R L Einwohner
Biographic Data
| ID | 79908 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R L Einwohner |
| GIVEN NAMES | R L |
| FAMILY NAME | Einwohner |
| SIGNATURE | EINWOHNER R L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Purdue University West Lafayette |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1789-9537 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 707 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
(Re)Conceptualizing resistance? A look back after twenty years
In this paper we revisit our 2004 article, ‘Conceptualizing Resistance’, and its typology of resistance. Reflecting on our empirical work on resistance since then, we argue that while our typology was useful, we now see the need for a more holistic approach to resistance, one that considers the temporal, spatial, and interactional parameters of resistance. We support our argument with illustrations from our own respective work on Jewish resistanc…
Black lives matter and say her name: How intersectional solidarity strengthens movements for social justice
Hope and Honor: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust
Holocaust accounts typically cast Jewish victims as meek, going “like sheep to the slaughter.” Given such portrayals, people ask, “Why didn’t Jews resist?” But Jews did resist, staging armed uprisings in ghettos and camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. This book’s goal is not to dispel the myth of Jewish passivity; however, it instead argues that Jewish resistance deserves explanation. Research on social movements shows that protest occurs when…
Drive-By Solidarity: Conceptualizing the Temporal Relationship between #BlackLivesMatter and Anonymous’s #OpKKK
This article offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of a form of solidarity in which one group spontaneously mobilizes in support of another, unrelated group. It is a fleeting solidarity based not on shared identity but on temporarily aligned goals, one aimed less at persistence and more at short-term impact. We call this drive-by solidarity because of its spontaneous, unilateral, and unsolicited nature. We argue that it is a “thinner” fo…
Workarounds and Roadblocks”: Risk and Resistance among Food Movement Activists
This article examines how activists involved in the food movement use different tactics intended to challenge and subvert the agrifood structures they encounter. We use data from interviews and participant observations with 57 food movement activists operating in less robust alternative food systems throughout the Southern Plains states of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Our respondents describe how they interpret their regional food syste…
Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust
Active Solidarity: Intersectional Solidarity in Action
While solidarity lies at the heart of collective action, it is not easily achieved. Social movements are characterized not only by difference within activist ranks but also by power asymmetries that reflect broader domination and distrust. The concept of intersectional solidarity is central to contemporary social justice movements’ efforts to negotiate these divisions, but how can it be achieved? To answer this question, we offer some guidelines …
After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March
The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” ac…
Becoming a Movement Society? Patterns in the Public Acceptance of Protest, 1985–2006
A social movement society refers to a society in which protest is a standard, institutionalized feature of the political landscape. Is the United States steadily becoming such a society? Whereas other empirical tests of the movement society thesis have focused on political tactics and individual participation in protest, we point to the public’s attitudes as another indicator of the movement society. Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, we…
I'm Not Your Stereotypical Mormon Girl: Mormon Women's Gendered Resistance
Research on women in gender-traditional religions has shown that women often exercise agency within the gendered confines of their religious institutions. This paper builds on the growing literature on women's agency in gender-traditional religions by exploring whether and why some active Mormon women resist the gendered expectations of their faith more strongly than others. Drawing on interviews with women members of the Church of Jesus Christ o…
Jewish Resistance against the Nazis
Some seventy-five years after the events of the Holocaust, we are still learning more about this tragic period. Patrick Henry's edited volume on Jewish resistance against the Nazis is a rich and powerful contribution to Holocaust scholarship. Written to help counter the prevailing myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust—a myth that Henry describes as “simply unconscionable” (p. xx)—this impressive collection of essays by prominent researche…
Authorities and Uncertainties: Applying Lessons from the Study of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust to the Milgram Legacy
Milgram's experiments were born out of a desire to understand the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. This article argues that the study of Jewish resistance against that persecution also furthers our understanding of Milgram's experiments. Case data from the Nazi‐created ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź—settings in which Jews reached very different decisions with regard to resistance—illustrate that decisions about resistance refl…
Motherhood and Opportunities for Activism Before and After the Czech Velvet Revolution
Extant social movement research emphasizes the nexus of gender and opportunity structures in a variety of contexts, yet little work has examined how gender mediates the effects of structural opportunities on activism over time. We advance the existing literature by examining environmental activism framed around motherhood in pre- and post-revolutionary Czech Republic. Our analysis draws from rich qualitative data, collected over a ten-year span, …
Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust
Recent work in the field of social movements has argued for the importance of threat as a factor that explains the emergence of collective action. However, threat remains poorly specified and understood. This article seeks to refine the concept of threat and its role in mobilization with an examination of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Our study design compares two cases where resistance took place (the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sobibór deat…
