures in the first wave had any effects on the longevity of local unions or workers' actions in the second wave. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis will be employed. First, using newspaper accounts and union records, failing strikes will be examined to find out whether activists interpreted strike defeats, and if so, what interpretations were used. Second, using event history methods, data on union longevity will be analyzed to assess whether the use of defeat frames increased the probability of local union survival. Third, using strike statistics for the second wave of the new unionism, an analysis of strike participation rates will be done in order to investigate the effects of defe at frames on later strike militancy. Fourth, a few communities will be chosen for more intensive qualitative examination. %%% This research is one of the first systematic efforts to empirically evaluate the impact of a cultural product --defeat frames-- on the development of social movements. It is also one of the few studies to focus on the development and decline of social movements, rather than on their emergence.