Seeing Like an Advocate: Perceiving Success Amidst Ambiguous or Negative Outcomes

• In Event: 529 - Regular Session. Social Movement Consequences

Abstract

How do members of advocacy groups evaluate their efficacy? Existing research on social
movement organizations has primarily sought to answer this question objectively, rather than to
consider participants’ perceptions. This investigation therefore draws on insights from
ethnomethodology to analyze the case of a South Los Angeles-based group advocating for the
expedited release of prisoners sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Drawing on two
years of participant observation and interviews with 50 people affiliated with this group, I
find widespread positive assessments of efficacy that precede, rather than follow, information
that is often ambiguous or negative. Members took a positive view of deeply ambiguous
outcomes and feedback of their efficacy, such as the release of prisoners who may only have
benefited indirectly from their actions, or polite gestures and comments of the parole board
commissioners. Sometimes, their positive assessments were based on misunderstandings, as
when they believed the group to be responsible for the release of prisoners that it had not
supported. Members were quick to dismiss negative outcomes, including frequent parole denials
of the prisoners that they supported. And they either refuted or were unaware of negative
feedback, including explicit counterclaims to their efficacy from released prisoners and parole
board commissioners. Thus advocates cultivated the optimism that sustained their efforts but that
also kept them on a course that had a questionable impact on lifers’ parole prospects.

Author

• Nazgol Ghandnoosh, The Sentencing Project