David A Snow
Biographic Data
| ID | 3610036 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David A Snow |
| GIVEN NAMES | David A |
| FAMILY NAME | Snow |
| SIGNATURE | SNOW D A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 122 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8378 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 35 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 25 |
An imperious, closed sandbox? A rejoinder to Van Dijk’s critique of the framing perspective on social movement mobilization
In this article, we provide a response to Teun van Dijk’s criticism of the framing perspective on social movements, as expressed in his article ‘Analyzing Frame Analysis. A Critical Review of Framing Studies in Social Movement Research’. We argue that a more constructive tone is warranted and explain how his criticism is largely based on a selective reading and misinterpretation of the vast literature on framing and social movements. We provide a…
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
In this chapter, we review the literature on social-movements and political parties interactions. We propose a research agenda that conceptualizes and empirically studies how movement-party interactions vary quantitatively and qualitatively under conditions of functioning representative linkages and crisis of representation.
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Australian Aboriginal peoples' movements have been central to Aboriginal resistances to dispossessions and discriminations since European colonization began at the turn of the nineteenth century and continue into present times. Aboriginal organized protest has coalesced around three political and social criteria: the articulation of a direct claim; the organization of activities involving Aboriginal community members around this claim; and the ad…
The Framing Perspective on Social Movements
This chapter on the framing perspective in relation to social movements is divided into two overlapping sections. The first situates the framing perspective on movements historically and theoretically; the second elaborates the perspective's evolving conceptual architecture.
Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
Frame
The concept of frame designates interpretive structures that render events and occurrences subjectively meaningful, and thereby function to organize experience and guide action. Within sociology, the concept is derived primarily from the work of Erving Goffman, which is beholden in part to the earlier work of Gregory Bateson. For these scholars, as well as others who use the concept analytically, frames provide answers to such questions as: What …
Theorizing Social Movements
Collective Identity
Movements, Social
Libraries, Social Movements, and Cultural Change
While sociological conceptualizations of culture span a wide range of metaphors, from codes to elephants to toolkits, they are often insufficiently attuned to the processes through which cultural challenges are advanced by individual and collective actors, and the place of political and institutional power in constraining or nurturing these challenges. Drawing from relevant institutional and cultural theories, this article advances an alternative…
The Emergence, Development, and Future of the Framing Perspective
It has been more than twenty-five years since publication of David Snow, Burke Rochford, Steven Worden, and Robert Benford's article, "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation" in the American Sociological Review (1986). Here we consider the conceptual and empirical origins of the framing perspective, how its introduction fundamentally altered and continues to influence the study of social movements, and where scho…
Protest on the Fly
This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; u…
Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements
This three volume encyclopedia comprises over 400 entries in a user-friendly A-Z format. The coverage is broad-based, and reflects major social and political movements and related collective phenomena throughout segments of history and across the world: from the antislavery movement, to the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989, to the Arab Spring. This work brings together leading scholars, all of whom come to the project with exemplary trac…
Crowds (Gatherings) and Collective Behavior (Action)
Crowds, or temporary gatherings as some scholars prefer (McPhail 1991), are a ubiquitous feature of everyday life. People have long assembled to observe, to celebrate, and to protest various happenings in their everyday lives. The historical record is replete with examples of crowds functioning as important textual markers, helping to shape and define a particular event, as well as strategic precipitants and carriers of the events themselves. The…
Social Movements, Framing Processes, and Cultural Revitalization and Fabrication
We advance an understanding of the dynamic relationship between social movements, culture, and change by identifying and illustrating cultural revitalization and fabrication as two important cultural change processes. We also suggest that they are linked to and facilitated by the interpretive processes of frame articulation and elaboration. Analytically, cultural revitalizations and fabrications are the processes to be explained, whereas frame ar…
Social Scientific Inquiry Into Genocide and Mass Killing
