Elite Led Social Movements: Co-optation, Counter Movements and Maintenance of the Status Quo

• In Event: 512 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. Consumption and Social Movements

Abstract

While the social movements literature has generated important insights into the success and failure of movements and counter movements, it has dwelled less upon elite-led movements that pose as counterculture movements. A study of such movements promises to throw up important insights into the mechanisms through which disruptive or revolutionary ideas are co-opted into the status quo. It is in this vein that we focus on the mindfulness movement that has grown rapidly in Silicon Valley and now beyond it. Through interviews, observations and participation in significant field events, we find how a systemic issue has been reframed as an individual problem and mindfulness has been commoditized by a movement that has been led by industry captains working with prominent mindfulness teachers such as Zen monks and turned into a productivity enhancing device. As we collect more data on this phenomenon and how it is unfolding, we seek to generate new insights into the relationship between dominant social orders, elites and elite-led counterculture movements.

Authors

• Deborah Miriam Brown, University of Cambridge

• Shaz Ansari, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

• Kamal Munir, University of Cambridge