SOC433H5 Chapter 3: Ramos article
Ramos, Howard. 2006. "What causes Canadian Aboriginal protest? Examining resources,
opportunities and identity, 1951-2000." The Canadian Journal of Sociology 31 (2):211-234.
Abstract
• this paper tests whether or not Canadian Aboriginal protest, 1951–2000, can be explained by
resource mobilization, political opportunities, or the construction of a PanAboriginal collective
identity
• argues that the strongest influences on protest are the founding of new organizations, federal
monies, media attention, and successful resolution of land claims
• concludes that differences among “status groups,” and their access to resources and opportunities,
inhibit broad based PanAboriginal protest.
Introduction
• During the 1990s, Canada experienced a rise of Aboriginal contentious action.
• few scholars systematically examine why this increase in protest occurred or why it was so
widespread.
• focuses on a single status group or First Nation
• testing which factors influenced Canadian Aboriginal protest during the 1951–2000 period.
• it examines whether resource mobilization, political opportunities, or the construction of a
PanAboriginal collective identity account for protest.
• its strongest influences are the founding of new organizations, federal monies allocated to Indian
Affairs, media attention, and successful resolution of land claims
• PanAboriginal identity poorly accounts for increased protest, because differences in legal status
among Aboriginals and federal funding of organizations generate competition and divisions
among them.
Possible influences
• Conscientiously: citing and organizing outside dominant institutions, with the intention of
engaging or challenging power holders.
• There are three perspectives in the literature
o Resource mobilization
o Political opportunities
o Collective identity
• Resource mobilization
• looking at the resources needed to organize and coordinate actions
• links protest to the availability of financial assets
• also examines other types of resources, such as social or human capital and the availability of
organizations
• measure the success of resource mobilization by the presence of organizations that act as hubs of
interaction and assets
• political participation increases according to the availability of resources.
• Aboriginal protest, resources include presence of national organizations, the availability of
government funding, and human capital that can be drawn upon
• there is debate over whether organizations mobilize people to act contentiously or instead to
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participate in dominant institutions
• researchers associate the presence of organizations and their resources with greater participation
in dominant institutions rather than protest
• As a result, although resource mobilization may lead to contention, it may also contribute to
incorporation into dominant political processes.
• Political opportunity
• accounts for contentious action through the presence or absence of systemic opportunities.
• Protest is considered to be tied to openings and closings of the polity
• contention usually occurs in ebbs and flows with a clustering around specific events, new
resources, emerging divisions among elites, and general changes in state-civil society relations
• protest is linked to both the emergence and loss of opportunities
• closure leads to a radicalization of actions.
• those looking at the women’s movement tie the presence of opportunities to mobilization.
• For Canadian Aboriginals, many institutional and political opportunities emerged over the years,
as a result of both opening and closing of the polity.
• Yet, at the same time, much openness came in response to unprecedented protest against closing
opportunities,
• Thus, for Canadian Aboriginal protest, it is difficult to anticipate the direction of this relationship.
• Political opportunities may have both positive and negative effects on protest.
• Perhaps the most striking is that it means everything and nothing at the same time.
• its key problem is that most opportunities are assigned after-the- fact
• Attempts to operationalize it have led to rather mixed results and remain elusive
• attention to political opportunity is accused of missing the essence of mobilization, focusing too
much on structural influences at the cost of micro- mobilization or day-to-day interactions among
movements and their members.
• Collective identity literature
• accounts for some of these omissions by trying to understand micro-mobilization
• looks at how movements and bystander publics interact in order to assert and build identities.
• mobilization is intrinsically linked to one’s identity
• mobilization is bound to everyday interactions and social networks.
• Without a common identity, or shared social capital, there is little success in getting people to act
contentiously
• Culture shift
• Whereas movements at the end of the 19th century were grounded in class inequalities,
movements of the 21st century are based on the assertion and reaffirmation of denied identities
• participation in contentious action is a part of the social construction of that very identity
• the goal of protest is recognition of disenfranchised identities rather than attaining more
measurable material outcomes.
• its rise in the 1970s was linked to the creation of a new PanAboriginal identity
• one that extends beyond a single linguistic, cultural, or national group.
• opening and closing political opportunities and the creation of a new PanAboriginal identity led
to widespread Indigenous contention in the US.
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