The Need to Know: Cultured Ignorance and Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź
This article explores the role of knowledge in collective action with an examination of resistance efforts in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź during World War II. Because sustained collective resistance took place in Warsaw but not in the other two ghettos, a comparison of these cases is useful toward an understanding of the factors that facilitate collective action. Drawing on Schwartz's concept of "structured ignoran…
Leadership, Authority, and Collective Action: Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw and Vilna
This article examines leadership and its role in the emergence of collective action with a comparison of resistance activities in two Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews rose up in armed rebellion against the Nazis twice during 1943; in contrast, Jewish activists in the Vilna Ghetto planned for similar resistance, but a sustained uprising never took place. The author argues that these different outcomes can be attri…
Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the 'Aryan Side' of the Warsaw Ghetto
Research on social movements has found that activists often deploy their identity strategically, putting forth certain images of themselves in order to best achieve their goals. However, such work has focused mostly on settings in which activists are relatively free to pursue different identity-based strategies. In contrast, less is known about the strategic use of identity in more repressive contexts, where the expression of certain identities m…
That's How We Do Things Here: Local Culture and the Construction of Sweatshops and Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Two Campus Communities
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
Conceptualizing Resistance
Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional.…
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust
Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943
Macrolevel theories of social movement emergence posit that political opportunity "opens the door" for collective action. This article uses the case of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to show that collective action need not always require opportunity. Warsaw Jews' armed resistance was a response not to opportunity but to a lack thereof. Equally important was a strong sense of honor among the ghetto fighters: the hopelessness of their situation helped …
Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest
In this text, Michael Welch critically examines depth the controversy over flag desecration. Adopting a constructionist framework, he interprets the intensely negative societal reaction to flag burning as an instance of moral panic, a turbulent and exaggerated response to a putative social problem. What sets this particular response apart from other instances of moral panic is that it involves American civic religion, which bestows on a secular s…
Bringing The Outsiders In: Opponents' Claims and The Construction of Animal Rights Activists' Identity
Most research on the role of identity in social movements treats identity as something that is constructed solely by movement participants themselves. However, participants are not the only actors involved in this identity construction. This article uses basic insights from symbolic interactionism to argue that external claims, or claims made about movement participants by those outside the movement, also shape activists' sense of identity. Using…
Motivational Framing and Efficacy Maintenance: "Animal Rights Activists" Use Of Four Fortifying Strategies
While a great deal of research has documented the role of perceived efficacy in the decision to participate in collective action, less attention has been paid to these perceptions beyond the onset of protest activity. This article uses qualitative data from fieldwork with members of an animal rights group engaged in four different protest campaigns to examine activists” sense of their accomplishments in the context of ongoing activism. Despite fe…
Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences
Toska Olson, Rachel L. Einwohner, Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences, Teaching Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 403-422
Conceptualizing Resistance
Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional.…
Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943
Macrolevel theories of social movement emergence posit that political opportunity "opens the door" for collective action. This article uses the case of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to show that collective action need not always require opportunity. Warsaw Jews' armed resistance was a response not to opportunity but to a lack thereof. Equally important was a strong sense of honor among the ghetto fighters: the hopelessness of their situation helped …
Engendering Social Movements: Cultural Images and Movement Dynamics
The fields of gender and social movements have traditionally consisted of separate literatures. Recently, however, a number of scholars have begun a fruitful exploration of the ways in which gender shapes political protest. This study adds three things to this ongoing discussion. First, the authors offer a systematic typology of the various ways in which movements are gendered and apply that typology to a wide variety of movements, including thos…
Active Solidarity: Intersectional Solidarity in Action
While solidarity lies at the heart of collective action, it is not easily achieved. Social movements are characterized not only by difference within activist ranks but also by power asymmetries that reflect broader domination and distrust. The concept of intersectional solidarity is central to contemporary social justice movements’ efforts to negotiate these divisions, but how can it be achieved? To answer this question, we offer some guidelines …
Policy Alternatives and Political Change: Work, Family, and Gender on the Congressional Agenda, 1945-1990
Les changements en matiere juridique sont determines par les idees defendues par les legislateurs. Les AA., en utilisant une methode d'analyse de contenu, s'efforcent d'etudier, sur la periode 1945-1990, les propositions de lois avancees par les membres du Congres et cela concernant les politiques en matiere d'emploi, en matiere familiale, etndicale. Ils isolent trois themes fondamentaux dans ces domaines : la separation des spheres, l'egalite de…
