Theorizing Contention for the Professionalized World: SMOs, NGOs, and Formal Organization under Neoliberalism

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 12. Neoliberalism and Movements

Abstract

Neoliberalism has significantly reshaped the incentives and practices of civil society organizations. This paper uses extant scholarship on neoliberalism, organizations, and social movements in order to advance a theoretical argument about the specific nature of neoliberalism’s effects on social movements. Specifically, I argue that neoliberalism—by tying social movements to the bureaucracies and funding processes of federal institutions, by encouraging isomorphism with for-profit structures, and by increasing formal organization and professionalization—has exacerbated civil society’s resource dependence, and that has impaired civil society’s ability to criticize or advocate for dramatic policy change. I explicitly problematize some of the assumptions of the resource mobilization literature—from which most of the NGO literature proceeds—suggesting a need to sensitively probe some of the liabilities of formal organizations.

Author

• Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, Brown University