Research:
Research:
My research of social movements emerges directly from my long-term involvement in a variety of movements and political projects over the past three decades. Raised socially conservative, very religious (Mennonite), working class, and relatively sheltered in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I was nonetheless exposed to and captivated by issues of social and economic justice in high school. By age 17, I was fully submerged in radical left subcultures, where I acquired a wide-ranging skill set in community organizing, campaigning, and strategic communication. My instrumentalist orientation—toward building collective power and making the organizations and movements I was part of as effective as possible—often seemed to be in tension with group culture. I began wrestling with what I perceived to be a paralyzing ambivalence about political power, a “clubhouse” mentality that insulated us from broader social bases, and even a celebration of our own marginality.
A pivotal moment came when a fellow organizer lent me her copy of Frontiers of Social Movement Theory. As I began to explore the scholarship on group dynamics, behavior, and culture, I gained insights about why the movements and subcultures I had been giving my life to stayed so small and insular. I read this scholarship voraciously, integrating scholarly concepts into my analysis and training programs for grassroots organizers (through Beyond the Choir). My first book, Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press, 2017) was my effort to synthesize on-the-ground and scholarly insights, and to contribute back, both to contemporary social movements and to scholarly knowledge.
I am currently preparing an article for submission to a sociological journal that further explores the historically situated group dynamics discussed in Hegemony How-To. “Alienated or Rational Actors? An Integrated, ‘Neoclassical’ Approach to Occupy Wall Street” points to the utility of frameworks that have been largely abandoned by contemporary movement scholars. I elaborate how both strain and agency motivated and shaped Occupy participants, and shaped and constrained the movement’s internal culture and strategic orientation. Forging a ‘neoclassical’ approach, I offer a conceptual framework of four dimensions of social movements, and lenses to use to study movements: 1) movements as indicators of broader social strain; 2) movements as popular symbols that frame social cleavages and unify at least a significant portion of the populace; 3) movements as fields (or “field-like” social spaces) with their own distinct dynamics and social capital systems; and 4) movements as strategic actors that intervene to change the world.
See my CV for more information about my involvement in social movements and grassroots organizations.