Non-strategic Agency and Syncretic Identities in Indigenous Women’s Collective Action

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women's Religious Agency I

Abstract

The tripartite social movement framework is useful because it highlights both internal and external factors that enable or constrain collective action and the importance of both material conditions alongside the meaning-making work that collective action entails. Yet, the application of the tripartite framework has in many cases limited discussions of identity and agency to their strategic deployment, leaving little room for the study of non-purposive forms of agency and evolving identities. It has also been limited to social movements aimed at the state, ignoring collective action in other institutional settings. As a corrective, this article draws on multi-method research to examine indigenous women’s mobilization within the Presbyterian Church and their subsequent activities in the context of an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) in order to show that goals, frames, and identities were as much the result of action as its cause. The findings demonstrate that both during mobilization and after, women crafted and recrafted syncretic identities through action rather than prior to it, and that even when they were not acting strategically, their agency was central to this process. This article therefore pushes scholars of collective action to recognize new forms of agency unfolding in the context of organizations and social movements. It additionally demonstrates that while the majority of the literature has used the tripartite framework to study state-oriented social movements, once it is adjusted to allow for non-purposive forms of agency and evolving identities, it is additionally useful for studying collective action in other institutional settings.

Author

• Erin Beck, University of Oregon