This article reviews social scientific research on the occurrence of genocide and mass killing, focusing on the underlying, contributing processes. Relevant studies are grouped by their primary analytic focus: (a) macro-level state and institutional processes, (b) political elites and policy decisions, (c) nonelite perpetrator motivation and participation, (d) social construction of victim group identity, and (e) local and regional variation with…
Une ethnographie du recrutement et de la conversion formelle au Nichiren Shoshu dans les années 1970
Cet article, basé sur une ethnographie de longue durée menée au début des années 1970 au sein de la branche californienne du mouvement bouddhiste Nichiren Shoshu, montre comment, lors des « réunions de discussion » organisées par ce mouvement pour promouvoir sa philosophie, les cadres de l’interaction, ainsi que certaines stratégies interactionnelles, peuvent être utilisés pour tenter d’obtenir que des individus, au départ extérieur au groupe, ac…
Processus de cadrage et mouvements sociaux
Ce texte est la traduction d'un article devenu classique sur l'analyse des cadres appliquée à la sociologie des mouvements sociaux, initialement publié par l' Annual Review of Sociology en 2000. La récente multiplication de travaux académiques sur les cadres de l'action collective et sur les processus de cadrage liés aux mouvements sociaux permet de constater que ces processus sont désormais considérés - de même que la mobilisation des ressources…
Social Movements
This chapter contains sections titled: Conceptualization and Significance Generating and Facilitating Conditions Participation Dynamics Outcomes New Frontiers in Social Movements Concluding Comment References
Radicalism within the Context of Social Movements
Drawing on work within the study of social movements and on conversion processes that is relevant to understanding radicalization, as well as on our own relevant research experiences and findings, especially on radicalism in right-wing and left-wing movements, we focus attention on the elements and dynamics of social movements, both intra-movement and extra-movement, that facilitate the grassroots development and maintenance of radical identities…
Criminology, Racial Dehumanization and the Crime of Genocide in Darfur
Three major narratives are spun in this wel come addition to the limited but ongoing analysis of the genocide in Darfur, and to the scholarly study of genocide more gener ally. One narrative concerns the absence of the criminological voice in accounting for genocide, not only in Darfur but more broadly and historically. The second con cerns the debate and politics shrouding the determination of the number of genocidal deaths in Darfur. And the th…
A team field study of the appeal of megachurches
■ Through an ongoing team fieldwork project that entails ethnographic observations and interviews at multiple research sites in southern California, this study seeks an understanding of the growth of contemporary megachurches by examining how they go about the business of attracting new members and retaining old ones. In this article, we focus on how the megachurches assist members in addressing personal issues through diagnostic and prognostic f…
Any Space Left? Homeless Resistance by Place-Type in Los Angeles County
This study develops a more nuanced concept of homeless resistance, incorporating a range of resistance behaviors (exit, adaptation, persistence, and voice) that bridge the gap between current frameworks that either romanticize or ignore it. We also consider the possibility that different kinds of space may theoretically allow for different kinds of resistance. To this end, we employ an ecological approach to homeless space by classifying Los Ange…
Towards a contextual approach to the place–homeless survival nexus
Framing Processes and Social Movements
The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements. This review examines the analytic utility of the framing literature for understanding social movement dynamics. We f…
Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation
This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of adherent and constituent mobilization by proposing and analyzing frame alignment as a conceptual bridge linking social psychological and resource mobilization views on movement participation. Extension of Goffinan's (1974) frame analytic perspective provides the conceptualltheoretical framework; field research on two religious movements, the peace movement, and several neig…
Social Networks and Social Movements
Past examinations of differential recruitment to and the differential growth of social movements have typically sought explanation at a social psychological/motivational level of analysis. That focus has recently been called into question by scholars concerned with the process through which movement organizations expand their ranks and mobilize support for their causes. Yet, as Useem (1975) and Zald and McCarthy (1979) have noted, there has been …
Identity Work Among the Homeless
This paper elaborates processes of identity construction and avowal among homeless street people, with two underlying and interconected objectives in mind: to advance understanding of the manner in wich individuals at the bottom of status systems attempt to generate identities that provide them with a measures of self-worth and dignity and to shed additional empirical and theoretical light on the relationships among role, identity, and self-conce…
