How Social Movement Targets Shape Movement Outcomes

• In Event: 303 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. The Consequences of Social Movements

Abstract

As social movements challenge exploitative practices within civil society, it is important to understand how their targets experience collective action and demands for rights. Using qualitative data drawn from interviews with contemporary slaveholders in rural India, I identify structural factors and cultural practices that limit targets’ ability to respond effectively with violence or appeals to the state and status quo. Scholarship on movement targets has disproportionately emphasized state repression and countermobilization while overlooking less confrontational responses, including superficial compliance and simply giving up. The ability to choose amongst these options is contingent on economic, social, and political resources. Rights violators lacking those resources quit. While the powerful do what they will, it is rarely under conditions of their own choosing.

Author

• Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, University of San Diego