Dictionary / Encyclopedia Article Biographical consequences of activism GIUGNI, Marco Abstract Social and political movements have a wide range of effects. The biographical consequences of social movements are one of them. They can be defined as effects on the life-course of individuals who have participated in movement activities, effects that are at least in part due to involvement in those activities (see McAdam 1989; Goldstone & McAdam 2001; Giugni 2004 for reviews). Other types of effects include political and cultural outcomes. Political consequences are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements' political environment. Policy outcomes, a special category of political outcomes consisting of changes in legislation or other policy measures induced by social movements, are among the most often studied. Cultural outcomes are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements' cultural environment. They are perhaps the most difficult to study empirically as they are not easily identified, they depend on a wide range of other actors and events, and often they make themselves felt only in the long run. In addition, one can also imagine the existence of that which [...] Reference GIUGNI, Marco. Biographical consequences of activism. In: David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. p. 138-144 DOI : 10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm013 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:83710 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.
Biographical consequences of activism MARCO GIUGNI DEFINITIONAL ISSUES Social and political movements have a wide range of effects. The biographical consequences of social movements are one of them. They can be defined as effects on the life-course of individuals who have participated in movement activities, effects that are at least in part due to involvement in those activities (see McAdam 1989; Goldstone & McAdam 2001; Giugni 2004 for reviews). Other types of effects include political and cultural outcomes. Political consequences are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements political environment. Policy outcomes, a special category of political outcomes consisting of changes in legislation or other policy measures induced by social movements, are among the most often studied. Cultural outcomes are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements cultural environment. They are perhaps the most difficult to study empirically as they are not easily identified, they depend on a wide range of other actors and events, and often they make themselves felt only in the long run. In addition, one can also imagine the existence of that which some have called spillover effects, that is, effects of movements on each other. The study of the biographical consequences of activism crosses two major fields of investigation: (1) studies of life-course and the life-cycle and (2) work on processes of political socialization and participation. Focusing more specifically on scholarly work on the demographic and personal dimensions of contentious politics, Goldstone and McAdam (2001) have mapped the literature on demography, life-course, and contention, allowing us to better define our subject matter. They distinguish between four bodies of literature in this field depending on whether they thematically focus on movement emergence/development or decline/outcomes and whether they analytically focus on the macro or micro levels of analysis (see Table 1): (1) studies looking at the origin of contention from a macrosociological point of view; (2) studies looking at the biographical availability or other life-course factors that facilitate or prevent movement activism following a microsociological perspective; (3) studies analyzing contention as a force for aggregate change in life-course patterns at the macro level of analysis; and (4) studies focusing on the biographical consequences of individual activism at the micro level of analysis. Concerning our subject matter, this typology tells us that we should pay attention to two main types of consequences of activism: (1) the biographical consequences of individual activism and (2) the aggregate-level change in life-course patterns (see further McAdam 1999). While the former concerns the micro-level effects of sustained participation in social movements, the latter deals with the broader, macro-level consequences of activism. THE STATE OF RESEARCH Works on the biographical consequences of individual activism are much less numerous than the now quite substantial body of studies of the political and, more specifically, policy outcomes of social movements. In addition, a great deal of these studies have dealt with former activists of movements of the New Left in the United States, including participants in the civil rights movement (see Table 2). Works on Europe and on other movements are relatively scarce. In general, these follow-up studies of New Left activists quite consistently point to a strong and durable impact on the political The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, Edited by David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam. 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbespm013
