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128 Social Movements

social movements. As we have learned from Melucci, the collective iden-
tity of a social movement is never settled once and for all; on the contrary,
who “ we ” are is formed through ongoing disputes, and confl icting per-
spectives do not in and of themselves prevent solidarity.

Confl ict
What is also crucial, however, for the formation of a sense of “ we, ” is

conflict with “ them, ” with a concrete embodiment of the ideals to which
the movement is opposed which make it clear that confl icts within the
movement itself are between “ us. ” This opposition may be with another
organization, a network, or an authoritative policy - making institution.
Transnational movements, operating in a world in which many organiza-
tions, including states, are networked into global governance, have a
range of such interlocutors at different scales, from the local to the global.
For the most part, social movements aim to achieve change that is rooted
in national contexts. Globalization makes strategic “ scale shift ” easier:
“ scaling up ” to extend activities to include a wider range of actors and

sites of conflict with opponents; and “ scaling down, ” where the range of
actors and sites is reduced (see Tarrow, 2005 ). There are two main ways
in which transnational movements shift scale in order to bring about
domestic change. In “ externalization, ” movements “ scale up ” to bring
domestic causes to the attention of international organizations, especially
IGOs. As Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have shown, in the case
of the campaigns against violence against women, for example, advocacy
organizations put pressure on states from below, at the domestic level,
and from above, at the international level, in order to try to shame them
into acting to deal with issues within their own borders (Keck and Sikkink,
1998 ). Alternatively, social movements may “ scale down, ” to “ internal-
ize ” or “ domesticate ” conflicts that have their basis in policy made at a

supranational or international level (Tarrow, 2005 ). Tarrow argues that
the global justice movement in the US has largely now internalized protest
again global economic policy, focusing on issues, such as racism and
police brutality, that activists see as especially relevant within their states
(Hadden and Tarrow, 2007 ). Similarly, protests against economic policies
of the European Union within member states are now quite common
(Imrig and Tarrow, 2001 ). Examples from elsewhere include protests
across the world at the IMF - imposed austerity, especially in Latin America
and Africa (Della Porta and Tarrow, 2005 : 4 – 5). It was these protests
that began the global justice movement (Moghadam, 2008 : 92).