Bringing The Outsiders In: Opponents' Claims and The Construction of Animal Rights Activists' Identity
Most research on the role of identity in social movements treats identity as something that is constructed solely by movement participants themselves. However, participants are not the only actors involved in this identity construction. This article uses basic insights from symbolic interactionism to argue that external claims, or claims made about movement participants by those outside the movement, also shape activists' sense of identity. Using…
Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust
Recent work in the field of social movements has argued for the importance of threat as a factor that explains the emergence of collective action. However, threat remains poorly specified and understood. This article seeks to refine the concept of threat and its role in mobilization with an examination of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Our study design compares two cases where resistance took place (the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sobibór deat…
Practices, Opportunity, and Protest Effectiveness: Illustrations from Four Animal Rights Campaigns
Despite its central role in the study of social movements, research on political and cultural opportunity is problematic. The vague definition and broad applicability of the concept of opportunity make it difficult to identify all the opportunities that exist in a given protest situation. Furthermore, most analyses take place at the broad levels of culture and the state, which can obscure additional, localized factors that create opportunity for …
Gender, Class, and Social Movement Outcomes: Identity and Effectiveness in Two Animal Rights Campaigns
Animal rights organizations in the United States are predominantly female and middle class. What are the implications of the composition of these groups for animal rights activists' abilities to achieve their goals? In this article, the author examines the role of class and gender in the outcomes of an anti-hunting campaign and an anti-circus campaign waged by one animal rights organization in the Seattle area. The article shows that hunters make…
Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the 'Aryan Side' of the Warsaw Ghetto
Research on social movements has found that activists often deploy their identity strategically, putting forth certain images of themselves in order to best achieve their goals. However, such work has focused mostly on settings in which activists are relatively free to pursue different identity-based strategies. In contrast, less is known about the strategic use of identity in more repressive contexts, where the expression of certain identities m…
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust
Motivational Framing and Efficacy Maintenance: "Animal Rights Activists" Use Of Four Fortifying Strategies
While a great deal of research has documented the role of perceived efficacy in the decision to participate in collective action, less attention has been paid to these perceptions beyond the onset of protest activity. This article uses qualitative data from fieldwork with members of an animal rights group engaged in four different protest campaigns to examine activists” sense of their accomplishments in the context of ongoing activism. Despite fe…
Motherhood and Opportunities for Activism Before and After the Czech Velvet Revolution
Extant social movement research emphasizes the nexus of gender and opportunity structures in a variety of contexts, yet little work has examined how gender mediates the effects of structural opportunities on activism over time. We advance the existing literature by examining environmental activism framed around motherhood in pre- and post-revolutionary Czech Republic. Our analysis draws from rich qualitative data, collected over a ten-year span, …
After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March
The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” ac…
Becoming a Movement Society? Patterns in the Public Acceptance of Protest, 1985–2006
A social movement society refers to a society in which protest is a standard, institutionalized feature of the political landscape. Is the United States steadily becoming such a society? Whereas other empirical tests of the movement society thesis have focused on political tactics and individual participation in protest, we point to the public’s attitudes as another indicator of the movement society. Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, we…
The Need to Know: Cultured Ignorance and Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź
This article explores the role of knowledge in collective action with an examination of resistance efforts in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź during World War II. Because sustained collective resistance took place in Warsaw but not in the other two ghettos, a comparison of these cases is useful toward an understanding of the factors that facilitate collective action. Drawing on Schwartz's concept of "structured ignoran…
Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences
Toska Olson, Rachel L. Einwohner, Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences, Teaching Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 403-422
I'm Not Your Stereotypical Mormon Girl: Mormon Women's Gendered Resistance
Research on women in gender-traditional religions has shown that women often exercise agency within the gendered confines of their religious institutions. This paper builds on the growing literature on women's agency in gender-traditional religions by exploring whether and why some active Mormon women resist the gendered expectations of their faith more strongly than others. Drawing on interviews with women members of the Church of Jesus Christ o…
Leadership, Authority, and Collective Action: Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw and Vilna
This article examines leadership and its role in the emergence of collective action with a comparison of resistance activities in two Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews rose up in armed rebellion against the Nazis twice during 1943; in contrast, Jewish activists in the Vilna Ghetto planned for similar resistance, but a sustained uprising never took place. The author argues that these different outcomes can be attri…