The Outcomes of Homeless Mobilization
This article contributes to a more systematic understanding of movement outcomes by analyzing how organizational, tactical, political, and framing variables interact and combine to account for differences in the outcomes attained by 15 homeless social movement organizations (SMOs) active in eight U.S. cities. Using qualitative comparative analysis to assess ethnographically derived data on the 15 SMOs, the study highlights the importance of organ…
Mobilization at the Margins
For over two decades, resources have been assumed to be a fundamental determinant of the course and character of social movement organizations (SMOs) and their activities. Yet surprisingly little research evaluates this taken-for-granted assumption. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork on 15 homeless SMOs in eight U.S. cities, we construct an empirically grounded typology of resources and assess the combinations of resources necessary for the v…
The Emergence, Development, and Future of the Framing Perspective
It has been more than twenty-five years since publication of David Snow, Burke Rochford, Steven Worden, and Robert Benford's article, "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation" in the American Sociological Review (1986). Here we consider the conceptual and empirical origins of the framing perspective, how its introduction fundamentally altered and continues to influence the study of social movements, and where scho…
"Disrupting the "Quotidian
This article provides theoretical refinement and empirical specification for the breakdown variant of strain theory. It reconceptualizes the relationship between social breakdown and movement emergence in a fashion that is consistent with strands of cultural theory, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism, and that resonates with prospect theory and research on collective action in a diversity of settings. It argues that the key to the breakdo…
Elaborating Analytic Ethnography
Among the diverse styles of qualitative methodology is what John Lofland referred to as `analytic ethnography.' In contrast to the traditional interpretive style that attempts to get at the crux of `what is going on', to the more formal approach that seeks to identify the cognitive rules undergirding behavior, and to the more recent postmodern preoccupation with individual experience and voices, analytic ethnography seeks to develop systematic an…
Ideology, Framing Processes, and Islamic Terrorist Movements
We argue that the monolithic use and application of the concept of ideology to Islamic terrorist movements is of questionable analytic utility because it tends not only to ignore ideological variation and flexibility among these movements, but also glosses over the kind of discursive work required to articulate and elaborate the array of possible links between ideas, events, and action. Drawing on the framing perspective in the study of social mo…
Framing the French Riots
In an attempt to advance understanding of frame variation and the factors that account for it, we conduct a comparative study of how the Fall 2005 French "riots" were framed diagnostically and prognostically. We examine these framing activities across a diverse set of actors and assess the role of ideological, contextual, attributional and temporal factors hypothesized to account for the observed variation. The data come from a content analysis o…
Protest on the Fly
This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; u…
The Myth of Pervasive Mental Illness among the Homeless
This paper calls into question the double-edged thesis that the majority of the homeless are mentally ill and that the streets of urban America have consequently become the asylums of today. We present data from a triangulated field study of nearly 1,000 unattached homeless adults in Texas that contradict this stereotypic imagery. We also suggest that this root image is due to the medicalization of the problem of homelessness, a misplaced emphasi…
Mobilization Forum
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Snow, Robert Benford; Mobilization Forum: Comment on Oliver and Johnston. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 1 March 2000; 5 (1): 55–60. doi: https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.5.1.976335015g30u5j9 Download citation file: Ris (Zot…
The Lofland-Stark Conversion Model
The most refined and widely cited conversion model within the sociological literature is the value-added scheme propounded by Lofland and Stark (1965) well over a decade ago. This paper is a critical examination of the Lofland-Stark model. Data derived from an extensive study of recruitment and conversion to the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist movement in America provide little empirical support for the model in its entirety. Several components of the m…
The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism
Victory Celebrations as Theater
Drawing on data derived from a field study of victory celebrations, this paper suggests a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior. Existing theories of crowd behavior are either contradicted by the field data or do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of activity observed, for the interaction between the various categories of participants, or for the shifts in the behavior of the participants and the resultant change in the character of …
Inequality and the Self