2 biographical consequences of activism and personal lives of activists. Specifically, on the one hand, they show that former activists had continued to espouse leftist political attitudes (e.g., Demerath, Marwell, & Aiken 1971; Fendrich & Tarleau 1973; Whalen & Flacks 1980; Marwell, Aiken, & Demerath 1987; McAdam 1989), had continued to define themselves as liberal or radical in political orientation (e.g., Fendrich & Tarleau 1973), and had remained active in contemporary movements or other forms of political activity (e.g., Fendrich & Krauss 1978; Jennings & Niemi 1981; Fendrich & Lovoy 1988; McAdam 1989). On the other hand, they show that former activists had been concentrated in teaching or other helping professions (e.g., Fendrich 1974; McAdam 1989), had lower incomes than their age peers, were more likely than their age peers to have divorced, married later, or remained single (e.g., McAdam 1988, 1989), and were more likely than their age peers to have experienced an episodic or nontraditional work history (e.g., McAdam 1988, 1989). The biographical consequences of involvement in movements other than those of the New Left wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s are less numerous. Furthermore, they do not form such a consistent and easily recognizable body of literature. Yet they have not been completely ignored. For example, just to mention a few, Klatch (1999) has studied the longstanding biographical consequences of both leftist and rightist movement participants; Taylor and Raeburn (1995) have looked at the career consequences of high-risk activism by lesbian, gay, and bisexual sociologists; Whittier (1995) has shown in her study of the radical women s movement in Colombus, Ohio, that social movements may alter their social context, leading successive generations of participants to develop new perspectives; and Nagel (1995), in her study of the American Indian movement, has argued that Indian activism in the 1960s and 1970s led to an increased tendency of Indians to self-identify as such. Still, most if not all of these studies are zoomed in on strongly committed movement participants (i.e., activists) or at least those who strongly identify with a movement and its cause or objectives. Some scholars, however, have inquired into the individual-level effects of involvement in social movements by not-socommitted participants. For example, Sherkat and Blocker (1997) have used panel survey data to show that ordinary involvement in antiwar and student protests of the late 1960s had both a short-term and a long-term impact on the lives of participants. Specifically, demonstrators held more liberal political orientations and were more aligned with liberal parties and actions, they selected occupations in the new class, were more educated, held less traditional religious orientations and were less attached to religious organizations, married later, and were less likely to have children than nonparticipants. In a similar fashion, McAdam and collaborators (Wilhelm 1998; McAdam 1999; Van Dyke, McAdam, & Wilhelm 2000) have inquired into the biographical consequences of participation in social movements by means of a randomized national survey of US residents born between 1943 and 1964. What they found is largely consistent with the Table 1 Macro Micro Silence and voice in the study of demography, life-course, and contention Emergence/development Demographic pressures and the emergence of contention Land pressure and peasant rebellion Migration and the rise of ethnic competition Biographical availability or other life-course factors mediating entrance into activism Decline/outcomes Contention as a force for aggregate change in life-course patterns Biographical consequences of individual activism Source: Goldstone and McAdam (2001)
Table 2 Major follow-up studies of movement activists a Investigator(s) Year of Year of Activists in Control Before and Selected resulting publications participation follow-up sample group? after data? Demerath, Marwell, and Aiken 1965 1969 40 no yes Demerath et al. 1971 Fendrich 1960 1963 1971 128/100 b yes no Fendrich 1974, 1977; Fendrich & Krauss 1978; Fendrich & Tarleau 1973 Fendrich and Lovoy 1960 1963 1986 23 yes no Fendrich 1993 c ; Fendrich & Lovoy 1988 Jennings and Niemi 1964 1972 1973 216 yes yes Jennings & Niemi 1981; Jennings 1987 Maidenberg and Meyer 1967 1969 230 no no Maidenberg & Mayer 1970 Marwell, Aiken, and Demerath 1965 1984 145 no yes Marwell et al. 1987 McAdam 1964 1983 1984 330 yes yes McAdam 1988, 1989 Nassi and Abramowitz 1967 1977 15/30 d no no Abramowitz & Nassi 1981; Nassi & Abramowitz 1979 Whalen and Flacks 1970 1980 11 no no Whalen & Flacks 1980, 1984, 1989 Source: Adapted from McAdam (1989: 747) a This table was originally adapted from DeMartini (1983: 198). b Fendrich s 1977 article is based on comparative data on 28 white and 72 black activists. c Fendrich s 1993 book summarizes the overall thrust of his work on this topic. d Nassi & Abramowitz (1979) relied on 15 subjects, Abramowitz & Nassi (1981) on 30.
