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social movements
OLIVIER FILLIEULE
their attention in any serious way to adult socialization. Moreover . . . , political behavior or participation in political organizations is generally
conceived of as a dependent rather than independent variable. Socialization research has been
aimed at understanding why individuals do or
dont participate in politics, not at revealing the
effects of political activity. We have rarely studied the socialization effects of explicitly political
organizations as compared with others such as
families or schools.
previously inaccessible to them. This is the reason why, even in movements where women
are kept in positions of subjugation, mere participation can foster emancipation. The Black
Panther Party, for example, which planned to
link black liberation to a collective memory
reinvented and nourished from a precolonial
African culture dominated by men, served as
a place for political training and consciousness
raising about patriarchy and sexism.
Finally, it is clear that a social movement can
have profound and widespread socialization
effects on individuals in society by transforming their sense of identity and politicizing
the resulting social identification. Beyond the
results aforementioned, much work is needed
in order to build a comprehensive and solid
theoretical model for the study of the multiple socializing effects of social movements.
One possible point of departure is the Goffmanian notion of moral career, which directs
attention to the socializing effects of various
formal and informal organizational constraints
(status, proposed or reserved activities, leadership, and so on). Indeed, organizations do
a lot of work in socializing their members,
understood as role taking, which allows individuals to identify the different roles they face
and correctly fulfil their customary tasks. This
secondary socialization can, at times, assume
the form of explicit inculcations, the goal of
which is to homogenize activists categories of
thought and their way of acting within and
in the name of the organization. Most of the
time, know-how and activist wisdom amounts
to a practical sense, what Bourdieu refers to
as the anticipated adjustment to the requirements of a field, what the language of sports
calls the sense of the game (like sense of
place, the art of anticipation, etc.), acquired
over the course of a long dialectical process,
often described as a vocation, by which we
make ourselves according to what is making
us and we choose that by which we are chosen (Bourdieu 1980: 111112). This process
takes place outside of our conscious awareness.
If, following Gerth and Wright Mills (1954:
173), an institution leaves its mark on social
Indeed, vivid political events should be important catalysts because they can have traumatic
effects and stimulate heavy information flows.
Events may have an impact at any age but
depending on the position in the life cycle,
the socializing effects will differ, from strengthening and substantiation for older people to
conversion and alternation for youngsters. The
hypothesis here, in line with the impressionable
years model, is that people should especially
recall events as important if they happened in
their adolescence or early adulthood.
Two directions could be taken here. First,
the effects of direct participation on political
protest should be explored. Developing further
research in this direction is all the more
important in the subfield of social movements
since some research suggests that younger
participants often favor nonconventional
modes of action such as demonstrations and
blockades, which then often constitute their
first significant involvement with the political
system, therefore having strong cognitive
effects. The dramatic growth of the antiglobalization movement all over the world, with
its strong appeal to young generations, is no
doubt a rich field for studying such processes
and their possible effects on subsequent
movements (Fillieule et al. 2004). Research
should also focus on the impact of political
events on engaged observers and even
bystander publics in the vein of Stewart,
Settles, and Winter (1998), who suggest that
those who were attentive to the movements
in the 1960s but not very active in them,
showed lasting political effects years later. Such
inquiries could also suggest some interesting
questions on how groundbreaking movements
can play an important role in resocializing
other groups to the politics of protest, as for
example the American civil rights movement
did with many subsequent movements.
Another fascinating field of research in PS
concerns intergenerational effects of political
socialization. Here again, social movement
research has a lot to say in various directions.
First, regarding parental influence on their
offspring in a context of political unrest, it is
reasonable to ask: How long and in what magnitude parental influence persists over time in
periods of upheaval like those of the mid-1960s,
or when the political environment contains
forces antithetical to parental inclinations.
Understanding how political engagement plays
out in such cases, and tracing its implications
for intergenerational change, constitutes an
important challenge for future research. But
the prospect that offspring can also influence
parental attitudes, especially in domains in
which offspring introduce more modern
attitudes to families, should also be taken into
account. Recent research on protest marches of
2006 in the US (Pantoja, Menjivar, & Magana
2008) or more generally on political behavior
of early adult immigrants and its effects on
their parents is ripe territory for future work on
political socialization and social movements.
SEE ALSO: Commitment; Consciousness,
conscience, and social movements; Conversion
and new religious movements; Generational and
cohort analysis; Outcomes, cultural; Participation
in social movements; Political generation.
Whittier, N. (1995) Feminist Generations. The Persistence of the Radical Womens Movement. Temple
University Press, Philadelphia.
Wilhelm, B. (1998) Changes in cohabitation across
cohorts: The influence of political activism. Social
Forces 77, 289310.