Page 116 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

102 Social Movements

attribution, and encoding, but they are more universal and less context -

specific. They are powerful if they make claims which resonate with central
ideas and meanings already existing in the population and, as such, they
contribute to the escalation and intensity of collective action which char-
acterizes the upswing of a cycle of protest. In fact, Snow and Benford
argue that without the construction of an innovative frame there will be
no mass mobilization. Similarly, the deterioration of the master frame due
to changes in the prevailing cultural climate, or its displacement by a more

potent master frame, has a significant effect on the decline of a cycle of
protest.
Tarrow sees the American civil rights movement of the 1960s as a good
example of Snow and Benford ’ s theory of framing, arguing that its domi-
nant theme of “ rights ” was resonant with widely shared values, both
among black middle - class members of the movement and the white liberal
“ conscience constituents ” who supported it. However, this easy relation-
ship between the movement and American cultural understandings also
contributed to the decline of the cycle of protest initiated by the civil rights
movement; the rights frame was appropriated by disparate groups across
society, including even those who saw affirmative action as an infringe-

ment of their rights, while more radical black groups, rejecting the symbols

of white liberalism, failed to find resonance in an oppositional subculture
and became increasingly isolated and ineffectual. As Tarrow sees it,
success depends on “ maintaining a delicate balance between the resonance
of the movement ’ s message with existing political culture and its promise
of new departures ” (Tarrow, 1992 : 197).
Resource Mobilization theorists have attempted to integrate the framing
approach with the more familiar concepts in the tradition: “ political
opportunities ” and “ mobilizing structures. ” In their introduction to an
important collection of articles intended to do just that, McAdam,
McCarthy, and Zald argue that in order to fully understand social move-
ments it is necessary to analyze the dynamic relations between political
opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes, to examine
how they condition and constrain each other to shape movements ’ aims,
and activities (McAdam et al., 1996 ). To further this analysis, they propose
the study of social movements through time, over the course of their
development. The initial emergence of movements, they argue, is due
principally to social changes which make the political order more vulner-
able to change. However, the political opportunities created in this way

are only opportunities insofar as they are defined as such by a group of
actors already sufficiently organized to take advantage of whatever open-

ings the political system might offer. In the case of the revolutions in