Page 114 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

100 Social Movements

social movements. The most frequent and extensive criticisms concern the
model of the social actor on which it is premised. It is argued that to see
individuals acting solely out of rational self - interest ignores how actors
are always socially situated. Individuals are not detached and solitary,
with merely instrumental relationships to others, but always already
members of groups and communities, with feelings, beliefs, ideas, and
values about shared, collective identities. As we have seen, Oberschall
criticized Olson ’ s view of the individual as essentially isolated very early
in the development of RMT, but it is nevertheless Olson ’ s individualistic
assumptions which have been dominant in RMT research.
A further criticism related to the assumptions of rational choice theory
is the neglect of actors ’ perceptions; it is assumed that an individual
somehow immediately knows what is in his or her most rational self -
interest. In fact, even if self - interest is always the dominant motivation in
any individual decision – an assumption which is either tautological,
assuming that whatever the individual does is necessarily in his or her
rational interest, or else doubtful in the extreme – this depends on a cal-

culation of costs and benefits which are themselves socially constructed.
It is rational to pursue certain ends only if those ends are of value, and
value itself is socially constructed; it is not something decided on by an
individual in isolation (Scott, 1990 : 117 – 28; Morris and Mueller, 1992 ).
In response to such criticisms of the atomistic, over - rationalist model
of the individual on which the approach has been premised, those working
within the RMT tradition have attempted to develop a better account of
subjectivity and culture. The most influential work in this respect is that

of David Snow, in association with various colleagues. They draw on
Goffman ’ s ideas of framing to analyze how actors negotiate meanings and
commit themselves to social movements. This work is intended to supple-
ment RMT, to provide it with the tools to understand how individuals
make the choices so difficult to account for from a rational choice per-

spective and also, to a lesser extent, to understand the “ meaning - work ”
carried out by social movements. However, the attempt to combine a
social constructionist approach with the methodological individualism of
rational choice theory is actually more problematic than Resource
Mobilization theorists suppose. They stop short of accepting the full
implications of the understanding of culture they have adopted, which
actually brings the development of the approach within the “ cultural
turn ” of contemporary political sociology.
According to Snow and his associates, it is through “ frames ” that social
actors define grievances, forge collective identities, and create, interpret,

and transform opportunities in order to bring about social movements.