Dimensions of Contention: Reconciling Structural, Relational and Cultural Aspects

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 13. Social Networks and Mobilization

Abstract

A perennial source of differences among competing explanations of any given contentious political process, and indeed of any social process, lies in the divergence of starting assumptions (paradigms) held by the respective researchers. Tilly, for example, in explaining the rise of European states, uses a relational instrumentalist lens and sees culture as derivative therefrom. Gorski, in opposition, sees cultural morality as the primary driving force in this process. This paradigmatic split aligns on the classical material/ideal divide in the social sciences, except that Weber rejected any one-sided explanation. The present paper furthers this integrative spirit by developing and using a method of integrating and weighing the respective causal contribution of diverse paradigmatic perspectives—material, relational and cultural-in the explanation of contentious dynamics. It does so by developing an integrative table of relational modalities. The method uses the modalities to code the content of influential relationships among actors affecting the outcome. The relational data come from an exhaustive field study of environmental contention in Japan over a 17 year span. The resultant hybrid explanatory model better reflects the complexity of causality, improving validity while enhancing comparability and guiding thick description.

Author

• Jeffrey Broadbent, Univ of Minnesota