Culture and Movements
Francesca Polletta
University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
Search for more papers by this authorBeth Gharrity Gardner
University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
Search for more papers by this authorFrancesca Polletta
University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
Search for more papers by this authorBeth Gharrity Gardner
University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of culture in social movements' emergence, trajectories, and impacts. Culture is no longer conceptualized as a subjective lens through which people perceive objective structures, but rather as a key dimension of those structures. This has allowed researchers to shed new light on why certain areas of social life come to be contested when they do, as well as to understand the limitations on activists' ability to act strategically, and the sometimes surprising ways in which movements have influence. We focus on one vein of research: the role of institutional schemas in spurring mobilization and accounting for its effects. Schemas are accepted ways of doing things—doing business, obstetrics, race relations, or Internet protest. Research has investigated both the conditions in which institutionalized schemas become vulnerable to challenge and whether winning the acceptance of a new institutional schema counts as movement success.
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