Legitimacy in the Repertoire of Contention: How Black Lives Matter Activists Justify Riots

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Tactics & Repertoires: Invention, Legitimization, Radicalization

Abstract

Legitimacy is an overlooked precondition for a tactic’s availability within social movement repertoires. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 37 Movement for Black Lives activists in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, this article identifies a three-step process through which activists legitimize riots. First, activists reclassify riots as protest by ‘lumping’ them with revered tactics, thereby ‘splitting’ them from criminality. Second, activists engage in moral legitimation: while acknowledging the harm riots can cause to Black communities, activists frame them as justified counterviolence to state repression. Third, activists use instrumental legitimation: Despite potential reputational risks, they argue that riots impose costs on capitalism, delegitimize the state and lend credibility to subsequent non-violent protests. By tracing how activists legitimate a controversial movement tactic, this article argues that legitimation work shapes tactical availability. This challenges views of the repertoire of contention as a fixed toolkit from which activists choose tactics they regard as strategically effective or aligned with their collective identities.

Author

• Mathis Ebbinghaus, University of Oxford