4 biographical consequences of activism results of the follow-up studies of New Left activism mentioned earlier. Specifically, they found movement participants to be more likely to have been divorced, to have been married later, to have cohabited outside of marriage, and to have experienced an extended period of unemployment since completing their education, and conversely, less likely to have had children and to have ever married (see further Goldstone & McAdam 2001). Thus, they observed a strong biographical impact of movement participation. More broadly, they concluded that there is a close relationship between people s political experiences and orientations during the 1960s and 1970s and their subsequent life-course choices. These studies have shifted the focus of the analysis from a small group of strongly committed activists to the biographical consequences of more routine, low-risk forms of participation, making it possible to generalize the findings beyond the quite peculiar groups of activists included in the follow-up studies of New Left activists and also showing that people who have been involved in social movements in less committed forms carry the consequences of that involvement throughout their lives. In addition, they allow us to examine the broader implications of participation in social movements for the population at large and the aggregate patterns of life-course events, therefore providing more insights into the processes of political, cultural, and social change. This is, for example, the thrust of the research by McAdam and collaborators (Wilhelm 1998; McAdam 1999; Van Dyke, McAdam, & Wilhelm 2000). They have looked at the aggregate-level change in life-course patterns due to involvement in social movements. Specifically, this research argues that participation in the movements of the 1960s is partly responsible for the broader cultural shift associated with people born during the period of the so-called baby boom after the end of World War II. McAdam (1999; see further Goldstone & McAdam 2001) suggests a three-stage process to explain the link between the movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the changes in life-course patterns associated with the baby boom cohorts. In the first stage, activists in the political and countercultural movements of the period rejected normal life-course trajectories in favor of newer alternatives (e.g., cohabitation, childlessness, and an episodic work track). In the second stage, these alternatives to traditional patterns became embedded in a number of geographic and subcultural locations (most notably college campuses and self-consciously countercultural neighborhoods) that were the principal centers of the 1960s experience and of New Left activism, thus leading upper-middle-class suburbs to embody the new alternatives through socialization processes. Finally, in the third stage, these alternative life-course patterns spread to increasingly heterogeneous strata of young Americans through processes of diffusion and adaptation, and were largely stripped of their original political or countercultural content to be experienced simply as new lifecourse norms. Thus, in this perspective, the involvement of the few in social movements has much broader consequences on society at large. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES From a methodological point of view, students of social movements and political activism have employed a variety of approaches to account for the biographical consequences of activism. At the most general level, however, it is worth recalling the suggestion made some years ago by Charles Tilly to deal with the explanatory problems inherent in the study of all kinds of movement effects. According to him, only one repose will work: (1) to formulate clear theories of the causal process by which social movements produce their effects; (2) to limit the investigation to the effects made plausible by those theories; (3) to work upstream by identifying instances of the effects, then seeing whether the hypothesized causal chain was actually operating; (4) to work downstream by identifying instances of the causal chain in operation, then seeing whether and how
biographical consequences of activism 5 its hypothesized effects occurred; (5) to work midstream by examining whether the internal links of the causal chain operated as the theory requires; and (6) to rule out, to the extent possible, competing explanations of the effects. (Tilly 1999: 170) The latter aspect has often been the Achilles tendon of research on the biographical consequences of activisms. More specifically, as already pointed out by McAdam (1989, 1999) in reviewing work in this field (see further Giugni 2004), in particular the early followup studies of New Left activists have suffered from one or more of a number of methodological problems. Some of them pertain to timing and the cause effect nexus. Firstly and most importantly, most of the studies reviewed above lack so-called before/after data on activists (but see the studies by Demerath, Marwell, & Aiken 1971; Jennings & Niemi 1981; Marwell, Aiken, & Demerath 1987; McAdam 1988). The latter refer to information retrieved before people get involved in social movement activities as well as after such an involvement. In the absence of a research design that allows for obtaining data both before and after involvement, one needs to rely on retrospective data and make inferences based on individual recollections, which is obviously problematic from a methodological point of view. Secondly, most of the studies focus on the 1960s cycle of contention, that is, a particular period characterized by strong social movement mobilization. Such a specific focus makes it difficult to disentangle individual effects of participation in social movements from the characteristics of the period examined and prevents empirical generalizations. Thirdly, studies on New Left activists have often suffered from too short a time span separating activism from its consequences (but see the studies by Marwell, Aiken, & Demerath 1987; Fendrich & Lovoy 1988; McAdam 1999). If such a time span is not long enough, one cannot determine whether activism has had a durable influence on the activists life-course. Fourthly, a related weakness consists in having measured prior activism at a single point in time instead of repeated measures. The absence of such repeated observations weakens the explanation as one does not know whether activism had lasted for a fairly long period or was short-lived and the subjects were defined as activists only at the time the research was conducted. A panel design would be an important, although costly, improvement in this regard. Further methodological shortcomings of work on New Left activists, in part related to the ones just mentioned, concern sampling and the generalization of empirical findings. Firstly and most importantly, most of these studies suffer from a lack of representativeness of the sample as subjects were often drawn from nonrepresentative samples of the population. Not only do they deal only with people belonging to the New Left, but most works have focused on activists who are most strongly involved. In both cases, of course, generalizations are, to say the least, difficult, if not impossible. The use of survey data avoids this problem. Secondly, researchers often did not include a control group made up of people who did not participate in movement activities (but see the studies by Fendrich 1974, 1977; Jennings & Niemi 1981; Fendrich & Lovoy 1988; and McAdam 1988, 1989). This is an important shortcoming. A control group of nonactivists provide the research with a baseline against which one can assess the impact of activism. Without such a baseline, any conclusion about the biographical consequences of activism would be difficult to make and potentially spurious. Thirdly, most works have studied only a small number of subjects (but see the study by McAdam 1999). While not a problem in itself, this prevents the researcher from being able to generalize the findings beyond the subjects examined. Again, survey data can be of much help here. Fourthly, often subjects were drawn from narrow geographical areas, sometimes from a single city. Generalizations become obviously difficult in this case. Selecting the subjects from wider areas or from more than one area would certainly improve the generalizability of results.