Symbolic interactionism provides a major contribution to understanding inequality by illuminating the various manifestations and contexts of inequality at the micro, everyday level of social life. Drawing on a spectrum of symbolic interactionist theory and research, we examine the range of symbolic and interactional manifestations of social inequality, the consequences of being the object of patterned interactional affronts, and the strategies pe…
Interviewing by comment
"Cooling Out" Men in Singles Bars and Nightclubs
This article attempts to advance understanding of the interactional survival strategies of women in public places by examining the manner in which they fend off men and parry their advances in singles bars and nightclubs. The strategies employed are conceptualized as variants of the "cooling out" process initially outlined by Goffman (1952). Three sets of strategic practices associated with actual or anticipated cooling-out encounters are identif…
Fieldwork Roles and Informational Yield
One of the basic premises of role theory is that all roles, by virtue of their attendant rights and obligations, function as avenues and barriers to other roles and their information bases and perspectives. Using this premise as a point of departure, this article examines how different fieldwork roles facilitate and impede access to different types of information. The types of information considered include (1) direct experience, (2) observationa…
The disengagement process
Identifying the Precipitants of Homeless Protest Across 17 U.S. Cities, 1980 to 1990
During the 1980s, homeless people formed social movement organizations and mobilized collective action events in cities across the U.S. From the vantage point of social movement theories and scholarship on homelessness, it is surprising that homeless protest was so prevalent in the 1980s. Yet we find evidence of homeless protest events across no fewer than 50 U.S. cities in the 1980–90 period. Drawing on social movement theories about the precipi…
Space, Politics, and the Survival Strategies of the Homeless
This article sheds conceptual and empirical light on the ways in which urban physical space and homelessness intersect by considering three focal questions: (a) What are the key spatial concepts necessary for understanding the relationship between urban space and homeless survival strategies and routines, (b) what are the central strategies used within communities to control the homeless spatially or ecologically, and (c) how do the homeless resp…
A Dramaturgical Analysis Of Movement Accommodation
Addressed in this paper are two problems that have received little empirical attention in the social movement literature: the problem of outward-reaching strategies and tactics and the problem of movement adaptation and accommodation to its environment of operation. The paper sheds some empirical and theoretical light on these two problems by examining how a contemporary religious movement in America has strategically sought to establish a viable…
Social Networks and Social Movements
Past examinations of differential recruitment to and the differential growth of social movements have typically sought explanation at a social psychological/motivational level of analysis. That focus has recently been called into question by scholars concerned with the process through which movement organizations expand their ranks and mobilize support for their causes. Yet, as Useem (1975) and Zald and McCarthy (1979) have noted, there has been …
The disengagement process
The Lofland-Stark Conversion Model
The most refined and widely cited conversion model within the sociological literature is the value-added scheme propounded by Lofland and Stark (1965) well over a decade ago. This paper is a critical examination of the Lofland-Stark model. Data derived from an extensive study of recruitment and conversion to the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist movement in America provide little empirical support for the model in its entirety. Several components of the m…
Social Interaction in a Heterogeneous Apartment
This paper examines the relationship of propinquity (spatial proximity) to social interaction in a heterogeneous apartment, specifically, whether spatial propinquity or social homogeneity is the better explanation for resident interaction. We also examine the effects of other characteristics of the apartment design upon interaction patterns among apartment residents. Data are derived from in-depth structured personal interviews with residents of …
Victory Celebrations as Theater
Drawing on data derived from a field study of victory celebrations, this paper suggests a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior. Existing theories of crowd behavior are either contradicted by the field data or do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of activity observed, for the interaction between the various categories of participants, or for the shifts in the behavior of the participants and the resultant change in the character of …
Interviewing by comment
On the Presumed Fragility of Unconventional Beliefs
Upon encountering an unconventional belief system, people are often heard to exclaim: How could anyone in his right mind believe such nonsense? This sentiment is not restricted to the layperson. A more subtle version of it is featured in some of the social scientific literature on religious cults an movements. As such, it gives rise to explanations of cult or movement viability that are premised on an assumption that unconventional religious beli…
