Threat, Framing, and Ethnic Violence in California’s Humboldt Bay Region, 1853-1865

• In Event: 054 - Regular Session. Collective Behavior: New Perspectives on Group Process

Abstract

The study of reactive and repressive contention has increasingly focused on relational collective mechanisms, which are
theorized to mediate the linkage between structurally aggrieved individuals and collectively mobilizing resources and networks. However, the relative constitutive importance (i.e. necessity and sufficiency) of the structural and relational dimensions of intergroup competition for mobilization has yet to be
empirically evaluated. This study addresses this issue by focusing on the variable intensity of settler collective ethnic violence against indigenous peoples in the Humboldt Bay region of California, ca. 1853-­1865. To account for annual
variation in violent settler mobilization, I analyze an original historical dataset using fuzzy set qualitative-­comparative analysis, and constitutively adjudicate between structural and meso-­level financial incentives, organizational resources, and the collective framing and boundary entrepreneurship of local civic elites. Results indicate that perceived political threats to
settler territorial sovereignty were generally necessary but insufficient for high levels of violence, and that elite framing and boundary work mechanisms enabled these threats to become collectively mobilizing. These constitutive findings confirm the importance of structural conditions in mobilizing group‐based reactive contention, while also problematizing the ways in which actors collectively appraise these conditions as more or less threatening to their own interests.

Author

• Peter B. Owens, Washington University, St. Louis