From Protest Tactics to a Way of Life: Evidence on Category Ambiguity from the SRI Discourse

• In Event: 2483 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Tactics of Everyday Life

Abstract

In this paper, we contend that when a social movement tactic originally used during protests as a mechanism to mobilize against specific cases of social injustice evolves into a “way of living” or a more routinized lifestyle choice, its meaning becomes infused with definitional ambiguity leading to discretionary interpretation, emergence of co-narratives and subsequent categorical obfuscation. Using the mainstreaming of socially responsible investing (SRI) as our empirical context, we show that as the divestment movement in the late twentieth century grew into a relatively popular lifestyle choice by investors, the prior meanings and categorical definition of ethical investing became more ambiguous due to porous boundaries, duality of virtue inherent in the targets, and exercise of managerial discretion. One consequence of such ambiguity is that individual self-expression, self-consciousness and agency that are central in lifestyle movements become appropriated by discretionary and meaning-making work at the institutional level.

Author

• Saheli Nath, Northwestern University