The Convert as a Social Type
Further Thoughts on Social Networks and Movement Recruitment
WALLIS and Bruce (1982) have recently questioned the adequacy of our analysis of the relationship between social networks and the movement recruitment process (Snow et al. 1980). Our aim in that paper was to further empirical and theoretical understanding of the spread and growth of social movements by examining the role of such micro-structural factors as social networks in relation to differential recruitment (e.g., Why are some people rather t…
The Sociology of Conversion
This essay reviews recent research on religious conversion, particularly within the context of new religious movements. It addresses three fundamental issues pertinent to the study of conversion: first, the conceptualization and nature of conversion; second, the analytic status of converts' accounts; and third, the causes of conversion. The chapter concludes with a proposed agenda for subsequent research on conversion and related topics
Encounters with Unjust Authority
Chandler t o a r r e s t you.L i e u t e n a n t Chandler, would you p l e a s e a r r e s t him
The Anti-Cult Movement in America
Mind-Bending
Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation
This paper attempts to further theoretical and empirical understanding of adherent and constituent mobilization by proposing and analyzing frame alignment as a conceptual bridge linking social psychological and resource mobilization views on movement participation. Extension of Goffinan's (1974) frame analytic perspective provides the conceptualltheoretical framework; field research on two religious movements, the peace movement, and several neig…
Social Interaction as Drama
PART ONE: SOCIAL INTERACTION AS DRAMA A Word on Plays Perspectives from the Theater PART TWO: APPLICATIONS FROM CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION Protest Demonstrations in South Africa and Curacao Greek and Turkish Cypriots Ethnic Groups in Namibia and South Africa Egyptians and Israelis at Camp David - A Paul Hare and David Naveh
The Myth of Pervasive Mental Illness among the Homeless
This paper calls into question the double-edged thesis that the majority of the homeless are mentally ill and that the streets of urban America have consequently become the asylums of today. We present data from a triangulated field study of nearly 1,000 unattached homeless adults in Texas that contradict this stereotypic imagery. We also suggest that this root image is due to the medicalization of the problem of homelessness, a misplaced emphasi…
Fieldwork Roles and Informational Yield
One of the basic premises of role theory is that all roles, by virtue of their attendant rights and obligations, function as avenues and barriers to other roles and their information bases and perspectives. Using this premise as a point of departure, this article examines how different fieldwork roles facilitate and impede access to different types of information. The types of information considered include (1) direct experience, (2) observationa…
Sociological Theory, Religion, and Collective Action
From the Book Shelf
Identity Work Among the Homeless
This paper elaborates processes of identity construction and avowal among homeless street people, with two underlying and interconected objectives in mind: to advance understanding of the manner in wich individuals at the bottom of status systems attempt to generate identities that provide them with a measures of self-worth and dignity and to shed additional empirical and theoretical light on the relationships among role, identity, and self-conce…
Social Movements in an Organizational Society
Introduction Resource Mobilization Theory 1. Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory The Infrastructure of Movements 2. Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization: Infrastructure Deficits and New Technologies 3. Religious Groups as Crucibles of Social Movements 4. Organizational Intellectuals and the Criticism of Society Processes of Organizational Change 5. Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay, and Change 6. From Evangelis…
On the Precariousness of Measuring Insanity in Insane Contexts
On the Precariousness of Measuring Insanity in Insane Contexts David A. Snow, David A. Snow University of Arizona, Tucson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Susan G. Baker, Susan G. Baker University of Texas, Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Leon Anderson Leon Anderson University of Texas, Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acad…
Criminality and Homeless Men
This paper examines the relationship between criminality and homelessness by tracking a random sample of homeless males through the police department records of a large Southwestern city over a 27-month period. When compared with data on criminality in the general population of males within the city over the same period, these data show that while the homeless have a higher overall arrest rate, the majority of offenses for which they are arrested…
Gone from the Promised Land
Sociology (94 works) · Political science (52 works) · Psychology (52 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (33 works) · Epistemology (30 works) · Law (30 works) · History (29 works) · Politics (27 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Social science (21 works)