Drive-By Solidarity: Conceptualizing the Temporal Relationship between #BlackLivesMatter and Anonymous’s #OpKKK
This article offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of a form of solidarity in which one group spontaneously mobilizes in support of another, unrelated group. It is a fleeting solidarity based not on shared identity but on temporarily aligned goals, one aimed less at persistence and more at short-term impact. We call this drive-by solidarity because of its spontaneous, unilateral, and unsolicited nature. We argue that it is a “thinner” fo…
Authorities and Uncertainties: Applying Lessons from the Study of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust to the Milgram Legacy
Milgram's experiments were born out of a desire to understand the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. This article argues that the study of Jewish resistance against that persecution also furthers our understanding of Milgram's experiments. Case data from the Nazi‐created ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź—settings in which Jews reached very different decisions with regard to resistance—illustrate that decisions about resistance refl…
That's How We Do Things Here: Local Culture and the Construction of Sweatshops and Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Two Campus Communities
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust
Policy Alternatives and Political Change: Work, Family, and Gender on the Congressional Agenda, 1945-1990
Les changements en matiere juridique sont determines par les idees defendues par les legislateurs. Les AA., en utilisant une methode d'analyse de contenu, s'efforcent d'etudier, sur la periode 1945-1990, les propositions de lois avancees par les membres du Congres et cela concernant les politiques en matiere d'emploi, en matiere familiale, etndicale. Ils isolent trois themes fondamentaux dans ces domaines : la separation des spheres, l'egalite de…
The Social Psychology of Collective Action: Identity, Injustice, and Gender
Introduction. Social Psychological Approaches to Collective Action. Social Beliefs and Participation: Exploring Associations. Explaining Initial Involvement: Why Join Women's Groups? Outcomes of Participation. Explaining Non-activism. Conclusions. Appendixes. References. Index
Practices, Opportunity, and Protest Effectiveness: Illustrations from Four Animal Rights Campaigns
Despite its central role in the study of social movements, research on political and cultural opportunity is problematic. The vague definition and broad applicability of the concept of opportunity make it difficult to identify all the opportunities that exist in a given protest situation. Furthermore, most analyses take place at the broad levels of culture and the state, which can obscure additional, localized factors that create opportunity for …
Gender, Class, and Social Movement Outcomes: Identity and Effectiveness in Two Animal Rights Campaigns
Animal rights organizations in the United States are predominantly female and middle class. What are the implications of the composition of these groups for animal rights activists' abilities to achieve their goals? In this article, the author examines the role of class and gender in the outcomes of an anti-hunting campaign and an anti-circus campaign waged by one animal rights organization in the Seattle area. The article shows that hunters make…
Engendering Social Movements: Cultural Images and Movement Dynamics
The fields of gender and social movements have traditionally consisted of separate literatures. Recently, however, a number of scholars have begun a fruitful exploration of the ways in which gender shapes political protest. This study adds three things to this ongoing discussion. First, the authors offer a systematic typology of the various ways in which movements are gendered and apply that typology to a wide variety of movements, including thos…
Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences
Toska Olson, Rachel L. Einwohner, Forming and Transforming the Teaching Self in Different Institutional Environments: Two Teachers' Experiences, Teaching Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 403-422
Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest
In this text, Michael Welch critically examines depth the controversy over flag desecration. Adopting a constructionist framework, he interprets the intensely negative societal reaction to flag burning as an instance of moral panic, a turbulent and exaggerated response to a putative social problem. What sets this particular response apart from other instances of moral panic is that it involves American civic religion, which bestows on a secular s…
Bringing The Outsiders In: Opponents' Claims and The Construction of Animal Rights Activists' Identity
Most research on the role of identity in social movements treats identity as something that is constructed solely by movement participants themselves. However, participants are not the only actors involved in this identity construction. This article uses basic insights from symbolic interactionism to argue that external claims, or claims made about movement participants by those outside the movement, also shape activists' sense of identity. Using…
Motivational Framing and Efficacy Maintenance: "Animal Rights Activists" Use Of Four Fortifying Strategies
While a great deal of research has documented the role of perceived efficacy in the decision to participate in collective action, less attention has been paid to these perceptions beyond the onset of protest activity. This article uses qualitative data from fieldwork with members of an animal rights group engaged in four different protest campaigns to examine activists” sense of their accomplishments in the context of ongoing activism. Despite fe…
Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943
Macrolevel theories of social movement emergence posit that political opportunity "opens the door" for collective action. This article uses the case of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to show that collective action need not always require opportunity. Warsaw Jews' armed resistance was a response not to opportunity but to a lack thereof. Equally important was a strong sense of honor among the ghetto fighters: the hopelessness of their situation helped …
Conceptualizing Resistance
Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional.…