6 biographical consequences of activism SEE ALSO: Generational and cohort analysis; High and low risk/cost activism; Life history research and social movements; Outcomes, cultural; Outcomes, political; Participation in social movements; Political generation; Political socialization and social movements; Spillover, social movement. REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS DeMartini, J.R. (1983) Social movement participation: Political socialization, generational consciousness and lasting effects. Youth and Society 15, 195 233. Demerath, N.J., Marwell, G., and Aiken, M. (1971) Dynamics of Idealism. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Fendrich, J.M. (1974) Activists ten years later: A test of generational unit continuity. Journal of Social Issues 30, 95 118. Fendrich, J.M. (1977) Keeping the faith or pursuing the good life: A study of the consequences of participation in the civil rights movement. American Sociological Review 42, 144 157. Fendrich, J.M., and Krauss, E.M. (1978) Student activism and adult left-wing politics: A causal model of political socialization for black, white and Japanese students of the 1960s generation. Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 1, 231 256. Fendrich, J.M., and Lovoy, K.L. (1988) Back to the future: Adult political behavior of former political activists. American Sociological Review 53, 780 784. Fendrich, J.M., and Tarleau, A.T. (1973) Marching to a different drummer: Occupational and political correlates of former student activists. Social Forces 52, 245 253. Giugni, M. (2004) Personal and biographical consequences. In: Snow, D.A., Soule, S., and Kriesi, H. (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 489 507. Goldstone, J., and McAdam, D. (2001) Contention in demographic and life-course context. In: Aminzade, R.R., Goldstone, J.A., McAdam, D., Perry, E.J., Sewell, W.H., Jr, Tarrow, S., and Tilly, C. (eds), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 195 221. Jennings, M.K. (1987) Residues of a movement: The aging of the American protest generation. American Political Science Review 81, 367 382. Jennings, M.K., and Niemi, R.G. (1981) Generations and Politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Klatch, R. (1999) A Generation Divided. University of California Press, Berkeley. Marwell, G., Aiken, M., and Demerath, N.J. (1987) The persistence of political attitudes among 1960s civil rights activists. Public Opinion Quarterly 51, 359 375. McAdam, D. (1988) Freedom Summer. Oxford University Press, New York. McAdam, D. (1989) The biographical consequences of activism. American Sociological Review 54, 744 760. McAdam, D. (1999) The biographical impact of activism. In: Giugni, M., McAdam, D., and Tilly, C. (eds),how Social Movements Matter. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 117 146. Nagel, J. (1995) American Indian ethnic renewal: Politics and the resurgence of identity. American Sociological Review 60, 947 965. Sherkat, D.E., and Blocker, T.J. (1997) Explaining the political and personal consequences of protest. Social Forces 75, 1049 1070. Taylor, V., and Raeburn, N.C. (1995) Identity politics as high-risk activism: Career consequences for lesbian, gay, and bisexual sociologists. Social Problems 42, 252 273. Tilly, C. (1999) From interactions to outcomes of social movements. In: Giugni, M., McAdam, D., andtilly,c.(eds),how Social Movements Matter. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 253 270. Van Dyke, N., McAdam, D., and Wilhelm, B. (2000) Gendered outcomes: Gender differences in the biographical consequences of activism. Mobilization 5, 161 177. Whalen, J., and Flacks, R. (1980) The Isla Vista Bank Burners ten years later: Notes on the fate of student activists. Sociological Focus 13, 215 236. Whalen, J., and Flacks, R. (1984) Echoes of rebellion: The liberated generation grows up. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 12, 61 78. Whittier, N. (1995) Feminist Generations. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Wilhelm, B. (1998) Changes in cohabitation across cohorts: The influence of political activism. Social Forces 77, 289 310.