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Conflict Dynamics and Strategic Planning in Movement Groups: The Case of German Anti-Nuclear Power Groups

Sun, August 17, 12:30 to 1:30pm, TBA

Abstract

Recent scholarship has called for a closer inspection of strategic planning in social movements as a way to deepen our understanding of activist's agency. In this paper, I contribute to this call by bringing the method of conversation analysis and corresponding findings to social movement studies. I use transcripts of audio recordings made at internal meetings of German anti-nuclear groups to analyze planning episodes. If we come to understand planning episodes as talk-in-interaction we can observe that planning is influenced by interactional microdynamics. Agreement and disagreement about proposals are not equivalent options and my analysis shows that strategic knowledge thrives in disagreements about proposals. I further introduce a sequential conflict model which defines conflicts as a series of at least three disagreeing moves where the fourth move establishes mutual opposition between the arguing parties. This model allows two observations: First, planning can be understood as a form of conflict and is shaped by it. Second, most conflicts discontinue when mutual opposition has been established. The discontinuation of conflicts is again a point where strategic reasoning may be introduced in the form of general principles that consolidate opposing views. In conclusion, I argue that the relative fixity of the goals of the anti-nuclear movement and uncertainty as to how directly reach the goals contribute to a reduced conflict potential.

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