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust
That's How We Do Things Here: Local Culture and the Construction of Sweatshops and Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Two Campus Communities
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the 'Aryan Side' of the Warsaw Ghetto
Research on social movements has found that activists often deploy their identity strategically, putting forth certain images of themselves in order to best achieve their goals. However, such work has focused mostly on settings in which activists are relatively free to pursue different identity-based strategies. In contrast, less is known about the strategic use of identity in more repressive contexts, where the expression of certain identities m…
Leadership, Authority, and Collective Action: Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw and Vilna
This article examines leadership and its role in the emergence of collective action with a comparison of resistance activities in two Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews rose up in armed rebellion against the Nazis twice during 1943; in contrast, Jewish activists in the Vilna Ghetto planned for similar resistance, but a sustained uprising never took place. The author argues that these different outcomes can be attri…
The Need to Know: Cultured Ignorance and Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź
This article explores the role of knowledge in collective action with an examination of resistance efforts in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź during World War II. Because sustained collective resistance took place in Warsaw but not in the other two ghettos, a comparison of these cases is useful toward an understanding of the factors that facilitate collective action. Drawing on Schwartz's concept of "structured ignoran…
Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust
Recent work in the field of social movements has argued for the importance of threat as a factor that explains the emergence of collective action. However, threat remains poorly specified and understood. This article seeks to refine the concept of threat and its role in mobilization with an examination of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Our study design compares two cases where resistance took place (the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sobibór deat…
Motherhood and Opportunities for Activism Before and After the Czech Velvet Revolution
Extant social movement research emphasizes the nexus of gender and opportunity structures in a variety of contexts, yet little work has examined how gender mediates the effects of structural opportunities on activism over time. We advance the existing literature by examining environmental activism framed around motherhood in pre- and post-revolutionary Czech Republic. Our analysis draws from rich qualitative data, collected over a ten-year span, …
Authorities and Uncertainties: Applying Lessons from the Study of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust to the Milgram Legacy
Milgram's experiments were born out of a desire to understand the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. This article argues that the study of Jewish resistance against that persecution also furthers our understanding of Milgram's experiments. Case data from the Nazi‐created ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź—settings in which Jews reached very different decisions with regard to resistance—illustrate that decisions about resistance refl…
Jewish Resistance against the Nazis
Some seventy-five years after the events of the Holocaust, we are still learning more about this tragic period. Patrick Henry's edited volume on Jewish resistance against the Nazis is a rich and powerful contribution to Holocaust scholarship. Written to help counter the prevailing myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust—a myth that Henry describes as “simply unconscionable” (p. xx)—this impressive collection of essays by prominent researche…
I'm Not Your Stereotypical Mormon Girl: Mormon Women's Gendered Resistance
Research on women in gender-traditional religions has shown that women often exercise agency within the gendered confines of their religious institutions. This paper builds on the growing literature on women's agency in gender-traditional religions by exploring whether and why some active Mormon women resist the gendered expectations of their faith more strongly than others. Drawing on interviews with women members of the Church of Jesus Christ o…
Active Solidarity: Intersectional Solidarity in Action
While solidarity lies at the heart of collective action, it is not easily achieved. Social movements are characterized not only by difference within activist ranks but also by power asymmetries that reflect broader domination and distrust. The concept of intersectional solidarity is central to contemporary social justice movements’ efforts to negotiate these divisions, but how can it be achieved? To answer this question, we offer some guidelines …
After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March
The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” ac…
Becoming a Movement Society? Patterns in the Public Acceptance of Protest, 1985–2006
A social movement society refers to a society in which protest is a standard, institutionalized feature of the political landscape. Is the United States steadily becoming such a society? Whereas other empirical tests of the movement society thesis have focused on political tactics and individual participation in protest, we point to the public’s attitudes as another indicator of the movement society. Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, we…
Workarounds and Roadblocks”: Risk and Resistance among Food Movement Activists
This article examines how activists involved in the food movement use different tactics intended to challenge and subvert the agrifood structures they encounter. We use data from interviews and participant observations with 57 food movement activists operating in less robust alternative food systems throughout the Southern Plains states of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Our respondents describe how they interpret their regional food syste…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Law (20 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Social movement (10 works) · Collective action (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Criminology (8 works)