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Social Movements 113

Melucci ’ s emphasis on the construction of meaningful collective action
is also a response to Resource Mobilization theorists. In his view, RMT
is useful for the way in which it stresses the external relationships of social
movements to the fi eld of systematic opportunities and constraints within
which action takes place. Its focus on how social movements are formed
and maintained is a good corrective to Touraine ’ s emphasis on why they
have become so important in contemporary society. However, in Melucci ’ s
view, despite the way in which RMT postulates the construction of col-
lective action as a necessary process for social movements, it, too, takes
the unity of social movements for granted and fails to examine it as a
process. Furthermore, it is seriously limited in its capacity to do so insofar
as Resource Mobilization theorists tend to see opportunities and con-
straints as “ objective ” realities. Melucci is opposed to what he calls dual-
istic thinking, which emphasizes either the objective or the subjective
dimensions of social life; for him the goals of action, the means to be
used, and the environment within which it takes place are all defi ned by
collective actors in the ongoing process of constructing a social movement.
In this respect, his work is in sympathy with those who have used
Goffman ’ s model of frame analysis, arguing that the motivation to par-
ticipate in collective action is produced in interaction (although, as far as
I know, he nowhere refers to RMT ’ s appropriation of Goffman ’ s work).
However, unlike Resource Mobilization theorists, Melucci follows the
logic of this “ cultural turn ” through to its conclusion, arguing that the
reasons for becoming involved in a movement and the calculations of cost

and benefits are only developed in interaction. Although he thinks –
perhaps somewhat inconsistently – that structural explanations of the
objective conditions in which social movements have recently risen to
prominence are of value, they are relevant to collective action itself only
insofar as they enter into actors ’ perceptions and evaluations and so into
the processes of interaction in which it is constructed (Melucci, 1988 ).
Finally, Melucci breaks with Touraine and with RMT by rejecting the
view that it is committed militants or social movement organizations who
are the principal actors in collective action. For Melucci, social move-
ments are, above all, sustained in “ invisible submerged networks ” in
which experiments in life are carried on, new experiences created, and
collective identities forged in everyday life. In his view, movements appear
relatively infrequently as publicly visible phenomena in comparison with
their existence in the practices of a largely part - time and fl oating member-
ship in which they are formed and gain and maintain strength. The
consciousness - raising groups of the early women ’ s movement would no
doubt be good examples of Melucci ’ s “ submerged networks, ” as would