SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Political Opportunity, Extreme Behavior, Herbert Blumer
Document Summary
Movements are partly defined by their mode of action. People use certain tactics to achieve a goal. Repertoire: set of available modes of action and claims-making. Pickets, demonstration, sit-ins, die-ins, occupations, petitions, slogans, etc. If you look at protests, now and if you go back in time, pretty much all movements share a certain token. If we were to analyze different type of movements over time, we see that there are trends in the repertoires of actions used during social movements. We can capture how a movement evolves and we can also capture the different types of tactics that a movement uses. People repeat the same tactics because they learn from one another. These tactics help to create a sense of unity. At the same time, they create a sense of predictability. E. g. , montreal police know what kinds of tactics protesters use. However, something that was successful in the past might not be successful in the modern day.
